CHAPTER I. DR. SINGLETARY IS DEAD!

THE COMPLETE WORKS OF JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

By John Greenleaf Whittier

VOLUME I. NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS

PUBLISHERS' ADVERTISEMENT

The Standard Library Edition of Mr. Whittier's writings comprises his

poetical and prose works as re-arranged and thoroughly revised by

himself or with his cooperation. Mr. Whittier has supplied such

additional information regarding the subject and occasion of certain

poems as may be stated in brief head-notes, and this edition has been

much enriched by the poet's personal comment. So far as practicable the

dates of publication of the various articles have been given, and since

these were originally published soon after composition, the dates of

their first appearance have been taken as determining the time at which

they were written. At the request of the Publishers, Mr. Whittier has

allowed his early poems, discarded from previous collections, to be

placed, in the general order of their appearance, in an appendix to the

final volume of poems. By this means the present edition is made so

complete and retrospective that students of the poet's career will

always find the most abundant material for their purpose. The Publishers

congratulate themselves and the public that the careful attention which

Mr. Whittier has been able to give to this revision of his works has

resulted in so comprehensive and well-adjusted a collection.

The portraits prefixed to the several volumes have been chosen with a

view to illustrating successive periods in the poet's life. The

original sources and dates are indicated in each case.

CONTENTS:

THE VAUDOIS TEACHER

THE FEMALE MARTYR

EXTRACT FROM "A NEW ENGLAND LEGEND"

THE DEMON OF THE STUDY

THE FOUNTAIN

PENTUCKET

THE NORSEMEN

FUNERAL TREE OF THE SOKOKIS

ST JOHN

THE CYPRESS-TREE OF CEYLON

THE EXILES

THE KNIGHT OF ST JOHN

CASSANDRA SOUTHWICK

THE NEW WIFE AND THE OLD

THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK

I. THE MERRIMAC

II. THE BASHABA

III. THE DAUGHTER

IV. THE WEDDING

V. THE NEW HOME

VI. AT PENNACOOK

VII. THE DEPARTURE

VIII. SONG OF INDIAN WOMEN

BARCLAY OF URY

THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA

THE LEGEND OF ST MARK

KATHLEEN

THE WELL OF LOCH MAREE

THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS

TAULER

THE HERMIT OF THE THEBAID

THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN

THE GIFT OF TRITEMIUS

SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE

THE SYCAMORES

THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW

TELLING THE BEES

THE SWAN SONG OF PARSON AVERY

THE DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE OF NEWBURY

MABEL MARTIN: A HARVEST IDYL

PROEM

I. THE RIVER VALLEY

II. THE HUSKING

III. THE WITCH'S DAUGHTER

IV. THE CHAMPION

V. IN THE SHADOW

VI. THE BETROTHAL

THE PROPHECY OF SAMUEL SEWALL

THE RED RIVER VOYAGEUR

THE PREACHER

THE TRUCE OF PISCATAQUA

MY PLAYMATE

COBBLER KEEZAR'S VISION

AMY WENTWORTH

THE COUNTESS

AMONG THE HILLS

PRELUDE

AMONG THE HILLS

THE DOLE OF JARL THORKELL

THE TWO RABBINS

NOREMBEGA

MIRIAM

MAUD MULLER

MARY GARVIN

THE RANGER

NAUHAUGHT, THE DEACON

THE SISTERS

MARGUERITE

THE ROBIN

THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

PRELUDE

THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM

KING VOLMER AND ELSIE

THE THREE BELLS

JOHN UNDERHILL

CONDUCTOR BRADLEY

THE WITCH OF WENHAM

KING SOLOMON AND THE ANTS

IN THE "OLD SOUTH"

THE HENCHMAN

THE DEAD FEAST OF THE KOL-FOLK

THE KHAN'S DEVIL

THE KING'S MISSIVE

VALUATION

RABBI ISHMAEL

THE ROCK-TOMB OF BRADORE

THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS

To H P S

THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS

THE WISHING BRIDGE

HOW THE WOMEN WENT FROM DOVER

ST GREGORY'S GUEST

CONTENTS

BIRCHBROOK MILL

THE TWO ELIZABETHS

REQUITAL

THE HOMESTEAD

HOW THE ROBIN CAME

BANISHED FROM MASSACHUSETTS

THE BROWN DWARF OF RUGEN

NOTE.--The portrait prefixed to this volume was etched by

S. A. Schoff, in 1888, after a painting by Bass Otis, a pupil of

Gilbert Stuart, made in the winter of 1836-1837.

PROEM

I LOVE the old melodious lays

Which softly melt the ages through,

The songs of Spenser's golden days,

Arcadian Sidney's silvery phrase,

Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest morning dew.

Yet, vainly in my quiet hours

To breathe their marvellous notes I try;

I feel them, as the leaves and flowers

In silence feel the dewy showers,

And drink with glad, still lips the blessing of the sky.

The rigor of a frozen clime,

The harshness of an untaught ear,

The jarring words of one whose rhyme

Beat often Labor's hurried time,

Or Duty's rugged march through storm and strife, are here.

Of mystic beauty, dreamy grace,

No rounded art the lack supplies;

Unskilled the subtle lines to trace,

Or softer shades of Nature's face,

I view her common forms with unanointed eyes.

Nor mine the seer-like power to show

The secrets of the heart and mind;

To drop the plummet-line below

Our common world of joy and woe,

A more intense despair or brighter hope to find.

Yet here at least an earnest sense

Of human right and weal is shown;

A hate of tyranny intense,

And hearty in its vehemence,

As if my brother's pain and sorrow were my own.

O Freedom! if to me belong

Nor mighty Milton's gift divine,

Nor Marvell's wit and graceful song,

Still with a love as deep and strong

As theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on thy shrine.

AMESBURY, 11th mo., 1847.

INTRODUCTION

The edition of my poems published in 1857 contained the following note

by way of preface:--

"In these volumes, for the first time, a complete collection of my

poetical writings has been made. While it is satisfactory to know that

these scattered children of my brain have found a home, I cannot but

regret that I have been unable, by reason of illness, to give that

attention to their revision and arrangement, which respect for the

opinions of others and my own afterthought and experience demand.

"That there are pieces in this collection which I would 'willingly let

die,' I am free to confess. But it is now too late to disown them, and I

must submit to the inevitable penalty of poetical as well as other sins.

There are others, intimately connected with the author's life and times,

which owe their tenacity of vitality to the circumstances under which

they were written, and the events by which they were suggested.

"The long poem of Mogg Megone was in a great measure composed in early

life; and it is scarcely necessary to say that its subject is not such

as the writer would have chosen at any subsequent period."

After a lapse of thirty years since the above was written, I have been

requested by my publishers to make some preparation for a new and

revised edition of my poems. I cannot flatter myself that I have added

much to the interest of the work beyond the correction of my own errors

and those of the press, with the addition of a few heretofore

unpublished pieces, and occasional notes of explanation which seemed

necessary. I have made an attempt to classify the poems under a few

general heads, and have transferred the long poem of Mogg Megone to the

Appendix, with other specimens of my earlier writings. I have endeavored

to affix the dates of composition or publication as far as possible.

In looking over these poems I have not been unmindful of occasional

prosaic lines and verbal infelicities, but at this late day I have

neither strength nor patience to undertake their correction.

Perhaps a word of explanation may be needed in regard to a class of

poems written between the years 1832 and 1865. Of their defects from an

artistic point of view it is not necessary to speak. They were the

earnest and often vehement expression of the writer's thought and

feeling at critical periods in the great conflict between Freedom and

Slavery. They were written with no expectation that they would survive

the occasions which called them forth: they were protests, alarm

signals, trumpet-calls to action, words wrung from the writer's heart,

forged at white heat, and of course lacking the finish and careful

word-selection which reflection and patient brooding over them might

have given. Such as they are, they belong to the history of the

Anti-Slavery movement, and may serve as way-marks of its progress. If

their language at times seems severe and harsh, the monstrous wrong of

Slavery which provoked it must be its excuse, if any is needed. In

attacking it, we did not measure our words. "It is," said Garrison,

"a waste of politeness to be courteous to the devil." But in truth the

contest was, in a great measure, an impersonal one,--hatred of slavery

and not of slave-masters.

"No common wrong provoked our zeal,

The silken gauntlet which is thrown

In such a quarrel rings like steel."

Even Thomas Jefferson, in his terrible denunciation of Slavery in the

Notes on Virginia, says "It is impossible to be temperate and pursue the

subject of Slavery." After the great contest was over, no class of the

American people were more ready, with kind words and deprecation of

harsh retaliation, to welcome back the revolted States than the

Abolitionists; and none have since more heartily rejoiced at the fast

increasing prosperity of the South.

Grateful for the measure of favor which has been accorded to my

writings, I leave this edition with the public. It contains all that I

care to re-publish, and some things which, had the matter of choice been

left solely to myself, I should have omitted.

J. G. W.

NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS

THE VAUDOIS TEACHER.

This poem was suggested by the account given of the manner which the

Waldenses disseminated their principles among the Catholic gentry. They

gained access to the house through their occupation as peddlers of

silks, jewels, and trinkets. "Having disposed of some of their goods,"

it is said by a writer who quotes the inquisitor Rainerus Sacco, "they

cautiously intimated that they had commodities far more valuable than

these, inestimable jewels, which they would show if they could be

protected from the clergy. They would then give their purchasers a Bible

or Testament; and thereby many were deluded into heresy." The poem,

under the title Le Colporteur Vaudois, was translated into French by

Professor G. de Felice, of Montauban, and further naturalized by

Professor Alexandre Rodolphe Vinet, who quoted it in his lectures on

French literature, afterwards published. It became familiar in this form

to the Waldenses, who adopted it as a household poem. An American

clergyman, J. C. Fletcher, frequently heard it when he was a student,

about the year 1850, in the theological seminary at Geneva, Switzerland,

but the authorship of the poem was unknown to those who used it.

Twenty-five years later, Mr. Fletcher, learning the name of the author,

wrote to the moderator of the Waldensian synod at La Tour, giving the

information. At the banquet which closed the meeting of the synod, the

moderator announced the fact, and was instructed in the name of the

Waldensian church to write to me a letter of thanks. My letter, written

in reply, was translated into Italian and printed throughout Italy.

"O LADY fair, these silks of mine

are beautiful and rare,--

The richest web of the Indian loom, which beauty's

queen might wear;

And my pearls are pure as thy own fair neck, with whose

radiant light they vie;

I have brought them with me a weary way,--will my

gentle lady buy?"

The lady smiled on the worn old man through the

dark and clustering curls

Which veiled her brow, as she bent to view his

silks and glittering pearls;

And she placed their price in the old man's hand

and lightly turned away,

But she paused at the wanderer's earnest call,--

"My gentle lady, stay!

"O lady fair, I have yet a gem which a purer

lustre flings,

Than the diamond flash of the jewelled crown on

the lofty brow of kings;

A wonderful pearl of exceeding price, whose virtue

shall not decay,

Whose light shall be as a spell to thee and a

blessing on thy way!"

The lady glanced at the mirroring steel where her

form of grace was seen,

Where her eye shone clear, and her dark locks

waved their clasping pearls between;

"Bring forth thy pearl of exceeding worth, thou

traveller gray and old,

And name the price of thy precious gem, and my

page shall count thy gold."

The cloud went off from the pilgrim's brow, as a

small and meagre book,

Unchased with gold or gem of cost, from his

folding robe he took!

"Here, lady fair, is the pearl of price, may it prove

as such to thee

Nay, keep thy gold--I ask it not, for the word of

God is free!"

The hoary traveller went his way, but the gift he

left behind

Hath had its pure and perfect work on that high-

born maiden's mind,

And she hath turned from the pride of sin to the

lowliness of truth,

And given her human heart to God in its beautiful

hour of youth

And she hath left the gray old halls, where an evil

faith had power,

The courtly knights of her father's train, and the

maidens of her bower;

And she hath gone to the Vaudois vales by lordly

feet untrod,

Where the poor and needy of earth are rich in the

perfect love of God!

1830.

THE FEMALE MARTYR.

Mary G-----, aged eighteen, a "Sister of Charity," died in one of our

Atlantic cities, during the prevalence of the Indian cholera, while

in voluntary attendance upon the sick.

"BRING out your dead!" The midnight street

Heard and gave back the hoarse, low call;

Harsh fell the tread of hasty feet,

Glanced through the dark the coarse white sheet,

Her coffin and her pall.

"What--only one!" the brutal hack-man said,

As, with an oath, he spurned away the dead.

How sunk the inmost hearts of all,

As rolled that dead-cart slowly by,

With creaking wheel and harsh hoof-fall!

The dying turned him to the wall,

To hear it and to die!

Onward it rolled; while oft its driver stayed,

And hoarsely clamored, "Ho! bring out your dead."

It paused beside the burial-place;

"Toss in your load!" and it was done.

With quick hand and averted face,

Hastily to the grave's embrace

They cast them, one by one,

Stranger and friend, the evil and the just,

Together trodden in the churchyard dust.

And thou, young martyr! thou wast there;

No white-robed sisters round thee trod,

Nor holy hymn, nor funeral prayer

Rose through the damp and noisome air,

Giving thee to thy God;

Nor flower, nor cross, nor hallowed taper gave

Grace to the dead, and beauty to the grave!

Yet, gentle sufferer! there shall be,

In every heart of kindly feeling,

A rite as holy paid to thee

As if beneath the convent-tree

Thy sisterhood were kneeling,

At vesper hours, like sorrowing angels, keeping

Their tearful watch around thy place of sleeping.

For thou wast one in whom the light

Of Heaven's own love was kindled well;

Enduring with a martyr's might,

Through weary day and wakeful night,

Far more than words may tell

Gentle, and meek, and lowly, and unknown,

Thy mercies measured by thy God alone!

Where manly hearts were failing, where

The throngful street grew foul with death,

O high-souled martyr! thou wast there,

Inhaling, from the loathsome air,

Poison with every breath.

Yet shrinking not from offices of dread

For the wrung dying, and the unconscious dead.

And, where the sickly taper shed

Its light through vapors, damp, confined,

Hushed as a seraph's fell thy tread,

A new Electra by the bed

Of suffering human-kind!

Pointing the spirit, in its dark dismay,

To that pure hope which fadeth not away.

Innocent teacher of the high

And holy mysteries of Heaven!

How turned to thee each glazing eye,

In mute and awful sympathy,

As thy low prayers were given;

And the o'er-hovering Spoiler wore, the while,

An angel's features, a deliverer's smile!

A blessed task! and worthy one

Who, turning from the world, as thou,

Before life's pathway had begun

To leave its spring-time flower and sun,

Had sealed her early vow;

Giving to God her beauty and her youth,

Her pure affections and her guileless truth.

Earth may not claim thee. Nothing here

Could be for thee a meet reward;

Thine is a treasure far more dear

Eye hath not seen it, nor the ear

Of living mortal heard

The joys prepared, the promised bliss above,

The holy presence of Eternal Love!

Sleep on in peace. The earth has not

A nobler name than thine shall be.

The deeds by martial manhood wrought,

The lofty energies of thought,

The fire of poesy,

These have but frail and fading honors; thine

Shall Time unto Eternity consign.

Yea, and when thrones shall crumble down,

And human pride and grandeur fall,

The herald's line of long renown,

The mitre and the kingly crown,--

Perishing glories all!

The pure devotion of thy generous heart

Shall live in Heaven, of which it was a part.

1833.

EXTRACT FROM "A NEW ENGLAND LEGEND."

(Originally a part of the author's Moll Pitcher.)

How has New England's romance fled,

Even as a vision of the morning!

Its rites foredone, its guardians dead,

Its priestesses, bereft of dread,

Waking the veriest urchin's scorning!

Gone like the Indian wizard's yell

And fire-dance round the magic rock,

Forgotten like the Druid's spell

At moonrise by his holy oak!

No more along the shadowy glen

Glide the dim ghosts of murdered men;

No more the unquiet churchyard dead

Glimpse upward from their turfy bed,

Startling the traveller, late and lone;

As, on some night of starless weather,

They silently commune together,

Each sitting on his own head-stone

The roofless house, decayed, deserted,

Its living tenants all departed,

No longer rings with midnight revel

Of witch, or ghost, or goblin evil;

No pale blue flame sends out its flashes

Through creviced roof and shattered sashes!

The witch-grass round the hazel spring

May sharply to the night-air sing,

But there no more shall withered hags

Refresh at ease their broomstick nags,

Or taste those hazel-shadowed waters

As beverage meet for Satan's daughters;

No more their mimic tones be heard,

The mew of cat, the chirp of bird,

Shrill blending with the hoarser laughter

Of the fell demon following after!

The cautious goodman nails no more

A horseshoe on his outer door,

Lest some unseemly hag should fit

To his own mouth her bridle-bit;

The goodwife's churn no more refuses

Its wonted culinary uses

Until, with heated needle burned,

The witch has to her place returned!

Our witches are no longer old

And wrinkled beldames, Satan-sold,

But young and gay and laughing creatures,

With the heart's sunshine on their features;

Their sorcery--the light which dances

Where the raised lid unveils its glances;

Or that low-breathed and gentle tone,

The music of Love's twilight hours,

Soft, dream-like, as a fairy's moan

Above her nightly closing flowers,

Sweeter than that which sighed of yore

Along the charmed Ausonian shore!

Even she, our own weird heroine,

Sole Pythoness of ancient Lynn,'

Sleeps calmly where the living laid her;

And the wide realm of sorcery,

Left by its latest mistress free,

Hath found no gray and skilled invader.

So--perished Albion's "glammarye,"

With him in Melrose Abbey sleeping,

His charmed torch beside his knee,

That even the dead himself might see

The magic scroll within his keeping.

And now our modern Yankee sees

Nor omens, spells, nor mysteries;

And naught above, below, around,

Of life or death, of sight or sound,

Whate'er its nature, form, or look,

Excites his terror or surprise,

All seeming to his knowing eyes

Familiar as his "catechise,"

Or "Webster's Spelling-Book."

1833.

THE DEMON OF THE STUDY.

THE Brownie sits in the Scotchman's room,

And eats his meat and drinks his ale,

And beats the maid with her unused broom,

And the lazy lout with his idle flail;

But he sweeps the floor and threshes the corn,

And hies him away ere the break of dawn.

The shade of Denmark fled from the sun,

And the Cocklane ghost from the barn-loft cheer,

The fiend of Faust was a faithful one,

Agrippa's demon wrought in fear,

And the devil of Martin Luther sat

By the stout monk's side in social chat.

The Old Man of the Sea, on the neck of him

Who seven times crossed the deep,

Twined closely each lean and withered limb,

Like the nightmare in one's sleep.

But he drank of the wine, and Sindbad cast

The evil weight from his back at last.

But the demon that cometh day by day

To my quiet room and fireside nook,

Where the casement light falls dim and gray

On faded painting and ancient book,

Is a sorrier one than any whose names

Are chronicled well by good King James.

No bearer of burdens like Caliban,

No runner of errands like Ariel,

He comes in the shape of a fat old man,

Without rap of knuckle or pull of bell;

And whence he comes, or whither he goes,

I know as I do of the wind which blows.

A stout old man with a greasy hat

Slouched heavily down to his dark, red nose,

And two gray eyes enveloped in fat,

Looking through glasses with iron bows.

Read ye, and heed ye, and ye who can,

Guard well your doors from that old man!

He comes with a careless "How d' ye do?"

And seats himself in my elbow-chair;

And my morning paper and pamphlet new

Fall forthwith under his special care,

And he wipes his glasses and clears his throat,

And, button by button, unfolds his coat.

And then he reads from paper and book,

In a low and husky asthmatic tone,

With the stolid sameness of posture and look

Of one who reads to himself alone;

And hour after hour on my senses come

That husky wheeze and that dolorous hum.

The price of stocks, the auction sales,

The poet's song and the lover's glee,

The horrible murders, the seaboard gales,

The marriage list, and the jeu d'esprit,

All reach my ear in the self-same tone,--

I shudder at each, but the fiend reads on!

Oh, sweet as the lapse of water at noon

O'er the mossy roots of some forest tree,

The sigh of the wind in the woods of June,

Or sound of flutes o'er a moonlight sea,

Or the low soft music, perchance, which seems

To float through the slumbering singer's dreams,

So sweet, so dear is the silvery tone,

Of her in whose features I sometimes look,

As I sit at eve by her side alone,

And we read by turns, from the self-same book,

Some tale perhaps of the olden time,

Some lover's romance or quaint old rhyme.

Then when the story is one of woe,--

Some prisoner's plaint through his dungeon-bar,

Her blue eye glistens with tears, and low

Her voice sinks down like a moan afar;

And I seem to hear that prisoner's wail,

And his face looks on me worn and pale.

And when she reads some merrier song,

Her voice is glad as an April bird's,

And when the tale is of war and wrong,

A trumpet's summons is in her words,

And the rush of the hosts I seem to hear,

And see the tossing of plume and spear!

Oh, pity me then, when, day by day,

The stout fiend darkens my parlor door;

And reads me perchance the self-same lay

Which melted in music, the night before,

From lips as the lips of Hylas sweet,

And moved like twin roses which zephyrs meet!

I cross my floor with a nervous tread,

I whistle and laugh and sing and shout,

I flourish my cane above his head,

And stir up the fire to roast him out;

I topple the chairs, and drum on the pane,

And press my hands on my ears, in vain!

I've studied Glanville and James the wise,

And wizard black-letter tomes which treat

Of demons of every name and size

Which a Christian man is presumed to meet,

But never a hint and never a line

Can I find of a reading fiend like mine.

I've crossed the Psalter with Brady and Tate,

And laid the Primer above them all,

I've nailed a horseshoe over the grate,

And hung a wig to my parlor wall

Once worn by a learned Judge, they say,

At Salem court in the witchcraft day!

"Conjuro te, sceleratissime,

Abire ad tuum locum!"--still

Like a visible nightmare he sits by me,--

The exorcism has lost its skill;

And I hear again in my haunted room

The husky wheeze and the dolorous hum!

Ah! commend me to Mary Magdalen

With her sevenfold plagues, to the wandering Jew,

To the terrors which haunted Orestes when

The furies his midnight curtains drew,

But charm him off, ye who charm him can,

That reading demon, that fat old man!

1835.

THE FOUNTAIN.

On the declivity of a hill in Salisbury, Essex County, is a fountain of

clear water, gushing from the very roots of a venerable oak. It is about

two miles from the junction of the Powow River with the Merrimac.

TRAVELLER! on thy journey toiling

By the swift Powow,

With the summer sunshine falling

On thy heated brow,

Listen, while all else is still,

To the brooklet from the hill.

Wild and sweet the flowers are blowing

By that streamlet's side,

And a greener verdure showing

Where its waters glide,

Down the hill-slope murmuring on,

Over root and mossy stone.

Where yon oak his broad arms flingeth

O'er the sloping hill,

Beautiful and freshly springeth

That soft-flowing rill,

Through its dark roots wreathed and bare,

Gushing up to sun and air.

Brighter waters sparkled never

In that magic well,

Of whose gift of life forever

Ancient legends tell,

In the lonely desert wasted,

And by mortal lip untasted.

Waters which the proud Castilian

Sought with longing eyes,

Underneath the bright pavilion

Of the Indian skies,

Where his forest pathway lay

Through the blooms of Florida.

Years ago a lonely stranger,

With the dusky brow

Of the outcast forest-ranger,

Crossed the swift Powow,

And betook him to the rill

And the oak upon the hill.

O'er his face of moody sadness

For an instant shone

Something like a gleam of gladness,

As he stooped him down

To the fountain's grassy side,

And his eager thirst supplied.

With the oak its shadow throwing

O'er his mossy seat,

And the cool, sweet waters flowing

Softly at his feet,

Closely by the fountain's rim

That lone Indian seated him.

Autumn's earliest frost had given

To the woods below

Hues of beauty, such as heaven

Lendeth to its bow;

And the soft breeze from the west

Scarcely broke their dreamy rest.

Far behind was Ocean striving

With his chains of sand;

Southward, sunny glimpses giving,

'Twixt the swells of land,

Of its calm and silvery track,

Rolled the tranquil Merrimac.

Over village, wood, and meadow

Gazed that stranger man,

Sadly, till the twilight shadow

Over all things ran,

Save where spire and westward pane

Flashed the sunset back again.

Gazing thus upon the dwelling

Of his warrior sires,

Where no lingering trace was telling

Of their wigwam fires,

Who the gloomy thoughts might know

Of that wandering child of woe?

Naked lay, in sunshine glowing,

Hills that once had stood

Down their sides the shadows throwing

Of a mighty wood,

Where the deer his covert kept,

And the eagle's pinion swept!

Where the birch canoe had glided

Down the swift Powow,

Dark and gloomy bridges strided

Those clear waters now;

And where once the beaver swam,

Jarred the wheel and frowned the dam.

For the wood-bird's merry singing,

And the hunter's cheer,

Iron clang and hammer's ringing

Smote upon his ear;

And the thick and sullen smoke

From the blackened forges broke.

Could it be his fathers ever

Loved to linger here?

These bare hills, this conquered river,--

Could they hold them dear,

With their native loveliness

Tamed and tortured into this?

Sadly, as the shades of even

Gathered o'er the hill,

While the western half of heaven

Blushed with sunset still,

From the fountain's mossy seat

Turned the Indian's weary feet.

Year on year hath flown forever,

But he came no more

To the hillside on the river

Where he came before.

But the villager can tell

Of that strange man's visit well.

And the merry children, laden

With their fruits or flowers,

Roving boy and laughing maiden,

In their school-day hours,

Love the simple tale to tell

Of the Indian and his well.

1837

PENTUCKET.

The village of Haverhill, on the Merrimac, called by the Indians

Pentucket, was for nearly seventeen years a frontier town, and during

thirty years endured all the horrors of savage warfare. In the year

1708, a combined body of French and Indians, under the command of De

Chaillons, and Hertel de Rouville, the famous and bloody sacker of

Deerfield, made an attack upon the village, which at that time contained

only thirty houses. Sixteen of the villagers were massacred, and a still

larger number made prisoners. About thirty of the enemy also fell, among

them Hertel de Rouville. The minister of the place, Benjamin Rolfe, was

killed by a shot through his own door. In a paper entitled The Border

War of 1708, published in my collection of Recreations and Miscellanies,

I have given a prose narrative of the surprise of Haverhill.

How sweetly on the wood-girt town

The mellow light of sunset shone!

Each small, bright lake, whose waters still

Mirror the forest and the hill,

Reflected from its waveless breast

The beauty of a cloudless west,

Glorious as if a glimpse were given

Within the western gates of heaven,

Left, by the spirit of the star

Of sunset's holy hour, ajar!

Beside the river's tranquil flood

The dark and low-walled dwellings stood,

Where many a rood of open land

Stretched up and down on either hand,

With corn-leaves waving freshly green

The thick and blackened stumps between.

Behind, unbroken, deep and dread,

The wild, untravelled forest spread,

Back to those mountains, white and cold,

Of which the Indian trapper told,

Upon whose summits never yet

Was mortal foot in safety set.

Quiet and calm without a fear,

Of danger darkly lurking near,

The weary laborer left his plough,

The milkmaid carolled by her cow;

From cottage door and household hearth

Rose songs of praise, or tones of mirth.

At length the murmur died away,

And silence on that village lay.

--So slept Pompeii, tower and hall,

Ere the quick earthquake swallowed all,

Undreaming of the fiery fate

Which made its dwellings desolate.

Hours passed away. By moonlight sped

The Merrimac along his bed.

Bathed in the pallid lustre, stood

Dark cottage-wall and rock and wood,

Silent, beneath that tranquil beam,

As the hushed grouping of a dream.

Yet on the still air crept a sound,

No bark of fox, nor rabbit's bound,

Nor stir of wings, nor waters flowing,

Nor leaves in midnight breezes blowing.

Was that the tread of many feet,

Which downward from the hillside beat?

What forms were those which darkly stood

Just on the margin of the wood?--

Charred tree-stumps in the moonlight dim,

Or paling rude, or leafless limb?

No,--through the trees fierce eyeballs glowed,

Dark human forms in moonshine showed,

Wild from their native wilderness,

With painted limbs and battle-dress.

A yell the dead might wake to hear

Swelled on the night air, far and clear;

Then smote the Indian tomahawk

On crashing door and shattering lock;

Then rang the rifle-shot, and then

The shrill death-scream of stricken men,--

Sank the red axe in woman's brain,

And childhood's cry arose in vain.

Bursting through roof and window came,

Red, fast, and fierce, the kindled flame,

And blended fire and moonlight glared

On still dead men and scalp-knives bared.

The morning sun looked brightly through

The river willows, wet with dew.

No sound of combat filled the air,

No shout was heard, nor gunshot there;

Yet still the thick and sullen smoke

From smouldering ruins slowly broke;

And on the greensward many a stain,

And, here and there, the mangled slain,

Told how that midnight bolt had sped

Pentucket, on thy fated head.

Even now the villager can tell

Where Rolfe beside his hearthstone fell,

Still show the door of wasting oak,

Through which the fatal death-shot broke,

And point the curious stranger where

De Rouville's corse lay grim and bare;

Whose hideous head, in death still feared,

Bore not a trace of hair or beard;

And still, within the churchyard ground,

Heaves darkly up the ancient mound,

Whose grass-grown surface overlies

The victims of that sacrifice.

1838.

THE NORSEMEN.

In the early part of the present century, a fragment of a statue, rudely

chiselled from dark gray stone, was found in the town of Bradford, on

the Merrimac. Its origin must be left entirely to conjecture. The fact

that the ancient Northmen visited the north-east coast of North America

and probably New England, some centuries before the discovery of the

western world by Columbus, is very generally admitted.

GIFT from the cold and silent Past!

A relic to the present cast,

Left on the ever-changing strand

Of shifting and unstable sand,

Which wastes beneath the steady chime

And beating of the waves of Time!

Who from its bed of primal rock

First wrenched thy dark, unshapely block?

Whose hand, of curious skill untaught,

Thy rude and savage outline wrought?

The waters of my native stream

Are glancing in the sun's warm beam;

From sail-urged keel and flashing oar

The circles widen to its shore;

And cultured field and peopled town

Slope to its willowed margin down.

Yet, while this morning breeze is bringing

The home-life sound of school-bells ringing,

And rolling wheel, and rapid jar

Of the fire-winged and steedless car,

And voices from the wayside near

Come quick and blended on my ear,--

A spell is in this old gray stone,

My thoughts are with the Past alone!

A change!--The steepled town no more

Stretches along the sail-thronged shore;

Like palace-domes in sunset's cloud,

Fade sun-gilt spire and mansion proud

Spectrally rising where they stood,

I see the old, primeval wood;

Dark, shadow-like, on either hand

I see its solemn waste expand;

It climbs the green and cultured hill,

It arches o'er the valley's rill,

And leans from cliff and crag to throw

Its wild arms o'er the stream below.

Unchanged, alone, the same bright river

Flows on, as it will flow forever

I listen, and I hear the low

Soft ripple where its waters go;

I hear behind the panther's cry,

The wild-bird's scream goes thrilling by,

And shyly on the river's brink

The deer is stooping down to drink.

But hark!--from wood and rock flung back,

What sound comes up the Merrimac?

What sea-worn barks are those which throw

The light spray from each rushing prow?

Have they not in the North Sea's blast

Bowed to the waves the straining mast?

Their frozen sails the low, pale sun

Of Thule's night has shone upon;

Flapped by the sea-wind's gusty sweep

Round icy drift, and headland steep.

Wild Jutland's wives and Lochlin's daughters

Have watched them fading o'er the waters,

Lessening through driving mist and spray,

Like white-winged sea-birds on their way!

