THE MARINER’S TALE.

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BY R. PENN SMITH.

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Scene. A Flower Garden of a Mariner’s Asylum.

Characters. An aged Sailor and a Visiter.

Sailor.All things must move in circles as earth doth.

The orbs that make space gorgeous move in circles;

E’en space itself is one eternal circle;

For were it not, its end would sure be reached.

All drag a chain still moving round and round

Until we join the two ends of the chain:

Thus man completes his circle. No escape then.

Stranger.You spoke, sir, of a voyage.

Sailor.Oh! pardon me:

I had forgot—those circles set me wild.

Where left I off? ’Tis strange, the thread is broken.

Stranger.In the South Sea.

Sailor.O, true!—’mong fruitful isles

The jocund waters leaped when morn arose,

And fringed each billow’s snow-white pinnacle

With golden tissue. Waves that wildly roared

Through night, like fiends contending for their prey,

Now smiled serenely as a lawn in spring

Spangled with herbage ’mid the wasting snow;

And as our gallant vessel glided on

The joyful waters, like some amorous dame,

Kissed the bright prow in very wantonness,

Regardless of the wound so rudely made

In the too pliant bosom.

Stranger. You liken well

The waters to a woman; beautiful

In the bright sunshine of prosperity!

But when the tempest rages, sea-tossed man

Oft finds a shoal there, where his barque may strand,

Expecting a safe haven.

Sailor. You are bitter:

But truth is not always sweet. All on board

Assembled on the deck to hail the sun

Weaving with gold God’s heaving world of green;

While lowly murmuring the gladsome waves

Sang matins to their master. Voices full

As deep-toned organ’s swell, and others shrill

As notes of linnets, mingled with the songs

The glad sea made in praising Him who made it.

Stranger.Let the great sea and all that therein is;

The earth—its fruit—and all that live thereby—

And all that live hereafter, praise his name.

Sailor.Amid our happy concourse there was seen

A father and his little family,

And the fair partner of his joys and griefs,

The mother of his children. While they gazed

Upon the wide expanse, their bosoms heaved

With admiration for His mighty works

Who rules the fearful sea. They thanked and trusted.

Stranger.All thank and trust, who know the God they trust in.

Sailor.Among them was a fair-haired rosy boy

Who hugged his father’s knee; his little hands

Clasped in devotion to the unseen God,

In ignorance adoring; for his spirit,

Unstained of earth, was redolent of heaven,

And instinct with the praises he had learnt

From angel-lips in his celestial birth-place.

Stranger.Childhood’s inheritance, which manhood squanders,

God gives us all, while we return but little.

Sailor.As the sun rose he sung a little hymn.

The words were these. I think his father made it.

In the morning of existence,

Earth smiles, as Eden smiled on Adam;

With God and angels for companions,

Man—little lower than the angels—

Receives the truth as it was given

Once—face to face, and fresh from heaven.

In the noontide of existence,

With bathed brow and stalwort limb,

Man, singing, struggles for subsistence

For those in sin begot by him,

Rejoices in those human frailties

Which make him imitate his God.

In the sunset of existence,

Alone, in thy Gethsemane,

Quaff the cup bravely and repine not—

For man, thy God is there with thee.

Meekly obey the mandate given,

It purifies thy soul for heaven.

Stranger.A strange thought that—childhood is Adam’s Eden,

Where man beholds his Maker face to face;

The close of life is his Gethsemane,

Where he must quaff the chalice to the dregs,

Without a prayer to take it from his lips.

I’ve heard that hymn before.

Sailor. Why call it strange?

The cup is sweetened though it smack of bitter,

And the most bitter drops become the sweetest.

Gethsemane was nearer heaven with him

Who bathed with tears and blood the sacred soil,

Than fresh blown Paradise appears to have been

With angel visitants. Perchance they are

The self-same garden, typed by Spring and Autumn,

Seed-time and harvest! If that thought be true,

With bathed forelock and with steadfast soul

Gather the harvest of Gethsemane,

More precious than the flowers that smiled in Eden.

The task is thine—first husbandman, then reaper.

Stranger.Talk further of the boy who sung the hymn.

Sailor.That spotless child, the rudest of the crew

Loved, for his presence made us better men.

Stranger.True, all men who love children still grow better;

And the best men are children to the last,

At least in thought and feeling.

Sailor.There’s the circle—

Extremes must meet, and we are hedged within them.

But to pursue our voyage—and the boy.

Day passed away, and as the night came on

The full-orbed moon roiled in a cloudless sky,

And the wide waters now lay hushed in sleep.

