The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland Part 16

You're white as a ghost--Why, here's father from town!

And who are those men, daughter, helping him down?

Run! open the door! There's a whirr in my head, And the tune's getting louder--"The boys aren't dead!"

Cleora! That voice--it is Robert!--O, Lord!

I have leaned on Thy promise, and trusted Thy word, And out of the midst of great darkness and night Thy mercy has led me again to the light!

IN HOC SIGNO VINCES!

(UNDER THIS SIGN THOU SHALT CONQUER.)

Beneath the solemn stars that light The dread infinitudes of night, Mid wintry solitudes that lie Where lonely Hecla's toweling pyre Reddens an awful s.p.a.ce of sky With Thor's eternal altar fire!

Worn with the fever of unrest, And spent with years of eager quest, Beneath the vaulted heaven they stood, Pale, haggard eyed, of garb uncouth, The seekers of the Hidden Good, The searchers for Eternal Truth!

From fiery Afric's burning sands, From Asia's h.o.a.ry templed lands, From the pale borders of the North, From the far South--the fruitful West, O, long ago each journeyed forth, Led hither by one glorious quest!

And each, with pilgrim staff and shoon, Bore on his scrip a mystic rune, Some maxim of his chosen creed, By which, with swerveless rule and line, He shaped his life in word and deed To ends heroic and divine!

Around their dreary winter world The great ice-kraken dimly curled The white seas of the frozen zone; And like a mighty lifted s.h.i.+eld The hollow heavens forever shone On gleaming fiord and pathless field!

Behind them, in the nether deep, The central fires, that never sleep, Grappled and rose, and fell again; And with colossal shock and throe The shuddering mountain rent in twain Her garments of perpetual snow!

Then Aba Seyd, grave-eyed and grand, Stood forth with lifted brow and hand; Kingly of height, of mien sublime, Like glorious Saul among his peers, With matchless wisdom for all time Gleaned from the treasure house of years; His locks rose like an eagle's crest, His gray beard stormed on cheek and breast, His silvery voice sonorous rang, As when, exulting in the fray, Where lances hissed and trumpets sang, He held the Bedouin hordes at bay.

"Lo! Here we part: henceforth alone We journey to the goal unknown; But whatsoever paths we find, The ties of fellows.h.i.+p shall bind Our constant souls; and soon or late-- We laboring still in harmony-- The grand results for which we wait Shall crown the mighty years to be!

Now scoffed at, baffled, and beset, We grope in twilight darkness yet, We who would found the age of gold, Based on the universal good, And forge the links that yet shall hold The world in common Brotherhood!

"O, comrades of the Mystic Quest!

Who seek the Highest and the Best!

Where'er the goal for which we strive-- Whate'er the knowledge we may win-- This truth supreme shall live and thrive, 'Tis love that makes the whole world kin!

The love sublime and purified, That puts all dross of self aside To live for others--to uphold Before our own a brother's cause: This is the master power shall mould The n.o.bler customs, higher laws!

"Then shall all wars, all discords cease, And, rounded to perpetual peace, The bounteous years shall come and go Unvexed; and all humanity, Nursed to a loftier type, shall grow Like to that image undefiled, That fair reflex of Deity, Who, first, beneath the morning skies And glowing palms of paradise, A G.o.d-like man, awoke and smiled!"

* * * * Like some weird strain of music, spent In one full chord, the sweet voice ceased; A faint white glow smote up the east, Like wings uplifting--and a cry Of winds went forth, as if the night Beneath the brightening firmament Had voiced, in hollow prophecy, The affirmation: "By and by!"

HOW KATIE SAVED THE TRAIN.

The floods were out. Far as the bound Of sight was one stupendous round Of flat and sluggish crawling water!

As, from a slowly drowning rise, She looked abroad with startled eyes, The engineer's intrepid daughter.

Far as her straining eyes could see, The seething, swoolen Tombigbee Outspread his turbulent yellow tide; His angry currents swirled and surged O'er leagues of fertile lands submerged, And ruined hamlets, far and wide.

Along a swell of higher ground, Still, like a gleaming serpent, wound The heavy graded iron trail; But, inch by inch, the overflow Dragged down the road bed, till the slow Back-water crept across the rail.

And where the ghostly trestle spanned A stretch of marshy bottom-land, The stealthy under current gnawed At sunken pile, and ma.s.sive pier, And the stout bridge hung airily where She sullen d.y.k.e lay deep and broad.

Above the hollow, droning sound Of waves that filled the watery round, She heard a distant shout and din-- The levees of the upper land Had crumbled like a wall of sand, And the wild floods were pouring in!

She saw the straining d.y.k.e give way-- The quaking trestle reel and sway.

Yet hold together, bravely, still!

She saw the rus.h.i.+ng waters drown The piers, while ever sucking down The undermined and treacherous "fill!"

Her strong heart hammered in her breast, As o'er a distant woody crest A dim gray plume of vapor trailed; And nearer, clearer, by and by, Like the faint echo of a cry, A warning whistle shrilled and wailed!

Her frightened gelding reared and plunged, As the doomed trestle rocked and lunged-- The keen lash scored his silken hide: "Come, Bayard! We must reach the bridge And cross to yonder higher ridge-- For thrice an hundred lives we ride!"