Onward they glide,--and now I view

Their iron-armed and stalwart crew;

Joy glistens in each wild blue eye,

Turned to green earth and summer sky.

Each broad, seamed breast has cast aside

Its cumbering vest of shaggy hide;

Bared to the sun and soft warm air,

Streams back the Norsemen's yellow hair.

I see the gleam of axe and spear,

The sound of smitten shields I hear,

Keeping a harsh and fitting time

To Saga's chant, and Runic rhyme;

Such lays as Zetland's Scald has sung,

His gray and naked isles among;

Or muttered low at midnight hour

Round Odin's mossy stone of power.

The wolf beneath the Arctic moon

Has answered to that startling rune;

The Gael has heard its stormy swell,

The light Frank knows its summons well;

Iona's sable-stoled Culdee

Has heard it sounding o'er the sea,

And swept, with hoary beard and hair,

His altar's foot in trembling prayer.

'T is past,--the 'wildering vision dies

In darkness on my dreaming eyes

The forest vanishes in air,

Hill-slope and vale lie starkly bare;

I hear the common tread of men,

And hum of work-day life again;

The mystic relic seems alone

A broken mass of common stone;

And if it be the chiselled limb

Of Berserker or idol grim,

A fragment of Valhalla's Thor,

The stormy Viking's god of War,

Or Praga of the Runic lay,

Or love-awakening Siona,

I know not,--for no graven line,

Nor Druid mark, nor Runic sign,

Is left me here, by which to trace

Its name, or origin, or place.

Yet, for this vision of the Past,

This glance upon its darkness cast,

My spirit bows in gratitude

Before the Giver of all good,

Who fashioned so the human mind,

That, from the waste of Time behind,

A simple stone, or mound of earth,

Can summon the departed forth;

Quicken the Past to life again,

The Present lose in what hath been,

And in their primal freshness show

The buried forms of long ago.

As if a portion of that Thought

By which the Eternal will is wrought,

Whose impulse fills anew with breath

The frozen solitude of Death,

To mortal mind were sometimes lent,

To mortal musings sometimes sent,

To whisper-even when it seems

But Memory's fantasy of dreams--

Through the mind's waste of woe and sin,

Of an immortal origin!

1841.

FUNERAL TREE OF THE SOKOKIS.

Polan, chief of the Sokokis Indians of the country between Agamenticus

and Casco Bay, was killed at Windham on Sebago Lake in the spring of

1756. After the whites had retired, the surviving Indians "swayed" or

bent down a young tree until its roots were upturned, placed the body of

their chief beneath it, then released the tree, which, in springing back

to its old position, covered the grave. The Sokokis were early converts

to the Catholic faith. Most of them, prior to the year 1756, had removed

to the French settlements on the St. Francois.

AROUND Sebago's lonely lake

There lingers not a breeze to break

The mirror which its waters make.

The solemn pines along its shore,

The firs which hang its gray rocks o'er,

Are painted on its glassy floor.

The sun looks o'er, with hazy eye,

The snowy mountain-tops which lie

Piled coldly up against the sky.

Dazzling and white! save where the bleak,

Wild winds have bared some splintering peak,

Or snow-slide left its dusky streak.

Yet green are Saco's banks below,

And belts of spruce and cedar show,

Dark fringing round those cones of snow.

The earth hath felt the breath of spring,

Though yet on her deliverer's wing

The lingering frosts of winter cling.

Fresh grasses fringe the meadow-brooks,

And mildly from its sunny nooks

The blue eye of the violet looks.

And odors from the springing grass,

The sweet birch and the sassafras,

Upon the scarce-felt breezes pass.

Her tokens of renewing care

Hath Nature scattered everywhere,

In bud and flower, and warmer air.

But in their hour of bitterness,

What reek the broken Sokokis,

Beside their slaughtered chief, of this?

The turf's red stain is yet undried,

Scarce have the death-shot echoes died

Along Sebago's wooded side;

And silent now the hunters stand,

Grouped darkly, where a swell of land

Slopes upward from the lake's white sand.

Fire and the axe have swept it bare,

Save one lone beech, unclosing there

Its light leaves in the vernal air.

With grave, cold looks, all sternly mute,

They break the damp turf at its foot,

And bare its coiled and twisted root.

They heave the stubborn trunk aside,

The firm roots from the earth divide,--

The rent beneath yawns dark and wide.

And there the fallen chief is laid,

In tasselled garb of skins arrayed,

And girded with his wampum-braid.

The silver cross he loved is pressed

Beneath the heavy arms, which rest

Upon his scarred and naked breast.

'T is done: the roots are backward sent,

The beechen-tree stands up unbent,

The Indian's fitting monument!

When of that sleeper's broken race

Their green and pleasant dwelling-place,

Which knew them once, retains no trace;

Oh, long may sunset's light be shed

As now upon that beech's head,

A green memorial of the dead!

There shall his fitting requiem be,

In northern winds, that, cold and free,

Howl nightly in that funeral tree.

To their wild wail the waves which break

Forever round that lonely lake

A solemn undertone shall make!

And who shall deem the spot unblest,

Where Nature's younger children rest,

Lulled on their sorrowing mother's breast?

Deem ye that mother loveth less

These bronzed forms of the wilderness

She foldeth in her long caress?

As sweet o'er them her wild-flowers blow,

As if with fairer hair and brow

The blue-eyed Saxon slept below.

What though the places of their rest

No priestly knee hath ever pressed,--

No funeral rite nor prayer hath blessed?

What though the bigot's ban be there,

And thoughts of wailing and despair,

And cursing in the place of prayer.

Yet Heaven hath angels watching round

The Indian's lowliest forest-mound,--

And they have made it holy ground.

There ceases man's frail judgment; all

His powerless bolts of cursing fall

Unheeded on that grassy pall.

O peeled and hunted and reviled,

Sleep on, dark tenant of the wild!

Great Nature owns her simple child!

And Nature's God, to whom alone

The secret of the heart is known,--

The hidden language traced thereon;

Who from its many cumberings

Of form and creed, and outward things,

To light the naked spirit brings;

Not with our partial eye shall scan,

Not with our pride and scorn shall ban,

The spirit of our brother man!

1841.

ST. JOHN.

The fierce rivalry between Charles de La Tour, a Protestant, and

D'Aulnay Charnasy, a Catholic, for the possession of Acadia, forms one

of the most romantic passages in the history of the New World. La Tour

received aid in several instances from the Puritan colony of

Massachusetts. During one of his voyages for the purpose of obtaining

arms and provisions for his establishment at St. John, his castle was

attacked by D'Aulnay, and successfully defended by its high-spirited

mistress. A second attack however followed in the fourth month, 1647,

when D'Aulnay was successful, and the garrison was put to the sword.

Lady La Tour languished a few days in the hands of her enemy, and then

died of grief.

"To the winds give our banner!

Bear homeward again!"

Cried the Lord of Acadia,

Cried Charles of Estienne;

From the prow of his shallop

He gazed, as the sun,

From its bed in the ocean,

Streamed up the St. John.

O'er the blue western waters

That shallop had passed,

Where the mists of Penobscot

Clung damp on her mast.

St. Saviour had looked

On the heretic sail,

As the songs of the Huguenot

Rose on the gale.

The pale, ghostly fathers

Remembered her well,

And had cursed her while passing,

With taper and bell;

But the men of Monhegan,

Of Papists abhorred,

Had welcomed and feasted

The heretic Lord.

They had loaded his shallop

With dun-fish and ball,

With stores for his larder,

And steel for his wall.

Pemaquid, from her bastions

And turrets of stone,

Had welcomed his coming

With banner and gun.

And the prayers of the elders

Had followed his way,

As homeward he glided,

Down Pentecost Bay.

Oh, well sped La Tour

For, in peril and pain,

His lady kept watch,

For his coming again.

O'er the Isle of the Pheasant

The morning sun shone,

On the plane-trees which shaded

The shores of St. John.

"Now, why from yon battlements

Speaks not my love!

Why waves there no banner

My fortress above?"

Dark and wild, from his deck

St. Estienne gazed about,

On fire-wasted dwellings,

And silent redoubt;

From the low, shattered walls

Which the flame had o'errun,

There floated no banner,

There thundered no gun!

But beneath the low arch

Of its doorway there stood

A pale priest of Rome,

In his cloak and his hood.

With the bound of a lion,

La Tour sprang to land,

On the throat of the Papist

He fastened his hand.

"Speak, son of the Woman

Of scarlet and sin!

What wolf has been prowling

My castle within?"

From the grasp of the soldier

The Jesuit broke,

Half in scorn, half in sorrow,

He smiled as he spoke:

"No wolf, Lord of Estienne,

Has ravaged thy hall,

But thy red-handed rival,

With fire, steel, and ball!

On an errand of mercy

I hitherward came,

While the walls of thy castle

Yet spouted with flame.

"Pentagoet's dark vessels

Were moored in the bay,

Grim sea-lions, roaring

Aloud for their prey."

"But what of my lady?"

Cried Charles of Estienne.

"On the shot-crumbled turret

Thy lady was seen:

"Half-veiled in the smoke-cloud,

Her hand grasped thy pennon,

While her dark tresses swayed

In the hot breath of cannon!

But woe to the heretic,

Evermore woe!

When the son of the church

And the cross is his foe!

"In the track of the shell,

In the path of the ball,

Pentagoet swept over

The breach of the wall!

Steel to steel, gun to gun,

One moment,--and then

Alone stood the victor,

Alone with his men!

"Of its sturdy defenders,

Thy lady alone

Saw the cross-blazoned banner

Float over St. John."

"Let the dastard look to it!"

Cried fiery Estienne,

"Were D'Aulnay King Louis,

I'd free her again!"

"Alas for thy lady!

No service from thee

Is needed by her

Whom the Lord hath set free;

Nine days, in stern silence,

Her thraldom she bore,

But the tenth morning came,

And Death opened her door!"

As if suddenly smitten

La Tour staggered back;

His hand grasped his sword-hilt,

His forehead grew black.

He sprang on the deck

Of his shallop again.

"We cruise now for vengeance!

Give way!" cried Estienne.

"Massachusetts shall hear

Of the Huguenot's wrong,

And from island and creekside

Her fishers shall throng!

Pentagoet shall rue

What his Papists have done,

When his palisades echo

The Puritan's gun!"

Oh, the loveliest of heavens

Hung tenderly o'er him,

There were waves in the sunshine,

And green isles before him:

But a pale hand was beckoning

The Huguenot on;

And in blackness and ashes

Behind was St. John!

1841

THE CYPRESS-TREE OF CEYLON.

Ibn Batuta, the celebrated Mussulman traveller of the fourteenth

century, speaks of a cypress-tree in Ceylon, universally held sacred by

the natives, the leaves of which were said to fall only at certain

intervals, and he who had the happiness to find and eat one of them was

restored, at once, to youth and vigor. The traveller saw several

venerable Jogees, or saints, sitting silent and motionless under the

tree, patiently awaiting the falling of a leaf.

THEY sat in silent watchfulness

The sacred cypress-tree about,

And, from beneath old wrinkled brows,

Their failing eyes looked out.

Gray Age and Sickness waiting there

Through weary night and lingering day,--

Grim as the idols at their side,

And motionless as they.

Unheeded in the boughs above

The song of Ceylon's birds was sweet;

Unseen of them the island flowers

Bloomed brightly at their feet.

O'er them the tropic night-storm swept,

The thunder crashed on rock and hill;

The cloud-fire on their eyeballs blazed,

Yet there they waited still!

What was the world without to them?

The Moslem's sunset-call, the dance

Of Ceylon's maids, the passing gleam

Of battle-flag and lance?

They waited for that falling leaf

Of which the wandering Jogees sing:

Which lends once more to wintry age

The greenness of its spring.

Oh, if these poor and blinded ones

In trustful patience wait to feel

O'er torpid pulse and failing limb

A youthful freshness steal;

Shall we, who sit beneath that Tree

Whose healing leaves of life are shed,

In answer to the breath of prayer,

Upon the waiting head;

Not to restore our failing forms,

And build the spirit's broken shrine,

But on the fainting soul to shed

A light and life divine--

Shall we grow weary in our watch,

And murmur at the long delay?

Impatient of our Father's time

And His appointed way?

Or shall the stir of outward things

Allure and claim the Christian's eye,

When on the heathen watcher's ear

Their powerless murmurs die?

Alas! a deeper test of faith

Than prison cell or martyr's stake,

The self-abasing watchfulness

Of silent prayer may make.

We gird us bravely to rebuke

Our erring brother in the wrong,--

And in the ear of Pride and Power

Our warning voice is strong.

Easier to smite with Peter's sword

Than "watch one hour" in humbling prayer.

Life's "great things," like the Syrian lord,

Our hearts can do and dare.

But oh! we shrink from Jordan's side,

From waters which alone can save;

And murmur for Abana's banks

And Pharpar's brighter wave.

O Thou, who in the garden's shade

Didst wake Thy weary ones again,

Who slumbered at that fearful hour

Forgetful of Thy pain;

Bend o'er us now, as over them,

And set our sleep-bound spirits free,

Nor leave us slumbering in the watch

Our souls should keep with Thee!

1841

THE EXILES.

The incidents upon which the following ballad has its foundation

about the year 1660. Thomas Macy was one of the first, if not the first

white settler of Nantucket. The career of Macy is briefly but carefully

outlined in James S. Pike's The New Puritan.

THE goodman sat beside his door

One sultry afternoon,

With his young wife singing at his side

An old and goodly tune.

A glimmer of heat was in the air,--

The dark green woods were still;

And the skirts of a heavy thunder-cloud

Hung over the western hill.

Black, thick, and vast arose that cloud

Above the wilderness,

As some dark world from upper air

Were stooping over this.

At times the solemn thunder pealed,

And all was still again,

Save a low murmur in the air

Of coming wind and rain.

Just as the first big rain-drop fell,

A weary stranger came,

And stood before the farmer's door,

With travel soiled and lame.

Sad seemed he, yet sustaining hope

Was in his quiet glance,

And peace, like autumn's moonlight, clothed

His tranquil countenance,--

A look, like that his Master wore

In Pilate's council-hall:

It told of wrongs, but of a love

Meekly forgiving all.

"Friend! wilt thou give me shelter here?"

The stranger meekly said;

And, leaning on his oaken staff,

The goodman's features read.

"My life is hunted,--evil men

Are following in my track;

The traces of the torturer's whip

Are on my aged back;

"And much, I fear, 't will peril thee

Within thy doors to take

A hunted seeker of the Truth,

Oppressed for conscience' sake."

Oh, kindly spoke the goodman's wife,

"Come in, old man!" quoth she,

"We will not leave thee to the storm,

Whoever thou mayst be."

Then came the aged wanderer in,

And silent sat him down;

While all within grew dark as night

Beneath the storm-cloud's frown.

But while the sudden lightning's blaze

Filled every cottage nook,

And with the jarring thunder-roll

The loosened casements shook,

A heavy tramp of horses' feet

Came sounding up the lane,

And half a score of horse, or more,

Came plunging through the rain.

"Now, Goodman Macy, ope thy door,--

We would not be house-breakers;

A rueful deed thou'st done this day,

In harboring banished Quakers."

Out looked the cautious goodman then,

With much of fear and awe,

For there, with broad wig drenched with rain

The parish priest he saw.

Open thy door, thou wicked man,

And let thy pastor in,

And give God thanks, if forty stripes

Repay thy deadly sin."

"What seek ye?" quoth the goodman;

"The stranger is my guest;

He is worn with toil and grievous wrong,--

Pray let the old man rest."

"Now, out upon thee, canting knave!"

And strong hands shook the door.

"Believe me, Macy," quoth the priest,

"Thou 'lt rue thy conduct sore."

Then kindled Macy's eye of fire

"No priest who walks the earth,

Shall pluck away the stranger-guest

Made welcome to my hearth."

Down from his cottage wall he caught

The matchlock, hotly tried

At Preston-pans and Marston-moor,

By fiery Ireton's side;

Where Puritan, and Cavalier,

With shout and psalm contended;

And Rupert's oath, and Cromwell's prayer,

With battle-thunder blended.

Up rose the ancient stranger then

"My spirit is not free

To bring the wrath and violence

Of evil men on thee;

"And for thyself, I pray forbear,

Bethink thee of thy Lord,

Who healed again the smitten ear,

And sheathed His follower's sword.

"I go, as to the slaughter led.

Friends of the poor, farewell!"

Beneath his hand the oaken door

Back on its hinges fell.

"Come forth, old graybeard, yea and nay,"

The reckless scoffers cried,

As to a horseman's saddle-bow

The old man's arms were tied.

And of his bondage hard and long

In Boston's crowded jail,

Where suffering woman's prayer was heard,

With sickening childhood's wail,

It suits not with our tale to tell;

Those scenes have passed away;

Let the dim shadows of the past

Brood o'er that evil day.

"Ho, sheriff!" quoth the ardent priest,

"Take Goodman Macy too;

The sin of this day's heresy

His back or purse shall rue."

"Now, goodwife, haste thee!" Macy cried.

She caught his manly arm;

Behind, the parson urged pursuit,

With outcry and alarm.

Ho! speed the Macys, neck or naught,--

The river-course was near;

The plashing on its pebbled shore

Was music to their ear.

A gray rock, tasselled o'er with birch,

Above the waters hung,

And at its base, with every wave,

A small light wherry swung.

A leap--they gain the boat--and there

The goodman wields his oar;

"Ill luck betide them all," he cried,

"The laggards on the shore."

Down through the crashing underwood,

The burly sheriff came:--

"Stand, Goodman Macy, yield thyself;

Yield in the King's own name."

"Now out upon thy hangman's face!"

Bold Macy answered then,--

"Whip women, on the village green,

But meddle not with men."

The priest came panting to the shore,

His grave cocked hat was gone;

Behind him, like some owl's nest, hung

His wig upon a thorn.

"Come back,--come back!" the parson cried,

"The church's curse beware."

"Curse, an' thou wilt," said Macy, "but

Thy blessing prithee spare."

"Vile scoffer!" cried the baffled priest,

"Thou 'lt yet the gallows see."

"Who's born to be hanged will not be drowned,"

Quoth Macy, merrily;

"And so, sir sheriff and priest, good-by!"

He bent him to his oar,

And the small boat glided quietly

From the twain upon the shore.

Now in the west, the heavy clouds

Scattered and fell asunder,

While feebler came the rush of rain,

And fainter growled the thunder.

And through the broken clouds, the sun

Looked out serene and warm,

Painting its holy symbol-light

Upon the passing storm.

Oh, beautiful! that rainbow span,

O'er dim Crane-neck was bended;

One bright foot touched the eastern hills,

And one with ocean blended.

By green Pentucket's southern'slope

The small boat glided fast;

The watchers of the Block-house saw

The strangers as they passed.

That night a stalwart garrison

Sat shaking in their shoes,

To hear the dip of Indian oars,

The glide of birch canoes.

The fisher-wives of Salisbury--

The men were all away--

Looked out to see the stranger oar

Upon their waters play.

Deer-Island's rocks and fir-trees threw

Their sunset-shadows o'er them,

And Newbury's spire and weathercock

Peered o'er the pines before them.

Around the Black Rocks, on their left,

The marsh lay broad and green;

And on their right, with dwarf shrubs crowned,

Plum Island's hills were seen.

With skilful hand and wary eye

The harbor-bar was crossed;

A plaything of the restless wave,

The boat on ocean tossed.

The glory of the sunset heaven

On land and water lay;

On the steep hills of Agawam,

On cape, and bluff, and bay.

They passed the gray rocks of Cape Ann,

And Gloucester's harbor-bar;

The watch-fire of the garrison

Shone like a setting star.

How brightly broke the morning

On Massachusetts Bay!

Blue wave, and bright green island,

Rejoicing in the day.

On passed the bark in safety

Round isle and headland steep;

No tempest broke above them,

No fog-cloud veiled the deep.

Far round the bleak and stormy Cape

The venturous Macy passed,

And on Nantucket's naked isle

Drew up his boat at last.

And how, in log-built cabin,

They braved the rough sea-weather;

And there, in peace and quietness,

Went down life's vale together;

How others drew around them,

And how their fishing sped,

Until to every wind of heaven

Nantucket's sails were spread;

How pale Want alternated

With Plenty's golden smile;

Behold, is it not written

In the annals of the isle?

And yet that isle remaineth

A refuge of the free,

As when true-hearted Macy

Beheld it from the sea.

Free as the winds that winnow

Her shrubless hills of sand,

Free as the waves that batter

Along her yielding land.

Than hers, at duty's summons,

No loftier spirit stirs,

Nor falls o'er human suffering

A readier tear then hers.

God bless the sea-beat island!

And grant forevermore,

That charity and freedom dwell

As now upon her shore!

1841.

THE KNIGHT OF ST. JOHN.

ERE down yon blue Carpathian hills

The sun shall sink again,

Farewell to life and all its ills,

Farewell to cell and chain!

These prison shades are dark and cold,

But, darker far than they,

The shadow of a sorrow old

Is on my heart alway.

For since the day when Warkworth wood

Closed o'er my steed, and I,

An alien from my name and blood,

A weed cast out to die,--

When, looking back in sunset light,

I saw her turret gleam,

And from its casement, far and white,

Her sign of farewell stream,

Like one who, from some desert shore,

Doth home's green isles descry,

And, vainly longing, gazes o'er

The waste of wave and sky;

So from the desert of my fate

I gaze across the past;

Forever on life's dial-plate

The shade is backward cast!

I've wandered wide from shore to shore,

I've knelt at many a shrine;

And bowed me to the rocky floor

Where Bethlehem's tapers shine;

And by the Holy Sepulchre

I've pledged my knightly sword

To Christ, His blessed Church, and her,

The Mother of our Lord.

Oh, vain the vow, and vain the strife!

How vain do all things seem!

My soul is in the past, and life

To-day is but a dream.

In vain the penance strange and long,

And hard for flesh to bear;

The prayer, the fasting, and the thong,

And sackcloth shirt of hair.

The eyes of memory will not sleep,

Its ears are open still;

And vigils with the past they keep

Against my feeble will.

And still the loves and joys of old

Do evermore uprise;

I see the flow of locks of gold,

The shine of loving eyes!

Ah me! upon another's breast

Those golden locks recline;

I see upon another rest

The glance that once was mine.

"O faithless priest! O perjured knight!"

I hear the Master cry;

"Shut out the vision from thy sight,

Let Earth and Nature die.

"The Church of God is now thy spouse,

And thou the bridegroom art;

Then let the burden of thy vows

Crush down thy human heart!"

In vain! This heart its grief must know,

Till life itself hath ceased,

And falls beneath the self-same blow

The lover and the priest!

O pitying Mother! souls of light,

And saints and martyrs old!

Pray for a weak and sinful knight,

A suffering man uphold.

Then let the Paynim work his will,

And death unbind my chain,

Ere down yon blue Carpathian hill

The sun shall fall again.

1843

CASSANDRA SOUTHWICK.

In 1658 two young persons, son and daughter of Lawrence Smithwick of

Salem, who had himself been imprisoned and deprived of nearly all his

property for having entertained Quakers at his house, were fined for

non-attendance at church. They being unable to pay the fine, the General

Court issued an order empowering "the Treasurer of the County to sell

the said persons to any of the English nation of Virginia or Barbadoes,

to answer said fines." An attempt was made to carry this order into

execution, but no shipmaster was found willing to convey them to the

West Indies.

To the God of all sure mercies let my blessing rise

to-day,

From the scoffer and the cruel He hath plucked

the spoil away;

Yea, He who cooled the furnace around the faithful

three,

And tamed the Chaldean lions, hath set His hand-

maid free!

Last night I saw the sunset melt through my prison

bars,

Last night across my damp earth-floor fell the pale

gleam of stars;

In the coldness and the darkness all through the

long night-time,

My grated casement whitened with autumn's early

rime.

Alone, in that dark sorrow, hour after hour crept

by;

Star after star looked palely in and sank adown

the sky;

No sound amid night's stillness, save that which

seemed to be

The dull and heavy beating of the pulses of the sea;

All night I sat unsleeping, for I knew that on the

morrow

The ruler and the cruel priest would mock me in

my sorrow,

Dragged to their place of market, and bargained

for and sold,

Like a lamb before the shambles, like a heifer

from the fold!

Oh, the weakness of the flesh was there, the

shrinking and the shame;

And the low voice of the Tempter like whispers to

me came:

"Why sit'st thou thus forlornly," the wicked

murmur said,

"Damp walls thy bower of beauty, cold earth thy

maiden bed?

"Where be the smiling faces, and voices soft and

sweet,

Seen in thy father's dwelling, heard in the pleasant

street?

Where be the youths whose glances, the summer

Sabbath through,

Turned tenderly and timidly unto thy father's pew?

"Why sit'st thou here, Cassandra?-Bethink

thee with what mirth

Thy happy schoolmates gather around the warm

bright hearth;

How the crimson shadows tremble on foreheads

white and fair,

On eyes of merry girlhood, half hid in golden hair.

"Not for thee the hearth-fire brightens, not for

thee kind words are spoken,

Not for thee the nuts of Wenham woods by laughing

boys are broken;

No first-fruits of the orchard within thy lap are

laid,

For thee no flowers of autumn the youthful hunters

braid.

"O weak, deluded maiden!--by crazy fancies

led,

With wild and raving railers an evil path to tread;

To leave a wholesome worship, and teaching pure

and sound,

And mate with maniac women, loose-haired and

sackcloth bound,--

"Mad scoffers of the priesthood; who mock at

things divine,

Who rail against the pulpit, and holy bread and

wine;

Sore from their cart-tail scourgings, and from the

pillory lame,

Rejoicing in their wretchedness, and glorying in

their shame.

"And what a fate awaits thee!--a sadly toiling

slave,

Dragging the slowly lengthening chain of bondage

to the grave!

Think of thy woman's nature, subdued in hopeless

thrall,

The easy prey of any, the scoff and scorn of all!"

Oh, ever as the Tempter spoke, and feeble Nature's

fears

Wrung drop by drop the scalding flow of unavailing

tears,

I wrestled down the evil thoughts, and strove in

silent prayer,

To feel, O Helper of the weak! that Thou indeed

wert there!

I thought of Paul and Silas, within Philippi's cell,

And how from Peter's sleeping limbs the prison

shackles fell,

Till I seemed to hear the trailing of an angel's

robe of white,

And to feel a blessed presence invisible to sight.

Bless the Lord for all his mercies!--for the peace

and love I felt,

Like dew of Hermon's holy hill, upon my spirit

melt;

When "Get behind me, Satan!" was the language

of my heart,

And I felt the Evil Tempter with all his doubts

depart.

Slow broke the gray cold morning; again the sunshine

fell,

Flecked with the shade of bar and grate within

my lonely cell;

The hoar-frost melted on the wall, and upward

from the street

Came careless laugh and idle word, and tread of

passing feet.

At length the heavy bolts fell back, my door was

open cast,

And slowly at the sheriff's side, up the long street

I passed;

I heard the murmur round me, and felt, but dared

not see,

How, from every door and window, the people

gazed on me.

And doubt and fear fell on me, shame burned upon

my cheek,

Swam earth and sky around me, my trembling

limbs grew weak:

"O Lord! support thy handmaid; and from her

soul cast out

The fear of man, which brings a snare, the weakness

and the doubt."

Then the dreary shadows scattered, like a cloud in

morning's breeze,

And a low deep voice within me seemed whispering

words like these:

"Though thy earth be as the iron, and thy heaven

a brazen wall,

Trust still His loving-kindness whose power is over

all."

We paused at length, where at my feet the sunlit

waters broke

On glaring reach of shining beach, and shingly

wall of rock;

The merchant-ships lay idly there, in hard clear

lines on high,

Tracing with rope and slender spar their network

on the sky.

And there were ancient citizens, cloak-wrapped

and grave and cold,

And grim and stout sea-captains with faces bronzed

and old,

And on his horse, with Rawson, his cruel clerk at

hand,

Sat dark and haughty Endicott, the ruler of the

land.

And poisoning with his evil words the ruler's ready

ear,

The priest leaned o'er his saddle, with laugh and

scoff and jeer;

It stirred my soul, and from my lips the seal of

silence broke,

As if through woman's weakness a warning spirit

spoke.

I cried, "The Lord rebuke thee, thou smiter of the

meek,

Thou robber of the righteous, thou trampler of

the weak!

Go light the dark, cold hearth-stones,--go turn

the prison lock

Of the poor hearts thou hast hunted, thou wolf

amid the flock!"

Dark lowered the brows of Endicott, and with a

deeper red

O'er Rawson's wine-empurpled cheek the flush of

anger spread;

"Good people," quoth the white-lipped priest,

"heed not her words so wild,

Her Master speaks within her,--the Devil owns

his child!"

But gray heads shook, and young brows knit, the

while the sheriff read

That law the wicked rulers against the poor have

made,

Who to their house of Rimmon and idol priesthood

bring

No bended knee of worship, nor gainful offering.

Then to the stout sea-captains the sheriff, turning,

said,--

"Which of ye, worthy seamen, will take this

Quaker maid?

In the Isle of fair Barbadoes, or on Virginia's

shore,

You may hold her at a higher price than Indian

girl or Moor."

Grim and silent stood the captains; and when

again he cried,

"Speak out, my worthy seamen!"--no voice, no

sign replied;

But I felt a hard hand press my own, and kind

words met my ear,--

"God bless thee, and preserve thee, my gentle girl

and dear!"

A weight seemed lifted from my heart, a pitying

friend was nigh,--

I felt it in his hard, rough hand, and saw it in his

eye;

And when again the sheriff spoke, that voice, so

kind to me,

Growled back its stormy answer like the roaring

of the sea,--

"Pile my ship with bars of silver, pack with coins

of Spanish gold,

From keel-piece up to deck-plank, the roomage of

her hold,

By the living God who made me!--I would sooner

in your bay

Sink ship and crew and cargo, than bear this child

away!"

"Well answered, worthy captain, shame on their

cruel laws!"

Ran through the crowd in murmurs loud the people's

just applause.

"Like the herdsman of Tekoa, in Israel of old,

Shall we see the poor and righteous again for

silver sold?"

I looked on haughty Endicott; with weapon half-

way drawn,

Swept round the throng his lion glare of bitter hate

and scorn;

Fiercely he drew his bridle-rein, and turned in

silence back,

And sneering priest and baffled clerk rode

murmuring in his track.

Hard after them the sheriff looked, in bitterness of

soul;

Thrice smote his staff upon the ground, and

crushed his parchment roll.

"Good friends," he said, "since both have fled,

the ruler and the priest,

Judge ye, if from their further work I be not well

released."

Loud was the cheer which, full and clear, swept

round the silent bay,

As, with kind words and kinder looks, he bade me

go my way;

For He who turns the courses of the streamlet of

the glen,

And the river of great waters, had turned the

hearts of men.

Oh, at that hour the very earth seemed changed

beneath my eye,

A holier wonder round me rose the blue walls of

the sky,

A lovelier light on rock and hill and stream and

woodland lay,

And softer lapsed on sunnier sands the waters of

the bay.

Thanksgiving to the Lord of life! to Him all

praises be,

Who from the hands of evil men hath set his hand-

maid free;

All praise to Him before whose power the mighty

are afraid,

Who takes the crafty in the snare which for the

poor is laid!

Sing, O my soul, rejoicingly, on evening's twilight

calm

Uplift the loud thanksgiving, pour forth the grateful

psalm;

Let all dear hearts with me rejoice, as did the

saints of old,

When of the Lord's good angel the rescued Peter

told.

And weep and howl, ye evil priests and mighty

men of wrong,

The Lord shall smite the proud, and lay His hand

upon the strong.

