Ballads of Lost Haven | Page 5

no sorrow and no foreshadowing.?The wind forgets to whisper, the pines forget to moan,?And Malyn of the mountains is there among her own.?Malyn, whom grief nor wonder can trouble nevermore,?Since that spring night the Snowflake was wrecked beside her door, And strange her cry went seaward once, and her soul thereon With the vast lonely sea-winds, a wanderer, was gone.?But she, that patient beauty which is her body fair,?Endures on earth still lovely, untenanted of care.?The folk down at the harbor pity from day to day;?With a "God save you, Malyn!" they bid her on her way.?She smiles, poor feckless Malyn, the knowing smile of those Whom the too sudden vision God sometimes may disclose?Of his wild, lurid world-wreck, has blinded with its sheen. Then, with a fond insistence, pathetic and serene,?They pass among their fellows for lost minds none can save, Bent on their single business, and marvel why men rave. Now far away a sighing comes from the buried reef,?As though the sea were mourning above an ancient grief. For once the restless Mother of all the weary lands?Went down to him in beauty, with trouble in her hands,?And gave to him forever all memory to keep,?But to her wayward children oblivion and sleep,?That no immortal burden might plague one living thing,?But death should sweetly visit us vagabonds of spring.?And so his heart forever goes inland with the tide,?Searching with many voices among the marshes wide.?Under the quiet starlight, up through the stirring reeds, With whispering and lamenting it rises and recedes.?All night the lapsing rivers croon to their shingly bars The wizardries that mingle the sea-wind and the stars.?And all night long wherever the moving waters gleam,?The little hills hearken, hearken, the great hills hear and dream. And Malyn keeps the marshes all the sweet summer night, Alone, foot-free, to follow a wandering wisp-light.?For every day at sundown, at the first beacon's gleam,?She calls the gulls her brothers and keeps a tryst with them. "O gulls, white gulls, what see you beyond the sloping blue? And where away's the Snowflake, she's so long overdue?" Then, as the gloaming settles, the hilltop stars emerge And watch that plaintive figure patrol the dark sea verge. She follows the marsh fire; her heart laughs and is glad; She knows that light to seaward is her own sailor lad!?What are these tales they tell her of wreckage on the shore? Delay but makes his coming the nearer than before!?Surely her eyes have sighted his schooner in the lift!?But the great tide he homes on sets with an outward drift. So will-o'-the-wisp deludes her till dawn, and she turns home In unperturbed assurance, "To-morrow he will come."?This is the tale of Malyn, whom sudden grief so marred. And still each lovely summer resumes that sweet regard,-- The old unvexed eternal indifference to pain;?The sea sings in the marshes, and June comes back again. All night the lapsing rivers lisp in the long dike grass, And many memories whisper the sea-winds as they pass;?The tides disturb the silence; but not a hindrance bars The wash of time, where founder even the galleon stars. And all night long wherever the moving waters gleam,?The little hills hearken, hearken, the great hills hear and dream.
THE NANCY'S PRIDE
On the long slow heave of a lazy sea,?To the flap of an idle sail,?The Nancy's Pride went out on the tide;?And the skipper stood by the rail.
All down, all down by the sleepy town,?With the hollyhocks a-row?In the little poppy gardens,?The sea had her in tow.
They let her slip by the breathing rip,?Where the bell is never still,?And over the sounding harbor bar,?And under the harbor hill.
She melted into the dreaming noon,?Out of the drowsy land,?In sight of a flag of goldy hair,?To the kiss of a girlish hand.
For the lass who hailed the lad who sailed,?Was--who but his April bride??And of all the fleet of Grand Latite,?Her pride was the Nancy's Pride.
So the little vessel faded down?With her creaking boom a-swing,?Till a wind from the deep came up with a creep,?And caught her wing and wing.
She made for the lost horizon line,?Where the clouds a-castled lay,?While the boil and seethe of the open sea?Hung on her frothing way.
She lifted her hull like a breasting gull?Where the rolling valleys be,?And dipped where the shining porpoises?Put ploughshares through the sea.
A fading sail on the far sea-line,?About the turn of the tide,?As she made for the Banks on her maiden cruise,?Was the last of the Nancy's Pride.
To-day a boy with goldy hair,?In a garden of Grand Latite,?From his mother's knee looks out to sea?For the coming of the fleet.
They all may home on a sleepy tide,?To the flap of the idle sail;?But it's never again the Nancy's Pride?That answers a human hail.
They all may home on a sleepy tide?To the sag