Poems

Then were at peace once more; and we heard the harsh cries of the peacocks
Perched on a tree by a cabin-door, where the white-headed settler’s
White-headed children stood to look at the boat as it passed them,
Passed them so near that we heard their happy talk and their laughter.
Softly the sunset had faded, and now on the eastern horizon
Hung, like a tear in the sky, the beautiful star of the evening.

V

Still with his back to us standing, the pilot went on with his story:–
“All of us flocked round the woman. The children cried, and their mothers
Hugged them tight to their breasts; but the gambler said to the captain,–
‘Put me off there at the town that lies round the bend of the river.
Here, you! rise at once, and be ready now to go with me.’
Roughly he seized the woman’s arm and strove to uplift her.
She–she seemed not to heed him, but rose like one that is dreaming,
Slid from his grasp, and fleetly mounted the steps of the gangway,
Up to the hurricane-deck, in silence, without lamentation.
Straight to the stern of the boat, where the wheel was, she ran, and the people
Followed her fast till she turned and stood at bay for a moment,
Looking them in the face, and in the face of the gambler.
Not one to save her,–not one of all the compassionate people!
Not one to save her, of all the pitying angels in heaven!
Not one bolt of God to strike him dead there before her!
Wildly she waved him back, we waiting in silence and horror.
Over the swarthy face of the gambler a pallor of passion
Passed, like a gleam of lightning over the west in the night-time.
White, she stood, and mute, till he put forth his hand to secure her;
Then she turned and leaped,–in mid-air fluttered a moment,–
Down then, whirling, fell, like a broken-winged bird from a tree-top,
Down on the cruel wheel, that caught her, and hurled her, and crushed her,
And in the foaming water plunged her, and hid her forever.”

VI

Still with his back to us all the pilot stood, but we heard him
Swallowing hard, as he pulled the bell-rope for stopping. Then, turning,–
“This is the place where it happened,” brokenly whispered the pilot.
“Somehow, I never like to go by here alone in the night-time.”
Darkly the Mississippi flowed by the town that lay in the starlight,
Cheerful with lamps. Below we could hear them reversing the engines,
And the great boat glided up to the shore like a giant exhausted.
Heavily sighed her pipes. Broad over the swamps to the eastward
Shone the full moon, and turned our far-trembling wake into silver.
All was serene and calm, but the odorous breath of the willows
Smote with a mystical sense of infinite sorrow upon us.

FORLORN

I

Red roses, in the slender vases burning,
Breathed all upon the air,–
The passion and the tenderness and yearning,
The waiting and the doubting and despair.

II

Still with the music of her voice was haunted,
Through all its charméd rhymes,
The open book of such a one as chanted
The things he dreamed in old, old summer-times.

III

The silvern chords of the piano trembled
Still with the music wrung
From them; the silence of the room dissembled
The closes of the songs that she had sung.

IV

The languor of the crimson shawl’s abasement,–
Lying without a stir
Upon the floor,–the absence at the casement,
The solitude and hush were full of her.

V

Without, and going from the room, and never
Departing, did depart
Her steps; and one that came too late forever
Felt them go heavy o’er his broken heart.

VI

And, sitting in the house’s desolation,
He could not bear the gloom,
The vanishing encounter and evasion
Of things that were and were not in the room.

VII

Through midnight streets he followed fleeting visions
Of faces and of forms;
He heard old tendernesses and derisions
Amid the sobs and cries of midnight storms.

VIII