Poems - William Howells

It was a story the pilot told, with his back to his hearers,
Keeping his hand on the wheel and his eye on the globe of the jack-staff,
Holding the boat to the shore and out of the sweep of the current,
Lightly turning aside for the heavy logs of the drift-wood,
Widely shunning the snags that made us sardonic obeisance.

All the soft, damp air was full of delicate perfume
From the young willows in bloom on either bank of the river,
Faint, delicious fragrance, trancing the indolent senses
In a luxurious dream of the river and land of the lotus.
Not yet out of the west the roses of sunset were withered;
In the deep blue above light clouds of gold and of crimson
Floated in slumber serene; and the restless river beneath them
Rushed away to the sea with a vision of rest in its bosom;
Far on the eastern shore lay dimly the swamps of the cypress;
Dimly before us the islands grew from the rivers expanses,
Beautiful, wood-grown isles, with the gleam of the swart inundation
Seen through the swaying boughs and slender trunks of their willows;
And on the shore beside us the cotton-trees rose in the evening,
Phantom-like, yearningly, wearily, with the inscrutable sadness
Of the mute races of trees. While hoarsely the steam from her scape-pipes
Shouted, then whispered a moment, then shouted again to the silence,
Trembling through all her frame with the mighty pulse of her engines,
Slowly the boat ascended the swollen and broad Mississippi,
Bank-full, sweeping on, with tangled masses of drift-wood,
Daintily breathed about with whiffs of silvery vapor,
Where in his arrowy flight the twittering swallow alighted,
And the belated blackbird paused on the way to its nestlings.

It was the pilots story:They both came aboard there, at Cairo,
From a New Orleans boat, and took passage with us for Saint Louis.
She was a beautiful woman, with just enough blood from her mother
Darkening her eyes and her hair to make her race known to a trader:
You would have thought she was white. The man that was with her,you see such,
Weakly good-natured and kind, and weakly good-natured and vicious,
Slender of body and soul, fit neither for loving nor hating.
I was a youngster then, and only learning the river,
Not over-fond of the wheel. I used to watch them at monte,
Down in the cabin at night, and learned to know all of the gamblers.
So when I saw this weak one staking his money against them,
Betting upon the turn of the cards, I knew what was coming:
They never left their pigeons a single feather to fly with.
Next day I saw them together,the stranger and one of the gamblers:
Picturesque rascal he was, with long black hair and moustaches,
Black slouch hat drawn down to his eyes from his villanous forehead.
On together they moved, still earnestly talking in whispers,
On toward the forecastle, where sat the woman alone by the gangway.
Roused by the fall of feet, she turned, and, beholding her master,
Greeted him with a smile that was more like a wifes than anothers,
Rose to meet him fondly, and then, with the dread apprehension
Always haunting the slave, fell her eye on the face of the gambler,
Dark and lustful and fierce and full of merciless cunning.
Something was spoken so low that I could not hear what the words were;
Only the woman started, and looked from one to the other,
With imploring eyes, bewildered hands, and a tremor
All through her frame: I saw her from where I was standing, she shook so.
Say! is it so? she cried. On the weak, white lips of her master
Died a sickly smile, and he said, Louise, I have sold you.
God is my judge! May I never see such a look of despairing,
Desolate anguish, as that which the woman cast on her master,
Griping her breast with her little hands, as if he had stabbed her,
Standing in silence a space, as fixed as the Indian woman
Carved out of wood, on the pilot-house of the old Pocahontas!
Then, with a gurgling moan, like the sound in the throat of the dying,
Came back her voice, that, rising, fluttered, through wild incoherence,
Into a terrible shriek that stopped my heart while she answered:
Sold me? sold me? soldAnd you promised to give me my freedom!
Promised me, for the sake of our little boy in Saint Louis!
What will you say to our boy, when he cries for me there in Saint Louis?
What will you say to our God?Ah, you have been joking! I see it!
No? God! God! He shall hear it,and all of the angels in heaven,
Even the devils in hell!and none will believe when they hear it!
Sold me!Her voice died away with a wail, and in silence
Down she sank on the deck, and covered her face with her fingers.

In his story a moment the pilot paused, while we listened
To the salute of a boat, that, rounding the point of an island,
Flamed toward us with fires that seemed to burn from the waters,
Stately and vast and swift, and borne on the heart of the current.
Then, with the mighty voice of a giant challenged to battle,
Rose the responsive whistle, and all the echoes of island,
Swamp-land, glade, and brake replied with a myriad clamor,
Like wild birds that are suddenly startled from slumber at midnight,
Then were at peace once more; and we heard the harsh cries of the peacocks
Perched on a tree by a cabin-door, where the white-headed settlers
White-headed children stood to look at the boat as it passed them,
Passed them so near that we heard their happy talk and their laughter.
Softly the sunset had faded, and now on the eastern horizon
Hung, like a tear in the sky, the beautiful star of the evening.

