East and West: Poems Part 1

East and West: Poems.

by Bret Harte.

Part I.

A Greyport Legend.

(1797.)

They ran through the streets of the seaport town; They peered from the decks of the ships that lay: The cold sea-fog that came whitening down Was never as cold or white as they.

"Ho, Starbuck and Pinckney and Tenterden!

Run for your shallops, gather your men, Scatter your boats on the lower bay."

Good cause for fear! In the thick midday The hulk that lay by the rotting pier, Filled with the children in happy play, Parted its moorings, and drifted clear,-- Drifted clear beyond the reach or call,-- Thirteen children they were in all,-- All adrift in the lower bay!

Said a hard-faced skipper, "G.o.d help us all!

She will not float till the turning tide!"

Said his wife, "My darling will hear _my_ call, Whether in sea or heaven she bide:"

And she lifted a quavering voice and high, Wild and strange as a sea-bird's cry, Till they shuddered and wondered at her side.

The fog drove down on each laboring crew, Veiled each from each and the sky and sh.o.r.e: There was not a sound but the breath they drew, And the lap of water and creak of oar; And they felt the breath of the downs, fresh blown O'er leagues of clover and cold gray stone, But not from the lips that had gone before.

They come no more. But they tell the tale, That, when fogs are thick on the harbor reef, The mackerel fishers shorten sail; For the signal they know will bring relief: For the voices of children, still at play In a phantom hulk that drifts alway Through channels whose waters never fail.

It is but a foolish shipman's tale, A theme for a poet's idle page; But still, when the mists of doubt prevail, And we lie becalmed by the sh.o.r.es of Age, We hear from the misty troubled sh.o.r.e The voice of the children gone before, Drawing the soul to its anchorage.

A Newport Romance.

They say that she died of a broken heart (I tell the tale as 'twas told to me); But her spirit lives, and her soul is part Of this sad old house by the sea.

Her lover was fickle and fine and French: It was nearly a hundred years ago When he sailed away from her arms--poor wench-- With the Admiral Rochambeau.

I marvel much what periwigged phrase Won the heart of this sentimental Quaker, At what golden-laced speech of those modish days She listened--the mischief take her!

But she kept the posies of mignonette That he gave; and ever as their bloom failed And faded (though with her tears still wet) Her youth with their own exhaled.

Till one night, when the sea-fog wrapped a shroud Round spar and spire and tarn and tree, Her soul went up on that lifted cloud From this sad old house by the sea.

And ever since then, when the clock strikes two, She walks unbidden from room to room, And the air is filled that she pa.s.ses through With a subtle, sad perfume.

The delicate odor of mignonette, The ghost of a dead and gone bouquet, Is all that tells of her story; yet Could she think of a sweeter way?

I sit in the sad old house to-night,-- Myself a ghost from a farther sea; And I trust that this Quaker woman might, In courtesy, visit me.

For the laugh is fled from porch and lawn, And the bugle died from the fort on the hill, And the twitter of girls on the stairs is gone, And the grand piano is still.

Somewhere in the darkness a clock strikes two; And there is no sound in the sad old house, But the long veranda dripping with dew, And in the wainscot a mouse.

The light of my study-lamp streams out From the library door, but has gone astray In the depths of the darkened hall. Small doubt But the Quakeress knows the way.

Was it the trick of a sense o'erwrought With outward watching and inward fret?

But I swear that the air just now was fraught With the odor of mignonette!

I open the window, and seem almost-- So still lies the ocean--to hear the beat Of its Great Gulf artery off the coast, And to bask in its tropic heat.

In my neighbor's windows the gas-lights flare, As the dancers swing in a waltz of Strauss; And I wonder now could I fit that air To the song of this sad old house.

And no odor of mignonette there is But the breath of morn on the dewy lawn; And mayhap from causes as slight as this The quaint old legend is born.

But the soul of that subtle, sad perfume, As the spiced embalmings, they say, outlast The mummy laid in his rocky tomb, Awakens my buried past.

And I think of the pa.s.sion that shook my youth, Of its aimless loves and its idle pains, And am thankful now for the certain truth That only the sweet remains.

And I hear no rustle of stiff brocade, And I see no face at my library door; For now that the ghosts of my heart are laid, She is viewless forevermore.

But whether she came as a faint perfume, Or whether a spirit in stole of white, I feel, as I pa.s.s from the darkened room, She has been with my soul to-night!

The Hawk's Nest.

(Sierras.)

We checked our pace,--the red road sharply rounding; We heard the troubled flow Of the dark olive depths of pines, resounding A thousand feet below.

Above the tumult of the canon lifted, The gray hawk breathless hung; Or on the hill a winged shadow drifted Where furze and thorn-bush clung;

Or where half-way the mountain side was furrowed With many a seam and scar; Or some abandoned tunnel dimly burrowed,-- A mole-hill seen so far.

We looked in silence down across the distant Unfathomable reach: A silence broken by the guide's consistent And realistic speech.

"Walker of Murphy's blew a hole through Peters For telling him he lied; Then up and dusted out of South Hornitos Across the long Divide.

"We ran him out of Strong's, and up through Eden, And 'cross the ford below; And up this canon (Peters' brother leadin'), And me and Clark and Joe.

"He fou't us game: somehow, I disremember Jest how the thing kem round; Some say 'twas wadding, some a scattered ember From fires on the ground.