Katharine Lee Bates: Verses about Home

WHEN Cap'n Tom comes home, and his sea chest
Is opened, oh, the shells that rainbow foam
Tossed on far shores, by us to be possessed
When Cap'n Tom comes home!
Cocoanuts for which gray, chattering monkeys clomb;
Tamarinds, and dates, and luscious sweetmeats pressed
Into blue jars of quaint pagoda dome!
Canaries, corals, shimmering shawls and, best
Of all, keepsakes that on wild seas a-roam
He carved from whale's tooth for a village blest
When Cap'n Tom comes home!

HONOR to him whose very blood remembers
The old, enchanted dream-song of the Rhine,
Although his house of life. is fair with shine
Of fires new-kindled on the buried embers;
Whose heart is wistful for the flowers he tended
Beside his mother, for the caryen gnome
And climbing bear and cuckoo-clock of home,
For the whispering forest path two lovers wended;
Who none the less, still strange in speech and manner,
With our young Freedom keeps his plighted faith,
Sides with his children's hope against the wraith
Of his own childhood, hails the Starry Banner
As emblem of his country now, to-morrow;
A patriot by duty, not by birth.
The costliest loyalty has purest worth.
Honor to him who draws the sword in sorrow!

[sung to tune: "All Saints New"]



Our fathers, in the years grown dim, reared slowly, wall by wall
A holy dwelling-place for Him, that filleth all in all.
They wrought His house of faith and prayer, the rainbow round the Throne,
A precious temple builded fair on Christ the Cornerstone.

The Angel of the Golden Reed hath found the measure strait'
He hears the Great Foundation plead for ampler wall and gate.
The living pillars of the Truth grown on from morn to morn,
And still the heresy of youth is age's creed outworn.

But steadfast is their inner shrine wrought of the heart's fine gold,
Its hunger and its thirst divine, with jewels manifold,
Red sard of pain, hope's emerald gleam, white peace, no glory missed
Of righteous life and saintly dream, Jasper to amethyst.

Spirit of Truth, forbid that we who now God's temple are
And keep the faith with minds more free, our father's fabric mar.
Better than thoughts the stars that search is self still sacrificed,
For only Love can build the church whose corner-stone is Christ.

Two centuries' winter storms have lashed the changing sands of Falmouth's shore,
Deep-voiced, the winds, swift winged, wild, have echoed there the ocean's roar.
But though the north-east gale unleashed, rage-blind with power, relentless beat,
The sturdy light-house sheds its beam on waves churned white beneath the sleet.
And still when cold and fear are past, and fields are sweet with spring-time showers,
Mystic, the gray age-silent hills breathe out their souls in fair mayflowers.
And where the tawny saltmarsh lies beyond the sand dunes' farthest reach,
The undulous grass grown russet green, skirts the white crescent of the beach.

Above the tall elms' green-plumed tops, etched against low-hung, gray-hued skies,
Straight as the heaven-kissing pine, the home-bound mariner descries
The goodly spire of the old first church, reverend, serene, with old-time grace,
Symbol and sign of an inner life deep-sealed by time's slow carven trace.

Out of that church in days long gone went a stalwart, true-eyed sturdy band,
Sons of the mist and the flying foam, the blood and brawn of the Pilgrim land;
Down to the sea where the tall masts rose, where the green-mossed black hulls rose and fell,
And the cables strained at the call of the tide, for they knew and heeded its summons well.

