Carolina chansons

THE SEWEES OF SEWEE BAY [3]

"And these squaws, waiting in vain the return of their husbands, sought out braves among the other tribes, and so men say the Sewees have become Wandos."

"One flask of rum for fifty muskrat skins!
A horn of powder for a bear's is not enough;
A whole winter's hunting for some blanket stuff—
Ugh!" said the Sewee Chief,
"The pale-face is a thief!"

Ever, from the north-north-east,
The great winged canoes
Swept landward from the shining water
Into Bull's Bay,
Where the poor Sewees trapped the otter,
Or took the giant oysters for their feast—
Ever the ships came from the north and east.

Surely, at morning, when they walked the beaches,
Over the smoky-silver, whispering reaches,
Where the ships came from, loomed a land,
Far-off, one mountain-top, away
Where the great camp-fire sun made day:
"There are the pale-face lodges," they would say.
So all one winter
Was great hunting on that shore;
Much maize was pounded,
And of acorn oil great store
Was tried;
And collops of smoked deer meat set aside,
And skins and furs,
And furs and skins,
And bales of furs beside.

And all that winter, too,
The smoke eddied
From many a huge canoe,
Hollowed by flame from cypress trees
That with stone ax and fire
The Sewee shaped to the good shape
Of his desire.

So when next spring
The traders came from Charles Town,
Bringing a gift of blankets from the king,
The Sewees would not trade a pelt—
Saying, "We go to see
The Great White Father in his own tepee—
Heap, heap much rum!"
And then they passed the pipe of peace,
And puffed it, and looked glum.
The traders thought the redskins must be daft;
They saw the huge canoes,
And, wondering at their use,
Asked, "What will you do with these?"
And the chief pointed east across the seas;
And then the pale-face laughed.

And yet—
There was a story told
By one of Black Beard's men
Who had done evil things for gold,
That one morning, out at sea,
The fog made a sudden lift,
And from the high poop, looking through the rift,
He saw
Twenty canoes, each with six warriors,
Paddling straight toward the rising sun,
Where the wind made a flaw—
He swore he saw
And counted twenty hulls,
Circled about by screaming gulls—
Then such a storm came down
That some prayed on that hellion ship,
But he did not—
He was not born to drown.

This was the tale
Told with much bluster,
Over ale
And oaths,
At Charles Town.
He swore he saw the Indians in the dawn,
And he'd be danged!
And by Christ's Mother—
Take his rings in pawn!
But he was hanged
With poor Stede Bonnet, later on.

H.A.

[3] See the note at the back of the book.

LA FAYETTE LANDS [4]

That evening, gathered on the vessel's poop,
They saw the glimmering land,
And far lights moved there,
As once Columbus saw them, winking, strange;
Around the ship two darkies in a small canoe
Paddled and grinned, and held up silver fish.

Over the high ship's tumble-home
A pinnace slid,
Slow, lowered from the squealing davit-ropes,
And from a port a-square with lantern light,
The little, leather trunks were passed,
Ironbound and quaint; while down the vessel's side
With voluble advice, bon voyage and au revoir,
The chatting Frenchmen came—
Click-clap of rapiers clipping on hard boots,
Cocked hats and merry eyes.

The great ship backs its yards,
With drooping sails, await,
A spider-web of spars and lantern-lights,
While like a pilot shark, the slim canoe,

A V-shaped ripple wrinkling from its jaws,
Slides noiselessly across the swells,
Leading the swinging boat's crew to the beach;
And all the world slides up—
And then the stars slide down—
As ocean breathes; while evening falls,
And destiny is being rowed ashore.

The twilight-muffled bells of town, the bark of dogs,
The distant shouts, and smell of burning wood,
Fall graciously upon their sea-tired sense.
Wide-trousered, barefoot sailors carry them to land,
Tho' snake-voiced waves flaunt frothing up the beach;
The horse-hide trunks are piled upon a dune;
And there a little Frenchman takes his stand,
Hawk-faced and ardent,
While his brown cloak droops about him
Like young falcon plumes.

Gray beach, gray twilight, and gray sea—
How strange the scrub palmettoes down the coast!
No purple-castled heights, like dear Auvergne,
Against the background of the Puy de Dome,
But land as level as the sea, a sandy road
That twists through myrtle thickets
Where the black boys lead.

Far down a moss-draped avenue of oaks
There is a flash of torches, and the lights
Go flitting past the bottle panes;
A cracked plantation bell dull-clangs;
The beagles bay,
Black faces swarm, with ivory eyeballs glazed—
Court dwarfs that served thick chocolate, on their knees
In damasked, perfumed rooms at grand Versailles,
Were all the blacks the French had ever seen.

