The summer moon, which shines in so many a tale, was beaming over a
broad extent of uneven country. Some of its brightest rays were flung
into a spring of water, where no traveller, toiling, as the writer has,
up the hilly road beside which it gushes, ever failed to quench his
thirst. The work of neat hands and considerate art was visible about
this blessed fountain. An open cistern, hewn and hollowed out of solid
stone, was placed above the waters, which filled it to the brim, but by
some invisible outlet were conveyed away without dripping down its
sides. Though the basin had not room for another drop, and the
continual gush of water made a tremor on the surface, there was a
secret charm that forbade it to overflow. I remember, that when I had
slaked my summer thirst, and sat panting by the cistern, it was my
fanciful theory that Nature could not afford to lavish so pure a
liquid, as she does the waters of all meaner fountains.
While the moon was hanging almost perpendicularly over this spot, two
figures appeared on the summit of the hill, and came with noiseless
footsteps down towards the spring. They were then in the first
freshness of youth; nor is there a wrinkle now on either of their
brows, and yet they wore a strange, old-fashioned garb. One, a young
man with ruddy cheeks, walked beneath the canopy of a broad-brimmed
gray hat; he seemed to have inherited his great-grandsire’s
square-skirted coat, and a waistcoat that extended its immense flaps to
his knees; his brown locks, also, hung down behind, in a mode unknown
to our times. By his side was a sweet young damsel, her fair features
sheltered by a prim little bonnet, within which appeared the vestal
muslin of a cap; her close, long-waisted gown, and indeed her whole
attire, might have been worn by some rustic beauty who had faded half a
century before. But that there was something too warm and life-like in
them, I would here have compared this couple to the ghosts of two young
lovers who had died long since in the glow of passion, and now were
straying out of their graves, to renew the old vows, and shadow forth
the unforgotten kiss of their earthly lips, beside the moonlit spring.
“Thee and I will rest here a moment, Miriam,” said the young man, as
they drew near the stone cistern, “for there is no fear that the elders
know what we have done; and this may be the last time we shall ever
taste this water.”
Thus speaking, with a little sadness in his face, which was also
visible in that of his companion, he made her sit down on a stone, and
was about to place himself very close to her side; she, however,
repelled him, though not unkindly.
“Nay, Josiah,” said she, giving him a timid push with her maiden hand,
“thee must sit farther off, on that other stone, with the spring
between us. What would the sisters say, if thee were to sit so close to
me?”
“But we are of the world’s people now, Miriam,” answered Josiah.
The girl persisted in her prudery, nor did the youth, in fact, seem
altogether free from a similar sort of shyness; so they sat apart from
each other, gazing up the hill, where the moonlight discovered the tops
of a group of buildings. While their attention was thus occupied, a
party of travellers, who had come wearily up the long ascent, made a
halt to refresh themselves at the spring. There were three men, a
woman, and a little girl and boy. Their attire was mean, covered with
the dust of the summer’s day, and damp with the night-dew; they all
looked woebegone, as if the cares and sorrows of the world had made
their steps heavier as they climbed the hill; even the two little
children appeared older in evil days than the young man and maiden who
had first approached the spring.
“Good evening to you, young folks,” was the salutation of the
travellers; and “Good evening, friends,” replied the youth and damsel.
“Is that white building the Shaker meeting-house?” asked one of the
strangers. “And are those the red roofs of the Shaker village?”
“Friend, it is the Shaker village,” answered Josiah, after some
hesitation.
The travellers, who, from the first, had looked suspiciously at the
garb of these young people, now taxed them with an intention which all
the circumstances, indeed, rendered too obvious to be mistaken.
“It is true, friends,” replied the young man, summoning up his courage.
“Miriam and I have a gift to love each other, and we are going among
the world’s people, to live after their fashion. And ye know that we do
not transgress the law of the land; and neither ye, nor the elders
themselves, have a right to hinder us.”
“Yet you think it expedient to depart without leave-taking,” remarked
one of the travellers.
“Yea, ye-a,” said Josiah, reluctantly, “because father Job is a very
awful man to speak with; and being aged himself, he has but little
charity for what he calls the iniquities of the flesh.”
“Well,” said the stranger, “we will neither use force to bring you back
to the village, nor will we betray you to the elders. But sit you here
awhile, and when you have heard what we shall tell you of the world
which we have left, and into which you are going, perhaps you will turn
back with us of your own accord. What say you?” added he, turning to
his companions. “We have travelled thus far without becoming known to
each other. Shall we tell our stories, here by this pleasant spring,
for our own pastime, and the benefit of these misguided young lovers?”