For the Reunion of the Bates Family at Quincy, August 3, 1916
FAR away on the sunny levels
Where Kent lies drowsing beside the sea,
Where over the foxglove as over the foam
The gray gull sails, is our ancient home.
Wide though we wander, something follows,
The cradle-call from a village hid
Under the cloud of rooks and swallows
That love its thatches and orchards, Lydd.
Here they sported in rustic revels,
Our sturdy forbears, while ale flowed free,
Richard and Susan and Sybil and John,
All their jollity hushed and gone;
Our grandsires proud of their scraps of Latin,
Our grandams, 'notable huswifs' all;
We may touch the very settles they sat in,
But they, like their shadows upon the wall,
Have slipped from their sweet, accustomed places,
Stephen, Samuel, Ellen, Anne.
The pewter flagons they valued so
Stand, though battered, in shining row,
But the hands that scoured them, long since folded,
Lips that smacked over them, long since dust,
Are known no more in the town they molded
To civic honor and neighbor trust.
Ah, for their quaint, forgotten graces,
Flushing raptures of maid and man,
James and Alice, Thomas and Joan,
Blood of our blood and bone of our bone!
Only the trampled slabs and brasses
That floor the aisles of the old church tell
Their dates and virtues to him who passes,
How long they labored in Lydd, how well.
Their Catholic sins have all been shriven,
And their Puritan righteousness pardoned, too.
Lax and merry, or holy and harsh,
They have flown to Heaven from Romney Marsh,
Lydia, David, Joshua, Zealous,
'Katharine Spinster,' yet still on earth
Their wraiths abide in our being, jealous
For the brief, blunt name and its modest worth.
For each of us is phantom-driven,
A haunted house where a glimmering crew
Of dear and queer ancestral ghosts
Quarrel and match their family boasts,
Color our half and fashion our noses,
Shape the deed and govern the mood;
In every rose are a thousand roses;
Every man is a multitude.
A patchwork we are of antique vagaries;
Primitive passions trouble our pulse.
'Margery, relict of Andrew Bate,'
Clement, Rachel and William hate
And adore in us. No vain sunriser
In all our clan, but he owes the praise
To some progenital dew-surpriser
Who knelt to the dawn in pagan days.
Sailors that steered for the misty Canaries,
Fishers whose feet loved the feel of the dulse,
Agnes, Simon, Julian, George,
Faithful in kitchen, hayfield and forge,
Give us our dreams, our sea-love, the voices
That speak in our conscience, rebuke and forbid.
Hark! In our festal laughter rejoices
A quavering note from the graves of Lydd.

