No change on these sea-islands! The huge piled clouds range White in the cobalt sky; The moss hangs, And the strong, tiring sea-winds blow-- While day on glistering day goes by. The horses plow with hanging heads, Slow, followed by a black-faced man, Indifferent to the sun; The old cotton bushes hang with whitened heads; And there among the live-oak trees, Peep the small whitewashed cabins, Painted blue, perhaps, and scarlet-turbaned women, Ample-hipped, with voices soft and warm With the lean hounds and chocolate children swarm. Day after day the ocean pumps The awful valve-gates of his heart, Diastole and systole through these estuaries; The tides flow in long, gray, weed-streaked lines; The salt water, like the planet's lifeblood, goes As if the earth were breathing with long-taken breaths And we were very near her heart. No wonder that these faces show a tired dismay, Looking on burning suns, and scarcely blithe in May; Spring's coming is too fierce with life; And summer is too long; The stunted pine trees struggle with the sand Till the eyes sicken with their dwarfing strife. There are old women here among these island homes, With dull brown eyes that look at something gray, And tight silver hair, drawn back in lines, Like the beach grass that's always blown one way; With such a melancholy in their faces I know that they have lived long in these places. The tides, the hooting owls, the daylight moons, The leprous lights and shadows of the mosses, The funereal woodlands of these coasts, Draped like a perpetual hearse, And memories of an old war's ancient losses, Dwell in their faces' shadows like gray ghosts. And worse-- The terror of the black man always near-- The drab level of the ricefields and the marsh Lends them a mask of fear. PAGE TWO SUNSHINE This is a different page. Do you suppose the sun here lavishes his heat For nothing, in these islands by the sea? No! The great green-mottled melons ripen in the fields, Bleeding with scarlet, juicy pith deliriously; And the exuberant yams grow golden, thick and sweet; And white potatoes, in grave-rows, With leaves as rough as cat tongues; And pearly onions, and cabbages With white flesh, sweet as chicken meat.