Rhymes
of
Old Plimouth

By
Herbert Randall

Published by the Author
Hartford, Conn.
1921

Copyright, 1921
By HERBERT RANDALL

FOREWORD.

If be it so—by chance—this little book should claim for me

a friend, who, sometime, when I’m far away, shall search

and find a bit of rosemary, swept through with light, and

scatter it among the grasses where I sleep,

Then, then will I have found the garland I had hoped to

win, and from that quiet spot, that Land of Youth,

where my immortal spirit dwells, I’ll send a little wandering

prayer of gratitude, that heart hath answered

heart.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT.

Acknowledgment is made to The Outlook, The American Magazine, The Youth’s Companion, New England Magazine, The Nautilus, American Forestry Magazine, Boston Transcript, The Hartford Courant and The Hartford Times, wherein have appeared many of the poems printed in this book.

Herbert Randall.

INDEX.

TO MY PILGRIM MOTHER.

To her who sanctified the simple things of life,

Across the journeying years I bring

A wreath of amaranth and asphodel

To mingle with the everlasting light about her brow,

And on her breast, serene,

I fold the glory of an angel’s wing.

Singlehurst,

Plympton, Massachusetts.

THE TRYST OF NATIONS.

Tremendous dawn! that turns its back upon a fumbling

past, and then, in radiant ecstasy, sweeps up the heavens,

down the spaces of the wind, revealing, healing, seeking

out the darkest places of the world.

Night, still crimsoned by the blood of sacrifice, has sung its

Sorrow-Song; we must forget, and pray for those who

day by day must grow more intimate with pain, or some

unspoken loneliness.

O Dawn of Love’s completion, though earth still trembles

we no longer fear imperial will, and, phoenix-like, the

peasant rises from the dust, stares with his blinded eyes,

and praises God.

Cold Royalty, intolerable, an outcast, false and dull, the

cruel lines about its lips still tightly drawn—lost in the

art of savagery—sees not the new rich dawn, hears not

the herald-trumpetings, knows not the meaning of a

broken crown.

Written for the Pilgrim Tercentenary, Plymouth, 1921.

PLYMOUTH ROCK.

Archaic sphinx, but speak to me

Of things when this old world was new,

When Chaos was baptized in fire,

Such secrets must be known to you.

Would that the magic wand were mine

To rend the silence! Yours the heart

More wise than babbling multitudes;

Of what strange scenes were you a part?

An offspring of some glacial slope,

You may have been a thing of grace

Some ancient caryatid poised,

To hold Earth’s architrave in place.

Mayhap you were a thunderbolt

By Vulcan forged for Thor, red hot;

A miracle was never made,

So this may all be true, or not.

A child of some wild catapult

Who toyed with Sisyphus, and then,

Broke loose, went tumbling down to earth,

To habitat with tribes of men.

A missile from Orion’s belt,

Some dullard chiseled out of clay;

Perchance some treasure, Glancus owned,

Before his Furies ran away.

The throne of Neptune washed ashore

From some old chamber of the sea;

A Dryad-altar, pagan-blest,

An aerolite, lo! such it be!

Made sacred by the pounding waves,

To mark the aeons on the slopes

Where time looks out to heavens afar,

And God again renews man’s hopes

And rallies him to dare and die,

For Liberty, through all the years,

To dyke and drain and build anew,

By labour, gladness, dreams and tears.

’Tis here I lift my humble prayers,

And thanks for Life’s sweet mysteries,

For joy of song within my soul,

And chant its solemn histories;

If kings shall reign, O make us kings,

On seas and on the land,

Kings of the One Great Church where all

Shall bow at Love’s command.

Thou prophet, orb, and corner-stone,

As things immortal are as one,

Clad in the garb of wonder-fire,

Of gloom and the Olympian sun,

I bring a spray of arbutus,

From underneath the snow and sleet,

The angels fashioned like a star,

And drop at your anointed feet.

TO THE STANDISH GUARDS
OF THE OLD COLONY.

New England’s old three-cornered hat still guards this ancient town,

The men who followed Lafayette are marching up and down.

The spirit born at Lexington, and all the men are here,

With fife and drum, and here they come, and each a brigadier!

The heirs of Freedom ne’er broke ranks, or failed to face the brunt,

In every fight for righteousness our men are at the front;

In every battle fought for peace the past and future meet,

And grenadiers and cavaliers still flank each home and street.

The covenants our fathers made forever move in rhyme,

They’ve never found the Port of Rest; the iron tongues of Time

Are bugling men to saddle, and comrades, side by side,

From Gettysburg to Flanders join in a dusty ride!

And here they come! and there they come! The farmer and the knight,

And dead men, shouting—“load and fire!” from parapets of light.

And every one a mother’s son, the khaki, and the gold,

Old Glory prancing on ahead, a shout in every fold!

In every star a mother’s prayer, in every stripe is found

A country’s solace for the slain to wrap him, ’round and ’round.

March on, and let your scabbards swing, your swords shall never rust;

Ride! Ride! ye belted horsemen! the sacrificial trust

Of bygone days is haloed by bayonet and scroll,

Where millions read a simple creed that binds a nation’s soul.

High on the walls of Heaven it crowns a lifting sky;

Hats off! ye peoples of the earth, America goes by!

Written on the return of the Plymouth Boys from the World War.

BURIAL HILL.

How many years have ripened, gone to seed, and died,

Since first this Holy Precinct of the Dead was set apart and sanctified.

Sunset and purple cloud have kept their vestal watch,

The morning breezes played,

And noontide spanned the waters, day by day;

The lightnings and the frost disturb them nevermore,

Wrapt in a reverie of God, they heed not if the Shepherd-stars be caring for a weary world or no,

Or violets be budding in the melting snows.