She stooped and kissed his tawny mane, Sodden with flecks of froth and rain; Then put him at the surging flood!

Girth deep the dauntless gelding sank, The tide hissed round his smoking flank, But straight for life or death she rode!

The wide black heavens yawned again, Down came the torrent rus.h.i.+ng rain-- The icy river clutched her!

Shrill in her ears the waters sang, Strange fires from the abysses sprang, The sharp sleet stung like whip and spur!

Her yellow hair, blown wild and wide, Streamed like a meteor o'er the tide; Her set white face yet whiter grew, As lashed by furious flood and rain, Still for the bridge, with might and main, Her gallant horse swam, straight and true!

They gained the track, and slowly crept Timber by timber, torrents swept, Across the boiling h.e.l.l of water-- Till past the torn and shuddering bridge He bore her to the safer ridge, The engineer's intrepid daughter!

The night was falling wild and black, The waters blotted out the track; She gave her flying horse free rein, For full a dreadful mile away The lonely wayside station lay, And hoa.r.s.e above his startled neigh She heard the thunder of the train!

"What if they meet this side the goal?"

She thought with sick and shuddering soul; For well she knew what doom awaited A fell mischance--a step belated-- The grinding wheels, the yawning d.y.k.e-- Sure death for her--for them--alike!

Like danger-lamps her blue eyes glowed, As thro' the whirling gloom she rode, Her laboring breath drawn sharply in; Pitted against yon rus.h.i.+ng wheels Were tireless grit and trusty heels, And with G.o.d's favor they might win!

And soon along the perilous line Flamed out the lurid warning sign, While round her staggering horse the crowd Surged with wild cheers and plaudits loud.-- And this is how, thro' flood and rain, Brave Kate McCarthy saved the train!

OFF THE SKIDLOE.

With leagues of wasteful water ringed about, And wrapped in sheeted foam from base to peak, A sheer, stupendous monolith, wrought out By the slow, ceaseless labor of the deeps, In awful isolation, old as Time, The gray, forbidding Rock of Skidloe stands-- Breasting the wild incursions of the North-- The grim antagonist of a thousand waves!

Far to the leeward, faintly drawn against A dim perspective of perpetual storms, A frowning line of black basaltic cliffs Baffles the savage onset of the surf.

But, rolled in cloud and foam, old Skidloe lifts His dark, defiant head forever mid The shock and thunder of contending tides, And fixed, immovable as fate, hurls back The rude, eternal protest of the sea!

Colossal waters coil about his feet, Deep rooted in the awful gulfs between The measureless walls of mountain chains submerged; An infinite hoa.r.s.e murmur wells from all His dim mysterious crypts and corridors: The inarticulate mutterings that voice The ancient secret of the mighty main.

In all the troubled round of sea and air, No glimpse of brightness lends the vivid zest Of life and light to the harsh monotone Of gray tumultuous flood and spectral sky; Far off the black basaltic crags are heaved Against the desolate emptiness of s.p.a.ce; But no sweet beam of sunset ever falls Athwart old Skidloe's cloudy crest--no soft And wistful glory of awakened dawn Lays on his haggard brows a touch of grace.

Sometimes a lonely curlew skims across The seething torment of the dread abyss, And, shrieking, dips into the mist beyond; But, solitary and unchanged for aye, He towers amid the rude revolt of waves, His stony face seamed by a thousand years, And wrinkled with a million furrows, worn By the slow drip of briny tears, that creep Along his hollow cheek. His hidden hands Drag down the drowned and tossing wrecks that drive Before the fury of the Northern gales, And mute, inscrutable as destiny, He keeps his sombre secrets as of yore.

The slow years come and go; the seasons dawn And fade, and pa.s.s to swell the solemn ranks Of august ages in the march of Time.

But changeless still, amid eternal change, Old Skidloe bears the furious brunt of all The warring elements that grapple mid The mighty insurrections of the sea!

Gray desolation, ancient solitude, Brood o'er his wide, unrestful water world, While grim, unmoved, forbidding as of yore, He wraps his kingly alt.i.tudes about With the fierce blazon of the thunder cloud; And on his awful and uplifted brows The red phylactery of the lightning s.h.i.+nes; And throned amid eternal wars, he dwells, His dread regality hedged round by all The weird magnificence of exultant storms!

LIFE'S CROSSES.

"O life! O, vailed destiny!"

She cried--"within thy hidden hands What recompense is waiting me Beyond these naked wintry sands?

For lo! The ancient legend saith: 'Take ye a rose at Christmas tide, And pin thereto your loving faith, And cast it to the waters wide; Whate'er the wished-for guerdon be, G.o.d's hand will guide it safe to thee!'

"I pace the river's icy brink, This dreary Christmas Eve," she said, "And watch the dying sunset sink From pallid gold to ashen red.

My eyes are hot with weary tears, I heed not how the winds may blow, While thinking of the vanished years Beyond the stormy heave and throe Of yon far sea-line, dimly curled Around my lonely island-world.

"The winds make melancholy moan; I hear the river flowing by, As, heavy-hearted and alone, Beneath the wild December sky, I take the roses from my breast-- White roses of the Holy Rood-- And, filled with pa.s.sionate unrest, I cast them to the darkening flood.

O, roses, drifting out to sea, Bring my lost treasures back to me!