Читать книгу: «The Two Twilights», страница 3

NUNC DIMITTIS

 
Highlands of Navesink,
By the blue ocean's brink,
Let your gray bases drink
Deep of the sea.
Tide that comes flooding up,
Fill me a stirrup cup,
Pledge me a parting sup,
Now I go free.
 
 
Wall of the Palisades,
I know where greener glades,
Deeper glens, darker shades,
Hemlock and pine,
Far toward the morning lie
Under a bluer sky,
Lifted by cliffs as high,
Haunts that are mine.
 
 
Marshes of Hackensack,
See, I am going back
Where the Quinnipiac
Winds to the bay,
Down its long meadow track,
Piled with the myriad stack,
Where in wide bivouac
Camps the salt hay.
 
 
Spire of old Trinity,
Never again to be
Sea-mark and goal to me
As I walk down;
Chimes on the upper air,
Calling in vain to prayer,
Squandering your music where
Roars the black town:
 
 
Bless me once ere I ride
Off to God's countryside,
Where in the treetops hide
Belfry and bell;
Tongue of the steeple towers,
Telling the slow-paced hours —
Hail, thou still town of ours —
Bedlam, farewell!
 

BEAVER POND MEADOW

 
Thou art my Dismal Swamp, my Everglades:
Thou my Campagna, where the bison wades
Through shallow, steaming pools, and the sick air
Decays. Thou my Serbonian Bog art, where
O'er leagues of mud, black vomit of the Nile,
Crawls in the sun the myriad crocodile.
Or thou my Cambridge or my Lincoln fen
Shalt be – a lonely land where stilted men
Stalking across the surface waters go,
Casting long shadows, and the creaking, slow
Canal-barge, laden with its marshy hay,
Disturbs the stagnant ditches twice a day.
Thou hast thy crocodiles: on rotten logs
Afloat, the turtles swarm and bask: the frogs,
When come the pale, cold twilights of the spring,
Like distant sleigh-bells through the meadows ring.
The school-boy comes on holidays to take
The musk-rat in its hole, or kill the snake,
Or fish for bull-heads in the pond at night.
The hog-snout's swollen corpse, with belly white,
I find upon the footway through the sedge,
Trodden by tramps along the water's edge.
Not thine the breath of the salt marsh below
Where, when the tide is out, the mowers go
Shearing the oozy plain, that reeks with brine
More tonic than the incense of the pine.
Thou art the sink of all uncleanliness,
A drain for slaughter-pens, a wilderness
Of trenches, pockets, quagmires, bogs where rank
The poison sumach grows, and in the tank
The water standeth ever black and deep
Greened o'er with scum: foul pottages, that steep
And brew in that dark broth, at night distil
Malarious fogs bringing the fever chill.
Yet grislier horrors thy recesses hold:
The murdered peddler's body five days old
Among the yellow lily-pads was found
In yonder pond: the new-born babe lay drowned
And throttled on the bottom of this moat,
Near where the negro hermit keeps his boat;
Whose wigwam stands beside the swamp; whose meals
It furnishes, fat pouts and mud-spawned eels.
Even so thou hast a kind of beauty, wild,
Unwholesome – thou the suburb's outcast child,
Behind whose grimy skin and matted hair
Warm nature works and makes her creature fair.
Summer has wrought a blue and silver border
Of iris flags and flowers in triple order
Of the white arrowhead round Beaver Pond,
And o'er the milkweeds in the swamp beyond
Tangled the dodder's amber-colored threads.
In every fosse the bladderwort's bright heads
Like orange helmets on the surface show.
Richer surprises still thou hast: I know
The ways that to thy penetralia lead,
Where in black bogs the sundew's sticky bead
Ensnares young insects, and that rosy lass,
Sweet Arethusa, blushes in the grass.
Once on a Sunday when the bells were still,
Following the path under the sandy hill
Through the old orchard and across the plank
That bridges the dead stream, past many a rank
Of cat-tails, midway in the swamp I found
A small green mead of dry but spongy ground,
Entrenched about on every side with sluices
Full to the brim of thick lethean juices,
The filterings of the marsh. With line and hook
Two little French boys from the trenches took
Frogs for their Sunday meal and gathered messes
Of pungent salad from the water-cresses.
A little isle of foreign soil it seemed,
And listening to their outland talk, I dreamed
That yonder spire above the elm-tops calm
Rose from the village chestnuts of La Balme.
Yes, many a pretty secret hast thou shown
To me, O Beaver Pond, walking alone
On summer afternoons, while yet the swallow
Skimmed o'er each flaggy plash and gravelly shallow;
Or when September turned the swamps to gold
And purple. But the year is growing old:
The golden-rod is rusted, and the red
That streaked October's frosty cheek is dead;
Only the sumach's garnet pompons make
Procession through the melancholy brake.
Lo! even now the autumnal wind blows cool
Over the rippled waters of thy pool,
And red autumnal sunset colors brood
Where I alone and all too late intrude.
 

HIGH ISLAND

 
Pleasant it was at shut of day,
When wind and wave had sunk away,
To hear, as on the rocks we lay,
The fog bell toll;
And grimly through the gathering night
The horn's dull blare from Faulkner's Light,
Snuffed out by ghostly fingers white
That round it stole.
 
 
Somewhere behind its curtain, soon
The mist grew conscious of a moon:
No more we heard the diving loon
Scream from the spray;
But seated round our drift-wood fire
Watched the red sparks rise high and higher,
Then, wandering into night, expire
And pass away.
 
