The Project Gutenberg eBook ofNewfoundland Verse

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofNewfoundland VerseThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Newfoundland VerseAuthor: E. J. PrattRelease date: July 10, 2019 [eBook #59896]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Al Haines*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEWFOUNDLAND VERSE ***

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Newfoundland VerseAuthor: E. J. PrattRelease date: July 10, 2019 [eBook #59896]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Al Haines

Title: Newfoundland Verse

Author: E. J. Pratt

Release date: July 10, 2019 [eBook #59896]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Al Haines

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEWFOUNDLAND VERSE ***

To myMOTHER

byE.J.Pratt

The Ryerson PressPublishers Toronto

CONTENTS

Sea VariationsThe Toll of the BellsThe Ground-SwellMagnolia BlossomsThe Ice-Floes?The SharkThe FogThe Big FellowThe Morning PlungeIn AbsentiaThe Flood TideThe Pine TreeIn Lantern LightThe Secret of the SeaLoss of the Steamship FlorizelThe Drowning

Monologues And DialoguesICarloIIOverheard by a StreamIIIOverheard in a CoveIVThe Passing of Jerry MooreVThe History of John Jones

Creatures of Another CountryIThe Bird of ParadiseIIThe Epigrapher

Ode to December, 1917NewfoundlandFlashlights and Echoes from the years of 1914 and 1915The Great MotherIn MemoriamThe Hidden ScarEveningIn a Beloved HomeThe Conclusion of "Rachel"A Fragment from a Story

MORNING

Old, old is the sea to-day.A sudden stealth of ageHas torn awayThe texture of its youth and grace,And filched the rose of daybreak from its waters.Now lines of greyAnd dragging vapors on its browHeavily are drawn;And it lies broken as with centuries,Though yesterday,Blue-eyed and shadowless as a child's face,It held the promise of a luminous dawn;Though through its merry after-hoursIt bade the sun to pourIts flaming mintage on the ocean floorThat by a conjuror's touch was turnedTo rarer treasure manifold,Where jacinth, emerald and sapphire burned—A fringe around a core of gold....Old, old is the sea to-day,Forsaken, chill and grey,And banished is the glory of its waters;Though through the silent tenure of the nightIt bade the sterile moon to multiplyA thousand-fold its undivided light,Within the nadir of a richer sky;When every star a thousand cressets glowedThat, caught in wider conflagration, sentVast leagues of silver fire wherever flowedThe waters of its shoreless firmament.But old and greyIs the sea to-day,With the morning colors blanched upon its waters.

MASKS

What hidden soul residingWithin these forms, O sea!Should, every hour changing,To Time yet changeless be?What masks hast thou not worn,What parts not played,Thou Prince of all the RevelsIn Life's Masquerade?Light-hearted as a jester,The motley fits thy mood,As the gold and the purple,Thy statelier habitude.At dawn—A trumpeter preluding a day's pageant.At noon—A dancer weaving new measures around thefurrows of ships with white sails.Later—A courier with sealed tidings hastening towards the shore.At sunset—A dyer steeping colors on a bay.Again—A sculptor teasing faces out of the moonlit foam on a reef.Or carving bric-a-brac upon a beach,Or fashioning, with age-toiled hands, a grottoout of limestone.The wind blows—And a master puts a flute to his lips.It blows again—And his fingers take hold of organ stops ....

THE DESTROYER

Once more, the wind—And thou dost go on an old familiar wayIn tragic fashion,As a corsair, pursuing his preyWith the lust of passion,Falls like a burst of hailOn an autumn yield,Till every reach and gulf and bayIs left with the stubble of life and sail,With the face of the waters like unto the face of the field.

IN RETREAT

Now like a fugitive, who, on the desert sand,A moment broods upon the life he spilt.And, with averted gaze,Circling the dusky ruin of his hand,SurveysThe Arab measure of his guiltBefore a Presence standing there that callsHis name; in cloud and shadow and in whirlwind readsThe inviolate scripture of the fates;Then full across the desert speeds,Until he falls,Caught by the Avenger near the City Gates;—So underneath the heavens' lighted scroll,Ablaze with cryptic tokens of the slain,Headlong to shore thy spiral waters rollSwept by the besom of the winds; by rainAnd thunder driven in flightAlong the galleries of the night,Until upon the surge-line locked in strifeWith reef and breaker thou art shattered, soonIn fang and sinew to be strewnAround the cliffs that guard the ports of life.

O wild, tumultuous sea!Thy waters mock our liturgy,For thou dost take the threads of faith apart.Wherewith the cables of our life are spun,Strand upon strand unravelling;—thou dost hear,Recited from a tide-wet shore,Our creeds. Each hope and fearFiltered from life's confessions—one by one,Out of the dumb confusions of the heart,Are spread before thy sight—thou Arch-Inquisitor!How in a ruthless moment dost thou stripThe veilings from our eyes, and bid us castOur glances on a labyrinthine past,Stirred by a flash that on a wave's white lipGleams for an instant, or by some dark signWithin thy fearful hollows where night flingsHer crape of shadow on a tossing lineOf jetsam, will our years turn back,To gather from a weed-grown trackA bitter tale of dimmed rememberings.

RE-BORN

As to its end the tempest dragsIts way, thou art re-bornTo strength of body and beauty of face;And thou dost cover with a tranquil graceThose whom the winds had buffeted,And laid upon the waters—dead.In darkness dost thou cover them,As some white-winged mother of the crags,That daily gathering foodFrom sea-weed and from tide-wash, brings,At fall of night, to her rock-nurtured broodThe drowsy silence of her wings.