In accordance with this proposal, the whole party stationed themselves
round the stone cistern; the two children, being very weary, fell
asleep upon the damp earth, and the pretty Shaker girl, whose feelings
were those of a nun or a Turkish lady, crept as close as possible to
the female traveller, and as far as she well could from the unknown
men. The same person who had hitherto been the chief spokesman now
stood up, waving his hat in his hand, and suffered the moonlight to
fall full upon his front.
“In me,” said he, with a certain majesty of utterance,—“in me, you
behold a poet.”
Though a lithographic print of this gentleman is extant, it may be well
to notice that he was now nearly forty, a thin and stooping figure, in
a black coat, out at elbows; notwithstanding the ill condition of his
attire, there were about him several tokens of a peculiar sort of
foppery, unworthy of a mature man, particularly in the arrangement of
his hair which was so disposed as to give all possible loftiness and
breadth to his forehead. However, he had an intelligent eye, and, on
the whole, a marked countenance.
“A poet!” repeated the young Shaker, a little puzzled how to understand
such a designation, seldom heard in the utilitarian community where he
had spent his life. “Oh, ay, Miriam, he means a varse-maker, thee must
know.”
This remark jarred upon the susceptible nerves of the poet; nor could
he help wondering what strange fatality had put into this young man’s
mouth an epithet, which ill-natured people had affirmed to be more
proper to his merit than the one assumed by himself.
“True, I am a verse-maker,” he resumed, “but my verse is no more than
the material body into which I breathe the celestial soul of thought.
Alas! how many a pang has it cost me, this same insensibility to the
ethereal essence of poetry, with which you have here tortured me again,
at the moment when I am to relinquish my profession forever! O Fate!
why hast thou warred with Nature, turning all her higher and more
perfect gifts to the ruin of me, their possessor? What is the voice of
song, when the world lacks the ear of taste? How can I rejoice in my
strength and delicacy of feeling, when they have but made great sorrows
out of little ones? Have I dreaded scorn like death, and yearned for
fame as others pant for vital air, only to find myself in a middle
state between obscurity and infamy? But I have my revenge! I could have
given existence to a thousand bright creations. I crush them into my
heart, and there let them putrefy! I shake off the dust of my feet
against my countrymen! But posterity, tracing my footsteps up this
weary hill, will cry shame upon the unworthy age that drove one of the
fathers of American song to end his days in a Shaker village!”
During this harangue, the speaker gesticulated with great energy, and,
as poetry is the natural language of passion, there appeared reason to
apprehend his final explosion into an ode extempore. The reader must
understand that, for all these bitter words, he was a kind, gentle,
harmless, poor fellow enough, whom Nature, tossing her ingredients
together without looking at her recipe, had sent into the world with
too much of one sort of brain, and hardly any of another.
“Friend,” said the young Shaker, in some perplexity, “thee seemest to
have met with great troubles; and, doubtless, I should pity them, if—if
I could but understand what they were.”
“Happy in your ignorance!” replied the poet, with an air of sublime
superiority. “To your coarser mind, perhaps, I may seem to speak of
more important griefs when I add, what I had well-nigh forgotten, that
I am out at elbows, and almost starved to death. At any rate, you have
the advice and example of one individual to warn you back; for I am
come hither, a disappointed man, flinging aside the fragments of my
hopes, and seeking shelter in the calm retreat which you are so anxious
to leave.”
“I thank thee, friend,” rejoined the youth, “but I do not mean to be a
poet, nor, Heaven be praised! do I think Miriam ever made a varse in
her life. So we need not fear thy disappointments. But, Miriam,” he
added, with real concern, “thee knowest that the elders admit nobody
that has not a gift to be useful. Now, what under the sun can they do
with this poor varse-maker?”
“Nay, Josiah, do not thee discourage the poor man,” said the girl, in
all simplicity and kindness. “Our hymns are very rough, and perhaps
they may trust him to smooth them.”
