The Fisher-Girl

Where the old grey churchyard slopes to the sea,On the sunny side of a mossed headstone;Watching the wild white butterflies passThrough the fairy forests of grass,Two little children with brown legs bareWere merrily, merrilyWeaving a wonderful daisy-chain,And chanting the rhyme that was graven thereOver and over and over again;While the warm wind came and played with their hairAnd laughed and was goneOut, far out to the foam-flowered leaLike an ocean-wandering memory.

Eighteen hundred and forty-three,Dan Trevennick was lost at sea;And, buried here at her husband's sideLies the body of Joan, his bride,Who, a little while after she lost him, died.

This was the rhyme that was graven there,And the children chanted it quietly;As the warm wind came and played with their hair,And rustled the golden grasses against the stone,And laughed and was goneTo waken the wild white flowers of the sea,And sing a song of the days that were,A song of memory, gay and blindAs the sun on the graves that it left behind;For this, ah this, was the song of the wind.

She sat on the tarred old jetty, with a sailor's careless ease,And the clear waves danced around her feet and kissed her tawny knees;Her head was bare, and her thick black hair was coiled behind a throatChiselled as hard and bright and bold as the bow of a sailing boat.

Her eyes were blue, and her jersey was blue as the lapping,slapping seas,And the rose in her cheek was painted red by the brisk Atlantic breeze;And she sat and waited her father's craft, while Dan Trevennick's eyesWere sheepishly watching her sunlit smiles and her soft contentedsighs.

For he thought he would give up his good black pipe and his eveningglasses of beer,And blunder to chapel on Sundays again for a holy Christian year,To hold that foot in his hard rough hand and kiss the least ofits toes:Then he swore at himself for a great damned fool; which he probablywas, God knows.

Often in summer twilights, too, he would sit on a coil of rope,As the stars came out in their twinkling crowds to play with wonderand hope,While he watched the side of her clear-cut face as she sat on thejetty and fished,And even to help her coil her line was more than he hoped or wished.

But once or twice o'er the dark green tide he saw with a solemndelight,Hooked and splashing after her line, a flash and a streak of white;As hand over hand she hauled it up, a great black conger eel,For Dan Trevennick to kill as it squirmed with its head beneathhis heel.

And at last, with a crash and a sunset cry from the low soft eveningstar,A shadowy schooner suddenly loomed o'er the dark green oily bar;With fairy-like spars and misty masts in the golden dusk of gloaming,Where the last white seamew's wide-spread wings were wistfullywestward roaming;

Then the song of the foreign seamen rose in the magical evening air,Faint and far away, as it seemed, but they knew it was, ah, so near;Far away as her heart from Dan's as he sheepishly drew to her side,And near as her heart when he kissed the lips of his newly promisedbride.

And when they were riding away in the train on the night of theirhoneymoon,What a whisper tingled against her cheek as it blushed like arose in June;For she said, "I am tired and ready for bed," and Dan said, "Soam I;"And she murmured, "Are you tired, too, poor Dan?" and he answeredher, "No, dear, why?"

It was never a problem-play, at least, and the end of it all is this;They were drowned in the bliss of their ignorance and buried the restin a kiss;And they loved one another their whole life long, as lovers willoften do;For it never was only the fairy-tales that rang so royally true.

The rose in her cheek was painted red by the brisk Atlantic breeze;Her eyes were blue, and her jersey was blue as the lapping, slappingseas;Her head was bare, and her thick black hair was coiled behind a throatChiselled as hard and bright and bold as the bow of a sailing boat.

Eighteen hundred and forty-three,Dan Trevennick was lost at sea;And, buried here at her husband's sideLies the body of Joan, his bride,Who, a little while after she lost him, died.