THE DEAD CALM

How like a Pontiff dost thou lie at last,Impassive, robed at Death's high-unctioned hourWith those grey vestments that the storm,In the dread legacy of its power,Around thy level formMajestically hast cast,—In the pale light of the moon's slow tapers burning;All-silent in the calm recessionalOf the tide's turning;All-passionless, though on the distant sandsWhere the wreathed lilies of the spray, keen-siftedBy the late winds, are strewn, thy children call,Their patient handsIn prayer, to thee, uplifted.

We gave them at the harbor every token—The ritual of the guns, and at the mastThe flag half-high, and as the cortege passed,All that remained by our dumb hearts unspoken.And what within the band's low requiem,In footfall or in head uncovered failsOf final tribute, shall at altar-railsAround a chancel soon be offered them.

And now a throbbing organ-prelude dwellsOn the eternal story of the sea;Following in undertone, the LitanyEnds like a sobbing wave; and now beginsA tale of life's fore-shortened days; now swellsThe tidal triumph of Corinthians.

But neither trumpet-blast, nor the hoarse dinOf guns, nor the drooped signals from those muteBanners, could find a language to saluteThe frozen bodies that the ships brought in.To-day the vaunt is with the grave. SorrowHas raked up faith and burned it like a pileOf driftwood, scattering the ashes whileCathedral voices anthemed God's To-morrow.

Out from the belfries of the town there swungGreat notes that held the winds and the pagan rollOf open seas within their measured toll.Only the bells' slow ocean tones, that roseAnd hushed upon the air, knew how to tongueThat Iliad of Death upon the floes.

Three times we heard it calling with a low,Insistent note; at ebb-tide on the noon;And at the hour of dusk, when the red moonWas rising and the tide was on the flow;Then, at the hour of midnight once again,Though we had entered in and shut the doorAnd drawn the blinds, it crept up from the shoreAnd smote upon a bedroom window-pane;Then passed away as some dull pang that grewOut of the void before EternityHad fashioned out an edge for human grief;Before the winds of God had learned to strewHis harvest-sweepings on a winter seaTo feed the primal hungers of a reef.

The year's processionals mocked her as they streamedAcross the earth with proud, unsullied grace;Each flower in its appointed time and place,And the unfolding of each leaf had seemedTo brand the hope on which her heart had dreamed—That spring should drive the winter from her face,And summer with a broken covenant traceHow spring's indentured pledges were redeemed.

Slowly they came, those blown maturities,In chaste, irenic order, leaf and budAnd blossom, and red fruit upon the trees,Pale blue and yellow in spring flowers, bloodOf peony and rose—she knew them all—From the crocus to the aster in the fall.

But when the autumn frost had stripped each tree,And every garden of the earth lay bareOf leaf and flower and fruit, she turned to whereThe sun's immaculate hand was on the sea.He touched the waves and from them magicallyLilies and violets grew, and jonquils fairAs those of spring—all in November air,In fine reversal of earth's irony.

III

Then a wind from the land sprang up and whippedThe waters till the flowers grew acid-etchedUpon her heart; but other blooms, rose-lipped,Out of the fresh autumnal foam were fetchedBy the sun's hand—strange harvest that achievesIts seasonal fruit before the time of leaves.

Dawn from the Foretop! Dawn from the Barrel!A scurry of feet with a roar overhead;The master-watch wildly pointing to Northward,Where the herd in front ofThe Eaglewas spread!

Steel-planked and sheathed like a battleship's nose,She battered her path through the drifting floes;Past slob and growler we drove, and rammed herInto the heart of the patch and jammed her.There were hundreds of thousands of seals, I'd swear,In the stretch of that field—"white harps" to spareFor a dozen such fleets as had left that springTo share in the general harvesting.The first of the line, we had struck the main herd;The day was ours, and our pulses stirredIn that brisk, live hour before the sun,At the thought of the load and the sweepstake won.

We stood on the deck as the morning outrolledOn the fields its tissue of orange and gold,And lit up the ice to the north in the sharp,Clear air; each mother-seal and its "harp"Lay side by side; and as far as the rangeOf the patch ran out we saw that strange,And unimaginable thingThat sealers talk of every spring—The "bobbing-holes" within the floesThat neither wind nor frost could close;Through every hole a seal could dive,And search, to keep her brood alive,A hundred miles it well might be,For food beneath that frozen sea.Round sunken reef and cape she would rove,And though the wind and current droveThe ice-fields many leagues that day,We knew she would turn and find her wayBack to the hole, without the helpOf compass or log, to suckle her whelp—Back to that hole in the distant floes,And smash her way up with her teeth and nose.But we flung those thoughts aside when the shoutOf command from the master-watch rang out.

Assigned to our places in watches of four—Over the rails in a wild carouse,Two from the port and starboard bows,Two from the broadsides—off we tore,In the breathless rush for the day's attack,With the speed of hounds on a caribou's track.With the rise of the sun we started to kill,A seal for each blow from the iron billOf our gaffs. From the nose to the tail we ripped them,And laid their quivering carcases flatOn the ice; then with our knives we stripped themFor the sake of the pelt and its lining of fat.With three fathoms of rope we laced them fast,With their skins to the ice to be easy to drag,With our shoulders galled we drew them, and castThem in thousands around the watch's flag.Then, with our bodies begrimed with the reekOf grease and sweat from the toil of the day,We made forThe Eagle, two miles away,At the signal that flew from her mizzen peak.And through the night, as inch by inchShe reached the pans with the harps piled high,We hoisted them up as the hours filed byTo the sleepy growl of the donkey-winch.

