Carolina Chansons Part 8

MIDDLETON GARDEN

This is a garden where the Son of Heaven Well might walk, With all his dragon-broidered mandarins, To the plucked sound of tenor instruments, With peac.o.c.ks, kites, and little red balloons, Mirrored with incense and rice-paper lights, And old bronze lanterns on the full moon nights, Upon the lacquered, porcelain-pink lagoons.

If cardinals in sun-blood robes were here To kiss the ring of gorgeous Borgia popes; Or bold de Gama's loot from Malabar: Topaz and ruby, chrysolite and beryl, The golden idol with a thousand hands, And ropes of pearl; They would seem lesser than these flowers are, Whose masculine magnificence makes riches pale.

And yet with all its oriental hue There is a touch of Holland, Of ca.n.a.ls at Loo, Where Orange William planned a boxwood maze.

The house has Flemish curves upon its eaves; Its doorways yearn for buckle-shoed young bloods, Smoking clay pipes, with lace a-droop from sleeves-- Moonlight on terraces is like a story told By sleepy link-boys 'round old sedan chairs In days when tulip bulbs were gold.

The faint, crisp rustle of magnolia leaves Rasps with the crackling scratch of old brocade, The low bird-voices ripple like the laugh Of Watteau beauties coiffured, with pomade; Here ribboned dandies offered scented snuffs To other ghosts, beneath the giant trees-- Was that a flash of rose-flamingo stuffs-- Azaleas?--was a sneeze blown down the breeze?

This terrace is a stage set by the years, Fit for the pageants of the centuries; That fire-scarred ruin marks an act of tears-- Charm is more winsome coped with tragedies.

Here flaunted tilted hats and crinolines, Small parasols, hoopskirts, and bombazines, When turbaned slaves walked d.y.k.es in single file, And rice-fields made horizons, otherwhile.

All, all has pa.s.sed, but change, Gnawed by the rat-like teeth of avid years, The masters, through the door, to mysteries Beyond blind panels 'mid the moss-scarved trees, Uncanny gates, where negroes faintly bold, At high noon in the tide of summer heat, Stand in the draught of tomb-air deathly cold That flows like glacial water 'round their feet.

H.A.

THE GOOSE CREEK VOICE

This is the low-doored house among funereal trees, Where one May dusk they brought Louise, With music slow, And sobbing low, The old slaves crooning eerily.

She died asleep and weeping wearily.

She had a poppy-strange disease; A beauty that was more than carnal, How durst they leave her in the charnel?

She might be sleeping eerily!

Hush! They have locked her in the tomb, Among the silences and wilting bloom; Life's melody of voices drifts away-- Mistaken!

Was it an owlet in the thorns that moaned?

The churchyard moonlight turns ash-gray-- Hush! Pale Louise!

The dead must not awaken.

Something a twittering cry is uttering.

Is that a bird there on her breast, Lost in the fragrant gloom, Wakening to morning twilight in the tomb?

No bird--it is her folded hands a-fluttering!

I think I should have died to see her rise Among the withered wreaths And spider-cluttered palls Of her dead uncles' funerals, While streams of horror fed the blue lakes of her eyes.

I known I would have died to see her rise.

_Over the fields a voice calls from the tomb,_ _Pleading and pleading drearily,_ _But all the slaves have fled_ _And left her talking to her coffined dead,_ _And whimpering eerily._ _The young birds die_ _To see old hands thrust from the window-slit,_ _Clutching the light in handfuls of despair;_ _Stark fear has stroked the color from her hair,_ _While from the window comes_ _The babbled whisper of her prayer._ _Night is like spiders in her mouth;_ _By day they spin a film across her eyes._ _Now night; now day--_ _The birds come back;_ _It is another year:_ _The withering voice they fear_ _Has nothing more to say._

But yet once more Her kinsmen came With nodding plume and pall And music slow, And, sobbing low, They fluttered back the door, and lo!-- She leaned against the slit-window Her web-like, bony hands against the wall, And all about her, like a summer cloud Rippled her leprous hair, One bleached and shuddering shroud.

H.A.

