As if the earth turned slowly,
Or looked with one still face upon the sun
As Venus does—
Until the trees, the fields, the marshes,
All turn dun, dull Quaker-brown,
And a mild winter settles down,
And mosses are more gray.
All human souls are glasses
which reflect
The aspects of the outer world;
See what terrible gods the
huge Himalayas bred!
And the fierce Jewish Jaywah
came
From the hot Syrian deserts
With his inhibitory decalogue.
The gods of little hills are
always tame;
Here God is dull, where all
things stay the same.
No change on these sea-islands!
The huge piled clouds range
White in the cobalt sky;
The moss hangs,
And the strong, tiring sea-winds
blow—
While day on glistering day
goes by.
The horses plow with hanging
heads,
Slow, followed by a black-faced
man,
Indifferent to the sun;
The old cotton bushes hang
with whitened heads;
And there among the live-oak
trees,
Peep the small whitewashed
cabins,
Painted blue, perhaps, and
scarlet-turbaned women,
Ample-hipped, with voices
soft and warm
With the lean hounds and chocolate
children swarm.
Day after day the ocean pumps
The awful valve-gates of his
heart,
Diastole and systole through
these estuaries;
The tides flow in long, gray,
weed-streaked lines;
The salt water, like the planet’s
lifeblood, goes
As if the earth were breathing
with long-taken breaths
And we were very near her
heart.
No wonder that these faces
show a tired dismay,
Looking on burning suns, and
scarcely blithe in May;
Spring’s coming is too
fierce with life;
And summer is too long;
The stunted pine trees struggle
with the sand
Till the eyes sicken with
their dwarfing strife.
There are old women here among
these island homes,
With dull brown eyes that
look at something gray,
And tight silver hair, drawn
back in lines,
Like the beach grass that’s
always blown one way;
With such a melancholy in
their faces
I know that they have lived
long in these places.
The tides, the hooting owls,
the daylight moons,
The leprous lights and shadows
of the mosses,
The funereal woodlands of
these coasts,
Draped like a perpetual hearse,
And memories of an old war’s
ancient losses,
Dwell in their faces’
shadows like gray ghosts.
And worse—
The terror of the black man
always near—
The drab level of the ricefields
and the marsh
Lends them a mask of fear.
PAGE TWO
SUNSHINE