They wonder not at creeds of men,

Or why their prayers are lost in space;

Long since they found the sky-hung stretches of Eternity,

The pastorals of peace.

And yet, as ’twere a spectral mist,

I half suspect they may return sometime,

Remembering the beauty of this sylvan scene,

The wide blue vista of the deep,

Its glinting sails;

Perhaps they come to brush away the withered leaves that clog our minds,

And blaze a trail for Immortality,

More sunshine and more flowers;

To help us hear the blackbird’s whistle in the trees,

The rustle in the hedge,

The whisper in the grass when dandelions bloom,

The madrigals that lift the dampness hanging over graves.

THE OLD ROAD DOWN TO PLYMOUTH.

The old road down to Plymouth can never change for me,

In vagabond abandon it roams a century,

Braids through the dusky mornings, and evening’s afterglow,

An irridescent sunbeam, no matter where I go.

The old road down to Plymouth leads from a farmhouse door,

Leads like a jewelled ribbon, a thousand miles or more;

The door has lost its hinges, the barn has tumbled down,

But the old road down to Plymouth, the only road in town,

Winds in and out the bluets, the butterflies and hay;

I’ve sometimes made the journey a dozen times a day.

And yonder lies the vision, a sheltered, calm retreat,

For the old road down to Plymouth is a balm for weary feet.

ROSE OF PLYMOUTH.

(THE SABBATIA).

By the fairy-gods who nursed thee,

Suns and satellites grown cold,

By the loves our fathers plighted,

By my dearest thoughts untold,

Rose of Plymouth, here’s my promise,

I will wear thee in my heart,

Shield and cherish as a lover,

Nevermore with thee to part.

I will wear thee as a rainbow,

Radiant with light and spray,

Radiant with tomorrow’s splendor,

And a far-off yesterday.

I will wear thee as an emblem.

Of New England’s pride and power,

Wear thee as a starry token,

O my pretty, pretty flower.

Symbol of the pure and comely,

She that maiden of repose,

She the one they called Priscilla,

O my fair, my winsome rose.

Scintilating, brave and blushing,

Like that maiden time adores,

She the one that crossed the waters,

Idol of our Pilgrim shores.

THE ANGELUS OF PLYMOUTH WOODS.

I know a place ’mid desert wilds,

From city cares apart,

Where sheening ponds, like sleeping swans,

Dream on the world’s warm heart;

Its vesper-bells are calling, and ever calling me,

To worshipful devotion, from every leafy tree.

And none hath caught the music

Of praise and prayer divine,

More distant from life’s bitter hour

Than murmurs in the pine;

Nor acolyte of incense, nor robed Te Deum choirs,

E’er awed my soul with mysteries, so free from vain desires,

As cherubim and seraphim,

Who stay their phantom flight,

Amid the choirs of God’s green spires,

To tune their harps of light,

When evening’s drowsy whisper, the new moon in the west,

Broods Nature’s benediction, where lapwings float at rest.

PLIMOTH THROUGH AN OLD SPY GLASS.

(A SKETCH).

Deep nestled in my heart there glows,

Against an azure sky,

A picture I would paint for you,

But O, how dare I try?

My brush should be a sheldrake’s wing,

My palette were the moon,

My colors were the pulsing morn,

With mystic odors strewn;

Its background wandering tribes of men,

The wilderness, the sea,

Whose vast unbroken solitudes

Were moaning to be free.

Or yet, as on that natal day,

The fate-winds, white and cold,

The tide and wrack, far ebbing back,

Strange secrets should unfold.

We blot a page, and cross ourselves,

The cross is red, blood red;

Eternal change in girded loins,

And progress, hide the dead.

The hour glass turns, the mill-wheels hum,

O’er arching field and hill,

In rainbow tints a finger writes:

“Peace, Peace on Earth, Good Will.”

I glimpse the narrow winding streets,

Where linden trees bend o’er,

And homes with windows quaintly draped,

With hollyhocks by the door.

How were my picture made complete,

No kindly faces here?

But do I need the master-touch,

So radiant they appear.

How filled with joy, forever young,

The wanton breezes play;

How magical the distant blue,

How lily-white the way

Of phantom sails, all shimmering,

With lights where shallops roam,

When Aphrodite from the mist

Salutes the sea-born foam.

Dim as a half forgotten dream

The pageant moves along,

The Land of Promise beckoning;

I hear a spinning-song,

From lighthouse, school and steeple-bell,

O’er country-side and glen,

Love’s madrigals go ringing out

In praise of honest men.

But I would paint the twisted pines

On that old sturdy strand,

And I would have you see me kneel

And kiss the holy sand.

And then, my brush all palpitant

With light of virgin skies,

I’d consecrate my little sketch

And name it “Paradise.”

THE DREAM THAT’S IN THE SEA.

You ask me why I love the sea?

How can I tell?

I only know, the miracle, flowing, flowing, ever flowing,

And the white foam blowing,

The bubbling undertones,

The madness when the old gods rave,

The eddies, far and wide, that swing the door to memories,

When I am sad, make me glad,

With a tremulous joy,

As if I were a boy.

How can I tell the legend of its spell,

When skies are blue,

And earth rings true?

Or, underneath the mystic moon,

When I, the happiest of men,

Behold a love so great as that of life?

’Tis written in my soul,

Yet O, so far beyond the utterance of human tongue!

But sometimes, in the night,

Like a flash of light,

When I hear it breaking on the rocks,

Then speed away,

It seems to say,

“Defeat is not!”

Perhaps that’s why I love the sea.

THE OLD SKIPPER.

I laud no fabled glory

Of potentate or kings,

No beatific story

Of Love’s meanderings.