Over the bulwarks again we were gone,With the first faint streaks of a misty dawn;Fast as our arms could swing we slew them,Ripped them, "sculped" them, roped and drew themTo the pans where the seals in pyramids roseAround the flags on the central floes,Till we reckoned we had nine thousand deadBy the time the afternoon had fled;And that an added thousand or moreWould beat the count of the day before.So back again to the patch we wentTo haul, before the day was spent,Another load of four "harps" a man,To make the last the record pan.And not one of us saw, as we gaffed, and skinned,And took them in tow, that the north-east windHad veered off-shore; that the air was colder;That the signs of recall were there to the south,The flag ofThe Eagle, and the long, thin smoulderThat drifted away from her funnel's mouth.Not one of us thought of the speed of the stormThat hounded our tracks in the day's last chase(For the slaughter was swift, and the blood was warm),Till we felt the first sting of the snow in our face.

We looked south-east, where, an hour ago,Like a smudge on the sky-line, someone had seenThe Eagle, and thought he had heard her blowA note like a warning from her sirene.We gathered in knots, each man within callOf his mate, and slipping our ropes, we sped,Plunging our way through a thickening wallOf snow that the gale was driving ahead.We ran with the wind on our shoulder; we knewThat the night had left us this only clueOf the track before us, though with each wailThat grew to the pang of a shriek from the gale.Some of us swore thatThe EaglescreamedRight off to the east; to others it seemedOn the southern quarter and near, while the restCried out with every report that roseFrom the strain and the rend of the wind on the floesThatThe Eaglewas firing her guns to the west.And some of them turned to the west, though to goWas madness—we knew it and roared, but the notesOf our warning were lost as a fierce gust of snowEddied, and strangled the words in our throats.Then we felt in our hearts that the night had swallowedAll signals, the whistle, the flare, and the smokeTo the south; and like sheep in a storm we followedEach other; like sheep we huddled and broke.Here one would fall as hunger took holdOf his step; here one would sleep as the coldCrept into his blood, and another would kneelAthwart the body of some dead seal,And with knife and nails would tear it apart.To flesh his teeth in its frozen heart.And another dreamed that the storm was past,And raved of his bunk and brandy and food,AndThe Eaglenear, though in that blastThe mother was fully as blind as her brood.Then we saw, what we feared from the first—dark placesHere and there to the left of us, wide, yawning spacesOf water; the fissures and cracks had increasedTill the outer pans were afloat, and we knew,As they drifted along in the night to the east,By the cries we heard, that some of our crewWere borne to the sea on those pans and were lost.And we turned with the wind in our faces again,And took the snow with its lancing pain,Till our eye-balls cracked with the salt and the frost;Till only iron and fire that nightSurvived on the ice as we stumbled on;As we fell and rose and plunged—till the lightIn the south and east disclosed the dawn,And the sea heaving with floes—and then,The Eaglein wild pursuit of her men.

And the rest is as a story told,Or a dream that belonged to a dim, mad past,Of a March night and a north wind's cold,Of a voyage home with a flag half-mast;Of twenty thousand seals that were killedTo help to lower the price of bread;Of the muffled beat ... of a drum ... that filledA nave ... at our count of sixty dead.

Dawn!Gold-minted—The monarch of the morn,Awake—Shadows withdrawn,A sheet of glass rose-tinted—The lake!

Splash!A coral ringStudded with rubies and agates and gold,Finely wrought out.A vision of a silver flash.Lost! Was it a grayling,Or a rainbow-trout?

He seemed to know the harbor,So leisurely he swam;His fin,Like a piece of sheet-iron,Three-cornered,And with knife-edge,Stirred not a bubbleAs it movedWith its base-line on the water.

His body was tubularAnd taperedAnd smoke-blue,And as he passed the wharfHe turned,And snapped at a flat-fishThat was dead and floating.And I saw the flash of a white throat.And a double row of white teeth,And eyes of metallic grey,Hard and narrow and slit.

Then out of the harbor,With that three-cornered finShearing without a bubble the water,Lithely,Leisurely,He swam—That strange fish,Tubular, tapered, smoke-blue,Part vulture, part wolf.Part neither—for his blood was cold.

It stole in on us like a foot-pad,Somewhere out of the sea and air,Heavy with rifling PolarisAnd the Seven Stars.It left our eyes untouched,But took our sight,And then,Silently,It drew the song from our throats,And the supple bend from our ash-blades;For the bandit,With occult fingering,Had tangled upThe four threads of the compass,And fouled the snarl around our dory.

A huge six-footer,Eyes bay blue,And as deep;Lower jaw like a cliff,Tongue silent,As hard and strong as a huskie.

A little man,In a pressed suit,Standing before him,Had dug a name out of the past,And flung it at himUnder cover of law.

The big fellowLeaned over him,Like a steel girder,Just for a moment,Then swung around on his heelWithout striking.

And I thought of the big NewfoundlandI saw, asleep by a rockThe day before,That was galvanized by a challenge,But eyeing a cur,He turned,Yawned,Closed one eye,Then the other,And slept.

Clean-limbed and arrowy he shot his wayInto the crystal waters of the bay;Full thirty-feet below the derrick's beam,As a lithe salmon, leaping from a streamHangs, instant-poised, then arches for the plunge,Driving with lightning fin a dexterous lungeDown to his haunts, and trails, enwreathed in mists,A flock of garnets chasing amethysts.

Erect and motionless he stood,His face a hieroglyph of stone,Stopped was his pulse, chilled was his blood,And stiff each sinew, nerve and bone.

The spell an instant held him, whenHis veins were swept by tidal power,And then life's threescore years and tenWere measured by a single hour.

The world lay there beneath his eye;The sun had left the heavens to floatA hand-breadth from him, and the skyWas but an anchor for his boat.

