In a cabin low and dingy, fortressed by the dunes of sand
From the charging tramp of sea-winds, and wild waves that storm the land,
Gleams a firelight, streaming outward far along the moonless bay,
Reddening, on the serried breakers, their white plumes of feathered spray.
Fishing-nets, and glistening “oil-skins,” anchors huge and grapnels small,
Hang along the smoky girders, or lean starkly on the wall,
Jutting from their own black shadows into that transfiguring flare
That lends fitful life and glory to the rudest forms they bear.
Bending to the ruddy firelight, o’er a needle thick with twine,
An old face, where storm and danger have set many a rugged line,
Sits, – a Rembrandt from the canvas risen rough in ruddy flesh —
In among a coil of drift-net, mending every broken mesh,—
A brave fisherman who wrestles with the sea-gods in their hold,
From their strong, reluctant fingers wringing life for young and old;
For a rosy little maiden sits beside him blue-eyed, sweet,
Happy, watching, feeding the quaint flame-sprites dancing at her feet.
Beautiful, and weird, and wondrous, whispering their mysterious tales,
Their quick tongues in clinging volutes lap the waifs of cruel gales,—
Fragments from the wrecks unheard from, round whose jags the witch-light play,—
With a low and mocking laughter, and then sob their lives away.
Mystic flames of liquid emerald, full of that ethereal light
That along the curling breakers burns below the crumbling white,
So bitter o’er the dark, intenser green the drifting ruin drank
From the urns of molten torquois, when the wild waves rose & sank!
There a spire of tenderest violet, with a shifting, crimson base,
Bends about a gilded moulding that caught beauty’s startled face
In the death crash; here a yellow flame, shot through with lances red,
Wraps a splinter torn by winter tempest from a keelson’s bed.
A soft wraith, – a phosphorescent vapor more than flame, — coquets
With a remnant of some casket where a rose-scent still regrets
The fair hand the last to close it, and it well may seem, that tries
In that tremulous vibration to reclaim its bridal prize.
Oft a shivering jet of quivering purple hovers, leaps, and waves
O’er the block it touches never, like a fate-fire over graves;
Vanishing, and reappearing, as a ghost whose tale untold
Burns within him till his pale lips speak the horror that they hold.
Here a shred of hemper netting, there a carved and shattered scroll.
Flashes, and goes up in glory, like a liberated soul;
While a mass of knitted live-oak, raveled on a grinding reef,
Burns with splendors many-colored as the myriad autumn leaf.
Now the little maiden tosses to the flames a rough-hewn toy, –
A rude boat, from shores unknown, launched by some lone fisher’s boy, –
And a momentary vision flits across her silent thought,
Then the lonely beach seems lonelier where her golden shells are sought.
Now the grandsire’s task is ended, and he folds her in her cot,
With a kiss of love and memory for the mother she knew not;
And he lights and warms his old heart on the waifs of young desire,
And from all the life-storms leave him kindles there his driftwood fire.
Driftwood Flames