Woe to the wicked rulers in His avenging hour!

Woe to the wolves who seek the flocks to raven

and devour!

But let the humble ones arise, the poor in heart

be glad,

And let the mourning ones again with robes of

praise be clad.

For He who cooled the furnace, and smoothed the

stormy wave,

And tamed the Chaldean lions, is mighty still to

save!

1843.

THE NEW WIFE AND THE OLD.

The following ballad is founded upon one of the marvellous legends

connected with the famous General ----, of Hampton, New Hampshire,

who was regarded by his neighbors as a Yankee Faust, in league with

the adversary. I give the story, as I heard it when a child, from a

venerable family visitant.

DARK the halls, and cold the feast,

Gone the bridemaids, gone the priest.

All is over, all is done,

Twain of yesterday are one!

Blooming girl and manhood gray,

Autumn in the arms of May!

Hushed within and hushed without,

Dancing feet and wrestlers' shout;

Dies the bonfire on the hill;

All is dark and all is still,

Save the starlight, save the breeze

Moaning through the graveyard trees,

And the great sea-waves below,

Pulse of the midnight beating slow.

From the brief dream of a bride

She hath wakened, at his side.

With half-uttered shriek and start,--

Feels she not his beating heart?

And the pressure of his arm,

And his breathing near and warm?

Lightly from the bridal bed

Springs that fair dishevelled head,

And a feeling, new, intense,

Half of shame, half innocence,

Maiden fear and wonder speaks

Through her lips and changing cheeks.

From the oaken mantel glowing,

Faintest light the lamp is throwing

On the mirror's antique mould,

High-backed chair, and wainscot old,

And, through faded curtains stealing,

His dark sleeping face revealing.

Listless lies the strong man there,

Silver-streaked his careless hair;

Lips of love have left no trace

On that hard and haughty face;

And that forehead's knitted thought

Love's soft hand hath not unwrought.

"Yet," she sighs, "he loves me well,

More than these calm lips will tell.

Stooping to my lowly state,

He hath made me rich and great,

And I bless him, though he be

Hard and stern to all save me!"

While she speaketh, falls the light

O'er her fingers small and white;

Gold and gem, and costly ring

Back the timid lustre fling,--

Love's selectest gifts, and rare,

His proud hand had fastened there.

Gratefully she marks the glow

From those tapering lines of snow;

Fondly o'er the sleeper bending

His black hair with golden blending,

In her soft and light caress,

Cheek and lip together press.

Ha!--that start of horror! why

That wild stare and wilder cry,

Full of terror, full of pain?

Is there madness in her brain?

Hark! that gasping, hoarse and low,

"Spare me,--spare me,--let me go!"

God have mercy!--icy cold

Spectral hands her own enfold,

Drawing silently from them

Love's fair gifts of gold and gem.

"Waken! save me!" still as death

At her side he slumbereth.

Ring and bracelet all are gone,

And that ice-cold hand withdrawn;

But she hears a murmur low,

Full of sweetness, full of woe,

Half a sigh and half a moan

"Fear not! give the dead her own!"

Ah!--the dead wife's voice she knows!

That cold hand whose pressure froze,

Once in warmest life had borne

Gem and band her own hath worn.

"Wake thee! wake thee!" Lo, his eyes

Open with a dull surprise.

In his arms the strong man folds her,

Closer to his breast he holds her;

Trembling limbs his own are meeting,

And he feels her heart's quick beating

"Nay, my dearest, why this fear?"

"Hush!" she saith, "the dead is here!"

"Nay, a dream,--an idle dream."

But before the lamp's pale gleam

Tremblingly her hand she raises.

There no more the diamond blazes,

Clasp of pearl, or ring of gold,--

"Ah!" she sighs, "her hand was cold!"

Broken words of cheer he saith,

But his dark lip quivereth,

And as o'er the past he thinketh,

From his young wife's arms he shrinketh;

Can those soft arms round him lie,

Underneath his dead wife's eye?

She her fair young head can rest

Soothed and childlike on his breast,

And in trustful innocence

Draw new strength and courage thence;

He, the proud man, feels within

But the cowardice of sin!

She can murmur in her thought

Simple prayers her mother taught,

And His blessed angels call,

Whose great love is over all;

He, alone, in prayerless pride,

Meets the dark Past at her side!

One, who living shrank with dread

From his look, or word, or tread,

Unto whom her early grave

Was as freedom to the slave,

Moves him at this midnight hour,

With the dead's unconscious power!

Ah, the dead, the unforgot!

From their solemn homes of thought,

Where the cypress shadows blend

Darkly over foe and friend,

Or in love or sad rebuke,

Back upon the living look.

And the tenderest ones and weakest,

Who their wrongs have borne the meekest,

Lifting from those dark, still places,

Sweet and sad-remembered faces,

O'er the guilty hearts behind

An unwitting triumph find.

1843

THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK.

Winnepurkit, otherwise called George, Sachem of Saugus, married a

daughter of Passaconaway, the great Pennacook chieftain, in 1662. The

wedding took place at Pennacook (now Concord, N. H.), and the ceremonies

closed with a great feast. According to the usages of the chiefs,

Passaconaway ordered a select number of his men to accompany the

newly-married couple to the dwelling of the husband, where in turn there

was another great feast. Some time after, the wife of Winnepurkit

expressing a desire to visit her father's house was permitted to go,

accompanied by a brave escort of her husband's chief men. But when she

wished to return, her father sent a messenger to Saugus, informing her

husband, and asking him to come and take her away. He returned for

answer that he had escorted his wife to her father's house in a style

that became a chief, and that now if she wished to return, her father

must send her back, in the same way. This Passaconaway refused to do,

and it is said that here terminated the connection of his daughter with

the Saugus chief.--Vide MORTON'S New Canaan.

WE had been wandering for many days

Through the rough northern country. We had seen

The sunset, with its bars of purple cloud,

Like a new heaven, shine upward from the lake

Of Winnepiseogee; and had felt

The sunrise breezes, midst the leafy isles

Which stoop their summer beauty to the lips

Of the bright waters. We had checked our steeds,

Silent with wonder, where the mountain wall

Is piled to heaven; and, through the narrow rift

Of the vast rocks, against whose rugged feet

Beats the mad torrent with perpetual roar,

Where noonday is as twilight, and the wind

Comes burdened with the everlasting moan

Of forests and of far-off waterfalls,

We had looked upward where the summer sky,

Tasselled with clouds light-woven by the sun,

Sprung its blue arch above the abutting crags

O'er-roofing the vast portal of the land

Beyond the wall of mountains. We had passed

The high source of the Saco; and bewildered

In the dwarf spruce-belts of the Crystal Hills,

Had heard above us, like a voice in the cloud,

The horn of Fabyan sounding; and atop

Of old Agioochook had seen the mountains'

Piled to the northward, shagged with wood, and thick

As meadow mole-hills,--the far sea of Casco,

A white gleam on the horizon of the east;

Fair lakes, embosomed in the woods and hills;

Moosehillock's mountain range, and Kearsarge

Lifting his granite forehead to the sun!

And we had rested underneath the oaks

Shadowing the bank, whose grassy spires are shaken

By the perpetual beating of the falls

Of the wild Ammonoosuc. We had tracked

The winding Pemigewasset, overhung

By beechen shadows, whitening down its rocks,

Or lazily gliding through its intervals,

From waving rye-fields sending up the gleam

Of sunlit waters. We had seen the moon

Rising behind Umbagog's eastern pines,

Like a great Indian camp-fire; and its beams

At midnight spanning with a bridge of silver

The Merrimac by Uncanoonuc's falls.

There were five souls of us whom travel's chance

Had thrown together in these wild north hills

A city lawyer, for a month escaping

From his dull office, where the weary eye

Saw only hot brick walls and close thronged streets;

Briefless as yet, but with an eye to see

Life's sunniest side, and with a heart to take

Its chances all as godsends; and his brother,

Pale from long pulpit studies, yet retaining

The warmth and freshness of a genial heart,

Whose mirror of the beautiful and true,

In Man and Nature, was as yet undimmed

By dust of theologic strife, or breath

Of sect, or cobwebs of scholastic lore;

Like a clear crystal calm of water, taking

The hue and image of o'erleaning flowers,

Sweet human faces, white clouds of the noon,

Slant starlight glimpses through the dewy leaves,

And tenderest moonrise. 'T was, in truth, a study,

To mark his spirit, alternating between

A decent and professional gravity

And an irreverent mirthfulness, which often

Laughed in the face of his divinity,

Plucked off the sacred ephod, quite unshrined

The oracle, and for the pattern priest

Left us the man. A shrewd, sagacious merchant,

To whom the soiled sheet found in Crawford's inn,

Giving the latest news of city stocks

And sales of cotton, had a deeper meaning

Than the great presence of the awful mountains

Glorified by the sunset; and his daughter,

A delicate flower on whom had blown too long

Those evil winds, which, sweeping from the ice

And winnowing the fogs of Labrador,

Shed their cold blight round Massachusetts Bay,

With the same breath which stirs Spring's opening leaves

And lifts her half-formed flower-bell on its stem,

Poisoning our seaside atmosphere.

It chanced that as we turned upon our homeward way,

A drear northeastern storm came howling up

The valley of the Saco; and that girl

Who had stood with us upon Mount Washington,

Her brown locks ruffled by the wind which whirled

In gusts around its sharp, cold pinnacle,

Who had joined our gay trout-fishing in the streams

Which lave that giant's feet; whose laugh was heard

Like a bird's carol on the sunrise breeze

Which swelled our sail amidst the lake's green islands,

Shrank from its harsh, chill breath, and visibly drooped

Like a flower in the frost. So, in that quiet inn

Which looks from Conway on the mountains piled

Heavily against the horizon of the north,

Like summer thunder-clouds, we made our home

And while the mist hung over dripping hills,

And the cold wind-driven rain-drops all day long

Beat their sad music upon roof and pane,

We strove to cheer our gentle invalid.

The lawyer in the pauses of the storm

Went angling down the Saco, and, returning,

Recounted his adventures and mishaps;

Gave us the history of his scaly clients,

Mingling with ludicrous yet apt citations

Of barbarous law Latin, passages

From Izaak Walton's Angler, sweet and fresh

As the flower-skirted streams of Staffordshire,

Where, under aged trees, the southwest wind

Of soft June mornings fanned the thin, white hair

Of the sage fisher. And, if truth be told,

Our youthful candidate forsook his sermons,

His commentaries, articles and creeds,

For the fair page of human loveliness,

The missal of young hearts, whose sacred text

Is music, its illumining, sweet smiles.

He sang the songs she loved; and in his low,

Deep, earnest voice, recited many a page

Of poetry, the holiest, tenderest lines

Of the sad bard of Olney, the sweet songs,

Simple and beautiful as Truth and Nature,

Of him whose whitened locks on Rydal Mount

Are lifted yet by morning breezes blowing

From the green hills, immortal in his lays.

And for myself, obedient to her wish,

I searched our landlord's proffered library,--

A well-thumbed Bunyan, with its nice wood pictures

Of scaly fiends and angels not unlike them;

Watts' unmelodious psalms; Astrology's

Last home, a musty pile of almanacs,

And an old chronicle of border wars

And Indian history. And, as I read

A story of the marriage of the Chief

Of Saugus to the dusky Weetamoo,

Daughter of Passaconaway, who dwelt

In the old time upon the Merrimac,

Our fair one, in the playful exercise

Of her prerogative,--the right divine

Of youth and beauty,--bade us versify

The legend, and with ready pencil sketched

Its plan and outlines, laughingly assigning

To each his part, and barring our excuses

With absolute will. So, like the cavaliers

Whose voices still are heard in the Romance

Of silver-tongued Boccaccio, on the banks

Of Arno, with soft tales of love beguiling

The ear of languid beauty, plague-exiled

From stately Florence, we rehearsed our rhymes

To their fair auditor, and shared by turns

Her kind approval and her playful censure.

It may be that these fragments owe alone

To the fair setting of their circumstances,--

The associations of time, scene, and audience,--

Their place amid the pictures which fill up

The chambers of my memory. Yet I trust

That some, who sigh, while wandering in thought,

Pilgrims of Romance o'er the olden world,

That our broad land,--our sea-like lakes and mountains

Piled to the clouds, our rivers overhung

By forests which have known no other change

For ages than the budding and the fall

Of leaves, our valleys lovelier than those

Which the old poets sang of,--should but figure

On the apocryphal chart of speculation

As pastures, wood-lots, mill-sites, with the privileges,

Rights, and appurtenances, which make up

A Yankee Paradise, unsung, unknown,

To beautiful tradition; even their names,

Whose melody yet lingers like the last

Vibration of the red man's requiem,

Exchanged for syllables significant,

Of cotton-mill and rail-car, will look kindly

Upon this effort to call up the ghost

Of our dim Past, and listen with pleased ear

To the responses of the questioned Shade.

I. THE MERRIMAC.

O child of that white-crested mountain whose

springs

Gush forth in the shade of the cliff-eagle's

wings,

Down whose slopes to the lowlands thy wild waters

shine,

Leaping gray walls of rock, flashing through the

dwarf pine;

From that cloud-curtained cradle so cold and so

lone,

From the arms of that wintry-locked mother of

stone,

By hills hung with forests, through vales wide and

free,

Thy mountain-born brightness glanced down to the

sea.

No bridge arched thy waters save that where the

trees

Stretched their long arms above thee and kissed in

the breeze:

No sound save the lapse of the waves on thy

shores,

The plunging of otters, the light dip of oars.

Green-tufted, oak-shaded, by Amoskeag's fall

Thy twin Uncanoonucs rose stately and tall,

Thy Nashua meadows lay green and unshorn,

And the hills of Pentucket were tasselled with

corn.

But thy Pennacook valley was fairer than these,

And greener its grasses and taller its trees,

Ere the sound of an axe in the forest had rung,

Or the mower his scythe in the meadows had

swung.

In their sheltered repose looking out from the

wood

The bark-builded wigwams of Pennacook stood;

There glided the corn-dance, the council-fire shone,

And against the red war-post the hatchet was

thrown.

There the old smoked in silence their pipes, and

the young

To the pike and the white-perch their baited lines

flung;

There the boy shaped his arrows, and there the

shy maid

Wove her many-hued baskets and bright wampum

braid.

O Stream of the Mountains! if answer of thine

Could rise from thy waters to question of mine,

Methinks through the din of thy thronged banks

a moan

Of sorrow would swell for the days which have

gone.

Not for thee the dull jar of the loom and the wheel,

The gliding of shuttles, the ringing of steel;

But that old voice of waters, of bird and of breeze,

The dip of the wild-fowl, the rustling of trees.

II. THE BASHABA.

Lift we the twilight curtains of the Past,

And, turning from familiar sight and sound,

Sadly and full of reverence let us cast

A glance upon Tradition's shadowy ground,

Led by the few pale lights which, glimmering round

That dim, strange land of Eld, seem dying fast;

And that which history gives not to the eye,

The faded coloring of Time's tapestry,

Let Fancy, with her dream-dipped brush, supply.

Roof of bark and walls of pine,

Through whose chinks the sunbeams shine,

Tracing many a golden line

On the ample floor within;

Where, upon that earth-floor stark,

Lay the gaudy mats of bark,

With the bear's hide, rough and dark,

And the red-deer's skin.

Window-tracery, small and slight,

Woven of the willow white,

Lent a dimly checkered light;

And the night-stars glimmered down,

Where the lodge-fire's heavy smoke,

Slowly through an opening broke,

In the low roof, ribbed with oak,

Sheathed with hemlock brown.

Gloomed behind the changeless shade

By the solemn pine-wood made;

Through the rugged palisade,

In the open foreground planted,

Glimpses came of rowers rowing,

Stir of leaves and wild-flowers blowing,

Steel-like gleams of water flowing,

In the sunlight slanted.

Here the mighty Bashaba

Held his long-unquestioned sway,

From the White Hills, far away,

To the great sea's sounding shore;

Chief of chiefs, his regal word

All the river Sachems heard,

At his call the war-dance stirred,

Or was still once more.

There his spoils of chase and war,

Jaw of wolf and black bear's paw,

Panther's skin and eagle's claw,

Lay beside his axe and bow;

And, adown the roof-pole hung,

Loosely on a snake-skin strung,

In the smoke his scalp-locks swung

Grimly to and fro.

Nightly down the river going,

Swifter was the hunter's rowing,

When he saw that lodge-fire, glowing

O'er the waters still and red;

And the squaw's dark eye burned brighter,

And she drew her blanket tighter,

As, with quicker step and lighter,

From that door she fled.

For that chief had magic skill,

And a Panisee's dark will,

Over powers of good and ill,

Powers which bless and powers which ban;

Wizard lord of Pennacook,

Chiefs upon their war-path shook,

When they met the steady look

Of that wise dark man.

Tales of him the gray squaw told,

When the winter night-wind cold

Pierced her blanket's thickest fold,

And her fire burned low and small,

Till the very child abed,

Drew its bear-skin over bead,

Shrinking from the pale lights shed

On the trembling wall.

All the subtle spirits hiding

Under earth or wave, abiding

In the caverned rock, or riding

Misty clouds or morning breeze;

Every dark intelligence,

Secret soul, and influence

Of all things which outward sense

Feels, or bears, or sees,--

These the wizard's skill confessed,

At his bidding banned or blessed,

Stormful woke or lulled to rest

Wind and cloud, and fire and flood;

Burned for him the drifted snow,

Bade through ice fresh lilies blow,

And the leaves of summer grow

Over winter's wood!

Not untrue that tale of old!

Now, as then, the wise and bold

All the powers of Nature hold

Subject to their kingly will;

From the wondering crowds ashore,

Treading life's wild waters o'er,

As upon a marble floor,

Moves the strong man still.

Still, to such, life's elements

With their sterner laws dispense,

And the chain of consequence

Broken in their pathway lies;

Time and change their vassals making,

Flowers from icy pillows waking,

Tresses of the sunrise shaking

Over midnight skies.

Still, to th' earnest soul, the sun

Rests on towered Gibeon,

And the moon of Ajalon

Lights the battle-grounds of life;

To his aid the strong reverses

Hidden powers and giant forces,

And the high stars, in their courses,

Mingle in his strife!

III. THE DAUGHTER.

The soot-black brows of men, the yell

Of women thronging round the bed,

The tinkling charm of ring and shell,

The Powah whispering o'er the dead!

All these the Sachem's home had known,

When, on her journey long and wild

To the dim World of Souls, alone,

In her young beauty passed the mother of his child.

Three bow-shots from the Sachem's dwelling

They laid her in the walnut shade,

Where a green hillock gently swelling

Her fitting mound of burial made.

There trailed the vine in summer hours,

The tree-perched squirrel dropped his shell,--

On velvet moss and pale-hued flowers,

Woven with leaf and spray, the softened sunshine fell!

The Indian's heart is hard and cold,

It closes darkly o'er its care,

And formed in Nature's sternest mould,

Is slow to feel, and strong to bear.

The war-paint on the Sachem's face,

Unwet with tears, shone fierce and red,

And still, in battle or in chase,

Dry leaf and snow-rime crisped beneath his

foremost tread.

Yet when her name was heard no more,

And when the robe her mother gave,

And small, light moccasin she wore,

Had slowly wasted on her grave,

Unmarked of him the dark maids sped

Their sunset dance and moonlit play;

No other shared his lonely bed,

No other fair young head upon his bosom lay.

A lone, stern man. Yet, as sometimes

The tempest-smitten tree receives

From one small root the sap which climbs

Its topmost spray and crowning leaves,

So from his child the Sachem drew

A life of Love and Hope, and felt

His cold and rugged nature through

The softness and the warmth of her young

being melt.

A laugh which in the woodland rang

Bemocking April's gladdest bird,--

A light and graceful form which sprang

To meet him when his step was heard,--

Eyes by his lodge-fire flashing dark,

Small fingers stringing bead and shell

Or weaving mats of bright-hued bark,--

With these the household-god (3) had graced

his wigwam well.

Child of the forest! strong and free,

Slight-robed, with loosely flowing hair,

She swam the lake or climbed the tree,

Or struck the flying bird in air.

O'er the heaped drifts of winter's moon

Her snow-shoes tracked the hunter's way;

And dazzling in the summer noon

The blade of her light oar threw off its shower

of spray!

Unknown to her the rigid rule,

The dull restraint, the chiding frown,

The weary torture of the school,

The taming of wild nature down.

Her only lore, the legends told

Around the hunter's fire at night;

Stars rose and set, and seasons rolled,

Flowers bloomed and snow-flakes fell, unquestioned

in her sight.

Unknown to her the subtle skill

With which the artist-eye can trace

In rock and tree and lake and hill

The outlines of divinest grace;

Unknown the fine soul's keen unrest,

Which sees, admires, yet yearns alway;

Too closely on her mother's breast

To note her smiles of love the child of Nature lay!

It is enough for such to be

Of common, natural things a part,

To feel, with bird and stream and tree,

The pulses of the same great heart;

But we, from Nature long exiled,

In our cold homes of Art and Thought

Grieve like the stranger-tended child,

Which seeks its mother's arms, and sees but feels

them not.

The garden rose may richly bloom

In cultured soil and genial air,

To cloud the light of Fashion's room

Or droop in Beauty's midnight hair;

In lonelier grace, to sun and dew

The sweetbrier on the hillside shows

Its single leaf and fainter hue,

Untrained and wildly free, yet still a sister rose!

Thus o'er the heart of Weetamoo

Their mingling shades of joy and ill

The instincts of her nature threw;

The savage was a woman still.

Midst outlines dim of maiden schemes,

Heart-colored prophecies of life,

Rose on the ground of her young dreams

The light of a new home, the lover and the wife.

IV. THE WEDDING.

Cool and dark fell the autumn night,

But the Bashaba's wigwam glowed with light,

For down from its roof, by green withes hung,

Flaring and smoking the pine-knots swung.

And along the river great wood-fires

Shot into the night their long, red spires,

Showing behind the tall, dark wood,

Flashing before on the sweeping flood.

In the changeful wind, with shimmer and shade,

Now high, now low, that firelight played,

On tree-leaves wet with evening dews,

On gliding water and still canoes.

The trapper that night on Turee's brook,

And the weary fisher on Contoocook,

Saw over the marshes, and through the pine,

And down on the river, the dance-lights shine.

For the Saugus Sachem had come to woo

The Bashaba's daughter Weetamoo,

And laid at her father's feet that night

His softest furs and wampum white.

From the Crystal Hills to the far southeast

The river Sagamores came to the feast;

And chiefs whose homes the sea-winds shook

Sat down on the mats of Pennacook.

They came from Sunapee's shore of rock,

From the snowy sources of Snooganock,

And from rough Coos whose thick woods shake

Their pine-cones in Umbagog Lake.

From Ammonoosuc's mountain pass,

Wild as his home, came Chepewass;

And the Keenomps of the bills which throw

Their shade on the Smile of Manito.

With pipes of peace and bows unstrung,

Glowing with paint came old and young,

In wampum and furs and feathers arrayed,

To the dance and feast the Bashaba made.

Bird of the air and beast of the field,

All which the woods and the waters yield,

On dishes of birch and hemlock piled,

Garnished and graced that banquet wild.

Steaks of the brown bear fat and large

From the rocky slopes of the Kearsarge;

Delicate trout from Babboosuck brook,

And salmon speared in the Contoocook;

Squirrels which fed where nuts fell thick

in the gravelly bed of the Otternic;

And small wild-hens in reed-snares caught

from the banks of Sondagardee brought;

Pike and perch from the Suncook taken,

Nuts from the trees of the Black Hills shaken,

Cranberries picked in the Squamscot bog,

And grapes from the vines of Piscataquog:

And, drawn from that great stone vase which stands

In the river scooped by a spirit's hands,(4)

Garnished with spoons of shell and horn,

Stood the birchen dishes of smoking corn.

Thus bird of the air and beast of the field,

All which the woods and the waters yield,

Furnished in that olden day

The bridal feast of the Bashaba.

And merrily when that feast was done

On the fire-lit green the dance begun,

With squaws' shrill stave, and deeper hum

Of old men beating the Indian drum.

Painted and plumed, with scalp-locks flowing,

And red arms tossing and black eyes glowing,

Now in the light and now in the shade

Around the fires the dancers played.

The step was quicker, the song more shrill,

And the beat of the small drums louder still

Whenever within the circle drew

The Saugus Sachem and Weetamoo.

The moons of forty winters had shed

Their snow upon that chieftain's head,

And toil and care and battle's chance

Had seamed his hard, dark countenance.

A fawn beside the bison grim,--

Why turns the bride's fond eye on him,

In whose cold look is naught beside

The triumph of a sullen pride?

Ask why the graceful grape entwines

The rough oak with her arm of vines;

And why the gray rock's rugged cheek

The soft lips of the mosses seek.

Why, with wise instinct, Nature seems

To harmonize her wide extremes,

Linking the stronger with the weak,

The haughty with the soft and meek!

V. THE NEW HOME.

A wild and broken landscape, spiked with firs,

Roughening the bleak horizon's northern edge;

Steep, cavernous hillsides, where black hemlock

spurs

And sharp, gray splinters of the wind-swept

ledge

Pierced the thin-glazed ice, or bristling rose,

Where the cold rim of the sky sunk down upon

the snows.

And eastward cold, wide marshes stretched away,

Dull, dreary flats without a bush or tree,

O'er-crossed by icy creeks, where twice a day

Gurgled the waters of the moon-struck sea;

And faint with distance came the stifled roar,

The melancholy lapse of waves on that low shore.

No cheerful village with its mingling smokes,

No laugh of children wrestling in the snow,

No camp-fire blazing through the hillside oaks,

No fishers kneeling on the ice below;

Yet midst all desolate things of sound and view,

Through the long winter moons smiled dark-eyed

Weetamoo.

Her heart had found a home; and freshly all

Its beautiful affections overgrew

Their rugged prop. As o'er some granite wall

Soft vine-leaves open to the moistening dew

And warm bright sun, the love of that young wife

Found on a hard cold breast the dew and warmth

of life.

The steep, bleak hills, the melancholy shore,

The long, dead level of the marsh between,

A coloring of unreal beauty wore

Through the soft golden mist of young love seen.

For o'er those hills and from that dreary plain,

Nightly she welcomed home her hunter chief again.

No warmth of heart, no passionate burst of feeling,

Repaid her welcoming smile and parting kiss,

No fond and playful dalliance half concealing,

Under the guise of mirth, its tenderness;

But, in their stead, the warrior's settled pride,

And vanity's pleased smile with homage satisfied.

Enough for Weetamoo, that she alone

Sat on his mat and slumbered at his side;

That he whose fame to her young ear had flown

Now looked upon her proudly as his bride;

That he whose name the Mohawk trembling heard

Vouchsafed to her at times a kindly look or word.

For she had learned the maxims of her race,

Which teach the woman to become a slave,

And feel herself the pardonless disgrace

Of love's fond weakness in the wise and brave,--

The scandal and the shame which they incur,

Who give to woman all which man requires of her.

So passed the winter moons. The sun at last

Broke link by link the frost chain of the rills,

And the warm breathings of the southwest passed

Over the hoar rime of the Saugus hills;

The gray and desolate marsh grew green once more,

And the birch-tree's tremulous shade fell round the

Sachem's door.

Then from far Pennacook swift runners came,

With gift and greeting for the Saugus chief;

Beseeching him in the great Sachem's name,

That, with the coming of the flower and leaf,

The song of birds, the warm breeze and the rain,

Young Weetamoo might greet her lonely sire again.

And Winnepurkit called his chiefs together,

And a grave council in his wigwam met,

Solemn and brief in words, considering whether

The rigid rules of forest etiquette

Permitted Weetamoo once more to look

Upon her father's face and green-banked

Pennacook.

With interludes of pipe-smoke and strong water,

The forest sages pondered, and at length,

Concluded in a body to escort her

Up to her father's home of pride and strength,

Impressing thus on Pennacook a sense

Of Winnepurkit's power and regal consequence.

So through old woods which Aukeetamit's(5) hand,

A soft and many-shaded greenness lent,

Over high breezy hills, and meadow land

Yellow with flowers, the wild procession went,

Till, rolling down its wooded banks between,

A broad, clear, mountain stream, the Merrimac

was seen.

The hunter leaning on his bow undrawn,

The fisher lounging on the pebbled shores,

Squaws in the clearing dropping the seed-corn,

Young children peering through the wigwam doors,

Saw with delight, surrounded by her train

Of painted Saugus braves, their Weetamoo again.

VI. AT PENNACOOK.

The hills are dearest which our childish feet

Have climbed the earliest; and the streams most sweet

Are ever those at which our young lips drank,

Stooped to their waters o'er the grassy bank.

Midst the cold dreary sea-watch, Home's hearth-light

Shines round the helmsman plunging through the night;

And still, with inward eye, the traveller sees

In close, dark, stranger streets his native trees.

The home-sick dreamer's brow is nightly fanned

By breezes whispering of his native land,

And on the stranger's dim and dying eye

The soft, sweet pictures of his childhood lie.

Joy then for Weetamoo, to sit once more

A child upon her father's wigwam floor!

Once more with her old fondness to beguile

From his cold eye the strange light of a smile.

The long, bright days of summer swiftly passed,

The dry leaves whirled in autumn's rising blast,

And evening cloud and whitening sunrise rime

Told of the coming of the winter-time.

But vainly looked, the while, young Weetamoo,

Down the dark river for her chief's canoe;

No dusky messenger from Saugus brought

The grateful tidings which the young wife sought.

At length a runner from her father sent,

To Winnepurkit's sea-cooled wigwam went

"Eagle of Saugus,--in the woods the dove

Mourns for the shelter of thy wings of love."

But the dark chief of Saugus turned aside

In the grim anger of hard-hearted pride;

"I bore her as became a chieftain's daughter,

Up to her home beside the gliding water.

If now no more a mat for her is found

Of all which line her father's wigwam round,

Let Pennacook call out his warrior train,

And send her back with wampum gifts again."

The baffled runner turned upon his track,

Bearing the words of Winnepurkit back.

"Dog of the Marsh," cried Pennacook, "no more

Shall child of mine sit on his wigwam floor.

"Go, let him seek some meaner squaw to spread

The stolen bear-skin of his beggar's bed;

Son of a fish-hawk! let him dig his clams

For some vile daughter of the Agawams,

"Or coward Nipmucks! may his scalp dry black

In Mohawk smoke, before I send her back."

He shook his clenched hand towards the ocean wave,

While hoarse assent his listening council gave.

Alas poor bride! can thy grim sire impart

His iron hardness to thy woman's heart?

Or cold self-torturing pride like his atone

For love denied and life's warm beauty flown?

On Autumn's gray and mournful grave the snow

Hung its white wreaths; with stifled voice and low

The river crept, by one vast bridge o'er-crossed,

Built by the boar-locked artisan of Frost.

And many a moon in beauty newly born

Pierced the red sunset with her silver horn,

Or, from the east, across her azure field

Rolled the wide brightness of her full-orbed shield.

Yet Winnepurkit came not,--on the mat

Of the scorned wife her dusky rival sat;

And he, the while, in Western woods afar,

Urged the long chase, or trod the path of war.

Dry up thy tears, young daughter of a chief!

Waste not on him the sacredness of grief;

Be the fierce spirit of thy sire thine own,

His lips of scorning, and his heart of stone.

What heeds the warrior of a hundred fights,

The storm-worn watcher through long hunting nights,

Cold, crafty, proud of woman's weak distress,

Her home-bound grief and pining loneliness?

VII. THE DEPARTURE.

The wild March rains had fallen fast and long

The snowy mountains of the North among,

Making each vale a watercourse, each hill

Bright with the cascade of some new-made rill.

