The Island windows gleam, and all the sorrow
Of human life is lanterned into Dream;
The fishers’ huts are splashed, the grey shacks borrow
Red from the sun and weltered moonlight gleam.
Out on the dark, gold patches on the stable,
Light-stippled wharves; ruby and malachite;
Sharp, slanting roofs with witchlike peak and gable,
Plaqued in warm squares of ruddy window light.
Thin blocks of amber in the misty weather,
Oblongs of white translucence on the down;
Dim, tawny lights beyond pine hidden heather,
Clear coastward lights fringing the steepled town.
The grey owl flaps across the heaving hollow,
The chimneyed house sinks in the commons’ wave;
The cottage lights a hundred starlights follow,
The Island windows shine ... the road is brave!
DOCK DRAMA
Limp in his chair atilt against a shack
An old man broods o’er newspaper and smoke
Where shingle-quilted pent roofs back to back
Checker from grey of ash to black of coke;
Dim squares of window, opal-paned, baroque,
Waver on water, pearling it to deep
Weedwafted droop of shifting shadow cloak
Where swirls of silver imagery sweep.
Slow ribboning to the surface serpent rings
Of mast reflections quiver into grey
Upon the incoming tide that softly brings
One high-peaked sail along the buoyant way
Where questing water tentatively steals
Fingering mossy spiles and undulant keels.
The steam boat dock’s a stage where nightly speak
The actors in some ribald skit of Trade
Here serried barrels screen a jester’s freak
And piles of trunks made pirate ambuscade.
Red lanterns slackly swung and lights of jade
Accent accordions’ pert canzonette;
Or furry trawls along the string piece laid
Trip oil-skinned fisherman’s hulking silhouette.
A massive barge like enigmatic tomb
Toward a sea-scented land of dark drifts down;
Dim on the East the sandy headlands loom
Till dawn rings up green trees and steepled town.
Then like applause in broken scattering sound
The motor boats speed to the clamming ground.
GHOST HOUSE.
I had always felt contented about that ghost,
There in her vine-shrouded house aside of the road;
I knew that the rag-stuffed panes were her special boast,
That she liked the tumble-down chimney of her abode;
She liked that old hat that hung in the tree in the lane,
And the scarecrow leaves that dribbled around in the rain;
The ivy that muffled the sills, a ghost would adore,
And she revelled in cobwebs the twisted staircase wore.
“The dear, mild thing,” I thought, “she’s the only one
In this glittering, piece-work world that can run a home;
No wonder the birds to her leaf-hung windows come,
No wonder the black mole tunnels the garden loam;
And there is revelry under her knotted boards
Where wild kittens hide and the grey squirrels rattle their hoards.”