Fled was the class-room's puny space—His eye saw but a whirling disk;His old and language-weathered faceShone like a glowing asterisk!

What chance had he now to rememberThe year held months so saturnineAs ill-starred May and blank September,With that brute tugging at his line?

He paused a moment by the sea,Then stooped, and with a leisured handHe wrote in casual traceryHer name upon the flux of sand.

The waves beat up and swiftly spunA silver web at every stride;He watched their long, thin fingers runThe letters back into the tide.

But she had written where the tideCould never its grey waters fling;She watched the longest wave subsideEre it could touch the lettering.

I saw how he would come each night and waitAn hour or more beside that broken gate—Just stand, and stare across the road with dim,Grey eyes. Nothing was there but an old pine tree,Cut down and sawn in lengths; and absentlyHe answered questions that I put to him.

He spoke as if some horrid deed were done—Murder—no less—it seemed to be;A week before, under his very eyes,A gang of men had slain a tree.The pine was planted seventy years agoTo celebrate his birth,It had a right, he said, to live and grow,And then into the earth,By a mild and understanding law,To pass with nature's quiet burial.But they had come, those men, with axe and saw,And killed it like a criminal,And with the hangman's rope about its neck,It swayed a moment, then with heavy sound,Dropped with a crash of branches to the ground.

I could not paint, nor could I drawThe look that searched the night;The bleak refinement of the face I sawIn lantern light.

A cunning hand might seize the crag,Or stay the flight of a gull,Or the rocket's flash; or more—the lightning jagThat lit the hull.

But as a man born blind must stealHis colors from the nightBy hand, I had to touch that face to feelIt marble white.

Tell me thy secret, O Sea,The mystery sealed in thy breast;Come, breathe it in whispers to me,A child of thy fevered unrest.

It's midnight, and from me has sleepFlown afar, like a bird on the wing,All tired is my heart as I weepThrough a winter that knows not a spring.

Why dost thou respond to my pleaWith only a minor refrain?Thy voice in a moan floats to me,As an echo sobbed from my pain.

Hast thou a grief, too, like mine,That never heals with the years;A bosom entombing a shrineBedewed with the waste of thy tears?

Where lies my loved one to-nightBeneath thy grey mantle so wide?I would that his slumber were light,To wake with the flow of the tide.

Should he not wake, bear him this,An amaranth plucked from my heart;Wreathe it soft in his dreams with a kiss,Then return, and ere I depart.

On the flood of my soul's overflow.Borne on by my grief from the wildOf this storm-beaten life, let me knowHow he slept; let me know if he smiled.

What changed thy face from that of yesterday,Great Sea! that with thy mothering hands outspreadAnd smiling on our common life, didst layThe table covers for our daily bread?

To-day, held by the thresh of iron shocksWithin the vortex of a lightless fate,Thy hands are tearing seaweed on the rocks,And thou—a stark and wild inebriate.

The rust of hours,Through a year of days,Has dulled the edge of the pain;But at nightA wheel in my sleepGrinds it smooth and keen.

By day I rememberA face that was litWith the softness of human pattern;But at nightIt is changed in my sleepTo a bygone carved in chalk.

A cottage inlandThrough a year of daysHas latched its doors on the sea;But at nightI return in my sleepTo the cold, green lure of the waters.

CARLO

"The dog that saved the lives of more than ninety persons in that recent week, by swimming with a line from the sinking vessel to the shore, well understood the importance as well as the risk of his mission."—Extract from a Newfoundland paper.

I see no use in not confessing—To trace your breed would keep me guessing;It would indeed an expert puzzleTo match such legs with a jet-black muzzle.To make a mongrel, as you know,it takes some fifty types or so,And nothing in your height or length,In stand or color, speed or strength,Could make me see how any strainCould come from mastiff, bull, or Dane.But, were I given to speculatingOn pedigrees in canine rating,I'd wager this—not from your size,Not merely from your human eyes,But from the way you held that cableWithin those gleaming jaws of sable,Leaped from the taffrail of the wreckWith ninety souls upon its deck,And with your cunning dog-stroke toreYour path unerring to the shore—Yes, stake my life, the way you swam,That somewhere in your line a dam,Shaped to this hour by God's own hand,Had mated with a Newfoundland.

They tell me, Carlo, that your kindHas neither conscience, soul, nor mind;That reason is a thing unknownTo such as dogs; to man aloneThe spark divine—he may aspireTo climb to heaven or even higher;But God has tied around the dogThe symbol of his fate, the clog.Thus, I have heard some preachers say—Wise men and good, in a sort o' way—Proclaiming from the sacred box(Quoting from Butler and John Knox)How freedom and the moral lawGod gave to man, because He sawA way to draw a line at rootBetween the human and the brute.And you were classed with things like bats,Parrots and sand-flies and dock-rats,Serpents and toads that dwell in mud,And other creatures with cold bloodThat sightless crawl in slime, and sink.

Gadsooks! It makes me sick to thinkThat man must so exalt his raceBy giving dogs a servile place;Prate of his transcendentalism,While you save men by mechanism.And when I told them how you foughtThe demons of the storm, and broughtThat life-line from the wreck to shore,And saved those ninety souls or more,They argued with such confidence—'Twas instinct, nature, or blind sense.Amancould know when he would do it;You did it and never knew it.

And so, old chap, by what they say,You live and die and have your day,Like any cat or mouse or weevilThat has no sense of good and evil(Though sheep and goats, when they have died,The Good Book says are classified);But you, being neuter, go to—well,Neither to heaven nor to hell.