Without noticing this hint of professional employment, the poet turned
away, and gave himself up to a sort of vague reverie, which he called
thought. Sometimes he watched the moon, pouring a silvery liquid on the
clouds, through which it slowly melted till they became all bright;
then he saw the same sweet radiance dancing on the leafy trees which
rustled as if to shake it off, or sleeping on the high tops of hills,
or hovering down in distant valleys, like the material of unshaped
dreams; lastly, he looked into the spring, and there the light was
mingling with the water. In its crystal bosom, too, beholding all
heaven reflected there, he found an emblem of a pure and tranquil
breast. He listened to that most ethereal of all sounds, the song of
crickets, coming in full choir upon the wind, and fancied that, if
moonlight could be heard, it would sound just like that. Finally, he
took a draught at the Shaker spring, and, as if it were the true
Castalia, was forthwith moved to compose a lyric, a Farewell to his
Harp, which he swore should be its closing strain, the last verse that
an ungrateful world should have from him. This effusion, with two or
three other little pieces, subsequently written, he took the first
opportunity to send, by one of the Shaker brethren, to Concord, where
they were published in the New Hampshire Patriot.
Meantime, another of the Canterbury pilgrims, one so different from the
poet that the delicate fancy of the latter could hardly have conceived
of him, began to relate his sad experience. He was a small man, of
quick and unquiet gestures, about fifty years old, with a narrow
forehead, all wrinkled and drawn together. He held in his hand a
pencil, and a card of some commission-merchant in foreign parts, on the
back of which, for there was light enough to read or write by, he
seemed ready to figure out a calculation.
“Young man,” said he, abruptly, “what quantity of land do the Shakers
own here, in Canterbury?”
“That is more than I can tell thee, friend,” answered Josiah, “but it
is a very rich establishment, and for a long way by the roadside thee
may guess the land to be ours, by the neatness of the fences.”
“And what may be the value of the whole,” continued the stranger, “with
all the buildings and improvements, pretty nearly, in round numbers?”
“Oh, a monstrous sum,—more than I can reckon,” replied the young
Shaker.
“Well, sir,” said the pilgrim, “there was a day, and not very long ago,
neither, when I stood at my counting-room window, and watched the
signal flags of three of my own ships entering the harbor, from the
East Indies, from Liverpool, and from up the Straits, and I would not
have given the invoice of the least of them for the title-deeds of this
whole Shaker settlement. You stare. Perhaps, now, you won’t believe
that I could have put more value on a little piece of paper, no bigger
than the palm of your hand, than all these solid acres of grain, grass,
and pasture-land would sell for?”
“I won’t dispute it, friend,” answered Josiah, “but I know I had rather
have fifty acres of this good land than a whole sheet of thy paper.”
“You may say so now,” said the ruined merchant, bitterly, “for my name
would not be worth the paper I should write it on. Of course, you must
have heard of my failure?”
And the stranger mentioned his name, which, however mighty it might
have been in the commercial world, the young Shaker had never heard of
among the Canterbury hills.
“Not heard of my failure!” exclaimed the merchant, considerably piqued.
“Why, it was spoken of on ’Change in London, and from Boston to New
Orleans men trembled in their shoes. At all events, I did fail, and you
see me here on my road to the Shaker village, where, doubtless (for the
Shakers are a shrewd sect), they will have a due respect for my
experience, and give me the management of the trading part of the
concern, in which case I think I can pledge myself to double their
capital in four or five years. Turn back with me, young man; for though
you will never meet with my good luck, you can hardly escape my bad.”
“I will not turn back for this,” replied Josiah, calmly, “any more than
for the advice of the varse-maker, between whom and thee, friend, I see
a sort of likeness, though I can’t justly say where it lies. But Miriam
and I can earn our daily bread among the world’s people as well as in
the Shaker village. And do we want anything more, Miriam?”
“Nothing more, Josiah,” said the girl, quietly.
“Yea, Miriam, and daily bread for some other little mouths, if God send
them,” observed the simple Shaker lad.
Miriam did not reply, but looked down into the spring, where she
encountered the image of her own pretty face, blushing within the prim
little bonnet. The third pilgrim now took up the conversation. He was a
sunburnt countryman, of tall frame and bony strength, on whose rude and
manly face there appeared a darker, more sullen and obstinate
despondency, than on those of either the poet or the merchant.
“Well, now, youngster,” he began, “these folks have had their say, so
I’ll take my turn. My story will cut but a poor figure by the side of
theirs; for I never supposed that I could have a right to meat and
drink, and great praise besides, only for tagging rhymes together, as
it seems this man does; nor ever tried to get the substance of hundreds
into my own hands, like the trader there. When I was about of your
years, I married me a wife,—just such a neat and pretty young woman as
Miriam, if that’s her name,—and all I asked of Providence was an
ordinary blessing on the sweat of my brow, so that we might be decent
and comfortable, and have daily bread for ourselves, and for some other
little mouths that we soon had to feed. We had no very great prospects
before us; but I never wanted to be idle; and I thought it a matter of
course that the Lord would help me, because I was willing to help
myself.”
