Page:Poet Lore, volume 28, 1917.djvu/476



If this is all, then I have dreamed in vain. Though sombre woods and fields of rich shrill green Cling to your clouded, welted sides, a scene Which glitters bright when drenched with morning rain, Memories, far more sharply etched, remain Of alleys lava-dingy, hovel-mean; Smug whites; blacks, smirking, poorly clad and lean, Ubiquitous, monotonous, as cane. But no, your peaks now strike me with full force: Mount Misery, a huge fist clenched at heaven; Nevis, a mourner clutching at a pall. By what but your whole elemental leaven Was our first statesman raised from this crude source ? To Hamilton you gave, and lost, your all!


 * Not so much calm as lifeless is this sea
 * Which whispered once through many a jalousie
 * Of song and dance to Creole devil-may-care:
 * Forbidding is that ashen brow, those bare
 * And leprous shoulders, tigrine flanks; no tree
 * Less snakelike than the palm haunts the debris,
 * The charnel-house of what was gay St. Pierre.


 * And here it was that Hearn the dreamer drank
 * Color intoxicating to his pen;
 * Enchanted by the poise of turbaned head;
 * Quietly reveling in each urchin prank
 * Of graceful golden women, lithe bronzed men—
 * A dream that lives, though all he praised lies dead.