Major Huger, lace-ruffled shirt, knee-breeks,
A saddle-pistol in his hand,
Waits on the terrace,
Ready for "hospitality" to British privateers;
But now no London accent takes his ears,
No English bow so low, "Good evening, sair;
I am de la Fayette, and these, monsieur,
My friends, and this, le Baron Kalb."

Welcome's the custom of the time and land—
And these are noblemen of France!
Now is Bartholomew for turkeycocks,
Old wines decant, the chandeliers flare up,
The slave row brims with lights;
And horses gallop off to summon guests.

After the ship—how good the spacious rooms!
How strange mosquito canopies on beds!
Knights of St. Louis sniff the frying yams,
Venison, and turtle,—
The old green turtle died tonight—
The children's eyes grow wider on the stairs.

Down in the library,
The Marquis, writing back to old Auvergne,
Has sanded down the ink;
Again the quill pen squeaks:
"A ship will sail tomorrow back to France,
By special providence for you, dear wife;
Tonight there will be toasts to Washington,
To our good Louis and his Antoinette—
There will be toasts tonight for la Fayette...."
He melts the wax;
Look, how the candle gutters at the flame!
And now he seals the letter with his ring.

H.A.

[4] See the note at the back of the book.

THE PRIEST AND THE PIRATE [5]

a ballad of theodosia burr

And must the old priest wake with fright
Because the wind is high tonight?
Because the yellow moonlight dead
Lies silent as a word unsaid—
What dreams had he upon his bed?

Listen—the storm!

The winter moon scuds high and bare;
Her light is old upon his hair;
The gray priest muses in a prayer:

"Christ Jesus, when I come to die
Grant me a clean, sweet, summer sky,
Without the mad wind's panther cry.
Send me a little garden breeze
To gossip in magnolia trees;
For I have heard, these fifty years,
Confessions muttered at my ears,
Till every mumble of the wind
Is like tired voices that have sinned,

And furtive skirling of the leaves
Like feet about the priest-house eaves,
And moans seem like the unforgiven
That mutter at the gate of heaven,
Ghosts from the sea that passed unshriven.

And it was just this time of night
There came a boy with lantern light
And he was linen-pale with fright;
It was not hard to guess my task,
Although I raised the sash to ask—
'Oh, Father,' cried the boy, 'Oh, come!
Quickly with the viaticum!
The sailor-man is going to die!'
The thirsty silence drank his cry.
A starless stillness damped the air,
While his shrill voice kept piping there,
'The sailor-man is going to die'—
The huge drops splattered from the sky.

I shivered at my midnight toil,
But took the elements and oil,
And hurried down into the street
That barked and clamored at our feet—
And as we ran there came a hum
Of round shot slithered on a drum,
While like a lid of sound shut down
The thunder-cloud upon the town;

Jalousies banged and loose roofs slammed,
Like hornbooks fluttered by the damned;
And like a drover's whip the rain
Cracked in the driving hurricane.

Only the lightning showed the door
That like two cats we darted for;
It almost gave a man a qualm
To find the house inside so calm.

I sloshed all dripping up the stair,
Up to an attic room a-glare
With candle-shine and lightning-flare—
With little draughts that moved its hair
A wrinkled mummy sat a-stare,
Rigid, huddling in a chair.
I thought at first the thing was dead
Until the eyes slid in its head.

It seemed as if the Banshee storm
Knocked screaming for his withered form;
It shrieked and whistled like a parrot,
Clucking and stuttering through the garret.
With-out, the mailéd hands of hail
Battered the casements, and the gale
About his low roof shuddered, sighing,
As if it knew that he was dying.

It breathed like waiting beasts outside,
While soft feet made the shingles slide.

Then, like a blow upon the cheek,
The mummy's voice began to speak:

'Give me a priest! I'm going to die!'
The Banshee wind took up the cry:
'Give him a priest, he's going to die!'
The old house seemed to rock with laughter,
Shaking its sides and every rafter.

There was a terror in that room
Like faint light streaming from a tomb.
I tried three times before I spoke,
And then the bald words made me choke:
'Be quiet, man, for I am come
To bring you the viaticum!'—
I made the sign of holiness.
He rattled out a startled cry.
I whispered low, 'Confess, confess!'
His thin hands quivered with distress.
It is a bitter thing to die.

