"A Gloucester Song" by Helen Mansfield

Written for the Tercentennial Celebration in 1923


I sing the prehistoric. Ah, the spell
of things we know not surely, or not well!
We know they were, but know not how they were.—
To see into the past;—its secrets share:
Its mystery to pierce; the veil to raise
That dims the outline of those ancient days,—
This is a yearning that will not be stilled.
Yet how may these vague outlines e'er be filled?
Not ours the spade, revealing things long hid;
Not ours the soil. These virgin rocks forbid
The probing that awaits the Central lands;—
Thirty or forty feet to virgin sands—
Timid explorers do but scratch the ground
And say two thousand years is all they've found.
Let them dig deeper. They shall find full store
Of prehistoric things unguessed before.
Remember Crete! Its wondrous tale, retold,
Ran the world's history in other mould.
This changing world gives every land its own!
Brings it to high estate,—then casts its down.
To Wipe the slate, it breeds a ruder race,
And brings it in to take its better's place.
And commonly it wipes the slate so clean,
That higher life is as it ne'er had been.
The North Atlantic came not to its own
Until the South Atlantic's day was done.
Deem they it rolled through time without an aim;
An unploughed waste, until Columbus came ?
The white man's pride of birth would have it so:
The Red Man's pedigree might answer: No.

Once on a time, a red-skinned, beardless race
In early Egypt had its distant place.
'Twas driven thence in unrecorded day,
And crossed to Crete, by mariners' highway.
And there it proved itself a mighty race;
Ruled the Aegean with a lordly grace,
Developed arts and letters with rare skill,
Expanding in wide colonies at will.
Its fleets expanded, too, keeping the pace
With a great commerce; and it left its trace,
Brilliant and beautiful, as far as Spain
Without the Straights,—Methinks the rest is plain.—
So much is known.—What follows it, may seem
But fancy's flight,—a prehistoric dream.—
But one more step for Sea-Power of the day
Down Afric's coast to win its easy way;
And, daring purposely, or blown from course,
The Ocean at its narrowest part to cross.
Finding a haven and a cordial clime,
They went ashore and tarried for a time.
There all things pleased them well.—The land was kind,
And offered all things for a life refined.
Freely it gave, while asking no return,—
(Unlike the North,—its favors hardly won.)
Skilled seamen, they. Doubt not they went and came
Just as Columbus did. Their lot fell out the same.
Able ships followed them. More harbors on this side
Were visited; coasts picked up, far and wide.
And so in time they set up mighty states
Their arts, transplanted, flourishing apace.—
At last their sea-power failed them. Some rude race,
Coming to occupy its better's place,
Repeated the catastrophe of Crete,
And drove them forth, a varying fate to meet;
Their work undone,—no chronicle to tell
How 'twixt the continents the curtain fell
For many a day,—while, struggling with fate,
The generations, lapsing from that high estate,
Ended in Maya carving, rich but rude,
Decadent echo of the artist's mood.
'Twas so in Crete. Art saw its greatest day.
Then all grew coarse, till darkness held full sway
O'er copper weapons and the copper skin,
Palefaces with iron did the victory win.
The tribes that conquered Crete were landsmen,—hugged the shore;
And the great seas were ploughed by keel no more
For many a day, till the Phoenicians-came:
Whatever Crete had done, essayed the same,
But fell far short. Not theirs the eager mind,
The spiritual flame,—the artist soul behind.

Should evidence be claimed, to win belief,—
Savonarola looks an Apache chief
In every line. A throwback, one would say,
To some Etruscan strain of ancient day.
And in Oaxaca at a certain feast,
The animals are brought before the priest
Painted in patterns, and then led for show,
As in Etruscan tombs of long ago.
And by red men! red on Etruscan wall,
As on the Cretan,—Able seamen, all.

I sing the Visitor of Beauport Bay.
I sing Champlain, who named, and sailed away;—
Who first to paper gave our unknown shape,
And called it prettily "the Island Cape."
He knew not then how aptly it was said.
(Beauport, that year, was yet unvisited.)
Next year—'twas sixteen-six,—he came again,
And trod "the neck" that links us to the main.—
Upshore he comes, and makes Cat Ledge afar,
Then turns the corner, and behold! Dog Bar,
Showing its teeth, mayhap, in evil shape,
To bar invasion of our Island Cape.
O'ertaken now by falling shades of night,
Prudence doth counsel waiting for the light.
So they cast anchor, and securely ride,
Waiting to enter on the morning tide.
The seaman's glance supplies the seaman's lore,
And seeks the channel on the western shore.-
Round Rock astern, Shag Rock, Black Rocks are passed,
And lo! the inner harbor's gained at last.