THE LEAPING POLL

At early morning when the earth grows cold, When river mists creep up, And those asleep are nearest death, She died.

The feather would not flutter in her breath; And those who long had watched her slipped away, Too weary then to weep; They could do that next day-- They left her lonely on the bed, Under a long, glistening sheet, in feeble tallow-shine, Rigid from m.u.f.fled feet to swathed head.

This in old days before the Turkish cure Had driven out the pox; Next morning, while slave carpenters Were hammering at the oblong box, The sun revived her and she breathed again, Like Lazarus, and in later years grew beautiful, And was the mother of strong men.

These things her father, master of an ancient place, Pondered, and read of men in antique times Who wakened in the charnel from a trance.

Often his eyes would rest on her askance, And fear grew on him, and strange dreams he had a-bed, Till waking and asleep he turned his head, Front-back, front-back, from side to side, Looking for Death. At last, one night He heard crisp footfalls in his room, And stared his soul out in the gloom, Peering until he died.

But when they broke the seals upon his will, They found each codicil and long bequest Was held in trust until The heirs should carry out his last request-- To burn his body (naming witnesses); And they, all eagerness to share, Prepared to carry out this strange behest.

A pile of lightwood on the river bank, Neighbors on horseback, and the slaves, With teeth as white as eyeb.a.l.l.s, rank on rank, Watched on the pyre the form wrapped in a shroud, Lonely among the lolling tongues of flames-- The smoke streamed, trailing in a saffron cloud, The greedy noise of fire grew loud, Then, "whiff," the shroud burned with a flare: The dead man's eyes looked down Like china moons upon the crowd.

They saw him slowly shake his head, The thing denied that it was dead, While from the blacks arose a babblement of prayer.

Surely the head must stop-- Not till the fire caved!

Then from the very top The loosened poll came with a leap, Bounding three times, it took the river-steep; Down, down the river bank--all they Ran after it like school boys for a ball.

G.o.d! How the thing could roll!

It seemed the devil kicked the leaping poll.

At last it stopped at bay, Staring across a tidal flat, Where spider lilies frightened day.

They buried it within a lonesome wood, With trembling hands, beneath a foreign stone.

But there were some who said It moved its lips; And when they went away, the earth stirred And they heard it moan.

Now it comes leaping down the tunnel roads Where the moss hangs like stalact.i.tes, Screaming out curses, snapping at the toads; Negroes who pa.s.s there on the moonless nights Behind them hear a sound that stops their breath.

The keen wind whistles through its teeth, And the white skull goes bounding by Looking for Death.

H.A.

THE BLOCKADE RUNNER

I

Three years!

Since I had seen the city, in the time We waited through the tenseness of the hours, While nerves were zither strings For fate to jar upon: All through that night we counted old St. Michael's chimes Now three o'clock-- The bells spoke as they had on marriage days, With high and silver-happy tongues Yet somehow they had gained an irony, For out across the quiet April bay Grim, new-built forts grinned at old Sumter Through the morning mist-- _One--two--three--four--_ And no sound yet! Then-- Thirty minutes like a life too long; A red flash dirked the night; I thought a voice cried, "DOOM"; That was the gun that killed a million men.

G.o.d! How the city woke!

With what a rush of wonder in her streets, "_Burr_" of strained voices, earthquakes of feet, Tramping to rolling drums, The crowd swept to the Battery.

Roofs were black with gazing folk in knots, Leveling their spygla.s.ses Like phalanx spears, From sea wall to the chimney tops.

Over the rippling harbor came The growling, bull-dog bark of culverins, Red rockets curved and plunged Across the dawn.

The world seemed drunk with confidence That day-- Some secret nervousness about the slaves; What they might think or say; But they did neither; The bugles shouted at the Citadel.

Hours were punctuated by glad bells, Soon to be hid away, And gales of laughter came from gardens, Where bright tear-dashed eyes must weep farewells The braver lips refused to falter-- Mouths then seemed only made to kiss For men in gray, Who left the ancient houses of proud names, Through magic gates upon that magic day When the lost cause was still-born in its hope.