Carolina Chansons Part 7

ECLIPSE

Once melodies of street-cries washed these walls, Glad as the refluent song Of cheerful waters from a happy spring That shout their way along; Such cries were born in other days from lips A spirit taught to sing. Now it is gone!

Memory expects those hymns for shrimp and prawn, Or the mellifluous chaunt from the black gorge Of Orpheus inside a murky skin, Who looked the gold sun in the eye While garden mists grew thin, And intoned "_Hoppin' John_!"

As when the shadow of the gray eclipse Haggards the countryside, When moon-fooled birds have nothing more to say, And soft untimely bats begin to slide; As darkness sweeps the morning light away, So silence brushes music now from lips.

Oh! Can it be the songless spirit of this age Has slain the ancient music, or that ears Have harsher thresholds? Only this I know: The streets grow more discordant with the years; And that which bids the huckster sing no more, Will drive the flower-woman from the door.

H.A.

EDGAR ALLAN POE[8]

Once in the starlight When the tides were low, And the surf fell sobbing To the undertow, I trod the windless dunes Alone with Edgar Poe.

Dim and far behind us, Like a fabled bloom On the myrtle thickets, In the swaying gloom Hung the cl.u.s.tered windows Of the barrack-room.

Faint on the evening Tenuous and far As the beauty shaken From a vagrant star, Throbbed the ache and pa.s.sion Of an old guitar.

Life closed behind us Like a swinging gate, Leaving us unfettered And emanc.i.p.ate; Confidants of Destiny, Intimates of Fate.

I could only cower, Silent, while the night, Seething with its planets, Parted to our sight, Showing us infinity In its breadth and height.

But my chosen comrade, Tossing back his hair With the old loved gesture, Raised his face, and there Shone the agony that those Loved of G.o.d must bear.

Oh, we heard the many things Silence has to say; He and I together As alone we lay Waiting for the slow, sweet Miracle of day.

When the bugle's silver Spiralled up the dawn, Dew-dear, night-cool, And the stars were gone, I arose exultant, Like a man new born.

But my friend and master, Heavy-limbed and spent, Turned, as one must turn at last From the sacrament; And his eyes were deep with G.o.d's Burning discontent.

D.H.

[8] See the note on Poe.

ALCHEMY[9]

Some souls are strangers in this bourne; Beauty is born from such men's discontent; Earth's gra.s.s and stones, Her seas, her forests, and her air Are seas and forests till they mirror on some pool Unusually reflecting in an exile's mind, Who tarries here protesting and alone; And then they get strange shapes from memories of other stars The banished knew, or spheres he dreams will be.

Thus is the fivefold vision of the earth recast By ghostly alchemy.

But there are favored spots Where all earth's moods conspire to make a show Of things to be trans.m.u.ted into beauty By alchemic minds.

Such is this island beach where Poe once walked, And heard the melic throbbing of the sea, With m.u.f.fled sound of harbor bells-- Bells--he loved bells!

And here are drifting ghosts of city chimes Come over water through the evening mist, Like knells from death-ships off the coasts of spectral lands.

I think some dusk their metal voices Yet will call him back To walk upon this magic beach again, While Grief holds carnival upon the harbor bar.

Heralded by ravens from another air, The master will pa.s.s, pacing here, Wrapped in a cape dark as the unborn moon.

There will be lightning underneath a star; And he will speak to me Of archipelagoes forgot, Atolls in sailless seas, where dreams have married thought.

H.A.

[9] See the note on Poe.

OSCEOLA[10]

AN EPITAPH

The feathers of the eagle-bonnets ride upon the north wind; The sachems and their totems have perished in the fire; Through the valleys and the rivers and the mountains that you fought for Beats the quick desire.

In the happy hunting ground of proven warriors, You have pa.s.sed the pipe of peace at council fire With the pale-face and the Zulus' mighty chieftains-- Rest with dead desire.

H.A.

[10] The Indian Chief, Osceola, lies buried at Fort Moultrie.

MAGNOLIA GARDENS

A PROSE-POEM

In the spring when the first midges dance and warm days lure the last-year's b.u.t.terfly, the scarlet of the cardinals begins to flicker through the ivory smoke of the mosses. Then the alligator leaves his winter ooze, and the widening "O" of the ripple which his gar-like nose makes, travels slowly across the sullen ponds, where the pendant gonfalons of the mosses kiss their imaginary duplicates, hanging head downward in the red water.

When the first frog honks with the bull-voiced trumpet of resurgent spring, the jasmine rings its little hawk-bells, golden harp notes through the forest; and the usurping wistaria a.s.sumes the purple, reigning imperial and alone, flaunting its _palidementum_ in a cascade of lilac amid the matrix of the mosses. Its sleek, muscular vine-arms writhe round the clasped bodies of live oaks as if two lovers slept beneath a cloak, and the cloisonne pavilion of their dalliance drips a blue-glaze of shadows overhead.

Underneath this motley canopy of gray and blue, lush with the early tenderness of leaves, the pink azaleas open light-shy eyes like pupils of albinos, sloughing off delicate pods that smoulder, when the wind blows, live coals among the gray of furnace ashes. Here are magenta carpets fit for leprechauns, when crescent moons glimmer upon the ocher ponds, and the slow fireflies light their phantom lanterns, weaving to and fro about the ivory-orange marble of the tomb.

Each April day brings opalescent waves of birds that dart like living brands about the aisles to light the flower lamps; nonpareils, orioles, and hummingbirds, a mist of speed upon their wings, while the blue heron stands one-legged by the ponds, watching the garden till it seethes and flames with colors from the cloaks of mandarins.

High in the ancient forest the magnolias burn the perfect alban lucence of their lamps; white are their ivory cups like priestly linen, and fragrant with the tang of foreign citrons. An esoteric, mirrored swan slides by like Cleopatra's barge, while drums of color beaten by a maniac blend with old tints of Leonardo's dreams, colors that G.o.d might see if his own lightning blasted out his eyes.

This march of color chants a strange barbaric fitness of dithyrambic chords, and moves processional across the days like some encarnadined durbar, where a huge Ethiopian eunuch in red moon-shaped slippers and an orange turban walks with a glittering scimetar, leading a brace of sleepy leopards drugged and golden eyed; the caparisoned elephants swing down a latticed street; silk shawls hang from balconies, brushing the domed gilt of howdahs; and ruby-roped, the maharajahs sway behind the mahout with his peavey-goad.

The stark denial of the blue-ribbed sky looks down upon this garden, where the wantonness of earth is flaunted in the spring against the face of heaven's void sterility. Here stolid faces look ashamed. When the sun leans on boreal wings, there is a month that lovers walk here justified, while flower throats cry in vast choirs, "Glory to life!" and the uplifted trumpets of vine tubas shout with noise of color set to notes of bloom.