THE “BLIND” ROAD, NANTUCKET
IF you would find
Peace, and a lightened load,
And wells of delicate, salt, sweet-fern air,
And tranquil lines around you every where,
Follow the “blind” Rut Road.
It leads to liberties of yellow gorse,
To secret heather and to banks of bay;
It winds along the ocean, and its course
Is wet with wild sea-spray.
It leads along the swamps, where honey-ball
Hangs scented globes, where clethra scatters sweet,
By holly hedge, where pheasants thread the tall
Indigo plant, or flying sea-gulls meet.
It leads away from every fret and jar,
From everything that hurts and stings and tries;
Through green dwarf-pines, and hills of cinnebar,
Marshaling grasses up to windswept skies.
If you would find
Rest and forgetfulness and all things new,
Take the Rut Road, and it will bring to you
All dear forgotten things, things you see through,
But that this road holds sacred, being “blind.”
THE END OF THE SEASON—NANTUCKET
THE hotel building sees its doom, aghast,
And all its windows fix in sullen stare,
For no girl-voices ring on sunset air,
And no bright-breasted youth goes speeding past.
The latticed roses and the phlox have cast
Their petals upon paths where lovers dreamed,
And grey old streets, where gauzy figures streamed,
Settle to lamp-lit quietness at last.
Yet there is endless romance on the moor;
The hawks o’er wine-red hollows stretch their wings,
Wild ducks loop Autumnward in ranging strings,
And swallows balance round time-silvered door;
High looms the bluff in castle like contour,
And wear the beach the full white breasts of dunes
Nourish sky-silence, while the sea communes
With shells, a-quiver to the foam’s allure.
MOVING MILESTONES—NANTUCKET
MIDNIGHT, Black, and a wild sea of stars,
A gold-white surf of stars whose sparkling foam
Breaks into waves on occult ether bars,
Where star-tides have their deep eternal home.
All night the solemn Wonder sweeps me by;
Arcturus, Vega, Spica cross the sky
On one fixed path, by laws that do not change,
Unfailing while all other laws derange.