quank
    Among the tidal flats and rushes rank on rank;
    On island tufts the heron feeds its viscid young;
    And the quick mocker catches
    From lips of sons of slaves the eery snatches,
    And trolls them as no lips have ever sung.

    Oh!  It is good to be here in the spring,
    When water still stays solid in the North,
    When the first jasmine rings its golden bells,
    And the “wild wistaria” puts forth;
    But most because the sea then changes tone;
    Talking a whit less drear,
    It gossips in a smoother monotone,
    Whispering moon-scandal in the old earth’s ear.

H.A.

MODERN PHILOSOPHER

    They fight your battles for you every day,
    The zealous ones, who sorrow in your life. 
    Undaunted by a century of strife,
    With urgent fingers still they point the way
    To drawing rooms, in decorous array,
    And moral Heavens where no casual wife
    May share your lot; where dice and ready knife
    Are barred; and feet are silent when you pray.

    But you have music in your shuffling feet,
    And spirituals for a lenient Lord,
    Who lets you sing your promises away. 
    You hold your sunny corner of the street,
    And pluck deep beauty from a banjo chord: 
    Philosopher whose future is today!

D.H.

UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS

    The judge, who lives impeccably upstairs
    With dull decorum and its implication,
    Has all his servants in to family prayers,
    And edifies his soul with exhortation.

    Meanwhile his blacks live wastefully downstairs;
    Not always chaste, they manage to exist
    With less decorum than the judge upstairs,
    And find withal a something that he missed.

    This painful fact a Swede philosopher,
    Who tarried for a fortnight in our city,
    Remarked, one evening at the meal, before
    We paralyzed him silent with our pity—­

    Saying the black man living with the white
    Had given more than white men could requite.

H.A.

HAG-HOLLERIN’ TIME

    Black Julius peered out from the galley fly;
    Behind Jim Island, lying long and dim;
    An infra owl-light tinged the twilight sky
    As if a bonfire burned for cherubim.

    Dark orange flames came leering through the pines,
    And then the moon’s face, struggling with a sneeze,
    Along the flat horizon’s level lines
    Her nostrils fingered with palmetto trees.

    Her platinum wand made water wrinkles buckle;
    Old Julius gave appreciative chuckle;
    “It’s jes about hag-hollerin’ time,” he said. 
    I watched the globous buckeyes in his head