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 Provencal.
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.