Between The Road And The Harbor Poem by Fannie Stearns Davis

Between the Road and the Harbor

It is a little graveyard in a small island village, and it lies
between the blue harbor and the oyster-shell road. In the harbor
sit the patient schooners that wait for their winds;
the brief-staying yachts, clean-cut, straight, like the
type of face called aristocratic; the
heavy, dirty barges; industrious tugs; and the swarms of
small cat-boats, thick as mosquitoes in August. Over the dusty
white road go the human types of the ships - I say it so,
for the ships seem more enduring, more alive, almost, than
the people. There are slow-jogging farmers with rattling
wagons and heavy-footed nags; well-dressed young people,
whirled along by handsome horses; carters urging forward
heavy loads of wood and stone; bustling women hurrying into
the village for the marketing; chattering children, happy in
their freedom.

So in the harbor rest and wait the ships until their time comes
to fare forth over the stretching sea, away from the little island;
over the road go the people, until they journey out over the
great unknown road away from their little lives. And who
knows what lies beyond the blue hill of the sea, that piles up to
the horizon, save the ships that have sailed away? And who
knows what lies beyond the last high hill of the white road, save
those who have come to the brow of the hill, have looked over,
and have passed on out of sight?

Now between the road and the harbor lies the graveyard,
silent, stiff, and strange with the strangeness of death. I, who
know nothing of death, - who yet lie, as it were, in the blue harbor
or walk on the level road, - and must bow and be silent before
the straight white stones and must step reverently among the
little mounds; for those who are there know what none may
tell, what the wisest men on earth can not dream in their highest
visions. Yet the sandy soil covers only simple sailor-folks;
men who toiled on the water, women who waited at home. But
they know, and we, who see where they lie, and maybe smile at
the strange words written above them, know not.

There is no history about this graveyard. It must be, though,
that a story sits upon every headstone, with finger on lips, and
with crossed feet. But never does it venture out into the sunlight.
Perhaps, at night, when the east wind talks and cries to
the sea, the stones walk abroad, strange shadow-things, whispering
to each other across the wind's voice and across the low
mutter of the sea. Then tales of strong lives, lives that wrought
and grew not weary, tales of evil lives drive before the hot
wind of passion, tales of silent lives, dumb and unknown to
themselves, may speak. If a small story, short, and bright
with the blue and gold of children's day, happens there, and is
afraid at the uncouth gray forms about it, perhaps a parent-
story will clasp the little one close, and carry it back to its small home.

But no one here knows. Ships wait in the harbor, men go
over the road - the silent ones lie yet silent - new stories sit on
new stones - and there are more there that know. Ant the wind cries.

So will it be till the end of the sun shall come, and the
restless sea go home with the lost wind.