Still with his back to us standing, the pilot went on with his story:
All of us flocked round the woman. The children cried, and their mothers
Hugged them tight to their breasts; but the gambler said to the captain,
Put me off there at the town that lies round the bend of the river.
Here, you! rise at once, and be ready now to go with me.
Roughly he seized the womans arm and strove to uplift her.
Sheshe seemed not to heed him, but rose like one that is dreaming,
Slid from his grasp, and fleetly mounted the steps of the gangway,
Up to the hurricane-deck, in silence, without lamentation.
Straight to the stern of the boat, where the wheel was, she ran, and the people
Followed her fast till she turned and stood at bay for a moment,
Looking them in the face, and in the face of the gambler.
Not one to save her,not one of all the compassionate people!
Not one to save her, of all the pitying angels in heaven!
Not one bolt of God to strike him dead there before her!
Wildly she waved him back, we waiting in silence and horror.
Over the swarthy face of the gambler a pallor of passion
Passed, like a gleam of lightning over the west in the night-time.
White, she stood, and mute, till he put forth his hand to secure her;
Then she turned and leaped,in mid-air fluttered a moment,
Down then, whirling, fell, like a broken-winged bird from a tree-top,
Down on the cruel wheel, that caught her, and hurled her, and crushed her,
And in the foaming water plunged her, and hid her forever.

Still with his back to us all the pilot stood, but we heard him
Swallowing hard, as he pulled the bell-rope for stopping. Then, turning,
This is the place where it happened, brokenly whispered the pilot.
Somehow, I never like to go by here alone in the night-time.
Darkly the Mississippi flowed by the town that lay in the starlight,
Cheerful with lamps. Below we could hear them reversing the engines,
And the great boat glided up to the shore like a giant exhausted.
Heavily sighed her pipes. Broad over the swamps to the eastward
Shone the full moon, and turned our far-trembling wake into silver.
All was serene and calm, but the odorous breath of the willows
Smote with a mystical sense of infinite sorrow upon us.

Red roses, in the slender vases burning,
Breathed all upon the air,
The passion and the tenderness and yearning,
The waiting and the doubting and despair.

Still with the music of her voice was haunted,
Through all its charméd rhymes,
The open book of such a one as chanted
The things he dreamed in old, old summer-times.

The silvern chords of the piano trembled
Still with the music wrung
From them; the silence of the room dissembled
The closes of the songs that she had sung.

The languor of the crimson shawls abasement,
Lying without a stir
Upon the floor,the absence at the casement,
The solitude and hush were full of her.

Without, and going from the room, and never
Departing, did depart
Her steps; and one that came too late forever
Felt them go heavy oer his broken heart.

And, sitting in the houses desolation,
He could not bear the gloom,
The vanishing encounter and evasion
Of things that were and were not in the room.

Through midnight streets he followed fleeting visions
Of faces and of forms;
He heard old tendernesses and derisions
Amid the sobs and cries of midnight storms.

By midnight lamps, and from the darkness under
That lamps made at their feet,
He saw sweet eyes peer out in innocent wonder,
And sadly follow after him down the street.

The noonday crowds their restlessness obtruded
Between him and his quest;
At unseen corners jostled and eluded,
Against his hand her silken robes were pressed.

Doors closed upon her; out of garret casements
He knew she looked at him;
In splendid mansions and in squalid basements,
Upon the walls he saw her shadow swim.

From rapid carriages she gleamed upon him,
Whirling away from sight;
From all the hopelessness of search she won him
Back to the dull and lonesome house at night.

Full early into dark the twilights saddened
Within its closéd doors;
The echoes, with the clocks monotony maddened,
Leaped loud in welcome from the hollow floors;

But gusts that blew all day with solemn laughter
From wide-mouthed chimney-places,
And the strange noises between roof and rafter,
The wainscot clamor, and the scampering races

Of mice that chased each other through the chambers,
And up and down the stair,
And rioted among the ashen embers,
And left their frolic footprints everywhere,

Were hushed to hear his heavy tread ascending
The broad steps, one by one,
And toward the solitary chamber tending,
Where the dim phantom of his hope alone

Rose up to meet him, with his growing nearer,
Eager for his embrace,
And moved, and melted into the white mirror,
And stared at him with his own haggard face.

But, turning, he was ware her looks beheld him
Out of the mirror white;
And at the window yearning arms she held him,
Out of the vague and sombre fold of night.

Sometimes she stood behind him, looking over
His shoulder as he read;
Sometimes he felt her shadowy presence hover
Above his dreamful sleep, beside his bed;

And rising from his sleep, her shadowy presence
Followed his light descent
Of the long stair; her shadowy evanescence
Through all the whispering rooms before him went.

Upon the earthy draught of cellars blowing
His shivering lamp-flame blue,
Amid the damp and chill, he felt her flowing
Around him from the doors he entered through.

