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(Excerpt)
THE WOOD-YARD fires flare over the deck, | |
| As the steamer is moored to a sunken wreck. | |
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| They glare on the smoke-stacks, tall and black; | |
| They flush on the quick steam’s flying rack; | |
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| But shimmer soft on the curly hair | 5 |
| Of children crouched by the gangway and stair, | |
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| And rest like hands on the furrowed brow | |
| Of an old man bent o’er his shrouded frau. | |
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| Dark sweeps the restless river’s tide, | |
| While the pall of night comes down to hide | 10 |
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| From the careless gaze of strangers near, | |
| The pale thin form on the pine-plank bier. | |
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| They had come from the legend-haunted Rhine | |
| To the grand New World where the free stare shine, | |
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| Seeking the fortune they might not find | 15 |
| In the Fatherland they had left behind; | |
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| And while the proud fleet ship would toss | |
| The spray from her wings like an albatross, | |
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| Their shouting children sung with glee | |
| Wild, stirring songs of the brave and free. | 20 |
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| They saw the Indian isles of palm; | |
| The Mexique shores with their spice and balm; | |
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| And the Mississippi, an inland main, | |
| With its orange-groves and its fields of cane. | |
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| Sweet, round the tawny river’s mouth, | 25 |
| Blew the rare odors of the South, | |
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| And bright in the reeds, as the steamer sped, | |
| The white crane gleamed, and the ibis red. | |
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| So, ere they reached the far-off goal | |
| Where boundless prairie gardens roll | 30 |
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| From river to mount in their flowery braid | |
| Like playgrounds by the Titans made; | |
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| While all her little ones round her crept, | |
| And looked in her dying face and wept,— | |
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| She closed her sunken, faded eyes, | 35 |
| Forever on alien woods and skies. | |
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| They were far from consecrated ground, | |
| And the unshorn forest before them frowned; | |
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| But a vagrant footfall would not press | |
| The lone grave in the wilderness; | 40 |
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| So, turning away from his cherished dead, | |
| With a quivering lip old Hermann said, | |
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| As he looked toward the peaceful, virgin sod, | |
| “I ’ll bury her there, in the name of God.” | |
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| They dug her grave in the forest lone, | 45 |
| While the night-wind murmured a sobbing moan, | |
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| And the wood-yard fires, now red, now dim, | |
| Peopled the dark with spectres grim. * * * * * | |
| The old man kneels in the sacred place; | |
| On the cold damp clay he lays his face; | 50 |
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| When out from the gloom of a moss-hung tree, | |
| A low voice murmurs, “Pray for me.” | |
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| He sees in the thicket a dark-browed man | |
| Where the green palmetto spreads its fan; | |
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| His tall form hid in the darkening night, | 55 |
| His face aglow in the flambeau’s light. | |
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| A moment more, and a palm-branch fair | |
| Is laid on the fresh-heaped hillock there; | |
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| The stranger kneels by the silent dead,— | |
| “I, too, have buried my life,” he said. * * * * * | 60 |
| Fair in the morning’s rosy fire | |
| Saint Lazarus lifts its silver spire. | |
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| The river circles the garden round, | |
| And the still, bird-haunted burying-ground. | |
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| Children about the cloisters play, | 65 |
| And tell, as a tale of yesterday, | |
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| How the corner-stone by the bishop was laid, | |
| And Brother Antonio a deacon made,— | |
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| Brother Antonio, round whose head | |
| The brown bees hum when the hives are fed; | 70 |
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| Who pulls the weeds from the garden-walks, | |
| And shields from the sun the tender stalks; | |
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| In whose boat the fisher’s children ride | |
| And sing as he rows to the farther side; | |
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| About whose feet each helpless thing | 75 |
| May buzz and blossom and crawl and sing,— | |
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| Brother Antonio, who gave his gold | |
| To build this home for the sick and old; | |
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| Who teaches the lads in the village class; | |
| Who helps old Hermann mow the grass, | 80 |
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| Or sits at his door in the twilight dim, | |
| And sings with his sons their mother’s hymn. | |
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| The ships come in with their emigrant poor | |
| Crowded like sheep on the steerage-floor; | |
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| But smiles on the lips of the feeblest play | 85 |
| As Brother Antonio leads the way, | |
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| Guiding their babes with a tender care | |
| Down the noisy deck and the gangway-stair | |
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| To the hospital grounds so fresh and cool, | |
| Where the gold-fish glance in the sparkling pool, | 90 |
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| And the gentle Sisters day and night | |
| Watch by the sick on their couches white. | |
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| Many a nook in the graveyard fair | |
| Is bright with lilies and roses rare; | |
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| But one wild spot by the river-side | 95 |
| Is fairest at midnight’s solemn tide; | |
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| And there, where the green palmetto’s fan | |
| Shadows a headstone gray and wan, | |
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| Where the long moss swings and the eddies moan, | |
| Brother Antonio prays, alone. * * * * * | 100 |
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