Gnawed by the sunbeams, softened by the rain,

Heaved underneath by the swollen current's strain,

The ice-bridge yielded, and the Merrimac

Bore the huge ruin crashing down its track.

On that strong turbid water, a small boat

Guided by one weak hand was seen to float;

Evil the fate which loosed it from the shore,

Too early voyager with too frail an oar!

Down the vexed centre of that rushing tide,

The thick huge ice-blocks threatening either side,

The foam-white rocks of Amoskeag in view,

With arrowy swiftness sped that light canoe.

The trapper, moistening his moose's meat

On the wet bank by Uncanoonuc's feet,

Saw the swift boat flash down the troubled stream;

Slept he, or waked he? was it truth or dream?

The straining eye bent fearfully before,

The small hand clenching on the useless oar,

The bead-wrought blanket trailing o'er the water--

He knew them all--woe for the Sachem's daughter!

Sick and aweary of her lonely life,

Heedless of peril, the still faithful wife

Had left her mother's grave, her father's door,

To seek the wigwam of her chief once more.

Down the white rapids like a sear leaf whirled,

On the sharp rocks and piled-up ices hurled,

Empty and broken, circled the canoe

In the vexed pool below--but where was Weetamoo.

VIII. SONG OF INDIAN WOMEN.

The Dark eye has left us,

The Spring-bird has flown;

On the pathway of spirits

She wanders alone.

The song of the wood-dove has died on our shore

Mat wonck kunna-monee!(6) We hear it no more!

O dark water Spirit

We cast on thy wave

These furs which may never

Hang over her grave;

Bear down to the lost one the robes that she wore

Mat wonck kunna-monee! We see her no more!

Of the strange land she walks in

No Powah has told:

It may burn with the sunshine,

Or freeze with the cold.

Let us give to our lost one the robes that she wore:

Mat wonck kunna-monee! We see her no more!

The path she is treading

Shall soon be our own;

Each gliding in shadow

Unseen and alone!

In vain shall we call on the souls gone before:

Mat wonck kunna-monee! They hear us no more!

O mighty Sowanna!(7)

Thy gateways unfold,

From thy wigwam of sunset

Lift curtains of gold!

Take home the poor Spirit whose journey is o'er

Mat wonck kunna-monee! We see her no more!

So sang the Children of the Leaves beside

The broad, dark river's coldly flowing tide;

Now low, now harsh, with sob-like pause and swell,

On the high wind their voices rose and fell.

Nature's wild music,--sounds of wind-swept trees,

The scream of birds, the wailing of the breeze,

The roar of waters, steady, deep, and strong,--

Mingled and murmured in that farewell song.

1844.

BARCLAY OF URY.

Among the earliest converts to the doctrines of Friends in Scotland was

Barclay of Ury, an old and distinguished soldier, who had fought under

Gustavus Adolphus, in Germany. As a Quaker, he became the object of

persecution and abuse at the hands of the magistrates and the populace.

None bore the indignities of the mob with greater patience and nobleness

of soul than this once proud gentleman and soldier. One of his friends,

on an occasion of uncommon rudeness, lamented that he should be treated

so harshly in his old age who had been so honored before. "I find more

satisfaction," said Barclay, "as well as honor, in being thus insulted

for my religious principles, than when, a few years ago, it was usual

for the magistrates, as I passed the city of Aberdeen, to meet me on the

road and conduct me to public entertainment in their hall, and then

escort me out again, to gain my favor."

Up the streets of Aberdeen,

By the kirk and college green,

Rode the Laird of Ury;

Close behind him, close beside,

Foul of mouth and evil-eyed,

Pressed the mob in fury.

Flouted him the drunken churl,

Jeered at him the serving-girl,

Prompt to please her master;

And the begging carlin, late

Fed and clothed at Ury's gate,

Cursed him as he passed her.

Yet, with calm and stately mien,

Up the streets of Aberdeen

Came he slowly riding;

And, to all he saw and heard,

Answering not with bitter word,

Turning not for chiding.

Came a troop with broadswords swinging,

Bits and bridles sharply ringing,

Loose and free and froward;

Quoth the foremost, "Ride him down!

Push him! prick him! through the town

Drive the Quaker coward!"

But from out the thickening crowd

Cried a sudden voice and loud

"Barclay! Ho! a Barclay!"

And the old man at his side

Saw a comrade, battle tried,

Scarred and sunburned darkly;

Who with ready weapon bare,

Fronting to the troopers there,

Cried aloud: "God save us,

Call ye coward him who stood

Ankle deep in Lutzen's blood,

With the brave Gustavus?"

"Nay, I do not need thy sword,

Comrade mine," said Ury's lord;

"Put it up, I pray thee

Passive to His holy will,

Trust I in my Master still,

Even though He slay me.

"Pledges of thy love and faith,

Proved on many a field of death,

Not by me are needed."

Marvelled much that henchman bold,

That his laird, so stout of old,

Now so meekly pleaded.

"Woe's the day!" he sadly said,

With a slowly shaking head,

And a look of pity;

"Ury's honest lord reviled,

Mock of knave and sport of child,

In his own good city.

"Speak the word, and, master mine,

As we charged on Tilly's(8) line,

And his Walloon lancers,

Smiting through their midst we'll teach

Civil look and decent speech

To these boyish prancers!"

"Marvel not, mine ancient friend,

Like beginning, like the end:"

Quoth the Laird of Ury;

"Is the sinful servant more

Than his gracious Lord who bore

Bonds and stripes in Jewry?

"Give me joy that in His name

I can bear, with patient frame,

All these vain ones offer;

While for them He suffereth long,

Shall I answer wrong with wrong,

Scoffing with the scoffer?

"Happier I, with loss of all,

Hunted, outlawed, held in thrall,

With few friends to greet me,

Than when reeve and squire were seen,

Riding out from Aberdeen,

With bared heads to meet me.

"When each goodwife, o'er and o'er,

Blessed me as I passed her door;

And the snooded daughter,

Through her casement glancing down,

Smiled on him who bore renown

From red fields of slaughter.

"Hard to feel the stranger's scoff,

Hard the old friend's falling off,

Hard to learn forgiving;

But the Lord His own rewards,

And His love with theirs accords,

Warm and fresh and living.

"Through this dark and stormy night

Faith beholds a feeble light

Up the blackness streaking;

Knowing God's own time is best,

In a patient hope I rest

For the full day-breaking!"

So the Laird of Ury said,

Turning slow his horse's head

Towards the Tolbooth prison,

Where, through iron gates, he heard

Poor disciples of the Word

Preach of Christ arisen!

Not in vain, Confessor old,

Unto us the tale is told

Of thy day of trial;

Every age on him who strays

From its broad and beaten ways

Pours its seven-fold vial.

Happy he whose inward ear

Angel comfortings can hear,

O'er the rabble's laughter;

And while Hatred's fagots burn,

Glimpses through the smoke discern

Of the good hereafter.

Knowing this, that never yet

Share of Truth was vainly set

In the world's wide fallow;

After hands shall sow the seed,

After hands from hill and mead

Reap the harvests yellow.

Thus, with somewhat of the Seer,

Must the moral pioneer

From the Future borrow;

Clothe the waste with dreams of grain,

And, on midnight's sky of rain,

Paint the golden morrow!

THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA.

A letter-writer from Mexico during the Mexican war, when detailing some

of the incidents at the terrible fight of Buena Vista, mentioned that

Mexican women were seen hovering near the field of death, for the

purpose of giving aid and succor to the wounded. One poor woman was

found surrounded by the maimed and suffering of both armies, ministering

to the wants of Americans as well as Mexicans, with impartial

tenderness.

SPEAK and tell us, our Ximena, looking northward

far away,

O'er the camp of the invaders, o'er the Mexican

array,

Who is losing? who is winning? are they far or

come they near?

Look abroad, and tell us, sister, whither rolls the

storm we hear.

Down the hills of Angostura still the storm of

battle rolls;

Blood is flowing, men are dying; God have mercy

on their souls!

"Who is losing? who is winning?" Over hill

and over plain,

I see but smoke of cannon clouding through the

mountain rain.

Holy Mother! keep our brothers! Look, Ximena,

look once more.

"Still I see the fearful whirlwind rolling darkly

as before,

Bearing on, in strange confusion, friend and foeman,

foot and horse,

Like some wild and troubled torrent sweeping

down its mountain course."

Look forth once more, Ximena! "Ah! the smoke

has rolled away;

And I see the Northern rifles gleaming down the

ranks of gray.

Hark! that sudden blast of bugles! there the troop

of Minon wheels;

There the Northern horses thunder, with the cannon

at their heels.

"Jesu, pity I how it thickens I now retreat and

now advance!

Bight against the blazing cannon shivers Puebla's

charging lance!

Down they go, the brave young riders; horse and

foot together fall;

Like a ploughshare in the fallow, through them

ploughs the Northern ball."

Nearer came the storm and nearer, rolling fast and

frightful on!

Speak, Ximena, speak and tell us, who has lost,

and who has won?

Alas! alas! I know not; friend and foe together

fall,

O'er the dying rush the living: pray, my sisters,

for them all!

"Lo! the wind the smoke is lifting. Blessed

Mother, save my brain!

I can see the wounded crawling slowly out from

heaps of slain.

Now they stagger, blind and bleeding; now they

fall, and strive to rise;

Hasten, sisters, haste and save them, lest they die

before our eyes!

"O my hearts love! O my dear one! lay thy

poor head on my knee;

Dost thou know the lips that kiss thee? Canst

thou hear me? canst thou see?

O my husband, brave and gentle! O my Bernal,

look once more

On the blessed cross before thee! Mercy!

all is o'er!"

Dry thy tears, my poor Ximena; lay thy dear one

down to rest;

Let his hands be meekly folded, lay the cross upon

his breast;

Let his dirge be sung hereafter, and his funeral

masses said;

To-day, thou poor bereaved one, the living ask thy

aid.

Close beside her, faintly moaning, fair and young,

a soldier lay,

Torn with shot and pierced with lances, bleeding

slow his life away;

But, as tenderly before him the lorn Ximena knelt,

She saw the Northern eagle shining on his pistol-

belt.

With a stifled cry of horror straight she turned

away her head;

With a sad and bitter feeling looked she back upon

her dead;

But she heard the youth's low moaning, and his

struggling breath of pain,

And she raised the cooling water to his parching

lips again.

Whispered low the dying soldier, pressed her hand

and faintly smiled;

Was that pitying face his mother's? did she watch

beside her child?

All his stranger words with meaning her woman's

heart supplied;

With her kiss upon his forehead, "Mother!"

murmured he, and died!

"A bitter curse upon them, poor boy, who led thee

forth,

From some gentle, sad-eyed mother, weeping, lonely,

in the North!"

Spake the mournful Mexic woman, as she laid him

with her dead,

And turned to soothe the living, and bind the

wounds which bled.

"Look forth once more, Ximena!" Like a cloud

before the wind

Rolls the battle down the mountains, leaving blood

and death behind;

Ah! they plead in vain for mercy; in the dust the

wounded strive;

"Hide your faces, holy angels! O thou Christ of

God, forgive!"

Sink, O Night, among thy mountains! let the cool,

gray shadows fall;

Dying brothers, fighting demons, drop thy curtain

over all!

Through the thickening winter twilight, wide apart

the battle rolled,

In its sheath the sabre rested, and the cannon's

lips grew cold.

But the noble Mexic women still their holy task

pursued,

Through that long, dark night of sorrow, worn and

faint and lacking food.

Over weak and suffering brothers, with a tender

care they hung,

And the dying foeman blessed them in a strange

and Northern tongue.

Not wholly lost, O Father! is this evil world of

ours;

Upward, through its blood and ashes, spring afresh

the Eden flowers;

From its smoking hell of battle, Love and Pity

send their prayer,

And still thy white-winged angels hover dimly in

our air!

1847.

THE LEGEND OF ST. MARK.

"This legend (to which my attention was called by my friend Charles

Sumner), is the subject of a celebrated picture by Tintoretto, of which

Mr. Rogers possesses the original sketch. The slave lies on the ground,

amid a crowd of spectators, who look on, animated by all the various

emotions of sympathy, rage, terror; a woman, in front, with a child in

her arms, has always been admired for the lifelike vivacity of her

attitude and expression. The executioner holds up the broken implements;

St. Mark, with a headlong movement, seems to rush down from heaven in

haste to save his worshipper. The dramatic grouping in this picture is

wonderful; the coloring, in its gorgeous depth and harmony, is, in Mr.

Rogers's sketch, finer than in the picture."--MRS. JAMESON'S Sacred and

Legendary Art, I. 154.

THE day is closing dark and cold,

With roaring blast and sleety showers;

And through the dusk the lilacs wear

The bloom of snow, instead of flowers.

I turn me from the gloom without,

To ponder o'er a tale of old;

A legend of the age of Faith,

By dreaming monk or abbess told.

On Tintoretto's canvas lives

That fancy of a loving heart,

In graceful lines and shapes of power,

And hues immortal as his art.

In Provence (so the story runs)

There lived a lord, to whom, as slave,

A peasant-boy of tender years

The chance of trade or conquest gave.

Forth-looking from the castle tower,

Beyond the hills with almonds dark,

The straining eye could scarce discern

The chapel of the good St. Mark.

And there, when bitter word or fare

The service of the youth repaid,

By stealth, before that holy shrine,

For grace to bear his wrong, he prayed.

The steed stamped at the castle gate,

The boar-hunt sounded on the hill;

Why stayed the Baron from the chase,

With looks so stern, and words so ill?

"Go, bind yon slave! and let him learn,

By scath of fire and strain of cord,

How ill they speed who give dead saints

The homage due their living lord!"

They bound him on the fearful rack,

When, through the dungeon's vaulted dark,

He saw the light of shining robes,

And knew the face of good St. Mark.

Then sank the iron rack apart,

The cords released their cruel clasp,

The pincers, with their teeth of fire,

Fell broken from the torturer's grasp.

And lo! before the Youth and Saint,

Barred door and wall of stone gave way;

And up from bondage and the night

They passed to freedom and the day!

O dreaming monk! thy tale is true;

O painter! true thy pencil's art;

in tones of hope and prophecy,

Ye whisper to my listening heart!

Unheard no burdened heart's appeal

Moans up to God's inclining ear;

Unheeded by his tender eye,

Falls to the earth no sufferer's tear.

For still the Lord alone is God

The pomp and power of tyrant man

Are scattered at his lightest breath,

Like chaff before the winnower's fan.

Not always shall the slave uplift

His heavy hands to Heaven in vain.

God's angel, like the good St. Mark,

Comes shining down to break his chain!

O weary ones! ye may not see

Your helpers in their downward flight;

Nor hear the sound of silver wings

Slow beating through the hush of night!

But not the less gray Dothan shone,

With sunbright watchers bending low,

That Fear's dim eye beheld alone

The spear-heads of the Syrian foe.

There are, who, like the Seer of old,

Can see the helpers God has sent,

And how life's rugged mountain-side

Is white with many an angel tent!

They hear the heralds whom our Lord

Sends down his pathway to prepare;

And light, from others hidden, shines

On their high place of faith and prayer.

Let such, for earth's despairing ones,

Hopeless, yet longing to be free,

Breathe once again the Prophet's prayer

"Lord, ope their eyes, that they may see!"

1849.

KATHLEEN.

This ballad was originally published in my prose work, Leaves from

Margaret Smith's Journal, as the song of a wandering Milesian

schoolmaster. In the seventeenth century, slavery in the New World was

by no means confined to the natives of Africa. Political offenders and

criminals were transported by the British government to the plantations

of Barbadoes and Virginia, where they were sold like cattle in the

market. Kidnapping of free and innocent white persons was practised to a

considerable extent in the seaports of the United Kingdom.

O NORAH, lay your basket down,

And rest your weary hand,

And come and hear me sing a song

Of our old Ireland.

There was a lord of Galaway,

A mighty lord was he;

And he did wed a second wife,

A maid of low degree.

But he was old, and she was young,

And so, in evil spite,

She baked the black bread for his kin,

And fed her own with white.

She whipped the maids and starved the kern,

And drove away the poor;

"Ah, woe is me!" the old lord said,

"I rue my bargain sore!"

This lord he had a daughter fair,

Beloved of old and young,

And nightly round the shealing-fires

Of her the gleeman sung.

"As sweet and good is young Kathleen

As Eve before her fall;"

So sang the harper at the fair,

So harped he in the hall.

"Oh, come to me, my daughter dear!

Come sit upon my knee,

For looking in your face, Kathleen,

Your mother's own I see!"

He smoothed and smoothed her hair away,

He kissed her forehead fair;

"It is my darling Mary's brow,

It is my darling's hair!"

Oh, then spake up the angry dame,

"Get up, get up," quoth she,

"I'll sell ye over Ireland,

I'll sell ye o'er the sea!"

She clipped her glossy hair away,

That none her rank might know;

She took away her gown of silk,

And gave her one of tow,

And sent her down to Limerick town

And to a seaman sold

This daughter of an Irish lord

For ten good pounds in gold.

The lord he smote upon his breast,

And tore his beard so gray;

But he was old, and she was young,

And so she had her way.

Sure that same night the Banshee howled

To fright the evil dame,

And fairy folks, who loved Kathleen,

With funeral torches came.

She watched them glancing through the trees,

And glimmering down the hill;

They crept before the dead-vault door,

And there they all stood still!

"Get up, old man! the wake-lights shine!"

"Ye murthering witch," quoth he,

"So I'm rid of your tongue, I little care

If they shine for you or me."

"Oh, whoso brings my daughter back,

My gold and land shall have!"

Oh, then spake up his handsome page,

"No gold nor land I crave!

"But give to me your daughter dear,

Give sweet Kathleen to me,

Be she on sea or be she on land,

I'll bring her back to thee."

"My daughter is a lady born,

And you of low degree,

But she shall be your bride the day

You bring her back to me."

He sailed east, he sailed west,

And far and long sailed he,

Until he came to Boston town,

Across the great salt sea.

"Oh, have ye seen the young Kathleen,

The flower of Ireland?

Ye'll know her by her eyes so blue,

And by her snow-white hand!"

Out spake an ancient man, "I know

The maiden whom ye mean;

I bought her of a Limerick man,

And she is called Kathleen.

"No skill hath she in household work,

Her hands are soft and white,

Yet well by loving looks and ways

She doth her cost requite."

So up they walked through Boston town,

And met a maiden fair,

A little basket on her arm

So snowy-white and bare.

"Come hither, child, and say hast thou

This young man ever seen?"

They wept within each other's arms,

The page and young Kathleen.

"Oh give to me this darling child,

And take my purse of gold."

"Nay, not by me," her master said,

"Shall sweet Kathleen be sold.

"We loved her in the place of one

The Lord hath early ta'en;

But, since her heart's in Ireland,

We give her back again!"

Oh, for that same the saints in heaven

For his poor soul shall pray,

And Mary Mother wash with tears

His heresies away.

Sure now they dwell in Ireland;

As you go up Claremore

Ye'll see their castle looking down

The pleasant Galway shore.

And the old lord's wife is dead and gone,

And a happy man is he,

For he sits beside his own Kathleen,

With her darling on his knee.

1849.

THE WELL OF LOCH MAREE

Pennant, in his Voyage to the Hebrides, describes the holy well of Loch

Maree, the waters of which were supposed to effect a miraculous cure of

melancholy, trouble, and insanity.

CALM on the breast of Loch Maree

A little isle reposes;

A shadow woven of the oak

And willow o'er it closes.

Within, a Druid's mound is seen,

Set round with stony warders;

A fountain, gushing through the turf,

Flows o'er its grassy borders.

And whoso bathes therein his brow,

With care or madness burning,

Feels once again his healthful thought

And sense of peace returning.

O restless heart and fevered brain,

Unquiet and unstable,

That holy well of Loch Maree

Is more than idle fable!

Life's changes vex, its discords stun,

Its glaring sunshine blindeth,

And blest is he who on his way

That fount of healing findeth!

The shadows of a humbled will

And contrite heart are o'er it;

Go read its legend, "TRUST IN GOD,"

On Faith's white stones before it.

1850.

THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS.

The incident upon which this poem is based is related in a note to

Bernardin Henri Saint Pierre's Etudes de la Nature. "We arrived at the

habitation of the Hermits a little before they sat down to their table,

and while they were still at church. J. J. Rousseau proposed to me to

offer up our devotions. The hermits were reciting the Litanies of

Providence, which are remarkably beautiful. After we had addressed our

prayers to God, and the hermits were proceeding to the refectory,

Rousseau said to me, with his heart overflowing, 'At this moment I

experience what is said in the gospel: Where two or three are gathered

together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. There is here a

feeling of peace and happiness which penetrates the soul.' I said, 'If

Finelon had lived, you would have been a Catholic.' He exclaimed, with

tears in his eyes, 'Oh, if Finelon were alive, I would struggle to get

into his service, even as a lackey!'" In my sketch of Saint Pierre, it

will be seen that I have somewhat antedated the period of his old age.

At that time he was not probably more than fifty. In describing him, I

have by no means exaggerated his own history of his mental condition at

the period of the story. In the fragmentary Sequel to his Studies of

Nature, he thus speaks of himself: "The ingratitude of those of whom I

had deserved kindness, unexpected family misfortunes, the total loss of

my small patrimony through enterprises solely undertaken for the benefit

of my country, the debts under which I lay oppressed, the blasting of

all my hopes,--these combined calamities made dreadful inroads upon my

health and reason. . . . I found it impossible to continue in a room

where there was company, especially if the doors were shut. I could not

even cross an alley in a public garden, if several persons had got

together in it. When alone, my malady subsided. I felt myself likewise

at ease in places where I saw children only. At the sight of any one

walking up to the place where I was, I felt my whole frame agitated, and

retired. I often said to myself, 'My sole study has been to merit well

of mankind; why do I fear them?'"

He attributes his improved health of mind and body to the counsels of

his friend, J. J. Rousseau. "I renounced," says he, "my books. I threw

my eyes upon the works of nature, which spake to all my senses a

language which neither time nor nations have it in their power to alter.

Thenceforth my histories and my journals were the herbage of the fields

and meadows. My thoughts did not go forth painfully after them, as in

the case of human systems; but their thoughts, under a thousand engaging

forms, quietly sought me. In these I studied, without effort, the laws

of that Universal Wisdom which had surrounded me from the cradle, but on

which heretofore I had bestowed little attention."

Speaking of Rousseau, he says: "I derived inexpressible satisfaction

from his society. What I prized still more than his genius was his

probity. He was one of the few literary characters, tried in the furnace

of affliction, to whom you could, with perfect security, confide your

most secret thoughts. . . . Even when he deviated, and became the victim

of himself or of others, he could forget his own misery in devotion to

the welfare of mankind. He was uniformly the advocate of the miserable.

There might be inscribed on his tomb these affecting words from that

Book of which he carried always about him some select passages, during

the last years of his life: 'His sins, which are many, are forgiven, for

he loved much.'"

"I DO believe, and yet, in grief,

I pray for help to unbelief;

For needful strength aside to lay

The daily cumberings of my way.

"I 'm sick at heart of craft and cant,

Sick of the crazed enthusiast's rant,

Profession's smooth hypocrisies,

And creeds of iron, and lives of ease.

"I ponder o'er the sacred word,

I read the record of our Lord;

And, weak and troubled, envy them

Who touched His seamless garment's hem;

"Who saw the tears of love He wept

Above the grave where Lazarus slept;

And heard, amidst the shadows dim

Of Olivet, His evening hymn.

"How blessed the swineherd's low estate,

The beggar crouching at the gate,

The leper loathly and abhorred,

Whose eyes of flesh beheld the Lord!

"O sacred soil His sandals pressed!

Sweet fountains of His noonday rest!

O light and air of Palestine,

Impregnate with His life divine!

"Oh, bear me thither! Let me look

On Siloa's pool, and Kedron's brook;

Kneel at Gethsemane, and by

Gennesaret walk, before I die!

"Methinks this cold and northern night

Would melt before that Orient light;

And, wet by Hermon's dew and rain,

My childhood's faith revive again!"

So spake my friend, one autumn day,

Where the still river slid away

Beneath us, and above the brown

Red curtains of the woods shut down.

Then said I,--for I could not brook

The mute appealing of his look,--

"I, too, am weak, and faith is small,

And blindness happeneth unto all.

"Yet, sometimes glimpses on my sight,

Through present wrong, the eternal right;

And, step by step, since time began,

I see the steady gain of man;

"That all of good the past hath had

Remains to make our own time glad,

Our common daily life divine,

And every land a Palestine.

"Thou weariest of thy present state;

What gain to thee time's holiest date?

The doubter now perchance had been

As High Priest or as Pilate then!

"What thought Chorazin's scribes? What faith

In Him had Nain and Nazareth?

Of the few followers whom He led

One sold Him,--all forsook and fled.

"O friend! we need nor rock nor sand,

Nor storied stream of Morning-Land;

The heavens are glassed in Merrimac,--

What more could Jordan render back?

"We lack but open eye and ear

To find the Orient's marvels here;

The still small voice in autumn's hush,

Yon maple wood the burning bush.

"For still the new transcends the old,

In signs and tokens manifold;

Slaves rise up men; the olive waves,

With roots deep set in battle graves!

"Through the harsh noises of our day

A low, sweet prelude finds its way;

Through clouds of doubt, and creeds of fear,

A light is breaking, calm and clear.

"That song of Love, now low and far,

Erelong shall swell from star to star!

That light, the breaking day, which tips

The golden-spired Apocalypse!"

Then, when my good friend shook his head,

And, sighing, sadly smiled, I said:

"Thou mind'st me of a story told

In rare Bernardin's leaves of gold."

And while the slanted sunbeams wove

The shadows of the frost-stained grove,

And, picturing all, the river ran

O'er cloud and wood, I thus began:--

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

In Mount Valerien's chestnut wood

The Chapel of the Hermits stood;

And thither, at the close of day,

Came two old pilgrims, worn and gray.

One, whose impetuous youth defied

The storms of Baikal's wintry side,

And mused and dreamed where tropic day

Flamed o'er his lost Virginia's bay.

His simple tale of love and woe

All hearts had melted, high or low;--

A blissful pain, a sweet distress,

Immortal in its tenderness.

Yet, while above his charmed page

Beat quick the young heart of his age,

He walked amidst the crowd unknown,

A sorrowing old man, strange and lone.

A homeless, troubled age,--the gray

Pale setting of a weary day;

Too dull his ear for voice of praise,

Too sadly worn his brow for bays.

Pride, lust of power and glory, slept;

Yet still his heart its young dream kept,

And, wandering like the deluge-dove,

Still sought the resting-place of love.

And, mateless, childless, envied more

The peasant's welcome from his door

By smiling eyes at eventide,

Than kingly gifts or lettered pride.

Until, in place of wife and child,

All-pitying Nature on him smiled,

And gave to him the golden keys

To all her inmost sanctities.

Mild Druid of her wood-paths dim!

She laid her great heart bare to him,

Its loves and sweet accords;--he saw

The beauty of her perfect law.

The language of her signs lie knew,

What notes her cloudy clarion blew;

The rhythm of autumn's forest dyes,

The hymn of sunset's painted skies.

And thus he seemed to hear the song

Which swept, of old, the stars along;

And to his eyes the earth once more

Its fresh and primal beauty wore.

Who sought with him, from summer air,

And field and wood, a balm for care;

And bathed in light of sunset skies

His tortured nerves and weary eyes?

His fame on all the winds had flown;

His words had shaken crypt and throne;

Like fire, on camp and court and cell

They dropped, and kindled as they fell.

Beneath the pomps of state, below

The mitred juggler's masque and show,

A prophecy, a vague hope, ran

His burning thought from man to man.

For peace or rest too well he saw

The fraud of priests, the wrong of law,

And felt how hard, between the two,

Their breath of pain the millions drew.

A prophet-utterance, strong and wild,

The weakness of an unweaned child,

A sun-bright hope for human-kind,

And self-despair, in him combined.

He loathed the false, yet lived not true

To half the glorious truths he knew;

The doubt, the discord, and the sin,

He mourned without, he felt within.

Untrod by him the path he showed,

Sweet pictures on his easel glowed

Of simple faith, and loves of home,

And virtue's golden days to come.

But weakness, shame, and folly made

The foil to all his pen portrayed;

Still, where his dreamy splendors shone,

The shadow of himself was thrown.

Lord, what is man, whose thought, at times,

Up to Thy sevenfold brightness climbs,

While still his grosser instinct clings

To earth, like other creeping things!

So rich in words, in acts so mean;

So high, so low; chance-swung between

The foulness of the penal pit

And Truth's clear sky, millennium-lit!

Vain, pride of star-lent genius!--vain,

Quick fancy and creative brain,

Unblest by prayerful sacrifice,

Absurdly great, or weakly wise!

Midst yearnings for a truer life,

Without were fears, within was strife;

And still his wayward act denied

The perfect good for which he sighed.

The love he sent forth void returned;

The fame that crowned him scorched and burned,

Burning, yet cold and drear and lone,--

A fire-mount in a frozen zone!

Like that the gray-haired sea-king passed,(9)

Seen southward from his sleety mast,

About whose brows of changeless frost

A wreath of flame the wild winds tossed.

Far round the mournful beauty played

Of lambent light and purple shade,

Lost on the fixed and dumb despair

Of frozen earth and sea and air!

A man apart, unknown, unloved

By those whose wrongs his soul had moved,

He bore the ban of Church and State,

The good man's fear, the bigot's hate!

Forth from the city's noise and throng,

Its pomp and shame, its sin and wrong,

The twain that summer day had strayed

To Mount Valerien's chestnut shade.

To them the green fields and the wood

Lent something of their quietude,

And golden-tinted sunset seemed

Prophetical of all they dreamed.

The hermits from their simple cares

The bell was calling home to prayers,

And, listening to its sound, the twain

Seemed lapped in childhood's trust again.

Wide open stood the chapel door;

A sweet old music, swelling o'er

Low prayerful murmurs, issued thence,--

The Litanies of Providence!

Then Rousseau spake: "Where two or three

In His name meet, He there will be!"

And then, in silence, on their knees

They sank beneath the chestnut-trees.

As to the blind returning light,

As daybreak to the Arctic night,

Old faith revived; the doubts of years

Dissolved in reverential tears.

That gush of feeling overpast,

"Ah me!" Bernardin sighed at last,

I would thy bitterest foes could see

Thy heart as it is seen of me!

"No church of God hast thou denied;

Thou hast but spurned in scorn aside

A bare and hollow counterfeit,

Profaning the pure name of it!

"With dry dead moss and marish weeds

His fire the western herdsman feeds,

And greener from the ashen plain

The sweet spring grasses rise again.

"Nor thunder-peal nor mighty wind

Disturb the solid sky behind;

And through the cloud the red bolt rends

The calm, still smile of Heaven descends.

"Thus through the world, like bolt and blast,

And scourging fire, thy words have passed.

Clouds break,--the steadfast heavens remain;

Weeds burn,--the ashes feed the grain!

"But whoso strives with wrong may find

Its touch pollute, its darkness blind;

And learn, as latent fraud is shown

In others' faith, to doubt his own.

"With dream and falsehood, simple trust

And pious hope we tread in dust;

Lost the calm faith in goodness,--lost

The baptism of the Pentecost!

"Alas!--the blows for error meant

Too oft on truth itself are spent,

As through the false and vile and base

Looks forth her sad, rebuking face.

"Not ours the Theban's charmed life;

We come not scathless from the strife!

The Python's coil about us clings,

The trampled Hydra bites and stings!