The spiders wove their webs upon the ceiling;
The bat clung to the wall;
The dry leaves through the open transom stealing,
Skated and danced adown the empty hall.

About him closed the utter desolation,
About him closed the gloom;
The vanishing encounter and evasion
Of things that were and were not in the room

Vexed him forever; and his life forever
Immured and desolate,
Beating itself, with desperate endeavor,
But bruised itself, against the round of fate.

The roses, in their slender vases burning,
Were quenchéd long before;
A dust was on the rhymes of love and yearning;
The shawl was like a shroud upon the floor.

Her music from the thrilling chords had perished;
The stillness was not moved
With memories of cadences long cherished,
The closes of the songs that she had loved.

But not the less he felt her presence never
Out of the room depart;
Over the threshold, not the less, forever
He felt her going on his broken heart.

Das Vergnügen ist Nichts als ein höchst angenehmer Schmerz.

Full of beautiful blossoms
Stood the tree in early May:
Came a chilly gale from the sunset,
And blew the blossoms away;

Scattered them through the garden,
Tossed them into the mere:
The sad tree moaned and shuddered,
Alas! the Fall is here.

But all through the glowing summer
The blossomless tree throve fair,
And the fruit waxed ripe and mellow,
With sunny rain and air;

And when the dim October
With golden death was crowned,
Under its heavy branches
The tree stooped to the ground.

In youth there comes a west-wind
Blowing our bloom away,
A chilly breath of Autumn
Out of the lips of May.

We bear the ripe fruit after,
Ah, me! for the thought of pain!
We know the sweetness and beauty
And the heart-bloom never again.

One sails away to sea,
One stands on the shore and cries;
The ship goes down the world, and the light
On the sullen water dies.

The whispering shell is mute,
And after is evil cheer:
She shall stand on the shore and cry in vain,
Many and many a year.

But the stately, wide-winged ship
Lies wrecked on the unknown deep;
Far under, dead in his coral bed,
The lover lies asleep.

Through the silent streets of the city,
In the nights unbusy noon,
Up and down in the pallor
Of the languid summer moon,

I wander, and think of the village,
And the house in the maple-gloom,
And the porch with the honeysuckles
And the sweet-brier all abloom.

My soul is sick with the fragrance
Of the dewy sweet-briers breath:
O darling! the house is empty,
And lonesomer than death!

If I call, no one will answer;
If I knock, no one will come:
The feet are at rest forever,
And the lips are cold and dumb.

The summer moon is shining
So wan and large and still,
And the weary dead are sleeping
In the graveyard under the hill.

We looked at the wide, white circle
Around the Autumn moon,
And talked of the change of weather:
It would rain, to-morrow, or soon.

And the rain came on the morrow,
And beat the dying leaves
From the shuddering boughs of the maples
Into the flooded eaves.

The clouds wept out their sorrow;
But in my heart the tears
Are bitter for want of weeping,
In all these Autumn years.

The bobolink sings in the meadow,
The wren in the cherry-tree:
Come hither, thou little maiden,
And sit upon my knee;

And I will tell thee a story
I read in a book of rhyme;
I will but fain that it happened
To me, one summer-time,

When we walked through the meadow,
And she and I were young.
The story is old and weary
With being said and sung.

The story is old and weary:
Ah, child! it is known to thee.
Who was it that last night kissed thee
Under the cherry-tree?

Like a bird of evil presage,
To the lonely house on the shore
Came the wind with a tale of shipwreck,
And shrieked at the bolted door,

And flapped its wings in the gables,
And shouted the well-known names,
And buffeted the windows
Afeard in their shuddering frames.

It was night, and it is morning,
The summer sun is bland,
The white-cap waves come rocking, rocking,
In to the summer land.

The white-cap waves come rocking, rocking,
In the sun so soft and bright,
And toss and play with the dead man
Drowned in the storm last night.

I remember the burning brushwood,
Glimmering all day long
Yellow and weak in the sunlight,
Now leaped up red and strong,

And fired the old dead chestnut,
That all our years had stood,
Gaunt and gray and ghostly,
Apart from the sombre wood;

And, flushed with sudden summer,
The leafless boughs on high
Blossomed in dreadful beauty
Against the darkened sky.

We children sat telling stories,
And boasting what we should be,
When we were men like our fathers,
And watched the blazing tree,

That showered its fiery blossoms,
Like a rain of stars, we said,
Of crimson and azure and purple.
That night, when I lay in bed,

I could not sleep for seeing,
Whenever I closed my eyes,
The tree in its dazzling splendor
Against the darkened skies.

I cannot sleep for seeing,
With closéd eyes to-night,
The tree in its dazzling splendor
Dropping its blossoms bright;

And old, old dreams of childhood
Come thronging my weary brain,
Dear, foolish beliefs and longings:
I doubt, are they real again?

It is nothing, and nothing, and nothing,
That I either think or see:
The phantoms of dead illusions
To-night are haunting me.