SHAFTS FROM A CARIB BOW
West Indian Impressions
ST. CHRISTOPHER AND NEVIS
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!
LA PELÉE
Something sepulchral broods the listless air;
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.
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