Poems (Spofford)/Inside Plum Island

by Harriet Prescott Spofford

INSIDE PLUM ISLAND.

We floated in the idle breeze,
 With all our sails a-shiver;
The shining tide came softly through,
 And filled Plum Island River.

The shining tide stole softly up
 Across the wide green splendor,
Creek swelling creek till all in one
 The marshes made surrender.

And clear the flood of silver swung
 Between the brimming edges,
And now the depths were dark, and now
 The boat slid o'er the sedges.

And here a yellow sand spit foamed
 Amid the great sea meadows,
And here the sleeping waters gloomed
 Lucid in emerald shadows.

While, in their friendly multitude
 Encamped along our quarter,
The host of hay-cocks seemed to float
 With doubles in the water.

Around the sunny distance rose
 A blue and hazy highland,
And winding down our winding way
 The sand hills of Plum Island—

The windy dunes that hid the sea
 For many a dreary acre,
And muffled all its thundering fall
 Along the wild South Breaker.

We crept by Oldtown's marshy mouth,
 By reedy Rowley drifted,
But far away the Ipswich bar
 Its white caps tossed and shifted.

Sometimes we heard a bittern boom,
 Sometimes a piping: plover,
Sometimes there came the lonesome cry
 Of white gulls flying over.

Sometimes, a sudden fount of light,
 A sturgeon splashed, and fleeting
Behind the sheltering thatch we heard
 Oars in the rowlocks beating.

But all the rest was silence, save
 The rippling in the rushes,
The gentle gale that struck the sail
 In fitful swells and gushes.

Silence and summer and the sun,
 Waking a wizard legion,
Wove as we went their ancient spells
 In this enchanted region.

No spectral care could part the veil
 Of mist and sunbeams shredded,
That everywhere behind us closed
 The labyrinth we threaded.

Beneath our keel the great sky arched
 Its liquid light and azure;
We swung between two heavens, ensphered
 Within their charmed embrasure.

Deep in that watery firmament,
 With flickering lustres splendid,
Poised in his perfect flight, we saw
 The painted hawk suspended.

And there, the while the boat-side leaned,
 With youth and laughter laden,
We saw the red fin of the perch,
 We saw the swift menhaden.

Outside, the hollow sea might cry,
 The wailing wind give warning,
No whisper saddened us, shut in
 With sunshine and the morning.

Oh, far, far off the weary world
 With all its tumult waited,
Forever here with drooping sails
 Would we have hung belated!

Yet when the flaw came ruffling down,
 And round us curled .and sallied,
We skimmed, with bubbles on our track,
 As glad as when we dallied.

Broadly the bare brown Hundreds rose,
 The herds their hollows keeping,
And clouds of wings about our mast
 From Swallowbanks were sweeping.

While evermore the Bluff before
 Grew greenly on our vision,
Lifting beneath its waving boughs
 Its grassy slopes Elysian.

There, all day long, the summer sea
 Creams murmuring up the shingle;
There, all day long, the airs of earth
 With airs of heaven mingle.

Singing we went our happy way,
 Singing old songs, nor noted
Another voice that with us sang,
 As wing and wing we floated.

Till hushed, we listened, while the air
 With music still was beating,
Voice answering tuneful voice, again
 The words we sang repeating.

A flight of fluting echoes, sent
 With elfin carol o'er us—
More blithe than bird-song in the prime
 Rang out the sea-blown chorus.

Behind those dunes the storms had heaped
 In all fantastic fashion,
Who syllabled our songs in strains
 Remote from human passion?

What tones were those that caught our own,
 Filtered through light and distance,
And tossed them gayly to and fro-
 With such a sweet insistence?

What shoal of sea-sprites, to the sun
 Along the margin flocking,
Dripping with salt dews from the deeps,
 Made this melodious mocking?

We laughed—a hundred voices rose
 In airiest fairiest laughter;
We sang—a hundred voices quired
 And sang the whole song after.

One standing eager in the prow
 Blew out his bugle cheerly,
And far and wide their horns replied
 More silverly and clearly.

And falling down the falling tide,
 Slow and more slowly going,
Flown far, flown far, flown faint and fine,
 We heard their horns still blowing.

Then, with the last delicious note
 To other skies alluring,
Down ran the sails; beneath the Bluff
 The boat lay at her mooring.

Came they, these subtile powers, to tell
 The poet, at their revels,
How blest to live delightful days
 Among these meadow levels?

Blest as to lead his lonely thought
 Above horizons vaster,
Close to the stars, transfigured on
 The awful heights of Shasta!

Dreaming, he loitered still, we thought,
 Within his dream's bright portals;
We trifled with the hour, but he
 Had been with the immortals!

In vain, at night, we sought that sound—
 Stars over us and under
Through all that watery wilderness
 Building a word of wonder;

Or groping, when the light-house spark
 Its witch-dance kept before us,
Or when the unseen moon distilled
 Her deathly glamour o'er us;

Or when, the twin lamps of their towers
 Emerald and ruby gleaming,
Across the shadowy Merrimack
 The channel lights came streaming,—

In vain our lingering halloo,
 Our roundelay untiring,
No silver cry chimed far or nigh
 Of all that silver quiring.

Oh, never since that magic morn
 Those strains the boatman follows,
Or piping from the sandy hills,
 Or bubbling from the hollows!

Yet long as summer breezes blow,
 Waves murmur, rushes quiver,
Those warbling echoes everywhere
 Will haunt Plum Island River!