I'll not believe it, Carlo: IWill fetch you with me when I die,And, standing up at Peter's wicket,Will urge sound reasons for your ticket;I'll show him your life-saving labelAnd tell him all about that cable,The storm along the shore, the wreck,The ninety souls upon the deck;How one by one they came along,The young and old, the weak and strong—Pale women sick and tempest-tossed,With children given up for lost;I'd tell him more, if he would ask it—How they tied a baby in a basket.While a young sailor, picked and able,Moved out to steady it on the cable;And if he needed more recitalTo admit a mongrel without title,I'd get down low upon my knees.And swear before the Holy Keys,That, judging by the way you swam,Somewhere within your line, a damFormed for the job by God's own hand,Had littered for a Newfoundland.

I feel quite sure that if I made himGive ear to that, I could persuade himTo open up the Golden GateAnd let you in; but should he stateThat from your legs and height and speedHe still had doubts about your breed,And called my story of the cable"A cunningly deviséd fable,"Like other rumors that you've seenIn Second Peter, one, sixteen,I'd tell him (saving his high station)The devil take his legislation,And, where life, love, and death atone,I'd move your case up to the Throne.

OVERHEARD BY A STREAM

Here is the pool, and there the waterfall;This is the bank; keep out of sight, and crawlAlong the side to where that alder clumpJuts out. 'Twas there I saw a salmon jump,A full eight feet, not fifteen minutes past.Bend low a bit! or else the sun will castYour shadow on the stream. Still farther; stop!Now joint your rod; reel out your line, and dropYour leader with the "silver doctor" on it,Behind that rock that's got the log upon it.

There's nothing here; the water is too quiet;You need a pool with rapids flowing by it:Plenty of rush and motion, heave and roar.To turn their thoughts from things upon the shore;The day's too calm—I told you that before.Just mind your line! I tell you that he's there.I saw him spring up ten feet in the air—Twelve pounder, if an ounce! Great Mackinaw!Look! Quick! He's on! The "doctor" in his jaw......Snapped! Gone! You big fool: worse than any fool!What did you think to find here in this pool—A minnow or a shiner—that you triedWith such a jerk to land him on the sideOf this high bank? That was a salmon—fool!The biggest one that swam within this pool;The one I saw that jumped twelve feet—not lower;Would tip the scales at fourteen pounds or more.Lost—near that rock that's got the log upon it,Gone—with the leader and the "doctor" on it.

III

OVERHEARD IN A COVE

(The Old Salt Talks Back)Swiles=seals.Quintal=cwt.

THE SCHOLAR (recovering from heroic seizures)

Existence in this little town I findMuch too constricted for an ample mind;Unheeded on these vain and deafening shoresMight Wisdom cry aloud her precious stores—Wisdom for whom the Universe unseenAn illustrated page has ever been;Who but initiates may understandThe forms and pressures of her amorous hand!Her thoughts that wander through EternityWould perish here beside this muddy sea,For no divine afflatus ever reachesThe men who dry their fish upon these beaches.

THE SALT.

Your poor old dad and granddad, long since dead—God rest their weary souls—were born and bredUpon this shore, as fine God-fearin' sortAs ever brought a leaky ship to port.They never put up any braggin' claimsTo learnin'—couldn't more than write their names,And yet, no dealer born could take 'em in,In things of common sense, like figurin'Accounts, or show them any solid reasonWhy number one prime cod might any seasonDrop in price, while the fish remained as goodAs ever, and a quintal always stoodA quintal; and there never was a straitOr gulf or cape they couldn't navigate;And fair or foul it made no difference.

They had no learnin', but the chunk of senseThe Good Lord gave 'em for their calculation,While other men who learned their navigationFrom books, got drowned; so you for all your lettersHave got no call for sneerin' at your betters.

THE SCHOLAR (with condescension).

But, my dear man, I feel I must admitTo such a native modicum of wit,By this, plus luck, if such a thing there be,A man may wrest his living from the sea;But on the troublous sea as on the land.Note what we owe the scientific hand.The world's dark secrets have been opened outBy men who forged their faith from honest doubt.Who rounded out the universe for usBut Galileo and Copernicus?Who gave us chart and compass, sextant, log,And apparatus for detecting fogAnd wind and currents? Who gave us thermometers?Again, I ask; who, prisms and barometers?

THE SALT (snortingly).

A man that owns a hand can use a log,An idiot with one eye can see a fogWhen it is comin'.

THE SCHOLAR.

But no wit surmisesThe calculated way the wind uprises;The place it comes from, whereunto it goes,Nor tell you to the mile the rate it blows,A full seven days ahead. But Science drawsExact determinations of the lawsThat govern wind and waves; though, to be sure,In charting atmospheric temperatureShe may, for uninformed mentalities,Use terms like unexplained contingencies.But still, when all her facts are massed together,Unerring is her forecast of the weather;In our metropolis we have a manWhoplotsit every day.

THE SALT (fired by reminiscence).

Like hell he can.Whenever that fool bulletin comes out,With cock-sure talk about the heat and droughtThat's bound to last a week, I always askThe missus for me flannels and a flaskOf gin to keep me goin' through the day.And when it says—"Look out for frost, 'twill stayThree days or more," I know we'll have a spurtOf heat would boil a man inside his shirt.Its everlasting fable—"Fair and warm"Means "brewin' for the devil of a storm."

THE SCHOLAR (with righteous warmth).

This open and unshamed prevaricationPerturbs my soul with moral agitation.A votary of Truth I shall abide,That Wisdom of her child be justified.

THE SALT.

