The Hemp
(A Virginia Legend.)
The Planting of the Hemp.
Captain Hawk scourged clean the seas (Black is the gap below the plank) From the Great North Bank to the Caribbees (Down by the marsh the hemp grows rank).
His fear was on the seaport towns, The weight of his hand held hard the downs.And the merchants cursed him, bitter and black, For a red flame in the sea-fog's wrack Was all of their ships that might come back.
For all he had one word alone, One clod of dirt in their faces thrown, "The hemp that shall hang me is not grown!"His name bestrode the seas like Death.The waters trembled at his breath.
This is the tale of how he fell, Of the long sweep and the heavy swell, And the rope that dragged him down to hell.
The fight was done, and the gutted ship, Stripped like a shark the sea- gulls strip,Lurched blindly, eaten out with flame, Back to the land from where she came, A skimming horror, an eyeless shame.
And Hawk stood upon his quarter-deck, And saw the sky and saw the wreck.
Below, a butt for sailors' jeers, White as the sky when a white squall nears, Huddled the crowd of the prisoners.
Over the bridge of the tottering plank, Where the sea shook and the gulf yawned blank, They shrieked and struggled and dropped and sank,Pinioned arms and hands bound fast.One girl alone was left at last.
Sir Henry Gaunt was a mighty lord.He sat in state at the Council board; The governors were as nought to him.From one rim to the other rimOf his great plantations, flung out wide Like a purple cloak, was a full month's ride.
Life and death in his white hands lay, And his only daughter stood atbay, Trapped like a hare in the toils that day.
He sat at wine in his gold and his lace, And far away, in a bloody place, Hawk came near, and she covered her face.
He rode in the fields, and the hunt was brave, And far away his daughter gave A shriek that the seas cried out to hear, And he could not see and he could not save.
Her white soul withered in the mire As paper shrivels up in fire, And Hawk laughed, and he kissed her mouth, And her body he took for his desire.
The Growing of the Hemp.
Sir Henry stood in the manor room, And his eyes were hard gems in the gloom.
And he said, "Go dig me furrows five Where the green marsh creeps like a thing alive -- There at its edge, where the rushes thrive."And where the furrows rent the ground, He sowed the seed of hemp around.
And the blacks shrink back and are sore afraid At the furrows five that rib the glade, And the voodoo work of the master's spade.
For a cold wind blows from the marshland near, And white things move, and the night grows drear, And they chatter and crouch and are sick with fear.
But down by the marsh, where the gray slaves glean, The hemp sprouts up, and the earth is seen Veiled with a tenuous mist of green.
And Hawk still scourges the Caribbees, And many men kneel at his knees.
Sir Henry sits in his house alone, And his eyes are hard and dull like stone.
And the waves beat, and the winds roar, And all things are as they were before.
