Carolina Chansons | Page 6

a pirate hanging;?And gentlemen took supper in the street,?When candle-shine from tables guled the dark,?While others passing by would be discreet?And take the farther side without remark,?Pausing perhaps to snuff the balmy savor?Of turtle-soup mulled with the bay-leaves' flavor:?These walls beheld them, and these lingering trees?That still preempt the middle of the gutter;?They are the backdrops for old comedies--?If leaves were tongues--what stories they might utter!
H.A.
THE PIRATES[2]
I stood once where these rows of deep piazzas?Frown on the harbor from their columned pride,?And saw the gallant youngest of the cities?Lift from the jealous many-fingered tide.?Flanked by the multi-colored sweeping marshes,?Among the little hummocks choked with thorn,?I saw the first, small, dauntless row of buildings?Give back the rose and orange of the dawn.?Above them swayed the shining green palmettoes?Vocal and plaintive at the winds' caress;?While, at the edge of sight, the fluent silver?Of sea and bay framed the wide loneliness.
Out of the East came gaunt razees of commerce?Troubling the dappled azure of the seas;?While sleeping marsh awoke, and vanished under?The thrusting open fingers of the quays.
Ever, and more, came ships, while others followed.?Feeling their way among unsounded bars,?Heaping their freights upon the groaning wharf-heads,?Filling their holds with turpentines and tars,?Until the little twisting streets all vanished?Into a blur of interwoven spars.
II
One with the rest, I saw the commerce dwindle,?High-bosomed, sturdy vessels take the main?And leave us, with the morning in their faces,?Never to come to any port again.?Slowly an ominous and pregnant silence?Grew deep upon the wharves where ships had lain.
Laughter rang hollow in those days of waiting,?And nameless fears came drifting down the night.?The tides swung in from sea, hung, and retreated,?Bearing their secrets back beyond our sight;?Till, like the sudden rending of a curtain,?The East reeled with the lightnings of a fight.
Never was a night so long with waiting.?Never was the dark more prone to stay.?And, in the whispering gloom, taut, listening faces?Hung in a pallid line along the bay.?Slowly at last the mists dissolved, revealing?A fearful silhouette against the day.
Blue on a saffron dawn, a frigate lifted?Out of the fog that veiled her fold on fold,?Taking the early sunlight on her cannon?In running spurts and rings of molten gold;?No flag of any nation at her masthead.?Small wonder that our pulses fluttered cold.
Never a shot she fired on the city,?But, when the night came blowing in from sea,?And our ruddy windows warmed the darkness,?Through the surrounding gloom we heard the free?Strong sweep and clank of rowing in the harbor,?And on the wharves raw jest and revelry.
She was the first, but many others followed;?Insolent, keen, and swift to come-about,?I have seen them go smashing down the harbor,?Loud with the boom of canvas and the shout?Of lusty voices at the crowded bulwarks,?Where tattooed hands were swinging long-boats out.
Up through the streets the roisterers would swagger,?Filling the narrow ways from wall to wall,?Scattering gold like ringing summer showers,?Ready with song and jest and cheery call?For those who passed; buying the little taverns?At any cost; opening wine for all.
There were rare evenings when we used to gather?Down in a coffee-house beside the square.?Morgan knew well our little favored corner;?Black Beard the sinister was often there;?And we have watched the night blur into morning?While Bonnet, quiet-voiced and debonnaire,
Would throw the glamor of the seas about us?In archipelagoes of mad romance;?Pointing a story with a line from Shakespeare,?Quoting a Latin proverb; while his glance,?Flashing across the eager, listening circle,?Fettered--blinded--held us in a trance.
Their bags of Spanish gold bribed our juries,?Bought dignified officials of the Crown;?Money and wine were ours for the asking;?The Orient flamed out in shawl and gown,?Until a sudden and unholy splendor?Irradiated all the quiet town.
Those were the days when there was open gaming,?And roaring song in tongue of every race.?Evil, as colorful as poison weeds,?Bloomed in the market place.?And those who should have known, shared in the revels,?And passed their neighbors with averted face.
Until one day a frigate entered harbor,?And passed the city, with a Spanish prize,?Then insolently came-about, despoiled her,?And fired her before our very eyes,?While the vagrant breezes left the streaming vapor?Like red rust on the clean steel of the skies.
III
All in the sullied hours,?While the pirates stood away?Out of the murk and horror?In a sheer white burst of spray,
Leaving the wreck to settle?Under its winding sheet,?I felt the city shudder?And stir beneath my feet.
Thrilling against the morning,?As audible as song,?I heard the city waken?Out of her night of wrong.
That was a day to cherish?When Rhett and a gallant few?Summoned the best among us;?Called for a daring crew.
New and raw at the business,?To the smithy's roar and clang,?We drove our aching muscles?And as we worked we sang,
Until one blowing morning?With summer on the sea,?The Henry to the windward,?The Sea Nymph down alee,
Flecking the wide Atlantic?With a flaring, lacy track,?We went, as glad as the winds are glad,?To buy our honor back.
IV
Over