 
Down the dark wood, the pines among,
A lurid glare the firelight flung;
So for a while we talked and sung,
And then to sleep;
And heard in dreams the light-house bell,
As all night long in solemn swell
The tidal waters rose and fell
With soundings deep.
 

LOTUS EATING

 
Come up once more before mine eyes,
Sweet halcyon days, warm summer sea,
Faint orange of the morning skies
And dark-lined shores upon the lee!
Touched with the sunrise, sea and sky
All still on Memory's canvas lie:
The scattered isles with India ink
Dot the wide back-ground's gold and pink:
Unstirring in the Sunday calm,
Their profile cedars, sharply drawn,
Bold black against the flushing dawn,
Take shape like clumps of tropic palm.
Night shadows still the distance dim
(Ultra-marine) where ocean's brim
Upholdeth the horizon-rim.
 
 
Once more in thought we seem to creep
By lonely reefs where sea-birds scream,
Ulysses-like, along the deep
Borne onward in the ocean-stream.
The sea-floor spreadeth glassy still;
No breath the idle sail doth fill;
Our oar-blades smite the heavy seas;
Under the world the morning breeze
Treads with the sun the unknown ways.
Thus steer we o'er the solemn main
Eating the Lotus-fruit again,
Dreaming that time forever stays,
Singing "Where, Absence, is thy sting?"
Listening to hear our echoes ring
Through the far rocks where Sirens sing.
 

THE MERMAID'S GLASS

 
'T was down among the Thimble Isles
That strew for many "liquid miles"
The waters of Long Island Sound:
Our yacht lay in a cove; around
The rocky isles with cedars green
And channels winding in between:
And here a low, black reef was spread,
And there a sunken "nigger-head"
Dimpled the surface of the tide.
From one tall island's cliffy side
We heard the shaggy goats that fed:
The gulls wheeled screaming overhead
Or settled in a snowy flock
Far out upon the lonely rock
Which, like a pillar, seemed to show
Some drowned acropolis below.
Meanwhile, in the warm sea about,
With many a plunge and jolly shout,
Our crew enjoyed their morning bath.
The hairy skipper in his wrath
Lay cursing on the gunwale's rim:
He loved a dip but could not swim;
So, now and then with plank afloat
He'd struggle feebly round the boat
And o'er the side climb puffing in,
Scraping wide areas off his skin,
Then lie and sun each hirsute limb
Once more upon the gunwale's rim
And shout, with curses unavailing,
"Come out! There's wind: let's do some sailing."
 
 
A palm-leaf hat, that here and there
Bobbed on the water, showed him where
Some venturous swimmer outward bound
Escaped beyond his voice's sound.
All heedless of their skipper's call,
One group fought for the upset yawl.
The conqueror sat astride the keel
And deftly pounded with his heel
The hands that clutched his citadel,
Which showed – at distance – like the shell
Round which, unseen, the Naiad train
Sport naked on the middle main.
Myself had drifted far away,
Meanwhile, from where the sail-boat lay,
Till all unbroken I could hear
The wave's low whisper in my ear,
And at the level of mine eye
The blue vibration met the sky.
Sometimes upon my back I lay
And watched the clouds, while I and they
Were wafted effortless along. —
Sudden I seemed to hear a song:
Yet not a song, but some weird strain
As though the inarticulate main
Had found a voice whose human tone
Interpreted its own dull moan;
Its foamy hiss; its surfy roar;
Its gentle lapping on the shore;
Its noise of subterranean waves
That grumble in the sea-cliff caves;
Its whish among the drifting miles
Of gulf-weed from the Indian Isles: —
All – all the harmonies were there
Which ocean makes with earth or air.
Turning I saw a sunken ledge
Bared by the ebb, along whose edge
The matted sea-weed dripped: thereon,
Betwixt the dazzle of the sun
And the blue shimmer of the sea,
I saw – or else I seemed to see
A mermaid, crooning a wild song,
Combing with arm uplifted long
The hair that shed its meshes black
Down the slope whiteness of her back.
She held a mirror in her hand,
Wherein she viewed sky, sea, and land,
Her beauty's background and its frame.
But now, as toward the rock I came,
All suddenly across the glass
Some startling image seemed to pass;
For her song rose into a scream,
Over her shoulders one swift gleam
Of eyes unearthly fell on me,
And, 'twixt the flashing of the sea
And the blind dazzle of the sun,
I saw the rock, but thereupon
She sat no longer 'gainst the blue;
Only across the reef there flew
One snow-white tern and vanished too.
But, coasting that lone island round,
Among the slippery kelp I found
A little oval glass that lay
Upturned and flashing in the ray
Of the down-looking sun. Thereto
With scarce believing eyes I drew
And took it captive
 
 
A while there
I rested in the mermaid's lair,
And felt the merry breeze that blew,
And watched the sharpies as they flew,
And snuffed the sea's breath thick with brine,
And basked me in the sun's warm shine;
Then with my prize I made my way
Once more to where the sail-boat lay.
I kept the secret – and the glass;
By day across its surface pass
The transient shapes of common things
Which chance within its oval brings.
But when at night I strive to sound
The darkness of its face profound,
Again I seem to hear the breeze
That curls the waves on summer seas;
I see the isles with cedars green;
The channels winding in between;
The coves with beaches of white sand;
The reefs where warning spindles stand;
And, through the multitudinous shimmer
Of waves and sun, again the glimmer
Of eyes unearthly falls on me,
Deep with the mystery of the sea.