Just when a blast fell on the town,
I felt his lean claws clutch me down.
It seemed as if the hands of death
Were beating at my breast for breath;

His arms were like a twisted rope
Of rotten strands that tugged at hope.
'Listen, my father, listen well!'
The wind went tolling like a bell:

'She's lying fifty fathoms deep,
Where fishes like white birds go by
Through water-air in ocean-land;
She has a prayer-book in her hand—
Tonight she walks; tonight she spoke;
Her hair goes floating out and up,
Blown one way, with the water weeds,
Always one way, like amber smoke.

She asks the gift she gave to me—
This ring—I cannot get it off!'
His hand and hand fought like two claws—
'I hear her calling from the sea!'
His terror made my own heart pause.

His voice went moaning with the wind,
And groaned and rattled, 'I have sinned,'
And moaned and murmured at my ear
Of bat-winged angels standing near.

'The little schooner "Patriot"—
I can't forget the vessel's name;
We met her rounding Naggs Head Bank;
We made her people walk the plank,
Twelve men whose faces I forgot.

But there was one sweet lady there,
With lovely eyes and lovely hair,
Whose face has stayed like pain and care.
For every man she made a prayer;
And when the last had found the sea,
I cried to her to pray for me.

She prayed—and took this ring, and said:
"Wear this for me when I am dead."
She bowed her head, then steadfastly
She walked into the hungry sea.
But silent words were on her lips,
And there was comfort in her hand;
It was as if she walked a bridge
That led into a pleasant land.
All that was long and long ago,
So long ago this ring has grown
To be a very part of me,
One with my finger and the bone:'
His voice went trailing in a moan.

'This is her ring—
This is her ring!
I dare not die and wear the thing!'
His hand plucked at his finger thin
As if to ease him of his sin.
I gave a sudden gasping shout—
The wind that blew the window in
Had blown the candle out.

'Quick, father, quick!
The ring ... her name....'
There came a jagged spurt of flame;
The window seemed a furnace door
That gave upon a bed of ore;
The thunder rumbled out the muttered
Words that his failing tongue had uttered—
Another flash, a rending crack—
The old man crumpled like a sack;
I felt his stringy arms go slack.
How could he sit so dead, so still!
While wind snouts snuffed along the sill?

White shone his glimmering face, and dull
The sodden silence of the lull,
For when he died the wind had dropt;
And with his heart the storm had stopt,
All but a far-off mouthing sound
That seemed to sough from underground;
While silence paused to plan some ill,
Thwarted by thunder growling still.

All in the darkness of the place
With lightning playing on its face,
I fumbled with the corpse's ring
To which the dead hands seemed to cling;
The stiffening joints were loth to play—
After awhile it came away!

Out, like a sneak-thief through the gloom,
I tiptoed from the dead man's room;
The door behind me like a hatch
Banged—the white splash of my match
Made shadow shapes dance on the wall
As if the devil pulled the string.
The light ran melting round the ring;
Inside the worn script scrawled a-blur:
'J.A. to Theodosia Burr'
Confession is a sacred thing!
I'll keep his secret like the sea;
The ring goes to the grave with me."

H.A.

[5] See the note at the back of the book.

PALMETTO TOWN

Sea-island winds sweep through Palmetto Town,
Bringing with piney tang the old romance
Of Pirates and of smuggling gentlemen;
And tongues as languorous as southern France
Flow down her streets like water-talk at fords;
While through iron gates where pickaninnies sprawl,
The sound floats back, in rippled banjo chords,
From lush magnolia shade where mockers call.
Mornings, the flower-women hawk their wares—
Bronze caryatids of a genial race,
Bearing the bloom-heaped baskets on their heads;
Lithe, with their arms akimbo in wide grace,
Their jasmine nods jestingly at cares—
Turbaned they are, deep-chested, straight and tall,
Bandying old English words now seldom heard,
But sweet as Provençal.
Dreams peer like prisoners through her harp-like gates,
From molten gardens mottled with gray-gloom,
Where lichened sundials shadow ancient dates,
And deep piazzas loom.
Fringing her quays are frayed palmetto posts,
Where clipper ships once moored along the ways,
And fanlight doorways, sunstruck with old ghosts,
Sicken with loves of her lost yesterdays.
Often I halt upon some gabled walk,
Thinking I see the ear-ringed picaroons,
Slashed with a sash or Spanish folderols,
Gambling for moidores or for gold doubloons.
But they have gone where night goes after day,
And the old streets are gay with whistled tunes,
Bright with the lilt of scarlet parasols,
Carried by honey-voiced young octoroons.

H.A.

CAROLINA SPRING SONG

Against the swart magnolias' sheen
Pronged maples, like a stag's new horn,
Stand gouted red upon the green,
In March when shaggy buds are shorn.

