Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, WIND AND SEA, by SILAS WEIR MITCHELL


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

WIND AND SEA, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: An idle group within the willow's shade
Last Line: Crying, vengeance, vengeance! All the summer night.
Subject(s): Death; Love; Nature; Sea; Dead, The; Ocean


SCENE I

A June Afternoon.—Meadows.—A Farm, with distant Woods; New Jersey
Coast; Cape May.

AN idle group within the willow's shade
We lay and chatted, holding lazy tilts,
And many a lance of mocking laughter broke,
Or calmly settled creeds and governments
High on the pleasant uplands of content,
Till soon the westering sun peeped underneath
The fringes of our green tent-skirts, and fell,
Where on the paling-fence the milk-cans gleamed,
Red in the level gold, whilst suddenly,
Swift from the sea, the gay salt breezes came,
And, dipping like the swallows here and there,
With quick cool kisses touched the startled grain,
And fled ashamed, to seek new loves afar,
Where in the dark damp marsh the lilies float,
And lustrous-leaved the white magnolia lifts
Its silvery censers, and the frogs, like friars,
Intone their even-song along the marge.

HESTER (rising).
How sweet the air! Wilt hear the song you made
Of this same gentle north wind's winter pranks?

The lusty north wind all night long
His carols sang above my head,
And shook the roof, and roused the fire,
And with the cold, red morning fled.

Yet ere he left, upon my panes
He drew, with bold and easy hand,
The pine and fir, and icy bergs,
And frost ferns of his northern land;

And southward, like the Northmen old
Whose ships he drove across the seas,
Has gone to fade where roses grow,
And die among the orange-trees.

ALFRED.
That's music for a poet's soul, his words
Soft slipping from a woman's lips, the while
Caressed by lingering sunshine wrapt she stands,
A shining aureole round her fallen hair.

HENRY.
A bid for equal flattery. Let us go
Across the sand dunes o'er the mazy creeks.
Hear how old ocean calls us. Come away.

FRANK.
Dost thou remember that October day
We three together stood and saw at eve
The wanton wind you sleeping waves arouse,
Till at the touch of that coy courtesan
Strange yearning seized them, and with shout and cry
They followed fleetly, while she, laughing, fled
Across the golden-rods above the beach?

HENRY.
Ay, then it was you, perched beneath an oak,
To us, the long expectant heirs, set forth
King Autumn's testament and royal will.

HESTER.
I pray you tell again his dying thoughts,
And we shall lie upon the meadow grass
And be as heirs should be, stern visaged, grave,
Whilst you within yon bower of wild grapes stand:
So shall your words steal o'er the listening ear,
Breeze-broken, while the melancholy sea
Moans his sad chorus on the distant shore.

FRANK.
Brown-visaged Autumn sat within the wood,
And counted miserly his ripened wealth:
I, Autumn, heritor of Summer's wealth,—
I, Autumn, who am old and near to death,—
Do thus make clear my will; I dowered earth
With fruit and flowers. I fed her hungry tribes,
The bee, the bird, the worm, the lazy flocks,
And like a king who unto certain death
Goes proudly clad, in royal state I go,
Through the long sunset of October woods,
Where like a trembling maid the smooth-limbed beech
Lets fall her ruddy robes, or where afield
Red vine leaves fleck the cedar's sombre cone,
Or where the maple and the hickory tall
Shed the long summer's store of garnered gold.
Mine, too, the orchard's raining fruit, and mine
Round-shouldered melons fattening in the sun;
Mine the brown pennons of the rustling maize,
The squirrel's nutty wealth, the wrinkled gourd.
For I am Autumn, lord of fruits and flowers,—
God's almoner to all the tribes of man.
Here, then, to earth and all her habitants,
I, dying, leave what Summer's bounty gave:
Great store of grain, ripe fruit, and tasselled corn;
Yea, last of all, and best, I here bequeath,
With loving thought, a special legacy
To all good fellows everywhere on earth:
To them I give the sun-kissed grapes of Spain
The Rhine's autumnal treasure, and the fruit
Of knightly Burgundy and winding Rhone;
Nor less the grape of Capri's lifted cliff,
The purple globes that jewel Ischia's isle,
And that sad vintage weeping holy tears
On black Vesuvian slopes. To them I give
The soothing sweetness of the Cuban leaf
Wherewith to hold good counsel, when life palls,
Wherewith to charm away some weary hour.
And when from thoughtful lips the pale blue wreaths
Curl upward, and, the wanderer's only hearth,
His pipe-bowl, glows with hospitable fires,
I charge them drink a single cup, and say:
He was a good old fellow—peace to him.
So died great Autumn, passing like a mist,
Where in the woodland verge the maples rain
Reluctant gold in hesitating fall.