And let me tell you this: a half a brainCan tell a nor'-east wind will bring a rain.A sun-hound in the evenin' or a ringAround the moon—there is no safer thingFor prophesyin' weather; as for cold,You boasted that your man up yonder toldThat frost was comin'. Why, sure, a skunk knowsThat and more; three months ahead he growsA chunkier tail.

THE SCHOLAR.

Your language, my good sir,Is rank: but, waiving that, I must averWith emphasis that human life is longer,As knowledge grows from more to more, and stronger,With every age, the race. Take medicine,And note its triumphs. How shall I beginTo glorify that heavenly art enough,Since Aesculapius.

THE SALT.

I calls it bluff,This doctorin' business. There's Jim Hennessey's lad.When he was young his father thought he hadThe makin's of a doctor in him. I,Inquirin' like, asked him the reason why.He said the lad was handy with a knife,The way he'd carve a rabbit up alive,Or a young robin, maybe, just to seeWhat the innerds were like.

THE SCHOLAR.

Anatomy!A subject of minute research.

THE SALT.

Then JimPut no less than six years expense on him.When he came back, some said it was decline;He called it asthma, but he had the signOf a gone man; the neighbors were afraidTo have him in; their children, so they said,Might catch the wheezin' off his chest. One caseHis dad got for him—more to save his face,I said, but let that bide—Jim got his sonA case of Jack spavin—a wicked oneI will allow it was—in Hazzard's mare.The boy put on a apron, then a pairOf rubber gloves, and then he said he'd freezeThe leg and dose her up with fumes to easeThe pain; and afterwards he'd operate.Then sew her up and leave the rest to fate.He did his honest bit—at least he tried;The mare kicked down the stalls before she died.

THE SCHOLAR.

But your example only serves to showWhat dire results from ignorance may flow.He had no skill for equine malady—No special training.

THE SALT.

Just what Hennessey,His father, thought. So the old man, grown wise,Gave him another year to specialize—This time in spavins.

THE SCHOLAR.

How does this impugnThe Science by which man is made immuneFrom all those fearsome, devastating ills,From cholera morbus to domestic measles,That swept the cosmos? Tell me, has not manAdded by this to his allotted spanTwo decades?

THE SALT.

I don't see it with my eyes.This generation's dyin' off like flies;And why? Each mother son of them and daughterAre bred on arrowroot, with milk and water.They're all a scraggy lot; too much spoon-fed;Wants water bottles when they go to bed;Smokes cigarettes and drinks vile, home-made wine.Rhubarb will corn 'em; so will dandyline.'Tis not the same as what it was. I know,Away back in the sixties, when our crewWas home from swilin' and a regular streakOf thirst had struck us, how, one night a week,And after lodge was out, each man would take aGood, long and steady swig of old Jamaica,And never feel the worse on it. 'Twould blowA colony like you to Jericho.As tough as staragons, they had no callFor other medicine. A swig was allThey asked for, and a swig was all they got.It cooled them off when they were dry, and shotThem up, when they were cold. And, say, what can,Within a lifetime, come to any man,Except a burnin' fever or a freezin'?

THE SCHOLAR.

Your argument is void of rhyme or reason;Your observations on disease, mere chatter.

THE SALT.

Maybe 'tis so; but I looks at the matterQuite different wise. I holds that not in strength,Nor muscle, nor in gumption, nor in lengthOf days, are young folks like they used to be.I minds how in a blinkin' storm at sea,When both the captain and the mate were drowned,Under a double reef we had to roundThe Cape, on a lee coast, and, undermanned,And the taffrail blown to bits, the youngest handOn board, Sam Drake, took his turn at the wheel.He couldn't see the mainmast—had to feelThe schooner's course, yet brought her down the bay,With every shred of canvas swept away.

THE SCHOLAR.

Is not the clamant menace of the seaSilenced by steam, by electricity,By gasoline?

THE SALT.

My notion's still the same,That folks were better off before they came.More swiles were taken in the spring; more fishWere dried upon the flakes, and if you wishTo get my views on gasoline, I thinkThe racket of the engine and the stinkIs drivin' all the cod out of the bay.'Tis gettin' hopeless quite—no fish, no pay.But there's a worse account I feel like makin'Against new-fangled notions. They are takin'The backbone from the lads—initiationYou called it—

THE SCHOLAR.

No. Allow my emendation—Initiative! However, I understand.

THE SALT.

Maybe you're right; maybe you're not. 'Tis sand,I calls it; but no matter what 'tis called,With any kind of little snag they're stalled.They'd starve and die with plenty all around 'em.I minds when our supplies ran out we found 'em,Sometimes when we were in the bush, with teaAnd baccy gone—no drink or nothin'—weWould fetch a kettle full of juniperAnd boil it for an hour or so, and stirBarbados black-strap with it—

THE SCHOLAR (in deep spiritual reflection).

Do I see,In its archetypal form, Zymology,That most potential art?

THE SALT.

Yes, sir, the brewWould grow a jumper on your chest. We'd chewThe dried sap of the spruce, and then we'd takeDried tea-leaves with the chips of bark and makeA powerful, fine smoke. You never saw,I suppose, a man rig up a lobster clawWith quid, to get a drag when he had lostHis pipe? I needn't ask. That never crossedYour mind. I'd like to see a good round scoreLike you, a-headin' all for Labrador,Stowed in a fore-and-after with the sea,A-ragin' through the scuppers. It would beA sight for Satan, every time the ship,With not too much of ballast, took a dipTo come right up again with soakin' jibs—To watch your queasy stomachs and your ribsIn need of oilin'.

THE SCHOLAR.