"Meanwhile, the sport of seeming chance,

The plastic shapes of circumstance,

What might have been we fondly guess,

If earlier born, or tempted less.

"And thou, in these wild, troubled days,

Misjudged alike in blame and praise,

Unsought and undeserved the same

The skeptic's praise, the bigot's blame;--

"I cannot doubt, if thou hadst been

Among the highly favored men

Who walked on earth with Fenelon,

He would have owned thee as his son;

"And, bright with wings of cherubim

Visibly waving over him,

Seen through his life, the Church had seemed

All that its old confessors dreamed."

"I would have been," Jean Jaques replied,

"The humblest servant at his side,

Obscure, unknown, content to see

How beautiful man's life may be!

"Oh, more than thrice-blest relic, more

Than solemn rite or sacred lore,

The holy life of one who trod

The foot-marks of the Christ of God!

"Amidst a blinded world he saw

The oneness of the Dual law;

That Heaven's sweet peace on Earth began,

And God was loved through love of man.

"He lived the Truth which reconciled

The strong man Reason, Faith the child;

In him belief and act were one,

The homilies of duty done!"

So speaking, through the twilight gray

The two old pilgrims went their way.

What seeds of life that day were sown,

The heavenly watchers knew alone.

Time passed, and Autumn came to fold

Green Summer in her brown and gold;

Time passed, and Winter's tears of snow

Dropped on the grave-mound of Rousseau.

"The tree remaineth where it fell,

The pained on earth is pained in hell!"

So priestcraft from its altars cursed

The mournful doubts its falsehood nursed.

Ah! well of old the Psalmist prayed,

"Thy hand, not man's, on me be laid!"

Earth frowns below, Heaven weeps above,

And man is hate, but God is love!

No Hermits now the wanderer sees,

Nor chapel with its chestnut-trees;

A morning dream, a tale that's told,

The wave of change o'er all has rolled.

Yet lives the lesson of that day;

And from its twilight cool and gray

Comes up a low, sad whisper, "Make

The truth thine own, for truth's own sake.

"Why wait to see in thy brief span

Its perfect flower and fruit in man?

No saintly touch can save; no balm

Of healing hath the martyr's palm.

"Midst soulless forms, and false pretence

Of spiritual pride and pampered sense,

A voice saith, 'What is that to thee?

Be true thyself, and follow Me!

"In days when throne and altar heard

The wanton's wish, the bigot's word,

And pomp of state and ritual show

Scarce hid the loathsome death below,--

"Midst fawning priests and courtiers foul,

The losel swarm of crown and cowl,

White-robed walked Francois Fenelon,

Stainless as Uriel in the sun!

"Yet in his time the stake blazed red,

The poor were eaten up like bread

Men knew him not; his garment's hem

No healing virtue had for them.

"Alas! no present saint we find;

The white cymar gleams far behind,

Revealed in outline vague, sublime,

Through telescopic mists of time!

"Trust not in man with passing breath,

But in the Lord, old Scripture saith;

The truth which saves thou mayst not blend

With false professor, faithless friend.

"Search thine own heart. What paineth thee

In others in thyself may be;

All dust is frail, all flesh is weak;

Be thou the true man thou dost seek!

"Where now with pain thou treadest, trod

The whitest of the saints of God!

To show thee where their feet were set,

the light which led them shineth yet.

"The footprints of the life divine,

Which marked their path, remain in thine;

And that great Life, transfused in theirs,

Awaits thy faith, thy love, thy prayers!"

A lesson which I well may heed,

A word of fitness to my need;

So from that twilight cool and gray

Still saith a voice, or seems to say.

We rose, and slowly homeward turned,

While down the west the sunset burned;

And, in its light, hill, wood, and tide,

And human forms seemed glorified.

The village homes transfigured stood,

And purple bluffs, whose belting wood

Across the waters leaned to hold

The yellow leaves like lamps of hold.

Then spake my friend: "Thy words are true;

Forever old, forever new,

These home-seen splendors are the same

Which over Eden's sunsets came.

"To these bowed heavens let wood and hill

Lift voiceless praise and anthem still;

Fall, warm with blessing, over them,

Light of the New Jerusalem!

"Flow on, sweet river, like the stream

Of John's Apocalyptic dream

This mapled ridge shall Horeb be,

Yon green-banked lake our Galilee!

"Henceforth my heart shall sigh no more

For olden time and holier shore;

God's love and blessing, then and there,

Are now and here and everywhere."

1851.

TAULER.

TAULER, the preacher, walked, one autumn day,

Without the walls of Strasburg, by the Rhine,

Pondering the solemn Miracle of Life;

As one who, wandering in a starless night,

Feels momently the jar of unseen waves,

And hears the thunder of an unknown sea,

Breaking along an unimagined shore.

And as he walked he prayed. Even the same

Old prayer with which, for half a score of years,

Morning, and noon, and evening, lip and heart

Had groaned: "Have pity upon me, Lord!

Thou seest, while teaching others, I am blind.

Send me a man who can direct my steps!"

Then, as he mused, he heard along his path

A sound as of an old man's staff among

The dry, dead linden-leaves; and, looking up,

He saw a stranger, weak, and poor, and old.

"Peace be unto thee, father!" Tauler said,

"God give thee a good day!" The old man raised

Slowly his calm blue eyes. "I thank thee, son;

But all my days are good, and none are ill."

Wondering thereat, the preacher spake again,

"God give thee happy life." The old man smiled,

"I never am unhappy."

Tauler laid

His hand upon the stranger's coarse gray sleeve

"Tell me, O father, what thy strange words mean.

Surely man's days are evil, and his life

Sad as the grave it leads to." "Nay, my son,

Our times are in God's hands, and all our days

Are as our needs; for shadow as for sun,

For cold as heat, for want as wealth, alike

Our thanks are due, since that is best which is;

And that which is not, sharing not His life,

Is evil only as devoid of good.

And for the happiness of which I spake,

I find it in submission to his will,

And calm trust in the holy Trinity

Of Knowledge, Goodness, and Almighty Power."

Silently wondering, for a little space,

Stood the great preacher; then he spake as one

Who, suddenly grappling with a haunting thought

Which long has followed, whispering through the dark

Strange terrors, drags it, shrieking, into light

"What if God's will consign thee hence to Hell?"

"Then," said the stranger, cheerily, "be it so.

What Hell may be I know not; this I know,--

I cannot lose the presence of the Lord.

One arm, Humility, takes hold upon

His dear Humanity; the other, Love,

Clasps his Divinity. So where I go

He goes; and better fire-walled Hell with Him

Than golden-gated Paradise without."

Tears sprang in Tauler's eyes. A sudden light,

Like the first ray which fell on chaos, clove

Apart the shadow wherein he had walked

Darkly at noon. And, as the strange old man

Went his slow way, until his silver hair

Set like the white moon where the hills of vine

Slope to the Rhine, he bowed his head and said

"My prayer is answered. God hath sent the man

Long sought, to teach me, by his simple trust,

Wisdom the weary schoolmen never knew."

So, entering with a changed and cheerful step

The city gates, he saw, far down the street,

A mighty shadow break the light of noon,

Which tracing backward till its airy lines

Hardened to stony plinths, he raised his eyes

O'er broad facade and lofty pediment,

O'er architrave and frieze and sainted niche,

Up the stone lace-work chiselled by the wise

Erwin of Steinbach, dizzily up to where

In the noon-brightness the great Minster's tower,

Jewelled with sunbeams on its mural crown,

Rose like a visible prayer. "Behold!" he said,

"The stranger's faith made plain before mine eyes.

As yonder tower outstretches to the earth

The dark triangle of its shade alone

When the clear day is shining on its top,

So, darkness in the pathway of Man's life

Is but the shadow of God's providence,

By the great Sun of Wisdom cast thereon;

And what is dark below is light in Heaven."

1853.

THE HERMIT OF THE THEBAID.

O STRONG, upwelling prayers of faith,

From inmost founts of life ye start,--

The spirit's pulse, the vital breath

Of soul and heart!

From pastoral toil, from traffic's din,

Alone, in crowds, at home, abroad,

Unheard of man, ye enter in

The ear of God.

Ye brook no forced and measured tasks,

Nor weary rote, nor formal chains;

The simple heart, that freely asks

In love, obtains.

For man the living temple is

The mercy-seat and cherubim,

And all the holy mysteries,

He bears with him.

And most avails the prayer of love,

Which, wordless, shapes itself in needs,

And wearies Heaven for naught above

Our common needs.

Which brings to God's all-perfect will

That trust of His undoubting child

Whereby all seeming good and ill

Are reconciled.

And, seeking not for special signs

Of favor, is content to fall

Within the providence which shines

And rains on all.

Alone, the Thebaid hermit leaned

At noontime o'er the sacred word.

Was it an angel or a fiend

Whose voice be heard?

It broke the desert's hush of awe,

A human utterance, sweet and mild;

And, looking up, the hermit saw

A little child.

A child, with wonder-widened eyes,

O'erawed and troubled by the sight

Of hot, red sands, and brazen skies,

And anchorite.

"'What dost thou here, poor man? No shade

Of cool, green palms, nor grass, nor well,

Nor corn, nor vines." The hermit said

"With God I dwell.

"Alone with Him in this great calm,

I live not by the outward sense;

My Nile his love, my sheltering palm

His providence."

The child gazed round him. "Does God live

Here only?--where the desert's rim

Is green with corn, at morn and eve,

We pray to Him.

"My brother tills beside the Nile

His little field; beneath the leaves

My sisters sit and spin, the while

My mother weaves.

"And when the millet's ripe heads fall,

And all the bean-field hangs in pod,

My mother smiles, and, says that all

Are gifts from God."

Adown the hermit's wasted cheeks

Glistened the flow of human tears;

"Dear Lord!" he said, "Thy angel speaks,

Thy servant hears."

Within his arms the child he took,

And thought of home and life with men;

And all his pilgrim feet forsook

Returned again.

The palmy shadows cool and long,

The eyes that smiled through lavish locks,

Home's cradle-hymn and harvest-song,

And bleat of flocks.

"O child!" he said, "thou teachest me

There is no place where God is not;

That love will make, where'er it be,

A holy spot."

He rose from off the desert sand,

And, leaning on his staff of thorn,

Went with the young child hand in hand,

Like night with morn.

They crossed the desert's burning line,

And heard the palm-tree's rustling fan,

The Nile-bird's cry, the low of kine,

And voice of man.

Unquestioning, his childish guide

He followed, as the small hand led

To where a woman, gentle-eyed,

Her distaff fed.

She rose, she clasped her truant boy,

She thanked the stranger with her eyes;

The hermit gazed in doubt and joy

And dumb surprise.

And to!--with sudden warmth and light

A tender memory thrilled his frame;

New-born, the world-lost anchorite

A man became.

"O sister of El Zara's race,

Behold me!--had we not one mother?"

She gazed into the stranger's face

"Thou art my brother!"

"And when to share our evening meal,

She calls the stranger at the door,

She says God fills the hands that deal

Food to the poor."

"O kin of blood! Thy life of use

And patient trust is more than mine;

And wiser than the gray recluse

This child of thine.

"For, taught of him whom God hath sent,

That toil is praise, and love is prayer,

I come, life's cares and pains content

With thee to share."

Even as his foot the threshold crossed,

The hermit's better life began;

Its holiest saint the Thebaid lost,

And found a man!

1854.

MAUD MULLER.

The recollection of some descendants of a Hessian deserter in the

Revolutionary war bearing the name of Muller doubtless suggested the

somewhat infelicitous title of a New England idyl. The poem had no real

foundation in fact, though a hint of it may have been found in recalling

an incident, trivial in itself, of a journey on the picturesque Maine

seaboard with my sister some years before it was written. We had stopped

to rest our tired horse under the shade of an apple-tree, and refresh

him with water from a little brook which rippled through the stone wall

across the road. A very beautiful young girl in scantest summer attire

was at work in the hay-field, and as we talked with her we noticed that

she strove to hide her bare feet by raking hay over them, blushing as

she did so, through the tan of her cheek and neck.

MAUD MULLER on a summer's day,

Raked the meadow sweet with hay.

Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth

Of simple beauty and rustic-health.

Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee

The mock-bird echoed from his tree.

But when she glanced to the far-off town,

White from its hill-slope looking down,

The sweet song died, and a vague unrest

And a nameless longing filled her breast,--

A wish, that she hardly dared to own,

For something better than she had known.

The Judge rode slowly down the lane,

Smoothing his horse's chestnut mane.

He drew his bridle in the shade

Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid,

And asked a draught from the spring that flowed

Through the meadow across the road.

She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up,

And filled for him her small tin cup,

And blushed as she gave it, looking down

On her feet so bare, and her tattered gown.

"Thanks!" said the Judge; "a sweeter draught

From a fairer hand was never quaffed."

He spoke of the grass and flowers and trees,

Of the singing birds and the humming bees;

Then talked of the haying, and wondered whether

The cloud in the west would bring foul weather.

And Maud forgot her brier-torn gown,

And her graceful ankles bare and brown;

And listened, while a pleased surprise

Looked from her long-lashed hazel eyes.

At last, like one who for delay

Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away.

Maud Muller looked and sighed: "Ah me!

That I the Judge's bride might be!

"He would dress me up in silks so fine,

And praise and toast me at his wine.

"My father should wear a broadcloth coat;

My brother should sail a painted boat.

"I'd dress my mother so grand and gay,

And the baby should have a new toy each day.

"And I 'd feed the hungry and clothe the poor,

And all should bless me who left our door."

The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill,

And saw Maud Muller standing still.

A form more fair, a face more sweet,

Ne'er hath it been my lot to meet.

"And her modest answer and graceful air

Show her wise and good as she is fair.

"Would she were mine, and I to-day,

Like her, a harvester of hay;

"No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs,

Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues,

"But low of cattle and song of birds,

And health and quiet and loving words."

But he thought of his sisters, proud and cold,

And his mother, vain of her rank and gold.

So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on,

And Maud was left in the field alone.

But the lawyers smiled that afternoon,

When he hummed in court an old love-tune;

And the young girl mused beside the well

Till the rain on the unraked clover fell.

He wedded a wife of richest dower,

Who lived for fashion, as he for power.

Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright glow,

He watched a picture come and go;

And sweet Maud Muller's hazel eyes

Looked out in their innocent surprise.

Oft, when the wine in his glass was red,

He longed for the wayside well instead;

And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms

To dream of meadows and clover-blooms.

And the proud man sighed, with a secret pain,

"Ah, that I were free again!

"Free as when I rode that day,

Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay."

She wedded a man unlearned and poor,

And many children played round her door.

But care and sorrow, and childbirth pain,

Left their traces on heart and brain.

And oft, when the summer sun shone hot

On the new-mown hay in the meadow lot,

And she heard the little spring brook fall

Over the roadside, through the wall,

In the shade of the apple-tree again

She saw a rider draw his rein.

And, gazing down with timid grace,

She felt his pleased eyes read her face.

Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls

Stretched away into stately halls;

The weary wheel to a spinnet turned,

The tallow candle an astral burned,

And for him who sat by the chimney lug,

Dozing and grumbling o'er pipe and mug,

A manly form at her side she saw,

And joy was duty and love was law.

Then she took up her burden of life again,

Saying only, "It might have been."

Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,

For rich repiner and household drudge!

God pity them both! and pity us all,

Who vainly the dreams of youth recall.

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,

The saddest are these: "It might have been!"

Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies

Deeply buried from human eyes;

And, in the hereafter, angels may

Roll the stone from its grave away!

1854.

MARY GARVIN.

FROM the heart of Waumbek Methna, from the

lake that never fails,

Falls the Saco in the green lap of Conway's

intervales;

There, in wild and virgin freshness, its waters

foam and flow,

As when Darby Field first saw them, two hundred

years ago.

But, vexed in all its seaward course with bridges,

dams, and mills,

How changed is Saco's stream, how lost its freedom

of the hills,

Since travelled Jocelyn, factor Vines, and stately

Champernoon

Heard on its banks the gray wolf's howl, the trumpet

of the loon!

With smoking axle hot with speed, with steeds of

fire and steam,

Wide-waked To-day leaves Yesterday behind him

like a dream.

Still, from the hurrying train of Life, fly backward

far and fast

The milestones of the fathers, the landmarks of

the past.

But human hearts remain unchanged: the sorrow

and the sin,

The loves and hopes and fears of old, are to our

own akin;

And if, in tales our fathers told, the songs our

mothers sung,

Tradition wears a snowy beard, Romance is always

young.

O sharp-lined man of traffic, on Saco's banks today!

O mill-girl watching late and long the shuttle's

restless play!

Let, for the once, a listening ear the working hand

beguile,

And lend my old Provincial tale, as suits, a tear or

smile!

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

The evening gun had sounded from gray Fort

Mary's walls;

Through the forest, like a wild beast, roared and

plunged the Saco's' falls.

And westward on the sea-wind, that damp and

gusty grew,

Over cedars darkening inland the smokes of Spurwink

blew.

On the hearth of Farmer Garvin, blazed the crackling

walnut log;

Right and left sat dame and goodman, and between

them lay the dog,

Head on paws, and tail slow wagging, and beside

him on her mat,

Sitting drowsy in the firelight, winked and purred

the mottled cat.

"Twenty years!" said Goodman Garvin, speaking

sadly, under breath,

And his gray head slowly shaking, as one who

speaks of death.

The goodwife dropped her needles: "It is twenty

years to-day,

Since the Indians fell on Saco, and stole our child

away."

Then they sank into the silence, for each knew

the other's thought,

Of a great and common sorrow, and words were,

needed not.

"Who knocks?" cried Goodman Garvin. The

door was open thrown;

On two strangers, man and maiden, cloaked and

furred, the fire-light shone.

One with courteous gesture lifted the bear-skin

from his head;

"Lives here Elkanah Garvin?" "I am he," the

goodman said.

"Sit ye down, and dry and warm ye, for the night

is chill with rain."

And the goodwife drew the settle, and stirred the

fire amain.

The maid unclasped her cloak-hood, the firelight

glistened fair

In her large, moist eyes, and over soft folds of

dark brown hair.

Dame Garvin looked upon her: "It is Mary's self

I see!"

"Dear heart!" she cried, "now tell me, has my

child come back to me?"

"My name indeed is Mary," said the stranger sobbing

wild;

"Will you be to me a mother? I am Mary Garvin's child!"

"She sleeps by wooded Simcoe, but on her dying

day

She bade my father take me to her kinsfolk far

away.

"And when the priest besought her to do me no

such wrong,

She said, 'May God forgive me! I have closed

my heart too long.'

"'When I hid me from my father, and shut out

my mother's call,

I sinned against those dear ones, and the Father

of us all.

"'Christ's love rebukes no home-love, breaks no

tie of kin apart;

Better heresy in doctrine, than heresy of heart.

"'Tell me not the Church must censure: she who

wept the Cross beside

Never made her own flesh strangers, nor the claims

of blood denied;

"'And if she who wronged her parents, with her

child atones to them,

Earthly daughter, Heavenly Mother! thou at least

wilt not condemn!'

"So, upon her death-bed lying, my blessed mother

spake;

As we come to do her bidding, So receive us for her

sake."

"God be praised!" said Goodwife Garvin, "He taketh,

and He gives;

He woundeth, but He healeth; in her child our

daughter lives!"

"Amen!" the old man answered, as he brushed a

tear away,

And, kneeling by his hearthstone, said, with reverence,

"Let us pray."

All its Oriental symbols, and its Hebrew pararphrase,

Warm with earnest life and feeling, rose his prayer

of love and praise.

But he started at beholding, as he rose from off

his knee,

The stranger cross his forehead with the sign of

Papistrie.

"What is this?" cried Farmer Garvin. "Is an English

Christian's home

A chapel or a mass-house, that you make the sign

of Rome?"

Then the young girl knelt beside him, kissed his

trembling hand, and cried:

Oh, forbear to chide my father; in that faith my

mother died!

"On her wooden cross at Simcoe the dews and

sunshine fall,

As they fall on Spurwink's graveyard; and the

dear God watches all!"

The old man stroked the fair head that rested on

his knee;

"Your words, dear child," he answered, "are God's

rebuke to me.

"Creed and rite perchance may differ, yet our

faith and hope be one.

Let me be your father's father, let him be to me

a son."

When the horn, on Sabbath morning, through the

still and frosty air,

From Spurwink, Pool, and Black Point, called to

sermon and to prayer,

To the goodly house of worship, where, in order

due and fit,

As by public vote directed, classed and ranked the

people sit;

Mistress first and goodwife after, clerkly squire

before the clown,

"From the brave coat, lace-embroidered, to the gray

frock, shading down;"

From the pulpit read the preacher, "Goodman

Garvin and his wife

Fain would thank the Lord, whose kindness has

followed them through life,

"For the great and crowning mercy, that their

daughter, from the wild,

Where she rests (they hope in God's peace), has

sent to them her child;

"And the prayers of all God's people they ask,

that they may prove

Not unworthy, through their weakness, of such

special proof of love."

As the preacher prayed, uprising, the aged couple

stood,

And the fair Canadian also, in her modest maiden-

hood.

Thought the elders, grave and doubting, "She is

Papist born and bred;"

Thought the young men, "'T is an angel in Mary

Garvin's stead!"

THE RANGER.

Originally published as Martha Mason; a Song of the Old

French War.

ROBERT RAWLIN!--Frosts were falling

When the ranger's horn was calling

Through the woods to Canada.

Gone the winter's sleet and snowing,

Gone the spring-time's bud and blowing,

Gone the summer's harvest mowing,

And again the fields are gray.

Yet away, he's away!

Faint and fainter hope is growing

In the hearts that mourn his stay.

Where the lion, crouching high on

Abraham's rock with teeth of iron,

Glares o'er wood and wave away,

Faintly thence, as pines far sighing,

Or as thunder spent and dying,

Come the challenge and replying,

Come the sounds of flight and fray.

Well-a-day! Hope and pray!

Some are living, some are lying

In their red graves far away.

Straggling rangers, worn with dangers,

Homeward faring, weary strangers

Pass the farm-gate on their way;

Tidings of the dead and living,

Forest march and ambush, giving,

Till the maidens leave their weaving,

And the lads forget their play.

"Still away, still away!"

Sighs a sad one, sick with grieving,

"Why does Robert still delay!"

Nowhere fairer, sweeter, rarer,

Does the golden-locked fruit bearer

Through his painted woodlands stray,

Than where hillside oaks and beeches

Overlook the long, blue reaches,

Silver coves and pebbled beaches,

And green isles of Casco Bay;

Nowhere day, for delay,

With a tenderer look beseeches,

"Let me with my charmed earth stay."

On the grain-lands of the mainlands

Stands the serried corn like train-bands,

Plume and pennon rustling gay;

Out at sea, the islands wooded,

Silver birches, golden-hooded,

Set with maples, crimson-blooded,

White sea-foam and sand-hills gray,

Stretch away, far away.

Dim and dreamy, over-brooded

By the hazy autumn day.

Gayly chattering to the clattering

Of the brown nuts downward pattering,

Leap the squirrels, red and gray.

On the grass-land, on the fallow,

Drop the apples, red and yellow;

Drop the russet pears and mellow,

Drop the red leaves all the day.

And away, swift away,

Sun and cloud, o'er hill and hollow

Chasing, weave their web of play.

"Martha Mason, Martha Mason,

Prithee tell us of the reason

Why you mope at home to-day

Surely smiling is not sinning;

Leave, your quilling, leave your spinning;

What is all your store of linen,

If your heart is never gay?

Come away, come away!

Never yet did sad beginning

Make the task of life a play."

Overbending, till she's blending

With the flaxen skein she's tending

Pale brown tresses smoothed away

From her face of patient sorrow,

Sits she, seeking but to borrow,

From the trembling hope of morrow,

Solace for the weary day.

"Go your way, laugh and play;

Unto Him who heeds the sparrow

And the lily, let me pray."

"With our rally, rings the valley,--

Join us!" cried the blue-eyed Nelly;

"Join us!" cried the laughing May,

"To the beach we all are going,

And, to save the task of rowing,

West by north the wind is blowing,

Blowing briskly down the bay

Come away, come away!

Time and tide are swiftly flowing,

Let us take them while we may!

"Never tell us that you'll fail us,

Where the purple beach-plum mellows

On the bluffs so wild and gray.

Hasten, for the oars are falling;

Hark, our merry mates are calling;

Time it is that we were all in,

Singing tideward down the bay!"

"Nay, nay, let me stay;

Sore and sad for Robert Rawlin

Is my heart," she said, "to-day."

"Vain your calling for Rob Rawlin

Some red squaw his moose-meat's broiling,

Or some French lass, singing gay;

Just forget as he's forgetting;

What avails a life of fretting?

If some stars must needs be setting,

Others rise as good as they."

"Cease, I pray; go your way!"

Martha cries, her eyelids wetting;

"Foul and false the words you say!"

"Martha Mason, hear to reason!--

Prithee, put a kinder face on!"

"Cease to vex me," did she say;

"Better at his side be lying,

With the mournful pine-trees sighing,

And the wild birds o'er us crying,

Than to doubt like mine a prey;

While away, far away,

Turns my heart, forever trying

Some new hope for each new day.

"When the shadows veil the meadows,

And the sunset's golden ladders

Sink from twilight's walls of gray,--

From the window of my dreaming,

I can see his sickle gleaming,

Cheery-voiced, can hear him teaming

Down the locust-shaded way;

But away, swift away,

Fades the fond, delusive seeming,

And I kneel again to pray.

"When the growing dawn is showing,

And the barn-yard cock is crowing,

And the horned moon pales away

From a dream of him awaking,

Every sound my heart is making

Seems a footstep of his taking;

Then I hush the thought, and say,

'Nay, nay, he's away!'

Ah! my heart, my heart is breaking

For the dear one far away."

Look up, Martha! worn and swarthy,

Glows a face of manhood worthy

"Robert!" "Martha!" all they say.

O'er went wheel and reel together,

Little cared the owner whither;

Heart of lead is heart of feather,

Noon of night is noon of day!

Come away, come away!

When such lovers meet each other,

Why should prying idlers stay?

Quench the timber's fallen embers,

Quench the recd leaves in December's

Hoary rime and chilly spray.

But the hearth shall kindle clearer,

Household welcomes sound sincerer,

Heart to loving heart draw nearer,

When the bridal bells shall say:

"Hope and pray, trust alway;

Life is sweeter, love is dearer,

For the trial and delay!"

1856.

THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN.

FROM the hills of home forth looking, far beneath

the tent-like span

Of the sky, I see the white gleam of the headland

of Cape Ann.

Well I know its coves and beaches to the ebb-tide

glimmering down,

And the white-walled hamlet children of its ancient

fishing town.

Long has passed the summer morning, and its

memory waxes old,

When along yon breezy headlands with a pleasant

friend I strolled.

Ah! the autumn sun is shining, and the ocean

wind blows cool,

And the golden-rod and aster bloom around thy

grave, Rantoul!

With the memory of that morning by the summer

sea I blend

A wild and wondrous story, by the younger Mather

penned,

In that quaint Magnalia Christi, with all strange

and marvellous things,

Heaped up huge and undigested, like the chaos

Ovid sings.

Dear to me these far, faint glimpses of the dual

life of old,

Inward, grand with awe and reverence; outward,

mean and coarse and cold;

Gleams of mystic beauty playing over dull and

vulgar clay,

Golden-threaded fancies weaving in a web of

hodden gray.

The great eventful Present hides the Past; but

through the din

Of its loud life hints and echoes from the life

behind steal in;

And the lore of homeland fireside, and the legendary

rhyme,

Make the task of duty lighter which the true man

owes his time.

So, with something of the feeling which the Covenanter

knew,

When with pious chisel wandering Scotland's

moorland graveyards through,

From the graves of old traditions I part the black-

berry-vines,

Wipe the moss from off the headstones, and retouch

the faded lines.

Where the sea-waves back and forward, hoarse

with rolling pebbles, ran,

The garrison-house stood watching on the gray

rocks of Cape Ann;

On its windy site uplifting gabled roof and palisade,

And rough walls of unhewn timber with the moonlight

overlaid.

On his slow round walked the sentry, south and

eastward looking forth

O'er a rude and broken coast-line, white with

breakers stretching north,--

Wood and rock and gleaming sand-drift, jagged

capes, with bush and tree,

Leaning inland from the smiting of the wild and

gusty sea.

Before the deep-mouthed chimney, dimly lit by

dying brands,

Twenty soldiers sat and waited, with their muskets

in their hands;

On the rough-hewn oaken table the venison haunch

was shared,

And the pewter tankard circled slowly round from

beard to beard.

Long they sat and talked together,--talked of

wizards Satan-sold;

Of all ghostly sights and noises,--signs and wonders

manifold;

Of the spectre-ship of Salem, with the dead men

in her shrouds,

Sailing sheer above the water, in the loom of morning

clouds;

Of the marvellous valley hidden in the depths of

Gloucester woods,

Full of plants that love the summer,--blooms of

warmer latitudes;

Where the Arctic birch is braided by the tropic's

flowery vines,

And the white magnolia-blossoms star the twilight

of the pines!

But their voices sank yet lower, sank to husky

tones of fear,

As they spake of present tokens of the powers of

evil near;

Of a spectral host, defying stroke of steel and aim

of gun;

Never yet was ball to slay them in the mould of

mortals run.

Thrice, with plumes and flowing scalp-locks, from

the midnight wood they came,--

Thrice around the block-house marching, met, unharmed,

its volleyed flame;

Then, with mocking laugh and gesture, sunk in

earth or lost in air,

All the ghostly wonder vanished, and the moonlit

sands lay bare.

Midnight came; from out the forest moved a

dusky mass that soon

Grew to warriors, plumed and painted, grimly

marching in the moon.

"Ghosts or witches," said the captain, "thus I foil

the Evil One!"

And he rammed a silver button, from his doublet,

down his gun.

Once again the spectral horror moved the guarded

wall about;

Once again the levelled muskets through the palisades

flashed out,

With that deadly aim the squirrel on his tree-top

might not shun,

Nor the beach-bird seaward flying with his slant

wing to the sun.

Like the idle rain of summer sped the harmless

shower of lead.

With a laugh of fierce derision, once again the

phantoms fled;

Once again, without a shadow on the sands the

moonlight lay,

And the white smoke curling through it drifted

slowly down the bay!

"God preserve us!" said the captain; "never

mortal foes were there;

They have vanished with their leader, Prince and

Power of the air!

Lay aside your useless weapons; skill and prowess

naught avail;

They who do the Devil's service wear their master's

coat of mail!"

So the night grew near to cock-crow, when again

a warning call

Roused the score of weary soldiers watching round

the dusky hall

And they looked to flint and priming, and they

longed for break of day;

But the captain closed his Bible: "Let us cease

from man, and pray!"

To the men who went before us, all the unseen

powers seemed near,

And their steadfast strength of courage struck its

roots in holy fear.

Every hand forsook the musket, every head was

bowed and bare,

Every stout knee pressed the flag-stones, as the

captain led in prayer.

Ceased thereat the mystic marching of the spectres

round the wall,

But a sound abhorred, unearthly, smote the ears

and hearts of all,--

Howls of rage and shrieks of anguish! Never

after mortal man

Saw the ghostly leaguers marching round the

block-house of Cape Ann.

So to us who walk in summer through the cool and

sea-blown town,

From the childhood of its people comes the solemn

legend down.

Not in vain the ancient fiction, in whose moral

lives the youth

And the fitness and the freshness of an undecaying

truth.

Soon or late to all our dwellings come the spectres

of the mind,

Doubts and fears and dread forebodings, in the

darkness undefined;

Round us throng the grim projections of the heart

and of the brain,

And our pride of strength is weakness, and the

cunning hand is vain.

