Slow turns the water by the green marshes,
In Virginia.
Overhead the sea fowl
Make silver flashes, cry harsh as peacocks.
Capes and islands stand,
Ocean thunders,
The light houses burn red and gold stars.
In Virginia
Run a hundred rivers.[102]
The fine opening of Miss Johnston’s poem might serve as an evocation, except in the detail of the lighthouses, for her novel, Croatan (1923). The mere fact of her return to the Virginia of colonial days must have served to entice many readers to this book—who were held, I think, by the tale itself, once they had begun it. The legend of Raleigh’s lost colony of Roanoke and of a first white child born in Virginia, “Virginia Dare,” is skilfully utilized for a romance quite the most perfect Miss Johnston had imagined. The story of the three young people who grew up together in the forest—English girl, Spanish boy and Indian youth—is one of many overtones deftly sounded. Is Miss Johnston proclaiming a creed of racial tolerance and interracial understanding? Then the proclamation is made pianissimo and with muted strings, not with brass instruments. And the forest scenes—what delicious notes from oboes!