Trivial your words,Your passions bestial. The irrational herdsRoaming the plains would scorn such thoughts as these;The ox, the zebra and the ass appeaseTheir several hungers, earth-born as they are—Without afflatus, without mind—with farMore worthy satisfactions. What care you(recurrence of symptoms)For the primrose by the river's brink, the blueWithin the violet's eye, in fine, for flowers?Eating and drinking you lay waste your powers,The world being too much with you. Have you feltA presence that disturbs you? Have you kneltAt Nature's shrine, bathed at her crystal fount,And found her central peace? Say, do you countBy figures or by heart-throbs? Have you neverListened to brooks that babble on for ever?Sermons there are in stones; alas, they stirYou not.

THE SALT.

Shame on you, you idolater,For worshippin' stocks and stones. I see you tookAll your religion from a bot'ny book,And a dry, small lump it is, by every signThat I can see, you heathen. I gets mineFrom another kind of book. You don't need learnin'Neither, the kind that kills the soul's discernin'Of spiritual things. That's what our parson said,And he had learnin', too. It killed him deadBefore he gave it up, like a dry rotThat puts the blight on damson plums—that's whatIt is. Give me what makes a critter whole,And pours the blazin' glory on his soul,And saves him from the horrors.

THE SCHOLAR (on the verge of a paroxysm).

A most rudeConception of the spirit's growth—mere foodFor sucklings, for the race at those low stagesOf history that form the world's Dark Ages.From your contentions, then, must I assumeThat in your mind's horizon is no roomFor formulæ that dominate our times;For laws that tell how by successive climbsOur common human nature has becomeThe paragon magnificent for dumbAnd erring brutes? Millions of years have passedBetween the first crude cycle and the last,In which, despite the bludgeonings of chanceAnd fate, has man his own deliveranceWrought out; survived the thousand natural shocksThat flesh is heir to. In the eternal rocksEngraven is the epic.

THE SALT.

Pedley's lad,When he came back from learnin', was as badAs Hennessey. I might say worse, for heLacked any bit of skill that HennesseyMight seem to own if he got started right.Pedley, for so his old man thought, was quiteA brainy boy when growin' up. He'd shirkAny and every job that looked like work.He wouldn't run, he wouldn't walk; he'd fetchA book, and then for hours at a stretchHe'd squat down on the wharf—takin' the air,I said it was. He wouldn't read. He'd stare,Then drowse, then stare again, just like a sheep.Whose brains the wise God only gave for sleep,When Jeff, his younger brother, might be seenShapin' the model of a brigantine,Or doin' something handy, steepin' bark,Or renderin' out the liver of a shark.Well, when the old man finally understoodHe could do nothin' with him, for the goodOf his soul—the last thing left—he thought he'd sendHim off to join the Church; thought if he'd spendTen years wearin' a collar or a satinGown, and got crammed right to the neck with Latin,And the seven tongues, and all the other learnin',He'd be a thumpin' wonder on returnin'.He was. As bad as you for gall, he'd chinThe Lord out of his job, on points like sin,Damnation and the rest of it. He toldUs how the world—I can't just mind how old,He said it was; but just to illustrateHis point, he took a pencil and a slate,Marked five in the left-hand corner near the top,And added zeros till he had to stopFor want of room, and added more by tongue,Then ended, claimin' that the world was young.Just like a mushroom, so to speak; and whenHe thought he'd finished his explainin', thenOur pastor put a poser to him straight.Just how, he asked him, did he calculateIt out?—the parson, I'll allow, was roughOn questions—Was the slate not big enough?Did he run out of zeros? Was he sureHe had the tally right? A zero more,What mattered it, and how did he arriveBy any kind of reckonin' at that five?It looked so lonesome by itself. Would notAnother zero do instead? And whatDo you allow his answer was? I've heardSome blasphemy against the Livin' WordWithin my time—the Livin' Word that saysThe world's bin waggin' now, omittin' days,Six thousand years; but Word and Church and Lord,The evidence of the Fathers and the SwordOf the Spirit, everything—he cast them outWith one deliberate, sacrilegious clout.He told us—and it sounded like a boast—He told us—are you listenin'?—that the mostOf all his facts he got from skulls; from gravesOf savages that one time lived in caves;From skeletons of serpents, elephants;I think he mentioned bugs and bees and antsAnd frogs' backbones and such, but most of itHe got from skulls so old that not a bitOf chop was left upon the jowls. He said—Grantin' the man who owned the skull was deadSo long, the crown had rotted—yet he'd tellThe story from the jaw-bone just as well.

THE SCHOLAR (delivering le grand coup).

Thanks to the scientist's imagination,The point is proven to a demonstration,Your patriarchal history is a fable,A groundless fiction like your Tower of Babel,Your Samson or your Jonah. Had you senseTo follow while I forge the evidence,How from the void of dancing vortices,The human mind has wrought its destinies,You'd gather what the Universe discloses.

THE SALT (with profound disgust).

I'm done with you, my lad—I stands by Moses.

THE PASSING OF JERRY MOORE

(Juniper Hall answers the critics).

Did Jerry get through the gates of gold,To join the white-robed Saints, that baskedIn the glory of the Father's fold?That was the question each man asked,As Jerry lay with his cold feetAnd his cold hands under the sheet.

The last man, known as Juniper Hall,The life-time pal of Jerry Moore,Spoke—as soon as he had the floor—And said he disagreed with them all.He thought the judgment of Doran,That sanctified and solemn man,Put altogether too great storeUpon the words of Jerry's speech,As Jerry sat in the rain and sworeAt the fish that rotted on the beach.Why shouldn't a man, who day by dayHad seen the clouds wipe out the sunAnd botch the work his hands had done,Pour out his soul in a natural way,On the chance of ridding his chest of it,And tell the Lord what he thought of it all—The rain, the fog and a hungry fall,The rotten fish and the rest of it?

