FIRES - BOOK III

CONTENTS

The Dancing Seal
The Slag
Devil's Edge
The Lilac Tree
The Old Man
The Hare

Thanks are due to the editors of RHYTHM, and THE NATION, for leave to reprint some of these tales.

FIRES

THE DANCING SEAL

When we were building Skua Light--

The first men who had lived a night

Upon that deep-sea Isle--

As soon as chisel touched the stone,

The friendly seals would come ashore;

And sit and watch us all the while,

As though they'd not seen men before;

And so, poor beasts, had never known

Men had the heart to do them harm.

They'd little cause to feel alarm

With us, for we were glad to find

Some friendliness in that strange sea;

Only too pleased to let them be

And sit as long as they'd a mind

To watch us: for their eyes were kind

Like women's eyes, it seemed to me.

So, hour on hour, they sat: I think

They liked to hear the chisels' clink:

And when the boy sang loud and clear,

They scrambled closer in to hear;

And if he whistled sweet and shrill,

The queer beasts shuffled nearer still:

But every sleek and sheeny skin

Was mad to hear his violin.

When, work all over for the day,

He'd take his fiddle down and play

His merry tunes beside the sea,

Their eyes grew brighter and more bright,

And burned and twinkled merrily:

And as I watched them one still night,

And saw their eager sparkling eyes,

I felt those lively seals would rise

Some shiny night ere he could know,

And dance about him, heel and toe,

Unto the fiddle's heady tune.

And at the rising of the moon,

Half-daft, I took my stand before

A young seal lying on the shore;

And called on her to dance with me.

And it seemed hardly strange when she

Stood up before me suddenly,

And shed her black and sheeny skin;

And smiled, all eager to begin...

And I was dancing, heel and toe,

With a young maiden white as snow,

Unto a crazy violin.

We danced beneath the dancing moon,

All night, beside the dancing sea,

With tripping toes and skipping heels:

And all about us friendly seals

Like Christian folk were dancing reels

Unto the fiddle's endless tune

That kept on spinning merrily

As though it never meant to stop.

And never once the snow-white maid

A moment stayed

To take a breath,

Though I was fit to drop:

And while those wild eyes challenged me,

I knew as well as well could be

I must keep step with that young girl,

Though we should dance to death.

Then with a skirl

The fiddle broke:

The moon went out:

The sea stopped dead:

And, in a twinkling, all the rout

Of dancing folk had fled...

And in the chill bleak dawn I woke

Upon the naked rock, alone.

They've brought me far from Skua Isle...

I laugh to think they do not know

That as,