Hervey Allen

“ The white man hears, but cannot feel.
But it is always Sunday on sea-islands.
Plantation bells, calling the pickers from the fields,
Are like old temple gongs;
And the wind tells monodies among the pines,
Playing upon their strings the ocean's songs;
The ducks fly in long, trailing lines;
Skeows squonk and marsh-hens quank
Among the tidal flats and rushes rank on rank;
On island tufts the heron feeds its viscid young ”

“ Then Meeting Street first knew St. Michael's steeple,
When redcoats marched with royal drums a-banging,
Or merchants stopped gowned tutors to inquire
Why school let out to see a pirate hanging;
And gentlemen took supper in the street,
When candle-shine from tables guled the dark,
While others passing by would be discreet
And take the farther side without remark,
Pausing perhaps to snuff the balmy savor
Of turtle-soup mulled with the bay-leaves' flavor:
These walls beheld them, and these lingering trees
That still preempt the middle of the gutter ”

“ That flashed and smiled beneath a bonnet shade;
Life with the lure of all its swift disguise.
Then from the soaring lyric of the spire,
Like the composite voice of all the town,
The bells burst swiftly into singing fire
That wrapped the building, and which showered down
Bright cadences to flash along the ways
Loud with the splendid gladness of the days.
War took the city, and the laughter died
From lips that pain had kissed. One after one
[22] All lovely things went down the sanguine tide,
While death made moaning answer to the gun. ”

“ High in the ancient forest the magnolias burn the perfect alban lucence of their lamps; white are their ivory cups like priestly linen, and fragrant with the tang of foreign citrons. An esoteric, mirrored swan slides by like Cleopatra's barge, while drums of color beaten by a maniac blend with old tints of Leonardo's dreams, colors that God might see if his own lightning blasted out his eyes. ”

“ In the spring when the first midges dance and warm days lure the last-year's butterfly, the scarlet of the cardinals begins to flicker through the ivory smoke of the mosses. Then the alligator leaves his winter ooze, and the widening "O" of the ripple which his gar-like nose makes, travels slowly across the sullen ponds, where the pendant gonfalons of the mosses kiss their imaginary duplicates, hanging head downward in the red water.
When the first frog honks with the bull-voiced trumpet of resurgent spring, the jasmine rings its little hawk-bells, golden harp notes through the forest ”

“ The tides flow in long, gray, weed-streaked lines;
[68] The salt water, like the planet's lifeblood, goes
As if the earth were breathing with long-taken breaths
And we were very near her heart.
No wonder that these faces show a tired dismay,
Looking on burning suns, and scarcely blithe in May;
Spring's coming is too fierce with life;
And summer is too long;
The stunted pine trees struggle with the sand
Till the eyes sicken with their dwarfing strife. ”

“ Michael's tale of golden years
Far less like bells than chanted memories.
Yet there is something wanting in the song
Of lyric youth with voice unschooled by pain.
And there are breathing stillnesses that throng
Dim corners, and that only stir again
When bells are dumb. Not even bronze that beats
Our heart-throbs back can tell of old defeats. ”

“ Underneath this motley canopy of gray and blue, lush with the early tenderness of leaves, the pink [90] azaleas open light-shy eyes like pupils of albinos, sloughing off delicate pods that smoulder, when the wind blows, live coals among the gray of furnace ashes. Here are magenta carpets fit for leprechauns, when crescent moons glimmer upon the ocher ponds, and the slow fireflies light their phantom lanterns, weaving to and fro about the ivory-orange marble of the tomb.
Each April day brings opalescent waves of birds that dart like living brands about the aisles to light the flower lamps ”

“ Who hate solitude,
And march with drums—
Beat—beat—beat,
Down every ancient street,
The young giants! Minded like boys:
Action for action's sake they love
And noise for noise."
Voice of a Poet
"The fire of the sunset
Is remembered at midnight,
But forgotten at dawn.
While the old stars set,
Let us speak of their glory
Before they are gone."
H.A.
[20]
SILENCES [1]
You who have known my city for a day
And heard the music of her steepled bells,
Then laughed, and passed along your vagrant way,
Carrying only what the city tells
To those who listen solely with their ears ”