“And didn’t He help thee, friend?” demanded Josiah, with some
eagerness.
“No,” said the yeoman, sullenly; “for then you would not have seen me
here. I have labored hard for years; and my means have been growing
narrower, and my living poorer, and my heart colder and heavier, all
the time; till at last I could bear it no longer. I set myself down to
calculate whether I had best go on the Oregon expedition, or come here
to the Shaker village; but I had not hope enough left in me to begin
the world over again; and, to make my story short, here I am. And now,
youngster, take my advice, and turn back; or else, some few years
hence, you’ll have to climb this hill, with as heavy a heart as mine.”
This simple story had a strong effect on the young fugitives. The
misfortunes of the poet and merchant had won little sympathy from their
plain good sense and unworldly feelings, qualities which made them such
unprejudiced and inflexible judges, that few men would have chosen to
take the opinion of this youth and maiden as to the wisdom or folly of
their pursuits. But here was one whose simple wishes had resembled
their own, and who, after efforts which almost gave him a right to
claim success from fate, had failed in accomplishing them.
“But thy wife, friend?” exclaimed the younger man. “What became of the
pretty girl, like Miriam? Oh, I am afraid she is dead!”
“Yea, poor man, she must be dead,—she and the children, too,” sobbed
Miriam.
The female pilgrim had been leaning over the spring, wherein latterly a
tear or two might have been seen to fall, and form its little circle on
the surface of the water. She now looked up, disclosing features still
comely, but which had acquired an expression of fretfulness, in the
same long course of evil fortune that had thrown a sullen gloom over
the temper of the unprosperous yeoman.
“I am his wife,” said she, a shade of irritability just perceptible in
the sadness of her tone. “These poor little things, asleep on the
ground, are two of our children. We had two more, but God has provided
better for them than we could, by taking them to Himself.”
“And what would thee advise Josiah and me to do?” asked Miriam, this
being the first question which she had put to either of the strangers.
“’Tis a thing almost against nature for a woman to try to part true
lovers,” answered the yeoman’s wife, after a pause; “but I’ll speak as
truly to you as if these were my dying words. Though my husband told
you some of our troubles, he didn’t mention the greatest, and that
which makes all the rest so hard to bear. If you and your sweetheart
marry, you’ll be kind and pleasant to each other for a year or two, and
while that’s the case, you never will repent; but, by and by, he’ll
grow gloomy, rough, and hard to please, and you’ll be peevish, and full
of little angry fits, and apt to be complaining by the fireside, when
he comes to rest himself from his troubles out of doors; so your love
will wear away by little and little, and leave you miserable at last.
It has been so with us; and yet my husband and I were true lovers once,
if ever two young folks were .”
As she ceased, the yeoman and his wife exchanged a glance, in which
there was more and warmer affection than they had supposed to have
escaped the frost of a wintry fate, in either of their breasts. At that
moment, when they stood on the utmost verge of married life, one word
fitly spoken, or perhaps one peculiar look, had they had mutual
confidence enough to reciprocate it, might have renewed all their old
feelings, and sent them back, resolved to sustain each other amid the
struggles of the world. But the crisis passed and never came again.
Just then, also, the children, roused by their mother’s voice, looked
up, and added their wailing accents to the testimony borne by all the
Canterbury pilgrims against the world from which they fled.
“We are tired and hungry!” cried they. “Is it far to the Shaker
village?”
The Shaker youth and maiden looked mournfully into each other’s eyes.
They had but stepped across the threshold of their homes, when lo! the
dark array of cares and sorrows that rose up to warn them back. The
varied narratives of the strangers had arranged themselves into a
parable; they seemed not merely instances of woful fate that had
befallen others, but shadowy omens of disappointed hope and unavailing
toil, domestic grief and estranged affection, that would cloud the
onward path of these poor fugitives. But after one instant’s
hesitation, they opened their arms, and sealed their resolve with as
pure and fond an embrace as ever youthful love had hallowed.
“We will not go back,” said they. “The world never can be dark to us,
for we will always love one another.”
Then the Canterbury pilgrims went up the hill, while the poet chanted a
drear and desperate stanza of the Farewell to his Harp, fitting music
for that melancholy band. They sought a home where all former ties of
nature or society would be sundered, and all old distinctions levelled,
and a cold and passionless security be substituted for mortal hope and
fear, as in that other refuge of the world’s weary outcasts, the grave.
The lovers drank at the Shaker spring, and then, with chastened hopes,
but more confiding affections, went on to mingle in an untried life.