In the dark we cry like children; and no answer

from on high

Breaks the crystal spheres of silence, and no white

wings downward fly;

But the heavenly help we pray for comes to faith,

and not to sight,

And our prayers themselves drive backward all the

spirits of the night!

1857.

THE GIFT OF TRITEMIUS.

TRITEMIUS of Herbipolis, one day,

While kneeling at the altar's foot to pray,

Alone with God, as was his pious choice,

Heard from without a miserable voice,

A sound which seemed of all sad things to tell,

As of a lost soul crying out of hell.

Thereat the Abbot paused; the chain whereby

His thoughts went upward broken by that cry;

And, looking from the casement, saw below

A wretched woman, with gray hair a-flow,

And withered hands held up to him, who cried

For alms as one who might not be denied.

She cried, "For the dear love of Him who gave

His life for ours, my child from bondage save,--

My beautiful, brave first-born, chained with slaves

In the Moor's galley, where the sun-smit waves

Lap the white walls of Tunis!"--"What I can

I give," Tritemius said, "my prayers."--"O man

Of God!" she cried, for grief had made her bold,

"Mock me not thus; I ask not prayers, but gold.

Words will not serve me, alms alone suffice;

Even while I speak perchance my first-born dies."

"Woman!" Tritemius answered, "from our door

None go unfed, hence are we always poor;

A single soldo is our only store.

Thou hast our prayers;--what can we give thee

more?"

"Give me," she said, "the silver candlesticks

On either side of the great crucifix.

God well may spare them on His errands sped,

Or He can give you golden ones instead."

Then spake Tritemius, "Even as thy word,

Woman, so be it! Our most gracious Lord,

Who loveth mercy more than sacrifice,

Pardon me if a human soul I prize

Above the gifts upon his altar piled!

Take what thou askest, and redeem thy child."

But his hand trembled as the holy alms

He placed within the beggar's eager palms;

And as she vanished down the linden shade,

He bowed his head and for forgiveness prayed.

So the day passed, and when the twilight came

He woke to find the chapel all aflame,

And, dumb with grateful wonder, to behold

Upon the altar candlesticks of gold!

1857.

SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE.

In the valuable and carefully prepared History of Marblehead, published

in 1879 by Samuel Roads, Jr., it is stated that the crew of Captain

Ireson, rather than himself, were responsible for the abandonment of the

disabled vessel. To screen themselves they charged their captain with

the crime. In view of this the writer of the ballad addressed the

following letter to the historian:--

OAK KNOLL, DANVERS, 5 mo. 18, 1880.

MY DEAR FRIEND: I heartily thank thee for a copy of thy History of

Marblehead. I have read it with great interest and think good use has

been made of the abundant material. No town in Essex County has a record

more honorable than Marblehead; no one has done more to develop the

industrial interests of our New England seaboard, and certainly none

have given such evidence of self-sacrificing patriotism. I am glad the

story of it has been at last told, and told so well. I have now no doubt

that thy version of Skipper Ireson's ride is the correct one. My verse

was founded solely on a fragment of rhyme which I heard from one of my

early schoolmates, a native of Marblehead. I supposed the story to which

it referred dated back at least a century. I knew nothing of the

participators, and the narrative of the ballad was pure fancy. I am glad

for the sake of truth and justice that the real facts are given in thy

book. I certainly would not knowingly do injustice to any one, dead or

living.

I am very truly thy friend,

JOHN G. WHITTIER.

OF all the rides since, the birth of time,

Told in story or sung in rhyme,--

On Apuleius's Golden Ass,

Or one-eyed Calendar's horse of brass;

Witch astride of a human back,

Islam's prophet on Al-Borak,--

The strangest ride that ever was sped

Was Ireson's, out from Marblehead!

Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,

Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart

By the women of Marblehead!

Body of turkey, head of owl,

Wings a-droop like a rained-on fowl,

Feathered and ruffled in every part,

Skipper Ireson stood in the cart.

Scores of women, old and young,

Strong of muscle, and glib of tongue,

Pushed and pulled up the rocky lane,

Shouting and singing the shrill refrain

"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,

Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt

By the women o' Morble'ead!"

Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips,

Girls in bloom of cheek and lips,

Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase

Bacchus round some antique vase,

Brief of skirt, with ankles bare,

Loose of kerchief and loose of hair,

With conch-shells blowing and fish-horns' twang,

Over and over the Manads sang

"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,

Torr'd an' futherr'd an dorr'd in a corrt

By the women o' Morble'ead!"

Small pity for him!--He sailed away

From a leaking ship, in Chaleur Bay,--

Sailed away from a sinking wreck,

With his own town's-people on her deck!

"Lay by! lay by!" they called to him.

Back he answered, "Sink or swim!

Brag of your catch of fish again!"

And off he sailed through the fog and rain!

Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,

Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart

By the women of Marblehead!

Fathoms deep in dark Chaleur

That wreck shall lie forevermore.

Mother and sister, wife and maid,

Looked from the rocks of Marblehead

Over the moaning and rainy sea,--

Looked for the coming that might not be!

What did the winds and the sea-birds say

Of the cruel captain who sailed away?--

Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,

Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart

By the women of Marblehead!

Through the street, on either side,

Up flew windows, doors swung wide;

Sharp-tongued spinsters, old wives gray,

Treble lent the fish-horn's bray.

Sea-worn grandsires, cripple-bound,

Hulks of old sailors run aground,

Shook head, and fist, and hat, and cane,

And cracked with curses the hoarse refrain

"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,

Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt

By the women o''Morble'ead!"

Sweetly along the Salem road

Bloom of orchard and lilac showed.

Little the wicked skipper knew

Of the fields so green and the sky so blue.

Riding there in his sorry trim,

Like to Indian idol glum and grim,

Scarcely he seemed the sound to hear

Of voices shouting, far and near

"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,

Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt

By the women o' Morble'ead!"

"Hear me, neighbors!" at last he cried,--

"What to me is this noisy ride?

What is the shame that clothes the skin

To the nameless horror that lives within?

Waking or sleeping, I see a wreck,

And hear a cry from a reeling deck!

Hate me and curse me,--I only dread

The hand of God and the face of the dead!"

Said old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,

Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart

By the women of Marblehead!

Then the wife of the skipper lost at sea

Said, "God has touched him! why should we?"

Said an old wife mourning her only son,

"Cut the rogue's tether and let him run!"

So with soft relentings and rude excuse,

Half scorn, half pity, they cut him loose,

And gave him a cloak to hide him in,

And left him alone with his shame and sin.

Poor Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,

Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart

By the women of Marblehead!

1857.

THE SYCAMORES.

Hugh Tallant was the first Irish resident of Haverhill, Mass. He planted

the button-wood trees on the bank of the river below the village in the

early part of the seventeenth century. Unfortunately this noble avenue

is now nearly destroyed.

IN the outskirts of the village,

On the river's winding shores,

Stand the Occidental plane-trees,

Stand the ancient sycamores.

One long century hath been numbered,

And another half-way told,

Since the rustic Irish gleeman

Broke for them the virgin mould.

Deftly set to Celtic music,

At his violin's sound they grew,

Through the moonlit eves of summer,

Making Amphion's fable true.

Rise again, then poor Hugh Tallant

Pass in jerkin green along,

With thy eyes brimful of laughter,

And thy mouth as full of song.

Pioneer of Erin's outcasts,

With his fiddle and his pack;

Little dreamed the village Saxons

Of the myriads at his back.

How he wrought with spade and fiddle,

Delved by day and sang by night,

With a hand that never wearied,

And a heart forever light,--

Still the gay tradition mingles

With a record grave and drear,

Like the rollic air of Cluny,

With the solemn march of Mear.

When the box-tree, white with blossoms,

Made the sweet May woodlands glad,

And the Aronia by the river

Lighted up the swarming shad,

And the bulging nets swept shoreward,

With their silver-sided haul,

Midst the shouts of dripping fishers,

He was merriest of them all.

When, among the jovial huskers,

Love stole in at Labor's side,

With the lusty airs of England,

Soft his Celtic measures vied.

Songs of love and wailing lyke--wake,

And the merry fair's carouse;

Of the wild Red Fox of Erin

And the Woman of Three Cows,

By the blazing hearths of winter,

Pleasant seemed his simple tales,

Midst the grimmer Yorkshire legends

And the mountain myths of Wales.

How the souls in Purgatory

Scrambled up from fate forlorn,

On St. Eleven's sackcloth ladder,

Slyly hitched to Satan's horn.

Of the fiddler who at Tara

Played all night to ghosts of kings;

Of the brown dwarfs, and the fairies

Dancing in their moorland rings.

Jolliest of our birds of singing,

Best he loved the Bob-o-link.

"Hush!" he 'd say, "the tipsy fairies

Hear the little folks in drink!"

Merry-faced, with spade and fiddle,

Singing through the ancient town,

Only this, of poor Hugh Tallant,

Hath Tradition handed down.

Not a stone his grave discloses;

But if yet his spirit walks,

'T is beneath the trees he planted,

And when Bob-o-Lincoln talks;

Green memorials of the gleeman I

Linking still the river-shores,

With their shadows cast by sunset,

Stand Hugh Tallant's sycamores!

When the Father of his Country

Through the north-land riding came,

And the roofs were starred with banners,

And the steeples rang acclaim,--

When each war-scarred Continental,

Leaving smithy, mill, and farm,

Waved his rusted sword in welcome,

And shot off his old king's arm,--

Slowly passed that August Presence

Down the thronged and shouting street;

Village girls as white as angels,

Scattering flowers around his feet.

Midway, where the plane-tree's shadow

Deepest fell, his rein he drew

On his stately head, uncovered,

Cool and soft the west-wind blew.

And he stood up in his stirrups,

Looking up and looking down

On the hills of Gold and Silver

Rimming round the little town,--

On the river, full of sunshine,

To the lap of greenest vales

Winding down from wooded headlands,

Willow-skirted, white with sails.

And he said, the landscape sweeping

Slowly with his ungloved hand,

"I have seen no prospect fairer

In this goodly Eastern land."

Then the bugles of his escort

Stirred to life the cavalcade

And that head, so bare and stately,

Vanished down the depths of shade.

Ever since, in town and farm-house,

Life has had its ebb and flow;

Thrice hath passed the human harvest

To its garner green and low.

But the trees the gleeman planted,

Through the changes, changeless stand;

As the marble calm of Tadmor

Mocks the desert's shifting sand.

Still the level moon at rising

Silvers o'er each stately shaft;

Still beneath them, half in shadow,

Singing, glides the pleasure craft;

Still beneath them, arm-enfolded,

Love and Youth together stray;

While, as heart to heart beats faster,

More and more their feet delay.

Where the ancient cobbler, Keezar,

On the open hillside wrought,

Singing, as he drew his stitches,

Songs his German masters taught,

Singing, with his gray hair floating

Round his rosy ample face,--

Now a thousand Saxon craftsmen

Stitch and hammer in his place.

All the pastoral lanes so grassy

Now are Traffic's dusty streets;

From the village, grown a city,

Fast the rural grace retreats.

But, still green, and tall, and stately,

On the river's winding shores,

Stand the Occidental plane-trees,

Stand, Hugh Taliant's sycamores.

1857.

THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW.

An incident of the Sepoy mutiny.

PIPES of the misty moorlands,

Voice of the glens and hills;

The droning of the torrents,

The treble of the rills!

Not the braes of broom and heather,

Nor the mountains dark with rain,

Nor maiden bower, nor border tower,

Have heard your sweetest strain!

Dear to the Lowland reaper,

And plaided mountaineer,--

To the cottage and the castle

The Scottish pipes are dear;--

Sweet sounds the ancient pibroch

O'er mountain, loch, and glade;

But the sweetest of all music

The pipes at Lucknow played.

Day by day the Indian tiger

Louder yelled, and nearer crept;

Round and round the jungle-serpent

Near and nearer circles swept.

"Pray for rescue, wives and mothers,--

Pray to-day!" the soldier said;

"To-morrow, death's between us

And the wrong and shame we dread."

Oh, they listened, looked, and waited,

Till their hope became despair;

And the sobs of low bewailing

Filled the pauses of their prayer.

Then up spake a Scottish maiden,

With her ear unto the ground

"Dinna ye hear it?--dinna ye hear it?

The pipes o' Havelock sound!"

Hushed the wounded man his groaning;

Hushed the wife her little ones;

Alone they heard the drum-roll

And the roar of Sepoy guns.

But to sounds of home and childhood

The Highland ear was true;--

As her mother's cradle-crooning

The mountain pipes she knew.

Like the march of soundless music

Through the vision of the seer,

More of feeling than of hearing,

Of the heart than of the ear,

She knew the droning pibroch,

She knew the Campbell's call

"Hark! hear ye no' MacGregor's,

The grandest o' them all!"

Oh, they listened, dumb and breathless,

And they caught the sound at last;

Faint and far beyond the Goomtee

Rose and fell the piper's blast

Then a burst of wild thanksgiving

Mingled woman's voice and man's;

"God be praised!--the march of Havelock!

The piping of the clans!"

Louder, nearer, fierce as vengeance,

Sharp and shrill as swords at strife,

Came the wild MacGregor's clan-call,

Stinging all the air to life.

But when the far-off dust-cloud

To plaided legions grew,

Full tenderly and blithesomely

The pipes of rescue blew!

Round the silver domes of Lucknow,

Moslem mosque and Pagan shrine,

Breathed the air to Britons dearest,

The air of Auld Lang Syne.

O'er the cruel roll of war-drums

Rose that sweet and homelike strain;

And the tartan clove the turban,

As the Goomtee cleaves the plain.

Dear to the corn-land reaper

And plaided mountaineer,--

To the cottage and the castle

The piper's song is dear.

Sweet sounds the Gaelic pibroch

O'er mountain, glen, and glade;

But the sweetest of all music

The Pipes at Lucknow played!

1858.

TELLING THE BEES.

A remarkable custom, brought from the Old Country, formerly prevailed

in the rural districts of New England. On the death of a member of the

family, the bees were at once informed of the event, and their hives

dressed in mourning. This ceremonial was supposed to be necessary to

prevent the swarms from leaving their hives and seeking a new home.

HERE is the place; right over the hill

Runs the path I took;

You can see the gap in the old wall still,

And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook.

There is the house, with the gate red-barred,

And the poplars tall;

And the barn's brown length, and the cattle-yard,

And the white horns tossing above the wall.

There are the beehives ranged in the sun;

And down by the brink

Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed-o'errun,

Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink.

A year has gone, as the tortoise goes,

Heavy and slow;

And the same rose blooms, and the same sun glows,

And the same brook sings of a year ago.

There's the same sweet clover-smell in the breeze;

And the June sun warm

Tangles his wings of fire in the trees,

Setting, as then, over Fernside farm.

I mind me how with a lover's care

From my Sunday coat

I brushed off the burrs, and smoothed my hair,

And cooled at the brookside my brow and

throat.

Since we parted, a month had passed,--

To love, a year;

Down through the beeches I looked at last

On the little red gate and the well-sweep near.

I can see it all now,--the slantwise rain

Of light through the leaves,

The sundown's blaze on her window-pane,

The bloom of her roses under the eaves.

Just the same as a month before,--

The house and the trees,

The barn's brown gable, the vine by the door,--

Nothing changed but the hives of bees.

Before them, under the garden wall,

Forward and back,

Went drearily singing the chore-girl small,

Draping each hive with a shred of black.

Trembling, I listened: the summer sun

Had the chill of snow;

For I knew she was telling the bees of one

Gone on the journey we all must go.

Then I said to myself, "My Mary weeps

For the dead to-day;

Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps

The fret and the pain of his age away."

But her dog whined low; on the doorway sill,

With his cane to his chin,

The old man sat; and the chore-girl still

Sung to the bees stealing out and in.

And the song she was singing ever since

In my ear sounds on:--

"Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence!

Mistress Mary is dead and gone!"

1858.

THE SWAN SONG OF PARSON AVERY.

In Young's Chronicles of Massachusetts Bay front 1623 to 1636 may be

found Anthony Thacher's Narrative of his Shipwreck. Thacher was Avery's

companion and survived to tell the tale. Mather's Magnalia, III. 2,

gives further Particulars of Parson Avery's End, and suggests the title

of the poem.

WHEN the reaper's task was ended, and the

summer wearing late,

Parson Avery sailed from Newbury, with his wife

and children eight,

Dropping down the river-harbor in the shallop

"Watch and Wait."

Pleasantly lay the clearings in the mellow summer-

morn,

With the newly planted orchards dropping their

fruits first-born,

And the home-roofs like brown islands amid a sea

of corn.

Broad meadows reached out 'seaward the tided

creeks between,

And hills rolled wave-like inland, with oaks and

walnuts green;--

A fairer home, a--goodlier land, his eyes had never

seen.

Yet away sailed Parson Avery, away where duty led,

And the voice of God seemed calling, to break the

living bread

To the souls of fishers starving on the rocks of

Marblehead.

All day they sailed: at nightfall the pleasant land-

breeze died,

The blackening sky, at midnight, its starry lights

denied,

And far and low the thunder of tempest prophesied.

Blotted out were all the coast-lines, gone were rock,

and wood, and sand;

Grimly anxious stood the skipper with the rudder

in his hand,

And questioned of the darkness what was sea and

what was land.

And the preacher heard his dear ones, nestled

round him, weeping sore,

"Never heed, my little children! Christ is walking

on before;

To the pleasant land of heaven, where the sea shall

be no more."

All at once the great cloud parted, like a curtain

drawn aside,

To let down the torch of lightning on the terror

far and wide;

And the thunder and the whirlwind together smote

the tide.

There was wailing in the shallop, woman's wail

and man's despair,

A crash of breaking timbers on the rocks so sharp

and bare,

And, through it all, the murmur of Father Avery's

prayer.

From his struggle in the darkness with the wild

waves and the blast,

On a rock, where every billow broke above him as

it passed,

Alone, of all his household, the man of God was

cast.

There a comrade heard him praying, in the pause

of wave and wind

"All my own have gone before me, and I linger

just behind;

Not for life I ask, but only for the rest Thy

ransomed find!

"In this night of death I challenge the promise of

Thy word!--

Let me see the great salvation of which mine ears

have heard!--

Let me pass from hence forgiven, through the

grace of Christ, our Lord!

"In the baptism of these waters wash white my

every sin,

And let me follow up to Thee my household and

my kin!

Open the sea-gate of Thy heaven, and let me enter

in!"

When the Christian sings his death-song, all the

listening heavens draw near,

And the angels, leaning over the walls of crystal,

hear

How the notes so faint and broken swell to music

in God's ear.

The ear of God was open to His servant's last

request;

As the strong wave swept him downward the sweet

hymn upward pressed,

And the soul of Father Avery went, singing, to its

rest.

There was wailing on the mainland, from the rocks

of Marblehead;

In the stricken church of Newbury the notes of

prayer were read;

And long, by board and hearthstone, the living

mourned the dead.

And still the fishers outbound, or scudding from

the squall,

With grave and reverent faces, the ancient tale

recall,

When they see the white waves breaking on the

Rock of Avery's Fall!

1808.

THE DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE OF NEWBURY.

"Concerning ye Amphisbaena, as soon as I received your commands, I made

diligent inquiry: . . . he assures me yt it had really two heads, one

at each end; two mouths, two stings or tongues."--REV. CHRISTOPHER

TOPPAN to COTTON MATHER.

FAR away in the twilight time

Of every people, in every clime,

Dragons and griffins and monsters dire,

Born of water, and air, and fire,

Or nursed, like the Python, in the mud

And ooze of the old Deucalion flood,

Crawl and wriggle and foam with rage,

Through dusk tradition and ballad age.

So from the childhood of Newbury town

And its time of fable the tale comes down

Of a terror which haunted bush and brake,

The Amphisbaena, the Double Snake!

Thou who makest the tale thy mirth,

Consider that strip of Christian earth

On the desolate shore of a sailless sea,

Full of terror and mystery,

Half redeemed from the evil hold

Of the wood so dreary, and dark, and old,

Which drank with its lips of leaves the dew

When Time was young, and the world was new,

And wove its shadows with sun and moon,

Ere the stones of Cheops were squared and hewn.

Think of the sea's dread monotone,

Of the mournful wail from the pine-wood blown,

Of the strange, vast splendors that lit the North,

Of the troubled throes of the quaking earth,

And the dismal tales the Indian told,

Till the settler's heart at his hearth grew cold,

And he shrank from the tawny wizard boasts,

And the hovering shadows seemed full of ghosts,

And above, below, and on every side,

The fear of his creed seemed verified;--

And think, if his lot were now thine own,

To grope with terrors nor named nor known,

How laxer muscle and weaker nerve

And a feebler faith thy need might serve;

And own to thyself the wonder more

That the snake had two heads, and not a score!

Whether he lurked in the Oldtown fen

Or the gray earth-flax of the Devil's Den,

Or swam in the wooded Artichoke,

Or coiled by the Northman's Written Rock,

Nothing on record is left to show;

Only the fact that he lived, we know,

And left the cast of a double head

In the scaly mask which he yearly shed.

For he carried a head where his tail should be,

And the two, of course, could never agree,

But wriggled about with main and might,

Now to the left and now to the right;

Pulling and twisting this way and that,

Neither knew what the other was at.

A snake with two beads, lurking so near!

Judge of the wonder, guess at the fear!

Think what ancient gossips might say,

Shaking their heads in their dreary way,

Between the meetings on Sabbath-day!

How urchins, searching at day's decline

The Common Pasture for sheep or kine,

The terrible double-ganger heard

In leafy rustle or whir of bird!

Think what a zest it gave to the sport,

In berry-time, of the younger sort,

As over pastures blackberry-twined,

Reuben and Dorothy lagged behind,

And closer and closer, for fear of harm,

The maiden clung to her lover's arm;

And how the spark, who was forced to stay,

By his sweetheart's fears, till the break of day,

Thanked the snake for the fond delay.

Far and wide the tale was told,

Like a snowball growing while it rolled.

The nurse hushed with it the baby's cry;

And it served, in the worthy minister's eye,

To paint the primitive serpent by.

Cotton Mather came galloping down

All the way to Newbury town,

With his eyes agog and his ears set wide,

And his marvellous inkhorn at his side;

Stirring the while in the shallow pool

Of his brains for the lore he learned at school,

To garnish the story, with here a streak

Of Latin, and there another of Greek

And the tales he heard and the notes he took,

Behold! are they not in his Wonder-Book?

Stories, like dragons, are hard to kill.

If the snake does not, the tale runs still

In Byfield Meadows, on Pipestave Hill.

And still, whenever husband and wife

Publish the shame of their daily strife,

And, with mad cross-purpose, tug and strain

At either end of the marriage-chain,

The gossips say, with a knowing shake

Of their gray heads, "Look at the Double Snake

One in body and two in will,

The Amphisbaena is living still!"

1859.

MABEL MARTIN.

A HARVEST IDYL.

Susanna Martin, an aged woman of Amesbury, Mass., was tried and executed

for the alleged crime of witchcraft. Her home was in what is now known

as Pleasant Valley on the Merrimac, a little above the old Ferry way,

where, tradition says, an attempt was made to assassinate Sir Edmund

Andros on his way to Falmouth (afterward Portland) and Pemaquid, which

was frustrated by a warning timely given. Goody Martin was the only

woman hanged on the north side of the Merrimac during the dreadful

delusion. The aged wife of Judge Bradbury who lived on the other side of

the Powow River was imprisoned and would have been put to death but for

the collapse of the hideous persecution.

The substance of the poem which follows was published under the name of

The Witch's Daughter, in The National Era in 1857. In 1875 my publishers

desired to issue it with illustrations, and I then enlarged it and

otherwise altered it to its present form. The principal addition was in

the verses which constitute Part I.

PROEM.

I CALL the old time back: I bring my lay

in tender memory of the summer day

When, where our native river lapsed away,

We dreamed it over, while the thrushes made

Songs of their own, and the great pine-trees laid

On warm noonlights the masses of their shade.

And she was with us, living o'er again

Her life in ours, despite of years and pain,--

The Autumn's brightness after latter rain.

Beautiful in her holy peace as one

Who stands, at evening, when the work is done,

Glorified in the setting of the sun!

Her memory makes our common landscape seem

Fairer than any of which painters dream;

Lights the brown hills and sings in every stream;

For she whose speech was always truth's pure gold

Heard, not unpleased, its simple legends told,

And loved with us the beautiful and old.

I. THE RIVER VALLEY.

Across the level tableland,

A grassy, rarely trodden way,

With thinnest skirt of birchen spray

And stunted growth of cedar, leads

To where you see the dull plain fall

Sheer off, steep-slanted, ploughed by all

The seasons' rainfalls. On its brink

The over-leaning harebells swing,

With roots half bare the pine-trees cling;

And, through the shadow looking west,

You see the wavering river flow

Along a vale, that far below

Holds to the sun, the sheltering hills

And glimmering water-line between,

Broad fields of corn and meadows green,

And fruit-bent orchards grouped around

The low brown roofs and painted eaves,

And chimney-tops half hid in leaves.

No warmer valley hides behind

Yon wind-scourged sand-dunes, cold and bleak;

No fairer river comes to seek

The wave-sung welcome of the sea,

Or mark the northmost border line

Of sun-loved growths of nut and vine.

Here, ground-fast in their native fields,

Untempted by the city's gain,

The quiet farmer folk remain

Who bear the pleasant name of Friends,

And keep their fathers' gentle ways

And simple speech of Bible days;

In whose neat homesteads woman holds

With modest ease her equal place,

And wears upon her tranquil face

The look of one who, merging not

Her self-hood in another's will,

Is love's and duty's handmaid still.

Pass with me down the path that winds

Through birches to the open land,

Where, close upon the river strand

You mark a cellar, vine o'errun,

Above whose wall of loosened stones

The sumach lifts its reddening cones,

And the black nightshade's berries shine,

And broad, unsightly burdocks fold

The household ruin, century-old.

Here, in the dim colonial time

Of sterner lives and gloomier faith,

A woman lived, tradition saith,

Who wrought her neighbors foul annoy,

And witched and plagued the country-side,

Till at the hangman's hand she died.

Sit with me while the westering day

Falls slantwise down the quiet vale,

And, haply ere yon loitering sail,

That rounds the upper headland, falls

Below Deer Island's pines, or sees

Behind it Hawkswood's belt of trees

Rise black against the sinking sun,

My idyl of its days of old,

The valley's legend, shall be told.

II. THE HUSKING.

It was the pleasant harvest-time,

When cellar-bins are closely stowed,

And garrets bend beneath their load,

And the old swallow-haunted barns,--

Brown-gabled, long, and full of seams

Through which the rooted sunlight streams,

And winds blow freshly in, to shake

The red plumes of the roosted cocks,

And the loose hay-mow's scented locks,

Are filled with summer's ripened stores,

Its odorous grass and barley sheaves,

From their low scaffolds to their eaves.

On Esek Harden's oaken floor,

With many an autumn threshing worn,

Lay the heaped ears of unhusked corn.

And thither came young men and maids,

Beneath a moon that, large and low,

Lit that sweet eve of long ago.

They took their places; some by chance,

And others by a merry voice

Or sweet smile guided to their choice.

How pleasantly the rising moon,

Between the shadow of the mows,

Looked on them through the great elm-boughs!

On sturdy boyhood, sun-embrowned,

On girlhood with its solid curves

Of healthful strength and painless nerves!

And jests went round, and laughs that made

The house-dog answer with his howl,

And kept astir the barn-yard fowl;

And quaint old songs their fathers sung

In Derby dales and Yorkshire moors,

Ere Norman William trod their shores;

And tales, whose merry license shook

The fat sides of the Saxon thane,

Forgetful of the hovering Dane,--

Rude plays to Celt and Cimbri known,

The charms and riddles that beguiled

On Oxus' banks the young world's child,--

That primal picture-speech wherein

Have youth and maid the story told,

So new in each, so dateless old,

Recalling pastoral Ruth in her

Who waited, blushing and demure,

The red-ear's kiss of forfeiture.

But still the sweetest voice was mute

That river-valley ever heard

From lips of maid or throat of bird;

For Mabel Martin sat apart,

And let the hay-mow's shadow fall

Upon the loveliest face of all.

She sat apart, as one forbid,

Who knew that none would condescend

To own the Witch-wife's child a friend.

The seasons scarce had gone their round,

Since curious thousands thronged to see

Her mother at the gallows-tree;

And mocked the prison-palsied limbs

That faltered on the fatal stairs,

And wan lip trembling with its prayers!

Few questioned of the sorrowing child,

Or, when they saw the mother die;

Dreamed of the daughter's agony.

They went up to their homes that day,

As men and Christians justified

God willed it, and the wretch had died!

Dear God and Father of us all,

Forgive our faith in cruel lies,--

Forgive the blindness that denies!

Forgive thy creature when he takes,

For the all-perfect love Thou art,

Some grim creation of his heart.

Cast down our idols, overturn

Our bloody altars; let us see

Thyself in Thy humanity!

Young Mabel from her mother's grave

Crept to her desolate hearth-stone,

And wrestled with her fate alone;

With love, and anger, and despair,

The phantoms of disordered sense,

The awful doubts of Providence!

Oh, dreary broke the winter days,

And dreary fell the winter nights

When, one by one, the neighboring lights

Went out, and human sounds grew still,

And all the phantom-peopled dark

Closed round her hearth-fire's dying spark.

And summer days were sad and long,

And sad the uncompanioned eyes,

And sadder sunset-tinted leaves,

And Indian Summer's airs of balm;

She scarcely felt the soft caress,

The beauty died of loneliness!

The school-boys jeered her as they passed,

And, when she sought the house of prayer,

Her mother's curse pursued her there.

And still o'er many a neighboring door

She saw the horseshoe's curved charm,

To guard against her mother's harm!

That mother, poor and sick and lame,

Who daily, by the old arm-chair,

Folded her withered hands in prayer;--

Who turned, in Salem's dreary jail,

Her worn old Bible o'er and o'er,

When her dim eyes could read no more!

Sore tried and pained, the poor girl kept

Her faith, and trusted that her way,

So dark, would somewhere meet the day.

And still her weary wheel went round

Day after day, with no relief

Small leisure have the poor for grief.

III. THE CHAMPION.

So in the shadow Mabel sits;

Untouched by mirth she sees and hears,

Her smile is sadder than her tears.

But cruel eyes have found her out,

And cruel lips repeat her name,

And taunt her with her mother's shame.

She answered not with railing words,

But drew her apron o'er her face,

And, sobbing, glided from the place.

And only pausing at the door,

Her sad eyes met the troubled gaze

Of one who, in her better days,

Had been her warm and steady friend,

Ere yet her mother's doom had made

Even Esek Harden half afraid.

He felt that mute appeal of tears,

And, starting, with an angry frown,

Hushed all the wicked murmurs down.

"Good neighbors mine," he sternly said,

"This passes harmless mirth or jest;

I brook no insult to my guest.

"She is indeed her mother's child;

But God's sweet pity ministers

Unto no whiter soul than hers.

"Let Goody Martin rest in peace;

I never knew her harm a fly,

And witch or not, God knows--not I.

"I know who swore her life away;

And as God lives, I'd not condemn

An Indian dog on word of them."

The broadest lands in all the town,

The skill to guide, the power to awe,

Were Harden's; and his word was law.

None dared withstand him to his face,

But one sly maiden spake aside

"The little witch is evil-eyed!

"Her mother only killed a cow,

Or witched a churn or dairy-pan;

But she, forsooth, must charm a man!"

IV. IN THE SHADOW.

Poor Mabel, homeward turning, passed

The nameless terrors of the wood,

And saw, as if a ghost pursued,

Her shadow gliding in the moon;

The soft breath of the west-wind gave

A chill as from her mother's grave.