“ FROM THE BOOK OF THE SEA ISLANDS page one Shadows
There is deliberateness in all sea-island ways,
As alien to our days as stone wheels are.
The Islands cannot see the use of life
Which only lives for change. ”

“ Out on the gloom-deep water, when the nights
Are choked with fog, and perilous, and blind,
She is the faith that tends the calling lights.
Hers is the stifled voice of harbor bells
Muffled and broken by the mist and wind. ”

“ Local color has a fatal tendency to remain local; but it is also true that the universal often borders on the void. It has been said, perhaps wisely, that the immediate future of American Poetry lies rather in the intimate feeling of local poets who can interpret their own sections to the rest of the country as Robinson and Frost have done so nobly for New England, rather than in the effort to yawp universally. Hence there is no attempt here to say, "O New York, O Pennsylvania," but simply, "O Carolina." ”

“ When the sun leans on boreal wings, there is a month that lovers walk here justified, while flower throats cry in vast choirs, "Glory to life!" and the uplifted trumpets of vine tubas shout with noise of color set to notes of bloom. ”

“ That lies in wait to make a silent rush,
And there was something in her like a thrush,
For she had paddle-wheels, each like a wing.
She had a long hornet stern that seemed to hold a sting.
Sometimes her paddles slowly turned,
For they kept steam up, waiting for a gale.
It seemed as if the slim boat chafed and yearned
To go hell-tearing under steam and sail.
The oily water churned
And made a slap-slap to the paddles' stroke ”

“ Coupled with this there has been another task; that of keeping these legends and stories in their natural matrix, the semi-tropical landscape of the Low Country, which somehow lends them all a pensively melancholy yet fitting background. Not to have so portrayed them, would have been to sacrifice their essentially local tang. To the reader unfamiliar with coastal Carolina, the unique aspects of its landscapes may seem exaggerated in [10] these pages; the observant visitor and the native will, it is hoped, recognize that neither the colors nor the shadows are too strong. ”

“ The golden ivory of primeval light
Dwells in its Spanish moss,
Falling in living cascades from the trees,
[116] And who goes there in summer hears the bees
Booming among the Pride of India trees,
Dull grumbling tones,
A deaf man dreams,
Like far-off rumbling sound of boulder-stones
Washed down by headlong streams. ”

“ Because no nation of any time can point to a more inspiring example of self-sacrifice, and because now, in a country reunited and indissoluble, the traditions of both the North and the South are a common, glorious heritage, the poem, which presents the final episode in the drama, is written as a memorial to all who gave their lives in the venture. ”

“ As some of the material touched on is not accessible in standard reference, prose notes have been included giving the historical facts or background of legend upon which a poem has been based. These notes together with a bibliography will be found at the back of the volume.
If the only result of this book is to call attention to the literary and artistic values inherent in the South, and to the essentially unique and yet nationally interesting qualities of the Carolina Low Country, its landscapes and legends, the labor bestowed here will have secured its harvest. ”

“ The bells were taken; and a sterner note
Rang from their bronze where Lee and Jackson led.
The rhythmic seasons chill and burn and chill,
Cooling old angers, warming hearts again.
The ancient building quickens to the thrill
Of lilting feet ”

“ In a continent but recently settled, many parts of which have as yet little historical or cultural background, the material for this volume has been gathered from a section that was one of the first to be colonized. ”

“ When the first jasmine rings its golden bells,
And the "wild wistaria" puts forth;
But most because the sea then changes tone;
Talking a whit less drear,
It gossips in a smoother monotone,
Whispering moon-scandal in the old earth's ear.
H.A.
[72]
MODERN PHILOSOPHER
They fight your battles for you every day,
The zealous ones, who sorrow in your life. ”

“ There was also a story told by a dying sailor who confessed that he had seen the crew of such a boat walk the plank, and that among them was a beautiful woman who walked into the sea with a Bible or prayer-book in her hand.
The painting is in the possession of the Burr-Alston connection, and is thought by them, on account of its striking family resemblance, to be a picture of Theodosia Burr. The painting story has often been scouted, but there is too much circumstantial evidence to ignore it in treating the legend. ”