ALFRED.
What ho! good minstrel. Let us seaward roam,
'T is but a half-hour's stroll past yonder hill.

FRANK.
I well recall the way. It lies within
A wood of stunted cedars and of firs,
Which heard in infancy the great sea moan,
And so took on the wilted forms of fright.

HESTER.
Well, too, I know it: when the tide is up
'T is barred and traversed by an hundred creeks,
So populous with lilies, you might dream
King Oberon's navy rode at anchor there.

FRANK.
Let us away to it. Our sculptor here
Knows not the sea as we do. He shall feast
His eager eyes on it, and own to us
That earth has glories other than the curves
Of lithe Apollo and the queen of love.

SCENE II

Seashore.—Sand Dunes dotted with distorted Trees.

HENRY.
Why never can the painter tell to us
This awful story of a lonely sea,
This terrible soliloquy of nature?
Why must he slip us in the bit of red,
The group of fishers or the tossing ship?
Who asks for life or human action here?

FRANK.
Nay, man is nature's complement. The sea,
The sky, the flowers suggest him. Best I love
The smiling landscape of a woman's face.

ALFRED.
But he who worships nature, ought to be
The ready lover of her thousand gods.

HESTER.
Lo! what a thought is yon triumphant sea,
A thought so perfect in its competence,
That I would leave it to its loneliness.

ALFRED.
Think what it was when unto God there came
This great sea-thought.

FRANK. Here, friend, your chisel fails.
'T is powerless here. Thank heaven, I at least
Can some way capture it with feeble brush.

ALFRED.
Alas, 't is no man's prize. It mocks us all.
Leave me but only man, and you may paint,
And you may chisel. I would sail alone
The great Atlantic of the human heart.

HENRY.
Do you remember how, last summer, here
We played with fancies, and in idle mood
Struck to and fro the shuttlecocks of thought?

FRANK.
Ah, well I do. 'T was such an hour as comes
Once in the life of joy. Just here we lay.
As oft before, you led the playful race.

HENRY.
Watch now the waves; each has its little life,
High-couraged triumph in yon crest of pride,
Some proud decision in its onward sweep,—
Destruction, failure,—'t is a history!

FRANK.
I like it best when of a winter day
The cold dry norther rolls athwart the beach
The gleaming foam-balls into serpents white,
And all the sand is starred with rainbow lights.

HESTER.
It knoweth all the secrets of my moods:
To-day is gay with me, to-morrow grave.

FRANK.
For me its voice is ever sorrowful
As some God's grief beyond all earthly speech.

HESTER.
How wave on wave turns lapsing on the beach,
Like the great leaves of some eternal book.

ALFRED.
Unread forever since creation's dawn.
I pray you notice how the seaside trees
Seem flying headlong, all their withering limbs
Stretched landward, craving refuge from the sea.

FRANK.
As they might be remorseful murderers,
That heard the hoarse deep, like an angry foe,
Storm up the sand slopes—nearer, nearer still,
Crying, Vengeance, vengeance! all the summer night.





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