How dreary seemed the silent house!

Wide in the moonbeams' ghastly glare

Its windows had a dead man's stare!

And, like a gaunt and spectral hand,

The tremulous shadow of a birch

Reached out and touched the door's low porch,

As if to lift its latch; hard by,

A sudden warning call she beard,

The night-cry of a boding bird.

She leaned against the door; her face,

So fair, so young, so full of pain,

White in the moonlight's silver rain.

The river, on its pebbled rim,

Made music such as childhood knew;

The door-yard tree was whispered through

By voices such as childhood's ear

Had heard in moonlights long ago;

And through the willow-boughs below.

She saw the rippled waters shine;

Beyond, in waves of shade and light,

The hills rolled off into the night.

She saw and heard, but over all

A sense of some transforming spell,

The shadow of her sick heart fell.

And still across the wooded space

The harvest lights of Harden shone,

And song and jest and laugh went on.

And he, so gentle, true, and strong,

Of men the bravest and the best,

Had he, too, scorned her with the rest?

She strove to drown her sense of wrong,

And, in her old and simple way,

To teach her bitter heart to pray.

Poor child! the prayer, begun in faith,

Grew to a low, despairing cry

Of utter misery: "Let me die!

"Oh! take me from the scornful eyes,

And hide me where the cruel speech

And mocking finger may not reach!

"I dare not breathe my mother's name

A daughter's right I dare not crave

To weep above her unblest grave!

"Let me not live until my heart,

With few to pity, and with none

To love me, hardens into stone.

"O God! have mercy on Thy child,

Whose faith in Thee grows weak and small,

And take me ere I lose it all!"

A shadow on the moonlight fell,

And murmuring wind and wave became

A voice whose burden was her name.

V. THE BETROTHAL.

Had then God heard her? Had He sent

His angel down? In flesh and blood,

Before her Esek Harden stood!

He laid his hand upon her arm

"Dear Mabel, this no more shall be;

Who scoffs at you must scoff at me.

"You know rough Esek Harden well;

And if he seems no suitor gay,

And if his hair is touched with gray,

"The maiden grown shall never find

His heart less warm than when she smiled,

Upon his knees, a little child!"

Her tears of grief were tears of joy,

As, folded in his strong embrace,

She looked in Esek Harden's face.

"O truest friend of all'" she said,

"God bless you for your kindly thought,

And make me worthy of my lot!"

He led her forth, and, blent in one,

Beside their happy pathway ran

The shadows of the maid and man.

He led her through his dewy fields,

To where the swinging lanterns glowed,

And through the doors the huskers showed.

"Good friends and neighbors!" Esek said,

"I'm weary of this lonely life;

In Mabel see my chosen wife!

"She greets you kindly, one and all;

The past is past, and all offence

Falls harmless from her innocence.

"Henceforth she stands no more alone;

You know what Esek Harden is;--

He brooks no wrong to him or his.

"Now let the merriest tales be told,

And let the sweetest songs be sung

That ever made the old heart young!

"For now the lost has found a home;

And a lone hearth shall brighter burn,

As all the household joys return!"

Oh, pleasantly the harvest-moon,

Between the shadow of the mows,

Looked on them through the great elm--boughs!

On Mabel's curls of golden hair,

On Esek's shaggy strength it fell;

And the wind whispered, "It is well!"

THE PROPHECY OF SAMUEL SEWALL.

The prose version of this prophecy is to be found in Sewall's The New

Heaven upon the New Earth, 1697, quoted in Joshua Coffin's History of

Newbury. Judge Sewall's father, Henry Sewall, was one of the pioneers

of Newbury.

UP and down the village streets

Strange are the forms my fancy meets,

For the thoughts and things of to-day are hid,

And through the veil of a closed lid

The ancient worthies I see again

I hear the tap of the elder's cane,

And his awful periwig I see,

And the silver buckles of shoe and knee.

Stately and slow, with thoughtful air,

His black cap hiding his whitened hair,

Walks the Judge of the great Assize,

Samuel Sewall the good and wise.

His face with lines of firmness wrought,

He wears the look of a man unbought,

Who swears to his hurt and changes not;

Yet, touched and softened nevertheless

With the grace of Christian gentleness,

The face that a child would climb to kiss!

True and tender and brave and just,

That man might honor and woman trust.

Touching and sad, a tale is told,

Like a penitent hymn of the Psalmist old,

Of the fast which the good man lifelong kept to

With a haunting sorrow that never slept,

As the circling year brought round the time

Of an error that left the sting of crime,

When he sat on the bench of the witchcraft courts,

With the laws of Moses and Hale's Reports,

And spake, in the name of both, the word

That gave the witch's neck to the cord,

And piled the oaken planks that pressed

The feeble life from the warlock's breast!

All the day long, from dawn to dawn,

His door was bolted, his curtain drawn;

No foot on his silent threshold trod,

No eye looked on him save that of God,

As he baffled the ghosts of the dead with charms

Of penitent tears, and prayers, and psalms,

And, with precious proofs from the sacred word

Of the boundless pity and love of the Lord,

His faith confirmed and his trust renewed

That the sin of his ignorance, sorely rued,

Might be washed away in the mingled flood

Of his human sorrow and Christ's dear blood!

Green forever the memory be

Of the Judge of the old Theocracy,

Whom even his errors glorified,

Like a far-seen, sunlit mountain-side

By the cloudy shadows which o'er it glide I

Honor and praise to the Puritan

Who the halting step of his age outran,

And, seeing the infinite worth of man

In the priceless gift the Father gave,

In the infinite love that stooped to save,

Dared not brand his brother a slave

"Who doth such wrong," he was wont to say,

In his own quaint, picture-loving way,

"Flings up to Heaven a hand-grenade

Which God shall cast down upon his head!"

Widely as heaven and hell, contrast

That brave old jurist of the past

And the cunning trickster and knave of courts

Who the holy features of Truth distorts,

Ruling as right the will of the strong,

Poverty, crime, and weakness wrong;

Wide-eared to power, to the wronged and weak

Deaf as Egypt's gods of leek;

Scoffing aside at party's nod

Order of nature and law of God;

For whose dabbled ermine respect were waste,

Reverence folly, and awe misplaced;

Justice of whom 't were vain to seek

As from Koordish robber or Syrian Sheik!

Oh, leave the wretch to his bribes and sins;

Let him rot in the web of lies he spins!

To the saintly soul of the early day,

To the Christian judge, let us turn and say

"Praise and thanks for an honest man!--

Glory to God for the Puritan!"

I see, far southward, this quiet day,

The hills of Newbury rolling away,

With the many tints of the season gay,

Dreamily blending in autumn mist

Crimson, and gold, and amethyst.

Long and low, with dwarf trees crowned,

Plum Island lies, like a whale aground,

A stone's toss over the narrow sound.

Inland, as far as the eye can go,

The hills curve round like a bended bow;

A silver arrow from out them sprung,

I see the shine of the Quasycung;

And, round and round, over valley and hill,

Old roads winding, as old roads will,

Here to a ferry, and there to a mill;

And glimpses of chimneys and gabled eaves,

Through green elm arches and maple leaves,--

Old homesteads sacred to all that can

Gladden or sadden the heart of man,

Over whose thresholds of oak and stone

Life and Death have come and gone

There pictured tiles in the fireplace show,

Great beams sag from the ceiling low,

The dresser glitters with polished wares,

The long clock ticks on the foot-worn stairs,

And the low, broad chimney shows the crack

By the earthquake made a century back.

Up from their midst springs the village spire

With the crest of its cock in the sun afire;

Beyond are orchards and planting lands,

And great salt marshes and glimmering sands,

And, where north and south the coast-lines run,

The blink of the sea in breeze and sun!

I see it all like a chart unrolled,

But my thoughts are full of the past and old,

I hear the tales of my boyhood told;

And the shadows and shapes of early days

Flit dimly by in the veiling haze,

With measured movement and rhythmic chime

Weaving like shuttles my web of rhyme.

I think of the old man wise and good

Who once on yon misty hillsides stood,

(A poet who never measured rhyme,

A seer unknown to his dull-eared time,)

And, propped on his staff of age, looked down,

With his boyhood's love, on his native town,

Where, written, as if on its hills and plains,

His burden of prophecy yet remains,

For the voices of wood, and wave, and wind

To read in the ear of the musing mind:--

"As long as Plum Island, to guard the coast

As God appointed, shall keep its post;

As long as a salmon shall haunt the deep

Of Merrimac River, or sturgeon leap;

As long as pickerel swift and slim,

Or red-backed perch, in Crane Pond swim;

As long as the annual sea-fowl know

Their time to come and their time to go;

As long as cattle shall roam at will

The green, grass meadows by Turkey Hill;

As long as sheep shall look from the side

Of Oldtown Hill on marishes wide,

And Parker River, and salt-sea tide;

As long as a wandering pigeon shall search

The fields below from his white-oak perch,

When the barley-harvest is ripe and shorn,

And the dry husks fall from the standing corn;

As long as Nature shall not grow old,

Nor drop her work from her doting hold,

And her care for the Indian corn forget,

And the yellow rows in pairs to set;--

So long shall Christians here be born,

Grow up and ripen as God's sweet corn!--

By the beak of bird, by the breath of frost,

Shall never a holy ear be lost,

But, husked by Death in the Planter's sight,

Be sown again in the fields of light!"

The Island still is purple with plums,

Up the river the salmon comes,

The sturgeon leaps, and the wild-fowl feeds

On hillside berries and marish seeds,--

All the beautiful signs remain,

From spring-time sowing to autumn rain

The good man's vision returns again!

And let us hope, as well we can,

That the Silent Angel who garners man

May find some grain as of old lie found

In the human cornfield ripe and sound,

And the Lord of the Harvest deign to own

The precious seed by the fathers sown!

1859.

THE RED RIPER VOYAGEUR.

OUT and in the river is winding

The links of its long, red chain,

Through belts of dusky pine-land

And gusty leagues of plain.

Only, at times, a smoke-wreath

With the drifting cloud-rack joins,--

The smoke of the hunting-lodges

Of the wild Assiniboins.

Drearily blows the north-wind

From the land of ice and snow;

The eyes that look are weary,

And heavy the hands that row.

And with one foot on the water,

And one upon the shore,

The Angel of Shadow gives warning

That day shall be no more.

Is it the clang of wild-geese?

Is it the Indian's yell,

That lends to the voice of the north-wind

The tones of a far-off bell?

The voyageur smiles as he listens

To the sound that grows apace;

Well he knows the vesper ringing

Of the bells of St. Boniface.

The bells of the Roman Mission,

That call from their turrets twain,

To the boatman on the river,

To the hunter on the plain!

Even so in our mortal journey

The bitter north-winds blow,

And thus upon life's Red River

Our hearts, as oarsmen, row.

And when the Angel of Shadow

Rests his feet on wave and shore,

And our eyes grow dim with watching

And our hearts faint at the oar,

Happy is he who heareth

The signal of his release

In the bells of the Holy City,

The chimes of eternal peace!

1859

THE PREACHER.

George Whitefield, the celebrated preacher, died at Newburyport in 1770,

and was buried under the church which has since borne his name.

ITS windows flashing to the sky,

Beneath a thousand roofs of brown,

Far down the vale, my friend and I

Beheld the old and quiet town;

The ghostly sails that out at sea

Flapped their white wings of mystery;

The beaches glimmering in the sun,

And the low wooded capes that run

Into the sea-mist north and south;

The sand-bluffs at the river's mouth;

The swinging chain-bridge, and, afar,

The foam-line of the harbor-bar.

Over the woods and meadow-lands

A crimson-tinted shadow lay,

Of clouds through which the setting day

Flung a slant glory far away.

It glittered on the wet sea-sands,

It flamed upon the city's panes,

Smote the white sails of ships that wore

Outward or in, and glided o'er

The steeples with their veering vanes!

Awhile my friend with rapid search

O'erran the landscape. "Yonder spire

Over gray roofs, a shaft of fire;

What is it, pray?"--"The Whitefield Church!

Walled about by its basement stones,

There rest the marvellous prophet's bones."

Then as our homeward way we walked,

Of the great preacher's life we talked;

And through the mystery of our theme

The outward glory seemed to stream,

And Nature's self interpreted

The doubtful record of the dead;

And every level beam that smote

The sails upon the dark afloat

A symbol of the light became,

Which touched the shadows of our blame,

With tongues of Pentecostal flame.

Over the roofs of the pioneers

Gathers the moss of a hundred years;

On man and his works has passed the change

Which needs must be in a century's range.

The land lies open and warm in the sun,

Anvils clamor and mill-wheels run,--

Flocks on the hillsides, herds on the plain,

The wilderness gladdened with fruit and grain!

But the living faith of the settlers old

A dead profession their children hold;

To the lust of office and greed of trade

A stepping-stone is the altar made.

The church, to place and power the door,

Rebukes the sin of the world no more,

Nor sees its Lord in the homeless poor.

Everywhere is the grasping hand,

And eager adding of land to land;

And earth, which seemed to the fathers meant

But as a pilgrim's wayside tent,--

A nightly shelter to fold away

When the Lord should call at the break of day,--

Solid and steadfast seems to be,

And Time has forgotten Eternity!

But fresh and green from the rotting roots

Of primal forests the young growth shoots;

From the death of the old the new proceeds,

And the life of truth from the rot of creeds

On the ladder of God, which upward leads,

The steps of progress are human needs.

For His judgments still are a mighty deep,

And the eyes of His providence never sleep

When the night is darkest He gives the morn;

When the famine is sorest, the wine and corn!

In the church of the wilderness Edwards wrought,

Shaping his creed at the forge of thought;

And with Thor's own hammer welded and bent

The iron links of his argument,

Which strove to grasp in its mighty span

The purpose of God and the fate of man

Yet faithful still, in his daily round

To the weak, and the poor, and sin-sick found,

The schoolman's lore and the casuist's art

Drew warmth and life from his fervent heart.

Had he not seen in the solitudes

Of his deep and dark Northampton woods

A vision of love about him fall?

Not the blinding splendor which fell on Saul,

But the tenderer glory that rests on them

Who walk in the New Jerusalem,

Where never the sun nor moon are known,

But the Lord and His love are the light alone

And watching the sweet, still countenance

Of the wife of his bosom rapt in trance,

Had he not treasured each broken word

Of the mystical wonder seen and heard;

And loved the beautiful dreamer more

That thus to the desert of earth she bore

Clusters of Eshcol from Canaan's shore?

As the barley-winnower, holding with pain

Aloft in waiting his chaff and grain,

Joyfully welcomes the far-off breeze

Sounding the pine-tree's slender keys,

So he who had waited long to hear

The sound of the Spirit drawing near,

Like that which the son of Iddo heard

When the feet of angels the myrtles stirred,

Felt the answer of prayer, at last,

As over his church the afflatus passed,

Breaking its sleep as breezes break

To sun-bright ripples a stagnant lake.

At first a tremor of silent fear,

The creep of the flesh at danger near,

A vague foreboding and discontent,

Over the hearts of the people went.

All nature warned in sounds and signs

The wind in the tops of the forest pines

In the name of the Highest called to prayer,

As the muezzin calls from the minaret stair.

Through ceiled chambers of secret sin

Sudden and strong the light shone in;

A guilty sense of his neighbor's needs

Startled the man of title-deeds;

The trembling hand of the worldling shook

The dust of years from the Holy Book;

And the psalms of David, forgotten long,

Took the place of the scoffer's song.

The impulse spread like the outward course

Of waters moved by a central force;

The tide of spiritual life rolled down

From inland mountains to seaboard town.

Prepared and ready the altar stands

Waiting the prophet's outstretched hands

And prayer availing, to downward call

The fiery answer in view of all.

Hearts are like wax in the furnace; who

Shall mould, and shape, and cast them anew?

Lo! by the Merrimac Whitefield stands

In the temple that never was made by hands,--

Curtains of azure, and crystal wall,

And dome of the sunshine over all--

A homeless pilgrim, with dubious name

Blown about on the winds of fame;

Now as an angel of blessing classed,

And now as a mad enthusiast.

Called in his youth to sound and gauge

The moral lapse of his race and age,

And, sharp as truth, the contrast draw

Of human frailty and perfect law;

Possessed by the one dread thought that lent

Its goad to his fiery temperament,

Up and down the world he went,

A John the Baptist crying, Repent!

No perfect whole can our nature make;

Here or there the circle will break;

The orb of life as it takes the light

On one side leaves the other in night.

Never was saint so good and great

As to give no chance at St. Peter's gate

For the plea of the Devil's advocate.

So, incomplete by his being's law,

The marvellous preacher had his flaw;

With step unequal, and lame with faults,

His shade on the path of History halts.

Wisely and well said the Eastern bard

Fear is easy, but love is hard,--

Easy to glow with the Santon's rage,

And walk on the Meccan pilgrimage;

But he is greatest and best who can

Worship Allah by loving man.

Thus he,--to whom, in the painful stress

Of zeal on fire from its own excess,

Heaven seemed so vast and earth so small

That man was nothing, since God was all,--

Forgot, as the best at times have done,

That the love of the Lord and of man are one.

Little to him whose feet unshod

The thorny path of the desert trod,

Careless of pain, so it led to God,

Seemed the hunger-pang and the poor man's wrong,

The weak ones trodden beneath the strong.

Should the worm be chooser?--the clay withstand

The shaping will of the potter's hand?

In the Indian fable Arjoon hears

The scorn of a god rebuke his fears

"Spare thy pity!" Krishna saith;

"Not in thy sword is the power of death!

All is illusion,--loss but seems;

Pleasure and pain are only dreams;

Who deems he slayeth doth not kill;

Who counts as slain is living still.

Strike, nor fear thy blow is crime;

Nothing dies but the cheats of time;

Slain or slayer, small the odds

To each, immortal as Indra's gods!"

So by Savannah's banks of shade,

The stones of his mission the preacher laid

On the heart of the negro crushed and rent,

And made of his blood the wall's cement;

Bade the slave-ship speed from coast to coast,

Fanned by the wings of the Holy Ghost;

And begged, for the love of Christ, the gold

Coined from the hearts in its groaning hold.

What could it matter, more or less

Of stripes, and hunger, and weariness?

Living or dying, bond or free,

What was time to eternity?

Alas for the preacher's cherished schemes!

Mission and church are now but dreams;

Nor prayer nor fasting availed the plan

To honor God through the wrong of man.

Of all his labors no trace remains

Save the bondman lifting his hands in chains.

The woof he wove in the righteous warp

Of freedom-loving Oglethorpe,

Clothes with curses the goodly land,

Changes its greenness and bloom to sand;

And a century's lapse reveals once more

The slave-ship stealing to Georgia's shore.

Father of Light! how blind is he

Who sprinkles the altar he rears to Thee

With the blood and tears of humanity!

He erred: shall we count His gifts as naught?

Was the work of God in him unwrought?

The servant may through his deafness err,

And blind may be God's messenger;

But the Errand is sure they go upon,--

The word is spoken, the deed is done.

Was the Hebrew temple less fair and good

That Solomon bowed to gods of wood?

For his tempted heart and wandering feet,

Were the songs of David less pure and sweet?

So in light and shadow the preacher went,

God's erring and human instrument;

And the hearts of the people where he passed

Swayed as the reeds sway in the blast,

Under the spell of a voice which took

In its compass the flow of Siloa's brook,

And the mystical chime of the bells of gold

On the ephod's hem of the priest of old,--

Now the roll of thunder, and now the awe

Of the trumpet heard in the Mount of Law.

A solemn fear on the listening crowd

Fell like the shadow of a cloud.

The sailor reeling from out the ships

Whose masts stood thick in the river-slips

Felt the jest and the curse die on his lips.

Listened the fisherman rude and hard,

The calker rough from the builder's yard;

The man of the market left his load,

The teamster leaned on his bending goad,

The maiden, and youth beside her, felt

Their hearts in a closer union melt,

And saw the flowers of their love in bloom

Down the endless vistas of life to come.

Old age sat feebly brushing away

From his ears the scanty locks of gray;

And careless boyhood, living the free

Unconscious life of bird and tree,

Suddenly wakened to a sense

Of sin and its guilty consequence.

It was as if an angel's voice

Called the listeners up for their final choice;

As if a strong hand rent apart

The veils of sense from soul and heart,

Showing in light ineffable

The joys of heaven and woes of hell

All about in the misty air

The hills seemed kneeling in silent prayer;

The rustle of leaves, the moaning sedge,

The water's lap on its gravelled edge,

The wailing pines, and, far and faint,

The wood-dove's note of sad complaint,--

To the solemn voice of the preacher lent

An undertone as of low lament;

And the note of the sea from its sand coast,

On the easterly wind, now heard, now lost,

Seemed the murmurous sound of the judgment host.

Yet wise men doubted, and good men wept,

As that storm of passion above them swept,

And, comet-like, adding flame to flame,

The priests of the new Evangel came,--

Davenport, flashing upon the crowd,

Charged like summer's electric cloud,

Now holding the listener still as death

With terrible warnings under breath,

Now shouting for joy, as if he viewed

The vision of Heaven's beatitude!

And Celtic Tennant, his long coat bound

Like a monk's with leathern girdle round,

Wild with the toss of unshorn hair,

And wringing of hands, and, eyes aglare,

Groaning under the world's despair!

Grave pastors, grieving their flocks to lose,

Prophesied to the empty pews

That gourds would wither, and mushrooms die,

And noisiest fountains run soonest dry,

Like the spring that gushed in Newbury Street,

Under the tramp of the earthquake's feet,

A silver shaft in the air and light,

For a single day, then lost in night,

Leaving only, its place to tell,

Sandy fissure and sulphurous smell.

With zeal wing-clipped and white-heat cool,

Moved by the spirit in grooves of rule,

No longer harried, and cropped, and fleeced,

Flogged by sheriff and cursed by priest,

But by wiser counsels left at ease

To settle quietly on his lees,

And, self-concentred, to count as done

The work which his fathers well begun,

In silent protest of letting alone,

The Quaker kept the way of his own,--

A non-conductor among the wires,

With coat of asbestos proof to fires.

And quite unable to mend his pace

To catch the falling manna of grace,

He hugged the closer his little store

Of faith, and silently prayed for more.

And vague of creed and barren of rite,

But holding, as in his Master's sight,

Act and thought to the inner light,

The round of his simple duties walked,

And strove to live what the others talked.

And who shall marvel if evil went

Step by step with the good intent,

And with love and meekness, side by side,

Lust of the flesh and spiritual pride?--

That passionate longings and fancies vain

Set the heart on fire and crazed the brain?

That over the holy oracles

Folly sported with cap and bells?

That goodly women and learned men

Marvelling told with tongue and pen

How unweaned children chirped like birds

Texts of Scripture and solemn words,

Like the infant seers of the rocky glens

In the Puy de Dome of wild Cevennes

Or baby Lamas who pray and preach

From Tartir cradles in Buddha's speech?

In the war which Truth or Freedom wages

With impious fraud and the wrong of ages,

Hate and malice and self-love mar

The notes of triumph with painful jar,

And the helping angels turn aside

Their sorrowing faces the shame to bide.

Never on custom's oiled grooves

The world to a higher level moves,

But grates and grinds with friction hard

On granite boulder and flinty shard.

The heart must bleed before it feels,

The pool be troubled before it heals;

Ever by losses the right must gain,

Every good have its birth of pain;

The active Virtues blush to find

The Vices wearing their badge behind,

And Graces and Charities feel the fire

Wherein the sins of the age expire;

The fiend still rends as of old he rent

The tortured body from which he went.

But Time tests all. In the over-drift

And flow of the Nile, with its annual gift,

Who cares for the Hadji's relics sunk?

Who thinks of the drowned-out Coptic monk?

The tide that loosens the temple's stones,

And scatters the sacred ibis-bones,

Drives away from the valley-land

That Arab robber, the wandering sand,

Moistens the fields that know no rain,

Fringes the desert with belts of grain,

And bread to the sower brings again.

So the flood of emotion deep and strong

Troubled the land as it swept along,

But left a result of holier lives,

Tenderer-mothers and worthier wives.

The husband and father whose children fled

And sad wife wept when his drunken tread

Frightened peace from his roof-tree's shade,

And a rock of offence his hearthstone made,

In a strength that was not his own began

To rise from the brute's to the plane of man.

Old friends embraced, long held apart

By evil counsel and pride of heart;

And penitence saw through misty tears,

In the bow of hope on its cloud of fears,

The promise of Heaven's eternal years,--

The peace of God for the world's annoy,--

Beauty for ashes, and oil of joy

Under the church of Federal Street,

Under the tread of its Sabbath feet,

Walled about by its basement stones,

Lie the marvellous preacher's bones.

No saintly honors to them are shown,

No sign nor miracle have they known;

But he who passes the ancient church

Stops in the shade of its belfry-porch,

And ponders the wonderful life of him

Who lies at rest in that charnel dim.

Long shall the traveller strain his eye

From the railroad car, as it plunges by,

And the vanishing town behind him search

For the slender spire of the Whitefield Church;

And feel for one moment the ghosts of trade,

And fashion, and folly, and pleasure laid,

By the thought of that life of pure intent,

That voice of warning yet eloquent,

Of one on the errands of angels sent.

And if where he labored the flood of sin

Like a tide from the harbor-bar sets in,

And over a life of tune and sense

The church-spires lift their vain defence,

As if to scatter the bolts of God

With the points of Calvin's thunder-rod,--

Still, as the gem of its civic crown,

Precious beyond the world's renown,

His memory hallows the ancient town!

1859.

THE TRUCE OF PISCATAQUA.

In the winter of 1675-76, the Eastern Indians, who had been making war

upon the New Hampshire settlements, were so reduced in numbers by

fighting and famine that they agreed to a peace with Major Waldron at

Dover, but the peace was broken in the fall of 1676. The famous chief,

Squando, was the principal negotiator on the part of the savages. He had

taken up the hatchet to revenge the brutal treatment of his child by

drunken white sailors, which caused its death.

It not unfrequently happened during the Border wars that young white

children were adopted by their Indian captors, and so kindly treated

that they were unwilling to leave the free, wild life of the woods; and

in some instances they utterly refused to go back with their parents to

their old homes and civilization.

RAZE these long blocks of brick and stone,

These huge mill-monsters overgrown;

Blot out the humbler piles as well,

Where, moved like living shuttles, dwell

The weaving genii of the bell;

Tear from the wild Cocheco's track

The dams that hold its torrents back;

And let the loud-rejoicing fall

Plunge, roaring, down its rocky wall;

And let the Indian's paddle play

On the unbridged Piscataqua!

Wide over hill and valley spread

Once more the forest, dusk and dread,

With here and there a clearing cut

From the walled shadows round it shut;

Each with its farm-house builded rude,

By English yeoman squared and hewed,

And the grim, flankered block-house bound

With bristling palisades around.

So, haply shall before thine eyes

The dusty veil of centuries rise,

The old, strange scenery overlay

The tamer pictures of to-day,

While, like the actors in a play,

Pass in their ancient guise along

The figures of my border song

What time beside Cocheco's flood

The white man and the red man stood,

With words of peace and brotherhood;

When passed the sacred calumet

From lip to lip with fire-draught wet,

And, puffed in scorn, the peace-pipe's smoke

Through the gray beard of Waldron broke,

And Squando's voice, in suppliant plea

For mercy, struck the haughty key

Of one who held, in any fate,

His native pride inviolate!

"Let your ears be opened wide!

He who speaks has never lied.

Waldron of Piscataqua,

Hear what Squando has to say!

"Squando shuts his eyes and sees,

Far off, Saco's hemlock-trees.

In his wigwam, still as stone,

Sits a woman all alone,

"Wampum beads and birchen strands

Dropping from her careless hands,

Listening ever for the fleet

Patter of a dead child's feet!

"When the moon a year ago

Told the flowers the time to blow,

In that lonely wigwam smiled

Menewee, our little child.

"Ere that moon grew thin and old,

He was lying still and cold;

Sent before us, weak and small,

When the Master did not call!

"On his little grave I lay;

Three times went and came the day,

Thrice above me blazed the noon,

Thrice upon me wept the moon.

"In the third night-watch I heard,

Far and low, a spirit-bird;

Very mournful, very wild,

Sang the totem of my child.

"'Menewee, poor Menewee,

Walks a path he cannot see

Let the white man's wigwam light

With its blaze his steps aright.

"'All-uncalled, he dares not show

Empty hands to Manito

Better gifts he cannot bear

Than the scalps his slayers wear.'

"All the while the totem sang,

Lightning blazed and thunder rang;

And a black cloud, reaching high,

Pulled the white moon from the sky.

"I, the medicine-man, whose ear

All that spirits bear can hear,--

I, whose eyes are wide to see

All the things that are to be,--

"Well I knew the dreadful signs

In the whispers of the pines,

In the river roaring loud,

In the mutter of the cloud.

"At the breaking of the day,

From the grave I passed away;

Flowers bloomed round me, birds sang glad,

But my heart was hot and mad.

"There is rust on Squando's knife,

From the warm, red springs of life;

On the funeral hemlock-trees

Many a scalp the totem sees.

"Blood for blood! But evermore

Squando's heart is sad and sore;

And his poor squaw waits at home

For the feet that never come!

"Waldron of Cocheco, hear!

Squando speaks, who laughs at fear;

Take the captives he has ta'en;

Let the land have peace again!"

As the words died on his tongue,

Wide apart his warriors swung;

Parted, at the sign he gave,

Right and left, like Egypt's wave.

And, like Israel passing free

Through the prophet-charmed sea,

Captive mother, wife, and child

Through the dusky terror filed.

One alone, a little maid,

Middleway her steps delayed,

Glancing, with quick, troubled sight,

Round about from red to white.

Then his hand the Indian laid

On the little maiden's head,

Lightly from her forehead fair

Smoothing back her yellow hair.

"Gift or favor ask I none;

What I have is all my own

Never yet the birds have sung,

Squando hath a beggar's tongue.'

"Yet for her who waits at home,

For the dead who cannot come,

Let the little Gold-hair be

In the place of Menewee!

"Mishanock, my little star!

Come to Saco's pines afar;

Where the sad one waits at home,

Wequashim, my moonlight, come!"

"What!" quoth Waldron, "leave a child

Christian-born to heathens wild?

As God lives, from Satan's hand

I will pluck her as a brand!"

"Hear me, white man!" Squando cried;

"Let the little one decide.

Wequashim, my moonlight, say,

Wilt thou go with me, or stay?"

Slowly, sadly, half afraid,

Half regretfully, the maid

Owned the ties of blood and race,--

Turned from Squando's pleading face.

Not a word the Indian spoke,

But his wampum chain he broke,

And the beaded wonder hung

On that neck so fair and young.

Silence-shod, as phantoms seem

In the marches of a dream,

Single-filed, the grim array

Through the pine-trees wound away.

Doubting, trembling, sore amazed,

Through her tears the young child gazed.

"God preserve her!" Waldron said;

"Satan hath bewitched the maid!"

Years went and came. At close of day

Singing came a child from play,

Tossing from her loose-locked head

Gold in sunshine, brown in shade.

Pride was in the mother's look,

But her head she gravely shook,

And with lips that fondly smiled

Feigned to chide her truant child.

Unabashed, the maid began

"Up and down the brook I ran,

Where, beneath the bank so steep,

Lie the spotted trout asleep.

"'Chip!' went squirrel on the wall,

After me I heard him call,

And the cat-bird on the tree

Tried his best to mimic me.

"Where the hemlocks grew so dark

That I stopped to look and hark,

On a log, with feather-hat,

By the path, an Indian sat.

