Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. (1878–1962). Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1920.

The Apples

—The world is wasted with fire and sword

But the apples of gold hang over the sea.—

When the wounded seaman heard the ocean daughters

With their dreamy call

Lull the stormy demon of the waters,

He remembered all.

He remembered knowing of an island charted,

“Past a flying fire,”

Where a fruit was growing, winey-hearted,

Called “the mind’s desire.”

Near him broke the stealing rollers into jewels

Round a tree, and there

Sorrow’s end and healing, peace, renewals

Ripened in the air.

So he knew he’d found it and he watched the glory

Burning on the tree

With the dancers round it—like the story—

In the swinging sea.

Lovely round the honey-colored fruit, the motion

Made a leafy stir.

Songs were in that sunny tree of ocean

Where the apples were.

First the ocean sung them, then the daughters after,

Dancing to the word.

Beauty danced among them with low laughter

And the harp was heard.

In that sea’s immeasurable music sounded

Songs of peace, and still

From the bough the treasure hung down rounded

To the seaman’s will.

Redder than the jewel-seeded beach and sharper

Were the wounds he bore,

Hearing, past the cruel dark, a harper

Lulling on the shore.

Long he watched the wonders, ringed with lovely perils,

Watched the apples gleam

In the sleepy thunders on the beryls,

Then he breathed his dream:

“Bloody lands and flaming seas and cloudy slaughter,

Hateful fogs unfurled,

Steely horror, shaming sky and water,

These have wreathed the world.

“Give me fruit for freighting, till my anchor grapples

Home beyond the vast.

Earth shall end her hating through the apples

And be healed at last.”

Then the sea-girls, lifting up their lovely voices

With the secret word,

Sang it through the drifting ocean noises

And the sailor heard;

Ocean-old the answers reached his failing sinew,

Touched, unveiled his eyes;

Beach and bough and dancers are within you,

There the island lies.

“Though the heavens harden, though the thunders hover,

Though our song be mute,

Burning in our garden for the lover

Still unfolds the fruit.”

Outward from that shore the happy sailor, turning,

Passed the fleets of sleep,

Passed his pain and bore the secret, burning,

Homeward to the deep.

The Nation