I
BLUE as blossom of the myrtle
Smiled the steadfast eyes of Olaf
On the host of ships that harried
His enraged, gold-glittering Dragon,
Snared within that ring of sea-birds,
By their fierce beaks rent and bitten;
All men knew the crimson kirtle,
Rich-wrought helm and shield that dazzled
Back the whirling wrath of sword-edge,
But the king, while doom yet tarried,
Bleeding fast beneath his byrny,
Still throughout the savage hurtle
Of the ax-play and the spear-play,
Blinding storm of stones and arrows,
Shivering steel and shock of iron,
Stood erect above the slaughter,
An unblenching lord of battle,
Till about his knees were drifted
Heaps of slain, his last earl smitten.
From the poop then sprang King Olaf,
Faring on his farthest journey,
With his shield above him lifted,
Shield whose shimmer mocked the rattle
Of the missiles rained upon it,
Down into the deep sea-water.
Nevermore shall he thrust keel
Into billow, fain to feel
Pull of rudder 'neath his hand,
Swing of tide that bears his folk
On to spoil some startled strand,
Rick and homestead wrapt in smoke.
All the daring deeds are done
Of King Olaf Tryggvison.
II
As the red-stained waves ran o'er him,
Faithful to their friend, sea-rover,
Hid the flickering shield forever
From the fury of his foemen,
Hushed the war-din to his hearing,
Sweetened on his swooning senses
Even that wild roar of victory,
Through the dim green gloom appearing
Women's faces flashed before him.
Fair the first, but wan with vigil,
Mother-tender, mother-valiant,
Face of Astrid, she who bore him
On a couch of ferns and clover
In a little, lonely island,
Warded only by her fosterer,
Old Thorolf, who would not sever
His rude service from her sorrows;
She who flitted with her man-child
On from fen to forest, hunted
By the murderers of his father,
Every rustling branch an omen
Of the dangers darkening over
That rich seed of frail defenses;
She whose last look smiled him courage,
Rosy wean of three rude winters,
When the pirate crew had seized them,
Sold the gold-haired boy and mother
Into sundering thraldom, slaughtered
Old Thorolf as stiff and useless.
Then the face of Queen Allogia,
Like a sudden shield, white-shining,
Raised between the vengeful blood-wrath
And the lad whose earliest death-blow
Smote the slayer unforgotten
Of Thorolf. Soft gleamed another,
Younger face, white rose of passion,
Geira, to whose grace her lover
Bowed his boyhood's turbulences,
Gentled in that blissful bridal,
Till death stole upon their joyance,
Gathering her fragrant girlhood
Like a flower, and frenzy-driven
Forth King Olaf fared a-warring,
South-away to sack and harry
Every quiet shore that silvered
On his homeless, waste horizon.
Still amid the flying splinters
Of the swords, and famous morrows,
When the Norns did as it pleased them
With their secret shuttle, twining
In the pattern of his life-days
Strands of mirth and splendor only
For the rending, for the strewing
On the whirlwind, still the Viking
Was of women loved and hated.
Swift their faces glinted on a
Drowning sight, —the Irish Gyda,
Wise of heart to ken a hero,
Stepping by her silken suitors,
Choosing for her lord the towering,
Shag-cloaked Northman, rough and royal;
Then Queen Sigrid, called the Haughty,
With the blow his glove had given
Whitening on her lips, a striking
That became his scathe; young Gudrun,
Who, to her slain father loyal,
Would her bridegroom's breast have riven,
Glorious as he slept beside her,
With a stab too long belated,
With the steel he, waking, wrested
From that slender hand; and Thyri,
Clinging, coaxing, pouting, weeping,
Craving still the thing denied her,
With a sting in all her sweetness,
Yet to him a new Madonna
For the baby-boy who nestled
On her bosom, all bedrifted
With her yellow hair, their starry
Little son too dear for keeping,
Tender guest that might not tarry,
Though upon those tiny temples,
Crystal cold beneath the kisses,
Like midsummer storm came showering
Down the last wild tears of Olaf,
Ever longing, ever lonely.
Nevermore to him, who there
Chokes with brine, shall maidens bear
Honey-mead in well-carved cup,
While the harpers strike the strings,
And the songs and shouts go up
Till the hollow roof-tree rings.
All the wine of life is run
For King Olaf Tryggvison.
III
All had vanished from the vision
Of those blue eyes, blankly staring
Through that pall of purple waters,
Through that peace below all motion
Of intoning tides and billows,
Where sad palaces are peopled
By the gods he had forsaken.
Too divine for vain derision
And the empty sound of censure,
Wondered they upon the waster
Of their temples, their blasphemer,
As that drifting body rested
On the knees of Ran, the husher
Of all hearts beneath the ocean.
Many mariners, far-faring
By the swan-road, subtly taken
In her nets, have proved her pillows
Soft with slumber. Azure-vested
Clustering came her thrice-three daughters,
While her lord, the hoary Ægir,
From his castle coral-steepled
Wended slow, the seaweed woven
In his mantle. Comely Niörd,
Crowned with shells, and mystic Mimir,
Ay, and many another followed,
Musing on this altar-crusher,
On this sleeping king, awaker
In a realm not theirs, this taster
Of strange bread and wine, this dreamer
Of the new dream that had cloven
Even their dusk region hollowed
Out of chaos by All-Maker,
By the Power past peradventure.
Nevermore shall Olaf's rod
Smite a silent, oak-hewn god;
Nevermore shall Olaf's torch
Fire great Woden's house, or Thor's,
Where the stubborn heathen scorch,
Constant to their ancestors,
— Souls too steadfast to be won
By King Olaf Tryggvison.
IV
From that pallid body parted,
Sped the proud, impetuous spirit
Forth to seek his throne of splendor,
Not the benches of Valhalla
In the ancient Grove of Glistening,
Palace wrought of spears, roofed over
With gold shields, the tiles of Woden,
Where brave warriors feast forever
On the boar's flesh, making merry
With the foaming mead, with minstrels
And the hero-sport of battle,
But that far more dazzling dwelling
Of the young God radiant-hearted,
Christ, whose loyal earl was Olaf.
Oh, what welcome would he merit,
He, the new faith's fierce defender,
Forcing thousands, as a drover
Urges wild, unwilling cattle,
To the font, their blond heads shrinking
From the sacred dew? Who would not
Be faith-changers, take the christening
At his gracious word, gainsayers
Of his will, had been the players
In grim shows,—maimed, torn asunder,
Stoned, slow-strangled with the swallowing
Of live snakes. So did he sever
Norway from her shrines, excelling
All Christ's folk in fealty. Should not
Horns blow up for him in Heaven,
Olaf Tryggvison, who even
Had the wizards well outwitted,
Bidding them to feast, and firing,
While they drowsed there, dull with drinking,
Hall and all; caught those who flitted,
Chained them fast on tide-swept skerry,
Sorcerers whose best spell-singing
Had not stayed the waves from following?
Are not saints and angels listening
For his rumored coming, choiring
Till their praises are as thunder
Of great minster-bells a-ringing?
Olaf stood imparadised
In the loneliness of Christ,
Of the White Lord Christ, Who said:
'Only precious stones of pity,
Holy pearls of peace may build
For each soul the Shining City.
When in thee is Heaven fulfilled,
I shall claim my champion,
Not King Olaf Tryggvison,
But my shepherd Mercy, fed
On Love the wine and Love the bread.'