As gentle as the slumber of a child

Wearied with gambols through the live-long day.

The night-breeze from the orange-groves passed by,

Laden with odor. Heaven was chrisolite;

The sea a living mirror, in whose depths

The richly studded concave was reflected,

Making a perfect globe; and as the ship

Pursued her trackless flight, she seemed to be

Some spirit on errand supernatural,

So dark and silently she glided on

The babbling waves were scarcely audible.

Stranger.A pleasant sail which landsmen only dream of—

But never enjoy.

Sailor.All joy hath bitterness.

Stretched on the deck the sailor-boy reposed,

And lived in dreams his infant years again.

The seamen, ’mid the shrouds aloft reclining,

Told o’er their tales of wreck and lingering death,

And in the drowsy interval was heard

The rugged cadence of the helmsman’s song.

“A pleasant sail!” But pleasure has strange wings,

She comes a zephyr and departs a whirlwind.

Stranger.Kisses the flower to blooming, then destroys.

Sailor.Sudden the helmsman’s drowsy song was hushed.

A fearful cry arose—“The ship’s on fire!”

The seamen from aloft sent back the cry;

The sailor boy shook off his happy dream,

And woke to horror. All was wild dismay!

Half sleeping—half awake, the crew came forth;

Grim death, enveloped in his robes of flame,

Marched on and laughed. There was no human power

To put aside his footstep. On he moved

In awful majesty; whate’er he touched,

True to its origin, returned to dust,

And Nature’s master-work, man’s godlike frame,

Became as worthless as the spars and sails,

Each made its pile of ashes—nothing more.

Stranger.Ashes to ashes all, and dust to dust,

The self-same mandate both on earth and sea.

Sailor.The flames attained dominion. Tyrant-like,

They ruled and raged. Upon the shrouds they seized,

Kissing destruction—laughing as they kissed;

While the broad glare they spread upon the deep

Changed the sea’s nature. Water soon became

A lake of living fire. “A pleasant sail!”

Stranger.You weep. Go on.

Sailor.O that I then had perished!

I seized the boy and leaped into the waves.

Upon a fallen spar we safely rode

Until the ship went down. “A pleasant sail!”

Her knell one shriek of mortal agony.

We had no heart to weep for their sad fate—

No heart to pray for one less terrible.

I gathered fragments from the floating wreck,

And made a raft, where two immortal souls

Struggled with time to check eternity

With frail appliance. For three days we suffered;

And then a passing ship preserved our lives

For greater suffering.

Stranger.The boy—his fate?

Sailor.His parents dead—the lad became my charge.

I then was married to a worthy woman—

God’s kindest gift. We had an only child—

My wife brought up the children as if twins,

And at a proper age he sailed with me.

He grew to manhood—noble—cheerful—kind

As those who love the artless lips of children;

A very babe was he in his affections—

A very demon in his bitter passions.

The eagle and the dove oft make their nest—

The tiger and the ermin find a lair

In the same bosom.

Stranger.What became of him?

Sailor.My wife grew sick. He loved her as his mother;

He loved my daughter too. I sailed, and left him

To till my little ground and smooth their pathway.

After three years I came to port again.

Crossing my fields, which now poured forth their increase,

I saw a man resting upon his plough,

Singing right lustily.

Stranger.What did he sing?

Sailor.In the noontide of existence,

With swarthy brow and rugged limb,

Man bravely struggles for subsistence

For those in sin begot by him;

Rejoices in all frailties—sorrows,

They draw him nearer to his God.

Stranger.The hymn of early childhood still remembered.

Sailor.A bending in the chain to form the circle.

He led me to my home—and such a home!

It seemed as if the fairies had been there

Making their May-day—wife and daughter happy.

Then, from an arbor overgrown with flowers,

He placed a prattling child upon my knee,

And called him by my name. He laughed outright—

My daughter blushed. They now were man and wife.

I danced—then blubbered like a very child.

Tears are at times a truer sign of joy

Than smiles and laughter.

Stranger. ’Twas a boy, you said?

Sailor.A boy—his bud of Paradise, he called him.

Such flowers, too, often yield most bitter fruit

In man’s Gethsemane.

Stranger.Thank God! not always.

Sailor.We dwelt together for a few brief months.

He then proposed to try the sea again,

To place the beings whom we fondly loved

Beyond the cold calamities of earth.

Three years we sailed—we prospered, and returned

With means to make those happy whom we loved.

On wearied pinions, like the dove of peace

When land was found, he flew to seek the ark

Where our best feelings day and night reposed,

While struggling with the ocean. God! O God!

