Andromeda, and Other Poems

‘QU’EST QU’IL DIT’[10 - The Qu’est qu’il dit is a Tropical bird.]

Espion ailé de la jeune amante
De l’ombre des palmiers pourquoi ce cri?
Laisse en paix le beau garçon plaider et vaincre—
Pourquoi, pourquoi demander ‘Qu’est qu’il dit?’

‘Qu’est qu’il dit?’  Ce que tu dis toi-même
Chaque mois de ce printemps eternel;
Ce que disent les papillons qui s’entre-baisent,
Ce que dit tout bel jeun être à toute belle.

Importun!  Attende quelques lustres:
Quand les souvenirs 1’emmeneront ici—
Mère, grand’mère, pâle, lasse, et fidèle,
Demande mais doucement—‘Et le vieillard,
Qu’est qu’il dit?’

    Trinidad, January 10, 1870

THE LEGEND OF LA BREA[11 - This myth about the famous Pitch Lake of Trinidad was told almost word for word to a M. Joseph by an aged half-caste Indian who went by the name of Señor Trinidada.  The manners and customs which the ballad described, and the cruel and dangerous destruction of the beautiful birds of Trinidad, are facts which may be easily verified by any one who will take the trouble to visit the West Indies.]

Down beside the loathly Pitch Lake,
In the stately Morichal,[12 - A magnificent wood of the Mauritia Fanpalm, on the south shore of the Pitch Lake.]
Sat an ancient Spanish Indian,
Peering through the columns tall.

Watching vainly for the flashing
Of the jewelled colibris;[13 - Humming-birds.]
Listening vainly for their humming
Round the honey-blossomed trees.

‘Few,’ he sighed, ‘they come, and fewer,
To the cocorité[14 - Maximiliana palms.] bowers;
Murdered, madly, through the forests
Which of yore were theirs—and ours

By there came a negro hunter,
Lithe and lusty, sleek and strong,
Rolling round his sparkling eyeballs,
As he loped and lounged along.

Rusty firelock on his shoulder;
Rusty cutlass on his thigh;
Never jollier British subject
Rollicked underneath the sky.

British law to give him safety,
British fleets to guard his shore,
And a square of British freehold—
He had all we have, and more.

Fattening through the endless summer,
Like his own provision ground,
He had reached the summum bonum
Which our latest wits have found.

So he thought; and in his hammock
Gnawed his junk of sugar-cane,
Toasted plantains at the fire-stick,
Gnawed, and dozed, and gnawed again.

Had a wife in his ajoupa[15 - Hut of timber and palm-leaves.] —
Or, at least, what did instead;
Children, too, who died so early,
He’d no need to earn their bread.

Never stole, save what he needed,
From the Crown woods round about;
Never lied, except when summoned—
Let the warden find him out.

Never drank, except at market;
Never beat his sturdy mate;
She could hit as hard as he could,
And had just as hard a pate.

Had no care for priest nor parson,
Hope of heaven nor fear of hell;
And in all his views of nature
Held with Comte and Peter Bell.

Healthy, happy, silly, kindly,
Neither care nor toil had he,
Save to work an hour at sunrise,
And then hunt the colibri.

Not a bad man; not a good man:
Scarce a man at all, one fears,
If the Man be that within us
Which is born of fire and tears.

Round the palm-stems, round the creepers,
Flashed a feathered jewel past,
Ruby-crested, topaz-throated,
Plucked the cocorité bast,

Plucked the fallen ceiba-cotton,[16 - From the Eriodendron, or giant silk-cotton.]
Whirred away to build his nest,