We here present the last and most ambitious of Robert Hayman’s rhymes, “The Hermit,” in which a fisherman of Bristol’s Hope, relieved of his possessions by the pirate Peter Easton, addresses that now absent personage and, because of his misfortune, meditates on Newfoundland and casts upon the island and all its inhabitants an everlasting curse — then runs away.
Easton, bastard, plundering whore,
You sank my boat, you burned my store.
“But look ye on the bright side now,
Men there are worse off than thou,”
You said as you did sail away.
If such there be for them I pray.
“I leave and leave you with your life,
I leave and with me leaves your wife.
To her ’tis nothing new, I’m told.
She has with all your friends made bold,
And all the men from down the shore
And back again, and many more.”
My friends did swear this was a lie
And some of them with me did cry,
And swore that they would miss her, too,
“As much, or even more, than you.”
“I never will see her again.
She’s gone with Easton and his men,”
I said to them who laughed at me,
“But you at rest will never be.
Smallpox and scurvy, wind and cold,
Because of these you’ll ne’er grow old.
Red men, pirates, storms, starvation:
Death will seem like consolation.
Now on your heads this curse I place,
On you and yours and all your race
And those of other races, too.
Who sets foot here the day will rue.”
I then strode off into the wood,
The Hope behind me left for good,
And by myself from then did live,
To those back home no thought did give.
I slept according to the sun,
And for a spear forswore my gun,
And tried to live as Red Men did,
Though from the Red Men too I hid.
My days in solitude I spent,
My nights the same, inside my tent.
I lay there in my little room,
Upon my thoughts a cast of gloom.
“This land should not have settled been,
Its shores should have remained unseen.
Its woods should not have been traversed
Not e’en by those who got here first.
They’ll soon be gone, the ochre-men
Who number fewer now than when
John Cabot landed on the Cape
Or on them old John Guy did gape.”
I then did drowse and close my eyes
Of Red Men dreamed and their demise.
Whereas the Hopers still did come
And plagued though by my curse their sum
Despite the French and English crown,
Did ne’er to nothing dwindle down.
I stirred and soon was wide awake,
Too late discovered my mistake.
When on the Hope the curse I hung,
It was my own death knell I rung.
I, like the Red Men, soon would be
Consigned unto eternity.
I wished this Newfoundland could be
Unlooked at except by me,
And when I died looked at by none.
Then out of time this place would run.
The land again would be the same
As before the people came.
It would not be empty, lonely
Or forlorn. It simply would not be.
Hotel Newfoundland, New York, 1920
The San, St. John’s, 1922
Twelve Mile House, June 1923