Then all a mist-streaked, sunny day
The long sea-islands lean to hear
A water harp that shallows play
To lull the beaches' fluted ear.

When this same music wakes the gift
Of pregnant beauty in the sod,
And makes the uneasy vultures shift
Like evil things afraid of God,

Then, then it is I love to drift
Upon the flood-tide's lazy swirls,
While from the level rice fields lift
The spiritu'ls of darky girls.

I hear them singing in the fields
Like voices from the long-ago;
They speak to me of somber worlds
And sorrows that the humble know;

Of sorrow—yet their tones release
A harmony of larger hours
From easy epochs long at peace
Amid an irony of flowers.

So if they sometimes seem a choir
That cast a chill of doubt on spring,
They have still higher notes of fire
Like cardinals upon the wing.

H.A.

THE LAST CREW [6]

I

Spring found us early that eventful year,
Seeming to know in her clairvoyant way
The bitterness of hunger and despair
That lay upon the town.
Out of the sheer
Thin altitudes of day
She drifted down
Over the grim blockade
At the harbor mouth,
Trailing her beauty over the decay
That war had made,
Gilding old ruins with her jasmine spray,
Distilling warm moist perfume
From chill winter shade.

Out of the south
She brought the whisperings
Of questing wings.
Then, flame on flame,
The cardinals came,
Blowing like driven brands
Up from the sultry lands
Where Summer's happy fires always burn.
Old silences, that pain
Had held too close and long,
Stirred to the mocker's song,
And hope looked out again
From tired eyes.

Down where the White Point Gardens drank the sun,
And rippled to the lift of springing grass,
The women came;
And after them the aged, and the lame
That war had hurled back at them like a taunt.
And always, as they talked of little things,
How violets were purpling the shade
More early than in all remembered Springs,
And how the tides seemed higher than last year,
Their gaze went drifting out across the bay
To where,
Thrusting out of the mists,
Like hostile fists,
Waited the close blockade—
Then, dim to left and right,
The curving islands with their shattered mounds
That had been forts;
Mounds, which in spite
Of four long years of rending agony
Still held against the light;
Faint wraiths of color
For the breeze to lift
And flatten into faded red and white.

These sunny islands were not meant for wars;
See, how they curve away
Before the bay,
Bidding the voyager pause.
Warm with the hoarded suns of centuries,
Young with the garnered youth of many Springs,
They laugh like happy bathers, while the seas
Break in their open arms,
And the slow-moving breeze
Draws languid fingers down their placid brows.
Even the surly ocean knows their charms,
And under the shrill laughter of the surf,
He booms and sings his heavy monotone.

II

There are rare nights among these waterways
When Spring first treads the meadows of the marsh,
Leaving faint footprints of elusive green
To glimmer as she strays,
Breaking the Winter silence with the harsh
Sharp call of waterfowl;
Rubbing dim shifting pastels in the scene
With white of moon
And blur of scudding cloud,
Until the myrtle thickets
And the sand,
The silent streams,
And the substantial land
Go drifting down the tide of night
Aswoon.

On such a night as this
I saw the last crew go
Out of a world too beautiful to leave.
Only a chosen few
Beside the crew
Were gathered on the pier;
And in the ebb and flow
Of dark and moon, we saw them fare
Straight past the row of coffins
Where the fifth crew lay
Waiting their last short voyage
Across the bay.

And, as they went, not one among them swerved,
But eyes went homing swiftly to the West,
Where, faint and very few,
The windows of the town called out to them
Yet held them nerved
And ready for the test.
Young every one, they brought life at its best.

In the taut stillness, not a word
Was uttered, but one heard
The deep slow orchestration of the night
Swell and relapse; as swiftly, one by one,
Cutting a silhouette against the gray,
They rose, then dropped out softly like a dream
Into the rocking shadows of the stream.

A sudden grind of metal scarred the hush;
A marsh-hen threshed the water with her wings,
And, for a breath, the marsh life woke and throbbed.
Then, down beneath our feet, we caught the gleam
Of folded water flaring left and right,
While, with a noiseless rush,
A shadow darker than the rest
Drew from its fellows swarming round the quay,
Took an oncoming breaker,
Shook its shoulders free,
And faced the sea.