Then Juniper asked why Solomon Rowe(Who handed out to sinners gratisTimely advice such as might flowFrom him, a saint of ten years' status)Should so denounce what occupiedOld Jerry's mind the night he died.He had spent the day in mending a netAnd splicing a rope; without a thoughtAbout the way a sinner oughtTo make eternal peace, he ateHis three good hearty meals and wentTo bed. He took no Sacrament;He had no dying pains; he gaveNo groans; nor called the Lord to saveHis soul; but in his dreams he talked,With a sort of chuckle in his speech,Of a shoal of caplin on the beach,And of the punt that he had caulked,And other things that he had done.The case was proved, for Jake, his son,Who lay beside him on the bed,Had vouched for all that Solomon said.But Jerry's life from the day of his birthWas only meant for the jobs of earth,Like caulking punts and mending nets,And catching fish to pay his debts.He would shout like a man with gospel soulAt the saving news of a herring shoal,That swarmed down the bay in the spring,And no one louder than Jerry could singAs he'd barrel 'em up or smoke 'em,His rough, red hands, a-reeking with brine,And his clothes with a mixture of turpentine,Of tar and cod-liver oil and oakum;What wonder then that in his sleep,As he dreamed about that caplin shoal,The thought should so have tickled his soulAnd made him laugh, instead of weep,Like the saints that get so short of breathIn the last hour before their death?Besides, it's claimed he had not met,For want of savings, a just debtHe owed to Rowe before he died.But, then, as he had often said,The reason why he had not paidIt off—the Lord had never driedHis load of cod; but Solomon RoweHad owed a hundred dollars or soFor years, though the sun had always shoneUpon the fish of Solomon.

Then Juniper thought that Watchnight Percy—The one who spoke of the Lord's great mercy—Though his heart was right, yet, on the whole,Was over-anxious for Jerry's soul.Was Jerry's chance, like that of the thief,Merely the miracle of belief,That in the final midnight hourSprings from the Lord Almighty's powerAnd heavenly grace? Juniper couldNot argue this point for want of lightSo left the question as it stood,To deal with the claim of Christopher Wright.

Much that was spoken by ChristopherHad a measure of truth, said Juniper.It was true that Jerry, with his mindSo bent on worldly things, might findBeyond those gates of pearl and gold,Within those heavenly pavilions,Where white-robed angels by the millionsBask in the glory of the fold,No angel who would undertakeTo wean his thoughts from earthly things,And fit him up with a pair of wings;Or—still more hopeless job—to makeHim change his manners and his speech,So that those lordly potentatesMight not be shocked, as Jerry's matesWere often shocked upon the beach.All this, he said, and more besideMay yet be true of the man that died—(Jerry, who swore when the mood was on.And worried the soul of Solomon;Jerry, the most consistent liarThat ever told a fish-yarn when,On a wintry night, a crew of menWere gathered around a tamarack fire!)"I do not care," said Juniper,Looking direct at Christopher,"What Gabriel may think of Jerry,Or (turning around to stare at Joe)What the sins were that Doran might know:Or whether he laughed in his sleep and was merryIn the hour of death, as Jake, his son,Who lay beside him in the bedReported the news to SolomonOf what the dying man had said."

Thus Juniper spoke, his eyes a-glow,His bony fingers pointing at Rowe.

Then we felt a deep hush fallUpon the room, as Juniper HallSpoke to the dead man under the sheet,Just as a common man might greetA living friend. "Well, Jerry, old mate,They may talk as they like—now that you're cold—Of those who enter the Father's fold,Through mercy and grace. They may talk of the fateOf your soul. They may shake their heads and groanFor fear God's mercy was not shownTo you before you died. I knowNothing of what the angels do,Or where the souls of dead men go;But I'll take my chance in saying that you,Who always did your day's work well,Had far too good a soul for hell.I do not know the kind of luckThat came to Christopher and JoeAnd saved from the fire the soul of Rowe,Nor how the balances are struckAt death; but I'd like to stateIf things like contra accounts are storedOn the shelves of the upper Courts of the Lord.Who judges the hearts of men, that your slate,Jerry, should tell by a clean scoreHow you were head of a life-boat crew,With no one as good at the stern oar,And always on hand when a storm blew;And tell how you pulled young Davie Cole,(Who sits on that bench) out of a holeIn the slob ice one bitter nightIn March when Davey was frozen through,And lugged him ashore with his face as whiteAs the lip of a ghost, and brought him to,With no one around to lend you a hand.Yes, Jerry, old mate, if you never reachFor want of faith the angels' land,Without a sea, without a beach,Maybe the Lord in His good grace,May find close to the boundaryOf heaven and the outer place,A strip of shoreline by a sea,Where the winds blow and where you,As skipper of a life-boat crew,May throw a line across the deckOf many a crowded, foundering wreck.And on fine days when not aboardYour skiff, but lying up, the LordMay find odd jobs, perhaps a sailTo mend, that in a Galilean galeWas torn, or one or two old puntsThat He and Simon Peter onceUsed on the lake; or say, 'Here's barkAnd oakum, oil and pitch, all thatYou need; go—caulk that leaky arkThat went aground on Ararat.'And when you call your gang together,Some night in raw December weather(The gang made up of your lifeboat crew,And other spotted saints of God,Exiled to that shore with youBecause, while on the earth, they trodOn both the broad and narrow ways)To tell your yarns before a blazeOf balsam piled on tamarack—That night, I swear, I will come back(As stoker from the outer landOn special leave from Lucifer)To start your fire with my brand;I swear it now," said Juniper.

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