Classic Poem

Dear old Nantucket's isle of sand,
An ancient exile from the Land,—
Free from the devastating hand
Of pomp and pillage,
I find it year by year with all
Its white-winged fleet of cat-boats small
Guarding what Fancy loves to call
The violet village.

The yellow cliffs, the houses white,
The wind-mill with its wheel in sight,
The church spire and the beacons bright,
All bunched together;
How picturesque they are! How fair!
And, O how fragrant is the air,
With pink wild-roses everywhere
And purple heather!

Half foreign seems the little town,—
The narrow streets, the tumble-down
And rotting wharves whose past renown
Is linked with whalers,—
The roofs with Look-outs whence they saw
In bygone days the big ships draw
Homeward with oil, and watched with awe
The sea-worn sailors:

Half foreign, but the better half
Is like the flag that from the staff
Flings out its welcome, starry laugh,—
Native completely;
The shops, the schools, the zigzag lines
Of shingled dwellings hung with vines,
And gardens wrought in quaint designs
And smelling sweetly.

Here one may wander forth and meet
Skipper of eighty years whose feet
Find youth yet in the paven street;
And if one hunger
For yarns of wrecks and water lore,
Pass the tobacco round once more,
And hear what happened long before,
When he was younger.

Enchanting tales of wind and wave,
Witty, pathetic, gay and grave,—
One listens in the merman's cave
Enraptured, breathless,
While from the gray, bewhiskered lips
Come stories of the sea and ships;
The careful skipper never skips
The legends deathless.

Then out again, and let us go
Where fresh and cool the breezes blow
Over the dunes of Pocomo,
Where bird and berry
Conspire to lure us on until,
Over the gently sloping hill,
We see Wauwinet, white and still
And peaceful very.

Here is the ending of the quest;
Here, on this Island of the Blest,
Is found at last the Port of Rest,—
Remote, romantic:
A land-flower broken from the stem,
And few indeed there be of them
Fitted so perfectly to gem
The blue Atlantic.

Dreamy, delicious, drowsy, dull,—
A poppy-island beautiful;
And there are poppies here to cull
Until the plunder
Provokes the soul to sleep and dream
Amid the glamour and the gleam,
And makes the world about us seem
A world of wonder!