“ The Peace of Utrecht turned many privateers into pirates, ships which had been habitually preying upon Spanish commerce since Blake's victory at Santa Cruz in 1657, and these gentlemen of fortune were at first welcome in the Carolinas. Nearly all the coin in circulation then was at first brought by such doubtful adventurers, and they were regarded as the natural protectors of the Carolinas against their powerful enemy, the Spaniard, to the south. ”

“ H.A.
[130]
"MARSH TACKIES"
"Marsh Tackies" is the name given by the negroes to the little, wild horses of the Carolina coast country's swamps and sea islands. Early traditions say that these horses were found by the English when they first came and that they are the descendants of runaways from the Spanish settlements to the South about St. Augustine, or horses turned loose by DeSoto upon his ill-fated march to the Mississippi. These horses pick up a precarious living in out-of-the-way sections along the coast, and are occasionally taken and broken in by the negroes. ”

“ Like the beach grass that's always blown one way;
With such a melancholy in their faces
I know that they have lived long in these places.
The tides, the hooting owls, the daylight moons,
The leprous lights and shadows of the mosses,
The funereal woodlands of these coasts,
Draped like a perpetual hearse,
And memories of an old war's ancient losses,
Dwell in their faces' shadows like gray ghosts.
And worse—
The terror of the black man always near—
The drab level of the ricefields and the marsh
Lends them a mask of fear.
[69]
page two Sunshine
This is a different page. ”

“ In October his battery was ordered to Fort Moultrie, Charleston, S.C. Poe spent a whole year on Sullivan's Island. Professor C. Alphonso Smith, the well-known Poe authority, says, "So far as I know, this was the only tropical background that Poe had ever seen." That the susceptible nature of the young poet was vastly impressed by the weirdness and melancholy scenery of the Carolina coast country, there can be very little doubt. ”

“ Seeing the ships constantly coming into the Bay from England, they conceived the idea of building large canoes and reaching England over the ocean. Several huge canoes, larger than any hereto [125] fore built by Indians, were accordingly constructed; these were loaded with the proceeds of a season's hunting, and, manned by all the braves of the tribe, set out in the direction from which the ships came. A gale came up and the braves were never seen again. Their squaws gradually wandered off to other tribes. ”

“ The Marquis de la Fayette, under the name of Gilbert du Motier, sailed from Bordeaux on the 26th of March, 1777, accompanied by the Baron Kalb and several French Army Officers. On the 14th of June, 1777, he first landed in America on North Island in Winyah Bay, near Georgetown, S.C., and was received at the house of Major Huger. In a letter to his wife, written soon after his landing, La Fayette says, "I first saw and judged of the life of the country at the house of a Major Huger." Detailed accounts of La Fayette's landing and reception still exist. ”

“ The bells of Charleston, like the bells of London Town, have a peculiar interest. St. Michael's bells and clock were brought from England in 1764. When the British evacuated Charleston in 1782 they took the bells with them. A Mr. Ryhineu bought them in England and returned them. They were rehung in November, 1783. During the Civil War, St. Michael's steeple was the target for Federal artillery and fleet guns. In 1861 the bells were taken to Columbia, S.C., where two of them were stolen, and the rest injured by fire when the city was burned. ”

“ In 1718 Governor Spotswood of Virginia sent an expedition to North Carolina, which succeeded in surprising, capturing, and beheading the notorious "Black Beard," who in company with one Stede Bonnet, had long ravaged the coast with impunity.
In August of the same year word was brought to Charlestown that Bonnet with his ship the Royal James was refitting in the Cape Fear River. Colonel William Rhett volunteered to attack him. With two sloops of eight guns each, the Henry and the Nymph, and about 130 men in all, he set sail, and found Bonnet at anchor in the Cape Fear River. ”

“ For a long time its steeple was used as a lighthouse. It is the center of forgotten things.
The bells of St. Matthew's are modern and speak of [122] a new order, but all the bells are the voice of the town. They speak for her silences, which are eloquent.
NOTE ON "THE PIRATES"
The many inlets and sheltering coves of the Carolina coasts very early made the "low country" seaboard a rendezvous for pirates and a shelter to refit, and to bury their treasure.
As early as 1565 the French from Ribault's settlement succumbed to the temptation to plunder their rich Spanish neighbors ”