Poems – Page 11 – Poetry Out Loud

WĀʻEKAHI

O ke au i kahuli wela ka honua

O ke au i kahuli lole ka lani

O ke au i kukaiaka ka la.

E hoomalamalama i ka malama

O ke au o Makali’i ka po

O ka walewale hookumu honua ia

O ke kumu o ka lipo, i lipo ai

O ke kumu o ka Po, i po ai

O ka lipolipo, o ka lipolipo

O ka lipo o ka la, o ka lipo o ka po

Po wale hoi

Hanau ka po

At the time that turned the heat of the earth,

At the time when the heavens turned and changed,

At the time when the light of the sun was subdued

To cause light to break forth,

At the time of the night of Makalii (winter)

Then began the slime which established the earth,

The source of deepest darkness.

Of the depth of darkness, of the depth of darkness,

Of the darkness of the sun, in the depth of night,

It is night,

So was night born

There is a time when speech is all too frail,
There is a place where silence speaks the most:
What is the word to paint a human wail,
Or how heroic, speak where all is lost!
He who wears shackles mid his shackled host,
Shows valor’s steel to sturdily behave,
For life is Freedom’s last and real cost,
And so, the last resistance of the brave,
Is that stern silence which to chains prefers grave.

The scout at eve to Mickasukie came;
The stories of Twasinta were his boast,—
A stately chief, Palmecho was his name,
Had numerous herds and fields, and had a host
Of servants in the vale from Tampa’s coast.
A proud descendant of a House of Spain,
Distinguished as a patron, gen’rous most,
Whoever sought his roof, sought not in vain,
And he who tarried once, must shelter there again.

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

An Old Sailor’s Lament.

(December, 1861.)

I have a feeling for those ships,

  Each worn and ancient one,

 With great bluff bows, and broad in the beam;

  Ay, it was unkindly done.

  But so they serve the Obsolete—

  Even so, Stone Fleet!

You’ll say I’m doting; do but think

  I scudded round the Horn in one—

 The Tenedos, a glorious

  Good old craft as ever run—

  Sunk (how all unmeet!)

  With the Old Stone Fleet.

An India ship of fame was she,

  Spices and shawls and fans she bore;

 A whaler when her wrinkles came—

  Turned off! till, spent and poor,

  Her bones were sold (escheat)!

  Ah! Stone Fleet.

Four were erst patrician keels

  (Names attest what families be),

 The Kensington, and Richmond too,

  Leonidas, and Lee:

  But now they have their seat

  With the Old Stone Fleet.

To scuttle them—a pirate deed—

  Sack them, and dismast;

 They sunk so slow, they died so hard,

  But gurgling dropped at last.

  Their ghosts in gales repeat

  Woe’s us, Stone Fleet!

And all for naught. The waters pass—

  Currents will have their way;

 Nature is nobody’s ally; ’tis well;

  The harbor is bettered—will stay.

  A failure, and complete,

  Was your Old Stone Fleet.

Cool your heels on the rail of an observation car.
Let the engineer open her up for ninety miles an hour.
Take in the prairie right and left, rolling land and new hay crops,
swaths of new hay laid in the sun.
A gray village flecks by and the horses hitched in front of the
post-office never blink an eye.
A barnyard and fifteen Holstein cows, dabs of white on a black
wall map, never blink an eye.
A signalman in a tower, the outpost of Kansas City, keeps his
place at a window with the serenity of a bronze statue on a
dark night when lovers pass whispering.

Farewell, alas! my native land adored!
         I’ve sung thy praises in a faithful strain;
But westward life’s imperial tides have poured,
         Eddying in towns, and sweeping on again,
While braver hearts have in their strength ignored
         The old South limitations which remain.
And I must leave the land which gave me birth,
Or pine, an alien, on my native hearth.

Free labor still our country’s hope remains,—
         In this our largest manhood shall be grown;
The spirit of vast woods and vaster plains,—
         Canyons and geysers of the Yellowstone;
Alaskan summits, where bald winter reigns,
         And rests on base of gold his icy throne,—
These all are prophecies of what shall be,
When Freedom’s sons shall leave their brothers free.

And there was silence in the pulsing air,
         While in the noon sun fluttered banners gay—
A lull that breathed the courage of despair;
         A hush which meant a pause in which to pray,
There youths whose lives had never known a care
         Confronted veterans with locks of aged gray;
Before the cool glare of the veteran,
The blue-eyed youth stood dauntless, man to man.

I stood where the contending armies bled—
         A hundred thousand men on either side.
The past returned. Around me rose the dead,
         The brazen bugles rang out far and wide;
The clouds of thund’rous battle round me spread
         O’er lurid fields, where mighty chiefs did ride,
And ranks of serried steel swung into sight,
Flashing afar—an army in its might.