Poems from The Teacups | Page 7

my best,--
The house was real,--don't believe the
rest.
How could a ruined dwelling last so long
Without its legends
shaped in tale and song?
Who was this man of whom they tell the lies?

Perhaps--why not?--NAPOLEON! in disguise,--
So some said,
kidnapped from his ocean coop,
Brought to this island in a coasting
sloop,--
Meanwhile a sham Napoleon in his place
Played Nap. and
saved Sir Hudson from disgrace.
Such was one story; others used to
say,
"No,--not Napoleon,--it was Marshal Ney."
"Shot?" Yes, no
doubt, but not with balls of lead,

But balls of pith that never shoot
folks dead.
He wandered round, lived South for many a year,
At last

came North and fixed his dwelling here.
Choose which you will of all
the tales that pile
Their mingling fables on the tree-crowned isle.

Who wrote this modest version I suppose
That truthful Teacup, our
Dictator, knows;
Made up of various legends, it would seem,
The
sailor's yarn, the crazy poet's dream.
Such tales as this, by simple
souls received,
At first are stared at and at last believed;
From
threads like this the grave historians try
To weave their webs, and
never know they lie.
Hear, then, the fables that have gathered round

The lonely home an exiled stranger found.
THE EXILE'S SECRET
YE that have faced the billows and the spray
Of good St. Botolph's
island-studded bay,
As from the gliding bark your eye has scanned

The beaconed rocks, the wave-girt hills of sand,
Have ye not marked
one elm-o'ershadowed isle,
Round as the dimple chased in beauty's
smile,--
A stain of verdure on an azure field,
Set like a jewel in a
battered shield?
Fixed in the narrow gorge of Ocean's path,

Peaceful it meets him in his hour of wrath;
When the mailed Titan,
scourged by hissing gales,
Writhes in his glistening coat of clashing
scales,
The storm-beat island spreads its tranquil green,
Calm as an
emerald on an angry queen.
So fair when distant should be fairer near;

A boat shall waft us from the outstretched pier.
The breeze blows
fresh; we reach the island's edge,
Our shallop rustling through the
yielding sedge.
No welcome greets us on the desert isle;
Those elms,
far-shadowing, hide no stately pile
Yet these green ridges mark an
ancient road;
And to! the traces of a fair abode;
The long gray line
that marks a garden-wall,
And heaps of fallen beams,--fire-branded
all.
Who sees unmoved, a ruin at his feet,
The lowliest home where
human hearts have beat?
Its hearthstone, shaded with the bistre stain

A century's showery torrents wash in vain;

Its starving orchard,
where the thistle blows
And mossy trunks still mark the broken rows;


Its chimney-loving poplar, oftenest seen
Next an old roof, or where
a roof has been;
Its knot-grass, plantain,--all the social weeds,

Man's mute companions, following where he leads;
Its dwarfed, pale
flowers, that show their straggling heads, Sown by the wind from
grass-choked garden-beds;
Its woodbine, creeping where it used to
climb;
Its roses, breathing of the olden time;
All the poor shows the
curious idler sees,
As life's thin shadows waste by slow degrees,

Till naught remains, the saddening tale to tell,
Save home's last
wrecks,--the cellar and the well?
And whose the home that strews in black decay
The one
green-glowing island of the bay?
Some dark-browed pirate's, jealous
of the fate
That seized the strangled wretch of "Nix's Mate"?
Some
forger's, skulking in a borrowed name,
Whom Tyburn's dangling
halter yet may claim?
Some wan-eyed exile's, wealth and sorrow's
heir,
Who sought a lone retreat for tears and prayer?
Some brooding
poet's, sure of deathless fame,
Had not his epic perished in the flame?

Or some gray wooer's, whom a girlish frown
Chased from his solid
friends and sober town?
Or some plain tradesman's, fond of shade
and ease,
Who sought them both beneath these quiet trees?
Why
question mutes no question can unlock,
Dumb as the legend on the
Dighton rock?
One thing at least these ruined heaps declare,--
They
were a shelter once; a man lived there.
But where the charred and crumbling records fail,
Some breathing
lips may piece the half-told tale;
No man may live with neighbors
such as these,
Though girt with walls of rock and angry seas,
And
shield his home, his children, or his wife,
His ways, his means, his
vote, his creed, his life,
From the dread sovereignty of Ears and Eyes

And the small member that beneath them lies.
They told strange
things of that mysterious man;
Believe who will, deny them such as
can;
Why should we fret if every passing sail

Had its old seaman
talking on the rail?
The deep-sunk schooner stuffed with Eastern lime,

Slow wedging on, as if the waves were slime;
The knife-edged

clipper with her ruffled spars,
The pawing steamer with her inane of
stars,
The bull-browed galliot butting through the stream,
The
wide-sailed yacht that slipped along her beam,
The deck-piled sloops,
the pinched chebacco-boats,
The frigate, black with thunder-freighted
throats,
All had their talk about the lonely man;
And thus, in
varying phrase, the story ran.
His name had cost him little care to
seek,
Plain, honest, brief, a decent name to speak,
Common, not
vulgar, just the kind that slips
With least suggestion from a stranger's
lips.
His birthplace England, as his speech might show,
Or his hale
cheek, that wore the red-streak's glow;
His mouth sharp-moulded; in
its mirth