On either side a massy buttress stands.
Two tidal islands, with their silver sands
Stretching away and shining from afar,
The ruder waters from the haven bar.
Calm and serene, from teasing winds secure,
The silver chalice laps the terraced shore,—
The while in filmy haze retreating still,
The virgin forests climbs the distant hill,
And meets the sky that bends its azure bow
O'er the primeval beauty spread below.
In verdure fair bedight, the contour swells
Or dips to meet the tide that lingering tells
Rose Bank how witching is her flowery sheen,
What time a fairy islet swims between.
Such, such the scene that met the sailor's eye!
Such, such the heritage we now may scarce descry.
In those old times so dim, so far away,
The red men marred no beauty. Sages, say!
Which was the worthy heir,—or we or they ?
One taken, and one left. We tread the press alone.
How heavy, then, our debt for beauty once our own!
What if one were taken and one left again!
But ours the parting, and ours the pain!
Oh, may we strive to be the worthy heir
To God His jewel; trusted to our care!

II

I sing the Settlement. 'Tis prehistoric, too,
In that it offers to the eager view
No salient where a tendril tip might cling,
And weave a legend that a bard might sing.—
The Settlement!—Lend, Muse, a guiding ray.
A light where no light is, upon their way
Who stanchly came and stanchly carried through,
Or ill or well,—the thing they had to do.
The stoutest heart might fail.—
Yet this a doughty race!
Thirty-five years before,—half one life's space,—
It met the Armada face to face,
And did not quail.

A harbor without light,--not e'en a wigwam 's smoke,
And ice-sheathed rocks repel the breaker's sullen stroke.
And did they hear,—when this an empty shore,—
Voices where no voice is, amid the roar ?—
And over, under all, the rote of the great sea,
Playing, outside, in ceaseless symphony.
Orion fought the Bull beyond the Point, as now
Dealing him in the dark a strong, left-handed blow.
Arcturus and the Bears swung round the Pole all night.
High-riding winter moon. Then came thy light.
In clear New England air, and on the snow,
Night was as day. Thy waning was their woe.—
From rimy hill behind, broke out the wildcat's yell,—
The sooty hemlock's shade his citadel.
Was't they that named Cat Pond ?—and did they trace
In yon deep dell up there his hiding-place ?—
Over the shoulder of that mighty hill,
When towns were settled, ran the highway still.
The swamps and marshes,—now the level way,—
Were skirted all; nor crossed in many a day.

III

The reason why this was the spot they took
To set their stages is not far to look.
It is far out. Great ledges, high and bold,
Do sweep about, and in their arms do hold
A tiny haven backing on the sea,
As safe an anchorage as well may be.
Added to this, a spring within arm's reach,
From the bank gushing on the narrow beach.
Could Beauport offer anything more rare ?
No wonder that they set their stages there.

A band of Indians, in a roving show,
Chanced to come hither several years ago,
And on Stage Head an ancient shrine did trace,
And bent the knee, and said: "A holy place."
(The Great Stone Lizard that doth guard the spring,
Along the rocks his mighty shape doth fling.
A natural semblance, all by chance descried,
To primal man was ever sanctified.)-
But there he lay, while winters came and went,
Waiting for summer and the Sea Serpent,
The oldest visitor to Beauport Bay.
Hither he came, in waters smooth to play
And, when he tired of the open reach,
Stretch out and sleep along the shallow beach.
The Indians,-so runs a record dim,-
Advised the white man not to trouble him.

"Fisherman's Field!"—"the first land cleared in town."—
(By whites, that is. Red men, with tools of stone,—
So Champlain says,—had cleared some land before.
See how the white man stole the red man's score!)—
And while he treads "the neck" that o'erlooks all,—
The neck that suffered then nor "cut" nor wall,—
And eastward turns his gaze, the seaman looks
Across "a meadow," watered by two brooks:—
The "small stream" next him, that doth serve his crew
For the ship's washing, and another, too,—
(On level pathway to the beach,—the rill
That runs out by the rocks beneath the hill.)
Wigwams he draws there on the harbor's rim,
Beyond this meadow where they danced for him.
Two hundred Indians, he counts, or more,
Were here at that time. But the whole Bay Shore
Was swept by pestilence ere settlers came,
And gave the Island Cape an English name.