Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, APIA, by ARTHUR PETERSON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

APIA, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Ye isles samoan, fatal sisters three
Last Line: Cease, o melpomene, thy tragic song!
Subject(s): Samoa; Sea; Ocean


1

Ye isles Samoan, fatal sisters three,
Savaii, Tutuila, Upolu,
Weep for the brave who lie beneath your waves!
And Thou, O Muse, who erst sang love, sing now
Courage and duty; heroes undismayed
In battle with the cataclysmal sea,
Each at his post, steady in the face of death!
Awake, Melpomene, and lend thy aid!

2

Apia's crescent bay, open on the north,
Whose horns Matautu are and Mulinuu,
O'er whose blue wave, by hidden jagged reefs
Of coral rimmed, the sennit-sewed canoes
Of tattoed warriors ride; or gentler craft
Of maids Samoan, singing at the oar,
With sweet reiteration, their wild songs,
Or, veritable mermaids, in the deep
Swimming, with graceful undulating forms;
Apia's fateful semicircle fair,
Where stand in lines the melancholy palms
Whence hangs the milky cocoa-nut on high,
And bread-fruit, taro and banana grow,
And sings that island bird of liquid note,
And flows the Vaisiaga's ophite stream,
And bright green spreads the landscape right and left,
With wooded mountains, veiled in blue, behind:
Apia, with its beauty South-Sea Isle,
This the stage-setting is of my eloge;
The arena this where gladiators brave
Clutched with the ravening tigers of the sea.

3

As ye have seen, in winter time, a lake
Half-frozen, round whose shores a fringe of ice
Extends far toward the middle, which as yet
All uncongealed, ripples with surface free,
So at low tide Apia's bay appears,
Fringed by a reef of coral round about.

4

I see as in a dream that drama wild,
And hear its tragic voices manifold.
The armada fair; the flags American,
And that of England, those of Germany;
The gallant war-ships basking in the sun;
The voices of the bugles morn and eve;
The ever-glowering guns; the bustling life,
Each ship a little world complete; anon
The ominous signs; the steadily-falling glass --
Augur unerring of the wrath to come;
Nimbiferous winds; the long preluding swell;
The smiling face of heaven by clouds obscured;
The busy preparations of the ships --
Lower yards sent down, the skyey topmasts housed,
Steam up; each gallant argosy secure,
Riding at anchor, waiting for the shock.

5

A pause -- the calm profound before the storm --
The vague expectancy of evil -- then,
With distant voices weird presaging woe,
The rising gale; fierce squalls from the outer sea,
With roc-like wings, each fiercer than the last,
Harrying the bay; the gallant ships at first
Holding their own, to leeward staggering then
Before the blast; black night enshrouding all;
Cloud-strata, like Pandora's casket each,
Arriving, with aerial furies crammed
Innumerable; the wild hour before the dawn;
The Eber drifting toward the fatal reef,
Dragging her anchors; her struggle to escape;
Her failure; awful seas encompass her;
As ye have seen a leaf before the winds
Of autumn borne, whirled helpless here and there,
So was the unhappy Eber seized; she strikes;
Broadside she strikes and disappears from view;
To that dark sepulchre beneath the reef
The hundred-handed ocean bears her down;
She vanishes, with her three-score lives and ten;
She vanishes, to be seen of men no more.

6

Night wanes but wanes not that convulsion dire.
Rather, in fiercer phalanxes, the winds,
Like unleashed spirits from the nether world,
With grisly cries, gather to the awful wake.
Huge rollers from the outer ocean rush,
Wave behind wave, into that trap-like gulf
Where struggling lies, like netted birds, their prey.
Mast-high o'erhead they tower, then downward plunge,
Deluging the slant decks, and intrepid souls
Sweeping away with stress resistless; souls
To be consigned thence to that maelstrom vast
Which round the fatal harbor, fed by seas
Incoming, and the swoln Vaisiaga, whirled --
A hidden monster lived and worked and whirled,
Bearing its victims ever oceanward,
Far out into the abyss of storm, or down
To nethermost lair in the world submarine,
By horrid arms tentacular enclosed.

7

Night wanes but wanes not that convulsion dire.
Morn breaking shows a sky without a sun,
A sinister concave with tortuous clouds
Painted: this overhead: below the bay,
Like caldron of some anthropophagite
Gigantic, boils: here, in distressful plight,
Nipsic, Vandalia, Olga, and Adler ride:
Black from their funnels pours the desperate smoke
As strive they to escape the impending doom:
The jagged reef -- the jaws of Death -- confronts them!
Of the lost Eber them the vision haunts!
O thou sea-monster, ruthless in thy wrath,
When wast thou than this day more terrible?
Chaos seemed to have come again to earth!
But cease, O Muse! In accents brief relate
Each vessel's fate, and cease thy story grim,
For horrors twice-told pall! The reef escaped,
Beached were the Nipsic and the Olga soon,
Safe on a sandy strand; but by a sea
Titanic was the Adler thrown, and fell
Flat on her side, far in upon the reef;
Like armored knight, in mediaeval joust
Thrown from his horse, she falls, and, helpless lies;
And the Vandalia fair next that same reef
Sank down, as sinks a deer by dogs assailed,
Harried to her death by triturating seas.

8

All night, to awe-struck watchers on the beach,
(Seen through that swirling hurricane or heard)
The oscillating lights of ships unseen,
The trumpet-uttered voices of command,
The piercing whistle of the boatswain's mate,
The fierce collisions of the huddled ships.
All day, by watchers turned to workers now,
Passing of life-lines between ship and shore,
Ruddy Samoans singing in the surf,
Waist-deep standing, with outstretched rescuing hands,
Or swimming after lives lost but for them,
Island-bred heroes of the wood and wave.

9.

The closing scene: the Trenton's fires put out,
Broken her helm; the stout Calliope,
Four cables parted of her anchors five,
Slipping her last, hard by that fatal reef,
On iron muscles puissant staking all,
And to the open sea escaping safe;
The Trenton's cheer, that cheer heard round the world,
As, slowly moving up against the gale,
Out of that harbor of doom fighting her way,
Them the Calliope close passes by;
The answer from a hundred English throats;
The Trenton's end, last one of all to yield;
She of that Admiral brave the flagship is
Who in his youth by Farragut's side abode
Through many a battle-cyclone in the south;
She, on that reef remorseless drifting now,
Strikes the submerged Vandalia, with her tops
And rigging filled with men; strikes, but to them,
With rocket-carried lines, brings rescue sweet,
Rescue and, on the early morrow, land;
She, with our country's banner at her gaff,
Our anthem sounding at the sunset hour,
Lies in the deepening shadows of the night,
A lion wounded but defiant still!

10.

O isles Samoan, fatal sisters three,
Savaii, Tutuila, Upolu,
Do ye like sirens lure but to destroy?
If so, melt stony-hearted, melt for once,
And weep the brave who lie beneath your waves!
Cease, O Melpomene, thy tragic song!





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