Carolina Chansons | Page 5

is the log-lodge and the skin tepee,?And moons ago the ghost-canoe brought home?The latest of our sons and daughters--?Yet still we linger in tobacco smoke?And in the rustling fields of maize;?Faint are the tracks our moccasins have left,?But they are there, down all your ways."
Voice of a Slave?"We do not talk?Of hours in the rice?When days were long,?Nor of old masters?Who are with us here?Beyond all right or wrong.?Only white afternoons come back,?When in the fields?We reached the Mercy Seat?On wings of song."
Voice of a Planter?"Nothing moves there but the night wind,?Blowing the mosses like smoke;?All would be silent as moonlight?But for the owl in the oak--?Stairways that lead up to nothing--?Windows like terrible scars--?Snakes on a log in the cistern?Peering at stars...."
Spirit of Prophecy?"Dawn with its childish colors?Stipples the solemn vault of night;?Behind the horizon the sun shakes a bloody fist;?Mysteries stand naked by the lakes of mist;
Spirits take flight,?The medicine man,?The voodoo doctor--?Witches mount brooms.?The day looms.?Faster it comes,?Bringing young giants?Who hate solitude,?And march with drums--?Beat--beat--beat,?Down every ancient street,?The young giants! Minded like boys:?Action for action's sake they love?And noise for noise."
Voice of a Poet?"The fire of the sunset?Is remembered at midnight,?But forgotten at dawn.?While the old stars set,?Let us speak of their glory?Before they are gone."
H.A.
SILENCES[1]
You who have known my city for a day?And heard the music of her steepled bells,?Then laughed, and passed along your vagrant way,?Carrying only what the city tells?To those who listen solely with their ears;?You know St. Matthew's swinging harmonies,?And old St. Michael's tale of golden years?Far less like bells than chanted memories.
Yet there is something wanting in the song?Of lyric youth with voice unschooled by pain.?And there are breathing stillnesses that throng?Dim corners, and that only stir again?When bells are dumb. Not even bronze that beats?Our heart-throbs back can tell of old defeats.
But you who take the city for your own,?Come with me when the night flows deep and kind?Along these narrow ways of troubled stone,?And floods the wide savannas of the mind?With tides that cool the fever of the day:?One with the dark, companioned by the stars,?We'll seek St. Philip's, nebulous and gray,?Holding its throbbing beacon to the bars,?A prisoned spirit vibrant in the stone?That knew its empire of forgotten things.?Then will the city know you for her own,?And feel you meet to share her sufferings;?While down a swirl of poignant memories,?Herself shall find you in her silences.
Once coaches waited row on shining row?Before this door; and where the thirsty street?Drank the deep shadow of the portico?The Sunday hush was stirred by happy feet,?Low greetings, and the rustle of brocade,?The organ throb, and warmth of sunny eyes?That flashed and smiled beneath a bonnet shade;?Life with the lure of all its swift disguise.
Then from the soaring lyric of the spire,?Like the composite voice of all the town,?The bells burst swiftly into singing fire?That wrapped the building, and which showered down?Bright cadences to flash along the ways?Loud with the splendid gladness of the days.
War took the city, and the laughter died?From lips that pain had kissed. One after one?All lovely things went down the sanguine tide,?While death made moaning answer to the gun.?Then, as a golden voice dies in the throat?Of one who lives, but whose glad heart is dead,?The bells were taken; and a sterner note?Rang from their bronze where Lee and Jackson led.
The rhythmic seasons chill and burn and chill,?Cooling old angers, warming hearts again.?The ancient building quickens to the thrill?Of lilting feet; but only singing rain?Flutters old echoes in the portico;?Those who can still remember love it so.
D.H.
[1] See the note on the chimes at back of book.
PRESENCES
Despise the garish presences that flaunt?The obvious possession of today,?To wear with me the spectacles that haunt?The optic sense with wraiths of yesterday--?These cobbled shores through which the traffic streams?Have been the stage-set of successive towns,?Where coffined actors postured out their dreams,?And harlot Folly changed her thousand gowns.?This corner-shop was Bull's Head Tavern,?When names now dead on marble lived in clay;?Its rooms were like a sanded cavern,?Where candles made a sallow jest of day,?And drovers' boots came grinding like a quern,?While merchants drank their steaming cups of "tay."
Here pock-marked Black Beard covenanted Bonnet?To slit the Dons' throats at St. Augustine,?And bussed light ladies, unknown to this sonnet,?Whose names, no doubt, would rime with Magdalene.?And English parsons, who had lost their fames,?Sat tippling wine as spicy as their joke,?Larding bald texts with bets on cocking mains,?And whiffing pipes churchwardens used to smoke.?Here macaronis, hands a-droop with laces,?Dealt knave to knave in picquet_ or écarté_,?In coats no whit less scarlet than their faces,?While bullies hiccuped healths to King and Party,?And Yankee slavers, in from Barbadoes,?Drove flinty bargains with keen Huguenots.
Then Meeting Street first knew St. Michael's steeple,?When redcoats marched with royal drums a-banging,?Or merchants stopped gowned tutors to inquire?Why school let out to see