Then came an interval that seemed to be
Part of eternity.
Years might have passed, or seconds;
No one knew!
Close in the dark we huddled, each to each,
Too stirred for speech.
Our senses, sharpened to an agony,
Drew out across the water till the ache
Was more than we could bear;
Till eyes could almost see,
Ears almost hear.
And waiting there,
I seemed to feel the beach
Slip from my reach,
While all the stars went blank.
The smell of oil and death enveloped me,
And I could feel
The crouching figures straining at a crank,
Knees under chins, and heads drawn sharply down,
The heave and sag of shoulders,
Sting of sweat;
An eighth braced figure stooping to a wheel,
Body to body in the stifling gloom,
The sob and gasp of breath against an air
Empty and damp and fetid as a tomb.
With them I seemed to reel
Beneath the spin and heel
When combers took them fair,
Bruising their bodies,
Lifting black water where
Their feet clutched desperate at the floor.

And as each body spent out of its ebbing store
Of strength and hope,
I felt the forward thrust,
At first so sure,
Fail in its rhythm,
Falter slow,
And slower—
Hang an endless moment—
Till in a rush came fear—
Fear of the sea, that it might win again,
Gathering one crew more,
Making them pay in vain.

Then through the horror of it, like a clear
Sweet wind among the stars,
I felt the lift
And drive of heart and will
Working their miracles until
Spent muscles tensed again to offer all
In one transcendent gift.

III

A sudden flood of moonlight drenched the sea,
Pointing the scene in sharp, strong black and white.
Sumter came shouldering through the night,
Battered and grim.
The curve of ships shook off their dim
Vague outlines of a dream;
And stood, patient as death,
So certain in their pride,
So satisfied
To wait
The slow inevitableness of Fate.

Close, where the channel
Narrowed to the bay,
The Housatonic lay
Black on the moonlit tide,
Her wide
High sweep of spars
Flaunting their arrogance among the stars.

Darkness again,
Swift-winged and absolute,
Gulping the stars,
Folding the ships and sea,
Holding us waiting, mute.
Then, slowly in the void,
There grew a certainty
That silenced fear.
The very air
Was stirring to the march of Destiny.

One blinding second out of endless time
Fell, sundering the night.
I saw the Housatonic hurled,
A ship of light,
Out of a molten sea,
Hang an unending pulse-beat,
Glowing, stark;
While the hot clouds flung back a sullen roar.
Then all her pride, so confident and sure,
Went reeling down the dark.

Out of the blackness wave on livid wave
Leapt into being—thundered to our feet;
Counting the moments for us, beat by beat,
Until the last and smallest dwindled past,
Trailing its pallor like a winding-sheet
Over the last crew and its chosen grave.

IV

Morning swirled in from the sea,
And down by the low river-wall,
In a long unforgettable row,
Man faces tremulous, old;
Terrible faces of youth,
Broken and seared by the war,
Where swift fire kindled and blazed
From embers hot under the years,
While hands gripped a cane or a crutch;
Patient dumb faces of women,
Mothers, sisters, and wives:
And the vessel hull-down in the sea,
Where the waters, just stirring from sleep,
Lifted bright hands to the sun,
Hiding their lusty young dead,
Holding them jealously close
Down to the cold harbor floor.

There would be eight of them.
Here in the gathering light
Were waiting eight women or more
Who were destined forever to pay,
Who never again would laugh back
Into the eyes of life
In the old glad, confident way.
Each huddled dumbly to each;
But eyes could not lift from the sea,
Only hands touched in the dawn.

"He would have gone, my man;
He was like that. In the night
When I awoke with a start,
And brought his voice up from my dream:
That was goodbye and godspeed.
I know he is there with the rest."

Brave, but with quivering lips,
Each alone in the press of the crowd,
Was saying it over and over.

The day flooded all of the sky;
And the ships of the sullen blockade
Weighed anchor and drew down the wind,
Leaving their wreck to the waves.
Hour heaved slowly on hour,
Yet how could the city rejoice
With the women out there by the wall!
Night grew under the wharves,
And crept through the listening streets,
Until only the red of the tiles
Seemed warm from the breath of the day;
And the faces that waited and watched
Blurred into a wavering line,
Like foam on the curve of the dark,
Down there by the reticent sea.

What if the darkness should bring
The lean blockade-runners across
With food for the hungry and spent....
Who could joy in the sudden release
While the faces, still-smiling, but wan,
Turned slowly to hallow the town?

D.H.

About This Book

THE SEWEES OF SEWEE BAY[3]

LA FAYETTE LANDS[4]

THE PRIEST AND THE PIRATE[5]

a ballad of theodosia burr

PALMETTO TOWN

CAROLINA SPRING SONG

THE LAST CREW[6]

I

II

III

IV

THE SEWEES OF SEWEE BAY [3]

LA FAYETTE LANDS [4]

THE PRIEST AND THE PIRATE [5]

THE LAST CREW [6]