No ark was there—no resting-place for him!

Even Ararat was covered with the deluge.

Stranger.I understand you not.

Sailor.His wife was false.

Stranger.Impossible!

Sailor.But true. You tremble sir.

Her father curst the memory of his child;

Her mother withered, and soon died heart-broken.

You seem disturbed.

Stranger. ’Tis past. What did your son?

Sailor.He slew the slimy reptile that crawled over him;

Put his hard heel upon her glossy front,

Trampled her out in cold blood.

Stranger.God of heaven!

Sailor.And he did right.

Stranger.Your daughter!

Sailor.He did right.

She who betrays the honor of her husband,

Regardless of her parents, self, and children,

Should cease to live, though all unfit to die.

Better to rot in earth, than crawl through life,

Offending all things with her foul pollution.

I love my God; knowledge increases love.

I ask forgiveness of him, as Christ prayed.

I am his child, and yet I curse my child.

Her sin hath made the best of prayers from my lips

An invocation of a lasting curse

On her old father’s head a mockery!

Forgive as I forgive—a lie to God!

Her sin hath robbed me of my prayer of childhood—

The prayer I gathered from my mother’s lips—

The prayer that opens the celestial portals—

The prayer He taught when He appeared as mortal.

Stranger.His destiny.

Sailor.He fled and took his child;

But not as Cain fled with the brand upon him.

’Twas sacrifice to virtue, and no murder.

When I arrived my Eden was Golgotha;

I found a corpse—my wife bereft of reason.

I buried one, attended to the other

For years until she died. The fruits of lust!

I went to sea again in search of strife—

The quiet of the land near drove me mad.

The ship I sailed in scoured the southern sea,

To quell the pirates. We o’ertook a rover.

A deadly strife ensued—’twas life or death;

Their chief and I by chance met sword to sword;

I knew him not, and, strange, he knew not me.

O! grief outstrips the rapid wing of time

In marring youthful beauty! See this scar!

His cutlas gave it—but I mastered him.

Their chief subdued, the rover soon surrendered.

Stranger.His destiny?

Sailor.The yard-arm, and a halter.

I saw him pass away.

Stranger.And said he nothing?

Sailor.Naught to the crowd—but I remember this:

In the sunset of existence,

Alone in my Gethsemane,

I quaff the cup without repining,

For God, I feel thou’rt still with me.

Meekly obey the mandate given

That purifies the soul for heaven.

Stranger.His cradle-hymn still chanted to the grave.

Sailor.The circle, sir—the end and the beginning—

The two ends of the chain are linked together.

Stranger.You said he had a boy.

Sailor.I said not so.

There was a boy, whom I have searched for since;

But, like the shadows of all earthly hope,

He hath eluded me.

Stranger.I am that boy.

Sailor.Thou!—thou that boy! The wheel is still in motion!

Stranger.I stood beside the gallows when he died.

Sailor.His bird of Paradise! A cherub then!

I’ve seen you often sleeping among roses,

And he, a guardian angel, smiling o’er you.

You have not slept on roses often since,

But wept beneath your father’s gallows-tree.

And my blind deeds have shaped your destiny.

I brought your father to a shameful death,

Which your young eyes beheld. And I’ve made known

A thing, perhaps unknown to you before—

Your mother’s infamy. Alas! poor boy!

What an inheritance have we bequeathed you!

Stranger.You did your duty, sir.

Sailor.Ay, there’s the question.

Can duty lead man’s footsteps to God’s throne,

Making life death, the glad earth Tartarus?

I snatched a fellow-being, winged for heaven,

With God’s own impress on him still unblurred,

Who, but for me, would have flown chanting there

Anthems to angels. But with ruffian hands

I checked his flight, and stayed him for perdition.

Would that the ocean had received the child!

Would I had let him perish in the flames!

Would that this wound had marked me for the grave,

Ere I had saved him for an after life

Of sin and sorrow, though impelled by—duty.

Stranger.Why do you pluck those gorgeous poppy-flowers,

And cast them in the walk?

Sailor.They now are harmless;

Suffered to ripen, they are poisonous.

Let them die blooming, while they are innoxious.

Would he had perished as these simple flowers,

Ere his bloom faded, yielding deadly seed.

Stranger.I’ve sought you, sir, to solace your old age.

Sailor.God bless my child! We’re in the circle still.

Good begets evil often—evil good.

The grandsire and the grandson close the chain—

Alone—forlorn! Yet both have done their duty.

The world goes round and round, ’till hidden things

Stalk forth as spectres from the rotten grave.

All, all is plain! These circles drive me mad!