In those eyes, dark as pools, the morning star
Must have lain long; on that calm breadth of brow
Must have been set some nobleness of vow
To distance and to space and all things far.
A little narrow street enshrines her now,
But through the world her planet pathways are
Blazed with her name; the constellate gates un-pbar
To those who, following, her star-cairns know.
Woman, who walked with Science to mark the lights
Along dark ways, thy luminous steps are dim;
Rapt on ethereal roads of satellites:
Art gazing still through space beyond the brim
Of sparkling nebula meadows to the nights
Of some New Radiance o’er still farther Rim?
PROPHECY MADE GOING “DOWN ALONG.”
Don’t tell, but I think there’s a miracle today;
The Old North Church is full of Western light,
And the bush near by is afire; very bright
Shine the windows in the tower, for the last half hour
Some starlings have ranged there whistling and calling,
The barometer is falling,
It’s Underground Moon this week, you know;
(Don’t tell anybody I said so,
But I think there’s a miracle today.)
Somewhere on the Island something’s going to happen;
Don’t ask me, I don’t know anything about it.
Whatever I say I’d just as lief shout it,
(But there’s going to be a miracle today!)
If there’s any pass at all a-going your way,
Better say
(There’s going to be a miracle today.)
Don’t tell them who said so—they wouldn’t like it, hey?
(But there’s going to be a miracle today!)
I know it for sure, for I’ve stood for one hour
Watching those starlings in the North Church Tower.
So if you want a gam,
It’s sure I am
That there’s going to be a miracle today.
So that’s the drift,
Though maybe they’ll be miffed—
“He hasn’t got the run of it,” they’ll say,
But—there’s going to be a miracle today!
COAST YARN.
Skies pebbled with stars,
Sea, breathing like a sleeping animal,
Wind nuzzling wet shagginess of moors.
The coarse bright strains of an accordion,
Perversely stretched and shrunken
Against a wall of dark.
Brown faces, high cheekbones,
Polyglot sea-words;
A cold, dark swiftness;
Hardness of diligence
For shrewd, tight-fisted gain.
The Cranberry Pickers dance gravely
In squalid shacks on the moors,
And the greasy bottles pass
From old lips to young;
Rough doorways blurt out light;
White teeth, dark eyes shine.
There is chattering wharf talk
And garbled dock yard French;
Clamdiggers, Scallopers,
Fondle their dirty rolls
Of smoky dollar bills
And stride in booted ease.
Out of the moorland night
She, saucily, slips in,
Thistledown on her hair;
Little, slim, ear-ringed, scarlet-bloused,
Her feet and impertinent breasts four mischievous mongrel words
In a universal language;
Her mouth gleams like berries,
Swamp-light in her eyes—
Someone clasps, someone curses—
Then screams; a knife....
The sea, like an animal panting;
The sands, scared and white,
Broken barrels of cranberries
Strewn like unholy rosaries;
A man, stripped and bleeding,
Thrown overboard at midnight
Where the tide runs strong.