"Then I cried, and ran away;

But he called, and bade me stay;

And his voice was good and mild

As my mother's to her child.

"And he took my wampum chain,

Looked and looked it o'er again;

Gave me berries, and, beside,

On my neck a plaything tied."

Straight the mother stooped to see

What the Indian's gift might be.

On the braid of wampum hung,

Lo! a cross of silver swung.

Well she knew its graven sign,

Squando's bird and totem pine;

And, a mirage of the brain,

Flowed her childhood back again.

Flashed the roof the sunshine through,

Into space the walls outgrew;

On the Indian's wigwam-mat,

Blossom-crowned, again she sat.

Cool she felt the west-wind blow,

In her ear the pines sang low,

And, like links from out a chain,

Dropped the years of care and pain.

From the outward toil and din,

From the griefs that gnaw within,

To the freedom of the woods

Called the birds, and winds, and floods.

Well, O painful minister!

Watch thy flock, but blame not her,

If her ear grew sharp to hear

All their voices whispering near.

Blame her not, as to her soul

All the desert's glamour stole,

That a tear for childhood's loss

Dropped upon the Indian's cross.

When, that night, the Book was read,

And she bowed her widowed head,

And a prayer for each loved name

Rose like incense from a flame,

With a hope the creeds forbid

In her pitying bosom hid,

To the listening ear of Heaven

Lo! the Indian's name was given.

1860.

MY PLAYMATE.

THE pines were dark on Ramoth hill,

Their song was soft and low;

The blossoms in the sweet May wind

Were falling like the snow.

The blossoms drifted at our feet,

The orchard birds sang clear;

The sweetest and the saddest day

It seemed of all the year.

For, more to me than birds or flowers,

My playmate left her home,

And took with her the laughing spring,

The music and the bloom.

She kissed the lips of kith and kin,

She laid her hand in mine

What more could ask the bashful boy

Who fed her father's kine?

She left us in the bloom of May

The constant years told o'er

Their seasons with as sweet May morns,

But she came back no more.

I walk, with noiseless feet, the round

Of uneventful years;

Still o'er and o'er I sow the spring

And reap the autumn ears.

She lives where all the golden year

Her summer roses blow;

The dusky children of the sun

Before her come and go.

There haply with her jewelled hands

She smooths her silken gown,--

No more the homespun lap wherein

I shook the walnuts down.

The wild grapes wait us by the brook,

The brown nuts on the hill,

And still the May-day flowers make sweet

The woods of Follymill.

The lilies blossom in the pond,

The bird builds in the tree,

The dark pines sing on Ramoth hill

The slow song of the sea.

I wonder if she thinks of them,

And how the old time seems,--

If ever the pines of Ramoth wood

Are sounding in her dreams.

I see her face, I hear her voice;

Does she remember mine?

And what to her is now the boy

Who fed her father's kine?

What cares she that the orioles build

For other eyes than ours,--

That other hands with nuts are filled,

And other laps with flowers?

O playmate in the golden time!

Our mossy seat is green,

Its fringing violets blossom yet,

The old trees o'er it lean.

The winds so sweet with birch and fern

A sweeter memory blow;

And there in spring the veeries sing

The song of long ago.

And still the pines of Ramoth wood

Are moaning like the sea,--

The moaning of the sea of change

Between myself and thee!

1860.

COBBLER KEEZAR'S VISION.

This ballad was written on the occasion of a Horticultural Festival.

Cobbler Keezar was a noted character among the first settlers in the

valley of the Merrimac.

THE beaver cut his timber

With patient teeth that day,

The minks were fish-wards, and the crows

Surveyors of highway,--

When Keezar sat on the hillside

Upon his cobbler's form,

With a pan of coals on either hand

To keep his waxed-ends warm.

And there, in the golden weather,

He stitched and hammered and sung;

In the brook he moistened his leather,

In the pewter mug his tongue.

Well knew the tough old Teuton

Who brewed the stoutest ale,

And he paid the goodwife's reckoning

In the coin of song and tale.

The songs they still are singing

Who dress the hills of vine,

The tales that haunt the Brocken

And whisper down the Rhine.

Woodsy and wild and lonesome,

The swift stream wound away,

Through birches and scarlet maples

Flashing in foam and spray,--

Down on the sharp-horned ledges

Plunging in steep cascade,

Tossing its white-maned waters

Against the hemlock's shade.

Woodsy and wild and lonesome,

East and west and north and south;

Only the village of fishers

Down at the river's mouth;

Only here and there a clearing,

With its farm-house rude and new,

And tree-stumps, swart as Indians,

Where the scanty harvest grew.

No shout of home-bound reapers,

No vintage-song he heard,

And on the green no dancing feet

The merry violin stirred.

"Why should folk be glum," said Keezar,

"When Nature herself is glad,

And the painted woods are laughing

At the faces so sour and sad?"

Small heed had the careless cobbler

What sorrow of heart was theirs

Who travailed in pain with the births of God,

And planted a state with prayers,--

Hunting of witches and warlocks,

Smiting the heathen horde,--

One hand on the mason's trowel,

And one on the soldier's sword.

But give him his ale and cider,

Give him his pipe and song,

Little he cared for Church or State,

Or the balance of right and wrong.

"T is work, work, work," he muttered,--

"And for rest a snuffle of psalms!"

He smote on his leathern apron

With his brown and waxen palms.

"Oh for the purple harvests

Of the days when I was young

For the merry grape-stained maidens,

And the pleasant songs they sung!

"Oh for the breath of vineyards,

Of apples and nuts and wine

For an oar to row and a breeze to blow

Down the grand old river Rhine!"

A tear in his blue eye glistened,

And dropped on his beard so gray.

"Old, old am I," said Keezar,

"And the Rhine flows far away!"

But a cunning man was the cobbler;

He could call the birds from the trees,

Charm the black snake out of the ledges,

And bring back the swarming bees.

All the virtues of herbs and metals,

All the lore of the woods, he knew,

And the arts of the Old World mingle

With the marvels of the New.

Well he knew the tricks of magic,

And the lapstone on his knee

Had the gift of the Mormon's goggles

Or the stone of Doctor Dee.(11)

For the mighty master Agrippa

Wrought it with spell and rhyme

From a fragment of mystic moonstone

In the tower of Nettesheim.

To a cobbler Minnesinger

The marvellous stone gave he,--

And he gave it, in turn, to Keezar,

Who brought it over the sea.

He held up that mystic lapstone,

He held it up like a lens,

And he counted the long years coming

Ey twenties and by tens.

"One hundred years," quoth Keezar,

"And fifty have I told

Now open the new before me,

And shut me out the old!"

Like a cloud of mist, the blackness

Rolled from the magic stone,

And a marvellous picture mingled

The unknown and the known.

Still ran the stream to the river,

And river and ocean joined;

And there were the bluffs and the blue sea-line,

And cold north hills behind.

But--the mighty forest was broken

By many a steepled town,

By many a white-walled farm-house,

And many a garner brown.

Turning a score of mill-wheels,

The stream no more ran free;

White sails on the winding river,

White sails on the far-off sea.

Below in the noisy village

The flags were floating gay,

And shone on a thousand faces

The light of a holiday.

Swiftly the rival ploughmen

Turned the brown earth from their shares;

Here were the farmer's treasures,

There were the craftsman's wares.

Golden the goodwife's butter,

Ruby her currant-wine;

Grand were the strutting turkeys,

Fat were the beeves and swine.

Yellow and red were the apples,

And the ripe pears russet-brown,

And the peaches had stolen blushes

From the girls who shook them down.

And with blooms of hill and wildwood,

That shame the toil of art,

Mingled the gorgeous blossoms

Of the garden's tropic heart.

"What is it I see?" said Keezar

"Am I here, or ant I there?

Is it a fete at Bingen?

Do I look on Frankfort fair?

"But where are the clowns and puppets,

And imps with horns and tail?

And where are the Rhenish flagons?

And where is the foaming ale?

"Strange things, I know, will happen,--

Strange things the Lord permits;

But that droughty folk should be jolly

Puzzles my poor old wits.

"Here are smiling manly faces,

And the maiden's step is gay;

Nor sad by thinking, nor mad by drinking,

Nor mopes, nor fools, are they.

"Here's pleasure without regretting,

And good without abuse,

The holiday and the bridal

Of beauty and of use.

"Here's a priest and there is a Quaker,

Do the cat and dog agree?

Have they burned the stocks for ovenwood?

Have they cut down the gallows-tree?

"Would the old folk know their children?

Would they own the graceless town,

With never a ranter to worry

And never a witch to drown?"

Loud laughed the cobbler Keezar,

Laughed like a school-boy gay;

Tossing his arms above him,

The lapstone rolled away.

It rolled down the rugged hillside,

It spun like a wheel bewitched,

It plunged through the leaning willows,

And into the river pitched.

There, in the deep, dark water,

The magic stone lies still,

Under the leaning willows

In the shadow of the hill.

But oft the idle fisher

Sits on the shadowy bank,

And his dreams make marvellous pictures

Where the wizard's lapstone sank.

And still, in the summer twilights,

When the river seems to run

Out from the inner glory,

Warm with the melted sun,

The weary mill-girl lingers

Beside the charmed stream,

And the sky and the golden water

Shape and color her dream.

Air wave the sunset gardens,

The rosy signals fly;

Her homestead beckons from the cloud,

And love goes sailing by.

1861.

AMY WENTWORTH

TO WILLIAM BRADFORD.

As they who watch by sick-beds find relief

Unwittingly from the great stress of grief

And anxious care, in fantasies outwrought

From the hearth's embers flickering low, or caught

From whispering wind, or tread of passing feet,

Or vagrant memory calling up some sweet

Snatch of old song or romance, whence or why

They scarcely know or ask,--so, thou and I,

Nursed in the faith that Truth alone is strong

In the endurance which outwearies Wrong,

With meek persistence baffling brutal force,

And trusting God against the universe,--

We, doomed to watch a strife we may not share

With other weapons than the patriot's prayer,

Yet owning, with full hearts and moistened eyes,

The awful beauty of self-sacrifice,

And wrung by keenest sympathy for all

Who give their loved ones for the living wall

'Twixt law and treason,--in this evil day

May haply find, through automatic play

Of pen and pencil, solace to our pain,

And hearten others with the strength we gain.

I know it has been said our times require

No play of art, nor dalliance with the lyre,

No weak essay with Fancy's chloroform

To calm the hot, mad pulses of the storm,

But the stern war-blast rather, such as sets

The battle's teeth of serried bayonets,

And pictures grim as Vernet's. Yet with these

Some softer tints may blend, and milder keys

Relieve the storm-stunned ear. Let us keep sweet,

If so we may, our hearts, even while we eat

The bitter harvest of our own device

And half a century's moral cowardice.

As Nurnberg sang while Wittenberg defied,

And Kranach painted by his Luther's side,

And through the war-march of the Puritan

The silver stream of Marvell's music ran,

So let the household melodies be sung,

The pleasant pictures on the wall be hung--

So let us hold against the hosts of night

And slavery all our vantage-ground of light.

Let Treason boast its savagery, and shake

From its flag-folds its symbol rattlesnake,

Nurse its fine arts, lay human skins in tan,

And carve its pipe-bowls from the bones of man,

And make the tale of Fijian banquets dull

By drinking whiskey from a loyal skull,--

But let us guard, till this sad war shall cease,

(God grant it soon!) the graceful arts of peace

No foes are conquered who the victors teach

Their vandal manners and barbaric speech.

And while, with hearts of thankfulness, we bear

Of the great common burden our full share,

Let none upbraid us that the waves entice

Thy sea-dipped pencil, or some quaint device,

Rhythmic, and sweet, beguiles my pen away

From the sharp strifes and sorrows of to-day.

Thus, while the east-wind keen from Labrador

Sings it the leafless elms, and from the shore

Of the great sea comes the monotonous roar

Of the long-breaking surf, and all the sky

Is gray with cloud, home-bound and dull, I try

To time a simple legend to the sounds

Of winds in the woods, and waves on pebbled bounds,--

A song for oars to chime with, such as might

Be sung by tired sea-painters, who at night

Look from their hemlock camps, by quiet cove

Or beach, moon-lighted, on the waves they love.

(So hast thou looked, when level sunset lay

On the calm bosom of some Eastern bay,

And all the spray-moist rocks and waves that rolled

Up the white sand-slopes flashed with ruddy gold.)

Something it has--a flavor of the sea,

And the sea's freedom--which reminds of thee.

Its faded picture, dimly smiling down

From the blurred fresco of the ancient town,

I have not touched with warmer tints in vain,

If, in this dark, sad year, it steals one thought

from pain.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Her fingers shame the ivory keys

They dance so light along;

The bloom upon her parted lips

Is sweeter than the song.

O perfumed suitor, spare thy smiles!

Her thoughts are not of thee;

She better loves the salted wind,

The voices of the sea.

Her heart is like an outbound ship

That at its anchor swings;

The murmur of the stranded shell

Is in the song she sings.

She sings, and, smiling, hears her praise,

But dreams the while of one

Who watches from his sea-blown deck

The icebergs in the sun.

She questions all the winds that blow,

And every fog-wreath dim,

And bids the sea-birds flying north

Bear messages to him.

She speeds them with the thanks of men

He perilled life to save,

And grateful prayers like holy oil

To smooth for him the wave.

Brown Viking of the fishing-smack!

Fair toast of all the town!--

The skipper's jerkin ill beseems

The lady's silken gown!

But ne'er shall Amy Wentworth wear

For him the blush of shame

Who dares to set his manly gifts

Against her ancient name.

The stream is brightest at its spring,

And blood is not like wine;

Nor honored less than he who heirs

Is he who founds a line.

Full lightly shall the prize be won,

If love be Fortune's spur;

And never maiden stoops to him

Who lifts himself to her.

Her home is brave in Jaffrey Street,

With stately stairways worn

By feet of old Colonial knights

And ladies gentle-born.

Still green about its ample porch

The English ivy twines,

Trained back to show in English oak

The herald's carven signs.

And on her, from the wainscot old,

Ancestral faces frown,--

And this has worn the soldier's sword,

And that the judge's gown.

But, strong of will and proud as they,

She walks the gallery floor

As if she trod her sailor's deck

By stormy Labrador.

The sweetbrier blooms on Kittery-side,

And green are Elliot's bowers;

Her garden is the pebbled beach,

The mosses are her flowers.

She looks across the harbor-bar

To see the white gulls fly;

His greeting from the Northern sea

Is in their clanging cry.

She hums a song, and dreams that he,

As in its romance old,

Shall homeward ride with silken sails

And masts of beaten gold!

Oh, rank is good, and gold is fair,

And high and low mate ill;

But love has never known a law

Beyond its own sweet will!

1862.

THE COUNTESS.

TO E. W.

I inscribed this poem to Dr. Elias Weld of Haverhill, Massachusetts,

to whose kindness I was much indebted in my boyhood. He was the one

cultivated man in the neighborhood. His small but well-chosen library

was placed at my disposal. He is the "wise old doctor" of Snow-Bound.

Count Francois de Vipart with his cousin Joseph Rochemont de Poyen came

to the United States in the early part of the present century. They took

up their residence at Rocks Village on the Merrimac, where they both

married. The wife of Count Vipart was Mary Ingalls, who as my father

remembered her was a very lovely young girl. Her wedding dress, as

described by a lady still living, was "pink satin with an overdress of

white lace, and white satin slippers." She died in less than a year

after her marriage. Her husband returned to his native country. He lies

buried in the family tomb of the Viparts at Bordeaux.

I KNOW not, Time and Space so intervene,

Whether, still waiting with a trust serene,

Thou bearest up thy fourscore years and ten,

Or, called at last, art now Heaven's citizen;

But, here or there, a pleasant thought of thee,

Like an old friend, all day has been with me.

The shy, still boy, for whom thy kindly hand

Smoothed his hard pathway to the wonder-land

Of thought and fancy, in gray manhood yet

Keeps green the memory of his early debt.

To-day, when truth and falsehood speak their words

Through hot-lipped cannon and the teeth of swords,

Listening with quickened heart and ear intent

To each sharp clause of that stern argument,

I still can hear at times a softer note

Of the old pastoral music round me float,

While through the hot gleam of our civil strife

Looms the green mirage of a simpler life.

As, at his alien post, the sentinel

Drops the old bucket in the homestead well,

And hears old voices in the winds that toss

Above his head the live-oak's beard of moss,

So, in our trial-time, and under skies

Shadowed by swords like Islam's paradise,

I wait and watch, and let my fancy stray

To milder scenes and youth's Arcadian day;

And howsoe'er the pencil dipped in dreams

Shades the brown woods or tints the sunset streams,

The country doctor in the foreground seems,

Whose ancient sulky down the village lanes

Dragged, like a war-car, captive ills and pains.

I could not paint the scenery of my song,

Mindless of one who looked thereon so long;

Who, night and day, on duty's lonely round,

Made friends o' the woods and rocks, and knew the sound

Of each small brook, and what the hillside trees

Said to the winds that touched their leafy keys;

Who saw so keenly and so well could paint

The village-folk, with all their humors quaint,

The parson ambling on his wall-eyed roan.

Grave and erect, with white hair backward blown;

The tough old boatman, half amphibious grown;

The muttering witch-wife of the gossip's tale,

And the loud straggler levying his blackmail,--

Old customs, habits, superstitions, fears,

All that lies buried under fifty years.

To thee, as is most fit, I bring my lay,

And, grateful, own the debt I cannot pay.

. . . . . . . . . .

Over the wooded northern ridge,

Between its houses brown,

To the dark tunnel of the bridge

The street comes straggling down.

You catch a glimpse, through birch and pine,

Of gable, roof, and porch,

The tavern with its swinging sign,

The sharp horn of the church.

The river's steel-blue crescent curves

To meet, in ebb and flow,

The single broken wharf that serves

For sloop and gundelow.

With salt sea-scents along its shores

The heavy hay-boats crawl,

The long antennae of their oars

In lazy rise and fall.

Along the gray abutment's wall

The idle shad-net dries;

The toll-man in his cobbler's stall

Sits smoking with closed eyes.

You hear the pier's low undertone

Of waves that chafe and gnaw;

You start,--a skipper's horn is blown

To raise the creaking draw.

At times a blacksmith's anvil sounds

With slow and sluggard beat,

Or stage-coach on its dusty rounds

Fakes up the staring street.

A place for idle eyes and ears,

A cobwebbed nook of dreams;

Left by the stream whose waves are years

The stranded village seems.

And there, like other moss and rust,

The native dweller clings,

And keeps, in uninquiring trust,

The old, dull round of things.

The fisher drops his patient lines,

The farmer sows his grain,

Content to hear the murmuring pines

Instead of railroad-train.

Go where, along the tangled steep

That slopes against the west,

The hamlet's buried idlers sleep

In still profounder rest.

Throw back the locust's flowery plume,

The birch's pale-green scarf,

And break the web of brier and bloom

From name and epitaph.

A simple muster-roll of death,

Of pomp and romance shorn,

The dry, old names that common breath

Has cheapened and outworn.

Yet pause by one low mound, and part

The wild vines o'er it laced,

And read the words by rustic art

Upon its headstone traced.

Haply yon white-haired villager

Of fourscore years can say

What means the noble name of her

Who sleeps with common clay.

An exile from the Gascon land

Found refuge here and rest,

And loved, of all the village band,

Its fairest and its best.

He knelt with her on Sabbath morns,

He worshipped through her eyes,

And on the pride that doubts and scorns

Stole in her faith's surprise.

Her simple daily life he saw

By homeliest duties tried,

In all things by an untaught law

Of fitness justified.

For her his rank aside he laid;

He took the hue and tone

Of lowly life and toil, and made

Her simple ways his own.

Yet still, in gay and careless ease,

To harvest-field or dance

He brought the gentle courtesies,

The nameless grace of France.

And she who taught him love not less

From him she loved in turn

Caught in her sweet unconsciousness

What love is quick to learn.

Each grew to each in pleased accord,

Nor knew the gazing town

If she looked upward to her lord

Or he to her looked down.

How sweet, when summer's day was o'er,

His violin's mirth and wail,

The walk on pleasant Newbury's shore,

The river's moonlit sail!

Ah! life is brief, though love be long;

The altar and the bier,

The burial hymn and bridal song,

Were both in one short year!

Her rest is quiet on the hill,

Beneath the locust's bloom

Far off her lover sleeps as still

Within his scutcheoned tomb.

The Gascon lord, the village maid,

In death still clasp their hands;

The love that levels rank and grade

Unites their severed lands.

What matter whose the hillside grave,

Or whose the blazoned stone?

Forever to her western wave

Shall whisper blue Garonne!

O Love!--so hallowing every soil

That gives thy sweet flower room,

Wherever, nursed by ease or toil,

The human heart takes bloom!--

Plant of lost Eden, from the sod

Of sinful earth unriven,

White blossom of the trees of God

Dropped down to us from heaven!

This tangled waste of mound and stone

Is holy for thy sale;

A sweetness which is all thy own

Breathes out from fern and brake.

And while ancestral pride shall twine

The Gascon's tomb with flowers,

Fall sweetly here, O song of mine,

With summer's bloom and showers!

And let the lines that severed seem

Unite again in thee,

As western wave and Gallic stream

Are mingled in one sea!

1863.

AMONG THE HILLS

This poem, when originally published, was dedicated to Annie Fields,

wife of the distinguished publisher, James T. Fields, of Boston, in

grateful acknowledgment of the strength and inspiration I have found in

her friendship and sympathy. The poem in its first form was entitled The

Wife: an Idyl of Bearcamp Water, and appeared in The Atlantic Monthly

for January, 1868. When I published the volume Among the Hills, in

December of the same year, I expanded the Prelude and filled out also

the outlines of the story.

PRELUDE.

ALONG the roadside, like the flowers of gold

That tawny Incas for their gardens wrought,

Heavy with sunshine droops the golden-rod,

And the red pennons of the cardinal-flowers

Hang motionless upon their upright staves.

The sky is hot and hazy, and the wind,

Vying-weary with its long flight from the south,

Unfelt; yet, closely scanned, yon maple leaf

With faintest motion, as one stirs in dreams,

Confesses it. The locust by the wall

Stabs the noon-silence with his sharp alarm.

A single hay-cart down the dusty road

Creaks slowly, with its driver fast asleep

On the load's top. Against the neighboring hill,

Huddled along the stone wall's shady side,

The sheep show white, as if a snowdrift still

Defied the dog-star. Through the open door

A drowsy smell of flowers-gray heliotrope,

And white sweet clover, and shy mignonette--

Comes faintly in, and silent chorus lends

To the pervading symphony of peace.

No time is this for hands long over-worn

To task their strength; and (unto Him be praise

Who giveth quietness!) the stress and strain

Of years that did the work of centuries

Have ceased, and we can draw our breath once more

Freely and full. So, as yon harvesters

Make glad their nooning underneath the elms

With tale and riddle and old snatch of song,

I lay aside grave themes, and idly turn

The leaves of memory's sketch-book, dreaming o'er

Old summer pictures of the quiet hills,

And human life, as quiet, at their feet.

And yet not idly all. A farmer's son,

Proud of field-lore and harvest craft, and feeling

All their fine possibilities, how rich

And restful even poverty and toil

Become when beauty, harmony, and love

Sit at their humble hearth as angels sat

At evening in the patriarch's tent, when man

Makes labor noble, and his farmer's frock

The symbol of a Christian chivalry

Tender and just and generous to her

Who clothes with grace all duty; still, I know

Too well the picture has another side,--

How wearily the grind of toil goes on

Where love is wanting, how the eye and ear

And heart are starved amidst the plenitude

Of nature, and how hard and colorless

Is life without an atmosphere. I look

Across the lapse of half a century,

And call to mind old homesteads, where no flower

Told that the spring had come, but evil weeds,

Nightshade and rough-leaved burdock in the place

Of the sweet doorway greeting of the rose

And honeysuckle, where the house walls seemed

Blistering in sun, without a tree or vine

To cast the tremulous shadow of its leaves

Across the curtainless windows, from whose panes

Fluttered the signal rags of shiftlessness.

Within, the cluttered kitchen-floor, unwashed

(Broom-clean I think they called it); the best room

Stifling with cellar damp, shut from the air

In hot midsummer, bookless, pictureless,

Save the inevitable sampler hung

Over the fireplace, or a mourning piece,

A green-haired woman, peony-cheeked, beneath

Impossible willows; the wide-throated hearth

Bristling with faded pine-boughs half concealing

The piled-up rubbish at the chimney's back;

And, in sad keeping with all things about them,

Shrill, querulous-women, sour and sullen men,

Untidy, loveless, old before their time,

With scarce a human interest save their own

Monotonous round of small economies,

Or the poor scandal of the neighborhood;

Blind to the beauty everywhere revealed,

Treading the May-flowers with regardless feet;

For them the song-sparrow and the bobolink

Sang not, nor winds made music in the leaves;

For them in vain October's holocaust

Burned, gold and crimson, over all the hills,

The sacramental mystery of the woods.

Church-goers, fearful of the unseen Powers,

But grumbling over pulpit-tax and pew-rent,

Saving, as shrewd economists, their souls

And winter pork with the least possible outlay

Of salt and sanctity; in daily life

Showing as little actual comprehension

Of Christian charity and love and duty,

As if the Sermon on the Mount had been

Outdated like a last year's almanac

Rich in broad woodlands and in half-tilled fields,

And yet so pinched and bare and comfortless,

The veriest straggler limping on his rounds,

The sun and air his sole inheritance,

Laughed at a poverty that paid its taxes,

And hugged his rags in self-complacency!

Not such should be the homesteads of a land

Where whoso wisely wills and acts may dwell

As king and lawgiver, in broad-acred state,

With beauty, art, taste, culture, books, to make

His hour of leisure richer than a life

Of fourscore to the barons of old time,

Our yeoman should be equal to his home

Set in the fair, green valleys, purple walled,

A man to match his mountains, not to creep

Dwarfed and abased below them. I would fain

In this light way (of which I needs must own

With the knife-grinder of whom Canning sings,

"Story, God bless you! I have none to tell you!")

Invite the eye to see and heart to feel

The beauty and the joy within their reach,--

Home, and home loves, and the beatitudes

Of nature free to all. Haply in years

That wait to take the places of our own,

Heard where some breezy balcony looks down

On happy homes, or where the lake in the moon

Sleeps dreaming of the mountains, fair as Ruth,

In the old Hebrew pastoral, at the feet

Of Boaz, even this simple lay of mine

May seem the burden of a prophecy,

Finding its late fulfilment in a change

Slow as the oak's growth, lifting manhood up

Through broader culture, finer manners, love,

And reverence, to the level of the hills.

O Golden Age, whose light is of the dawn,

And not of sunset, forward, not behind,

Flood the new heavens and earth, and with thee bring

All the old virtues, whatsoever things

Are pure and honest and of good repute,

But add thereto whatever bard has sung

Or seer has told of when in trance and dream

They saw the Happy Isles of prophecy

Let Justice hold her scale, and Truth divide

Between the right and wrong; but give the heart

The freedom of its fair inheritance;

Let the poor prisoner, cramped and starved so long,

At Nature's table feast his ear and eye

With joy and wonder; let all harmonies

Of sound, form, color, motion, wait upon

The princely guest, whether in soft attire

Of leisure clad, or the coarse frock of toil,

And, lending life to the dead form of faith,

Give human nature reverence for the sake

Of One who bore it, making it divine

With the ineffable tenderness of God;

Let common need, the brotherhood of prayer,

The heirship of an unknown destiny,

The unsolved mystery round about us, make

A man more precious than the gold of Ophir.

Sacred, inviolate, unto whom all things

Should minister, as outward types and signs

Of the eternal beauty which fulfils

The one great purpose of creation, Love,

The sole necessity of Earth and Heaven!

. . . . . . . . . . .

For weeks the clouds had raked the hills

And vexed the vales with raining,

And all the woods were sad with mist,

And all the brooks complaining.

At last, a sudden night-storm tore

The mountain veils asunder,

And swept the valleys clean before

The besom of the thunder.

Through Sandwich notch the west-wind sang

Good morrow to the cotter;

And once again Chocorua's horn

Of shadow pierced the water.

Above his broad lake Ossipee,

Once more the sunshine wearing,

Stooped, tracing on that silver shield

His grim armorial bearing.

Clear drawn against the hard blue sky,

The peaks had winter's keenness;

And, close on autumn's frost, the vales

Had more than June's fresh greenness.

Again the sodden forest floors

With golden lights were checkered,

Once more rejoicing leaves in wind

And sunshine danced and flickered.

It was as if the summer's late

Atoning for it's sadness

Had borrowed every season's charm

To end its days in gladness.

Rivers of gold-mist flowing down

From far celestial fountains,--

The great sun flaming through the rifts

Beyond the wall of mountains.

We paused at last where home-bound cows

Brought down the pasture's treasure,

And in the barn the rhythmic flails

Beat out a harvest measure.

We heard the night-hawk's sullen plunge,

The crow his tree-mates calling

The shadows lengthening down the slopes

About our feet were falling.

And through them smote the level sun

In broken lines of splendor,

Touched the gray rocks and made the green

Of the shorn grass more tender.

The maples bending o'er the gate,

Their arch of leaves just tinted

With yellow warmth, the golden glow

Of coming autumn hinted.

Keen white between the farm-house showed,

And smiled on porch and trellis,

The fair democracy of flowers

That equals cot and palace.

And weaving garlands for her dog,

'Twixt chidings and caresses,

A human flower of childhood shook

The sunshine from her tresses.

Clear drawn against the hard blue sky,

The peaks had winter's keenness;

And, close on autumn's frost, the vales

Had more than June's fresh greenness.

Again the sodden forest floors

With golden lights were checkered,

Once more rejoicing leaves in wind

And sunshine danced and flickered.

It was as if the summer's late

Atoning for it's sadness

Had borrowed every season's charm

To end its days in gladness.

I call to mind those banded vales

Of shadow and of shining,

Through which, my hostess at my side,

I drove in day's declining.

We held our sideling way above

The river's whitening shallows,

By homesteads old, with wide-flung barns

Swept through and through by swallows;

By maple orchards, belts of pine

And larches climbing darkly

The mountain slopes, and, over all,

The great peaks rising starkly.

You should have seen that long hill-range

With gaps of brightness riven,--

How through each pass and hollow streamed

The purpling lights of heaven,--

On either hand we saw the signs

Of fancy and of shrewdness,

Where taste had wound its arms of vines

Round thrift's uncomely rudeness.

The sun-brown farmer in his frock

Shook hands, and called to Mary

Bare-armed, as Juno might, she came,

White-aproned from her dairy.

Her air, her smile, her motions, told

Of womanly completeness;

A music as of household songs

Was in her voice of sweetness.

Not fair alone in curve and line,

But something more and better,

The secret charm eluding art,

Its spirit, not its letter;--

An inborn grace that nothing lacked

Of culture or appliance,

The warmth of genial courtesy,

The calm of self-reliance.

Before her queenly womanhood

How dared our hostess utter

The paltry errand of her need

To buy her fresh-churned butter?

She led the way with housewife pride,

Her goodly store disclosing,

Full tenderly the golden balls

With practised hands disposing.

Then, while along the western hills

We watched the changeful glory

Of sunset, on our homeward way,

I heard her simple story.

The early crickets sang; the stream

Plashed through my friend's narration

Her rustic patois of the hills

Lost in my free-translation.

"More wise," she said, "than those who swarm

Our hills in middle summer,

She came, when June's first roses blow,

To greet the early comer.

"From school and ball and rout she came,

The city's fair, pale daughter,

To drink the wine of mountain air

Beside the Bearcamp Water.

"Her step grew firmer on the hills

That watch our homesteads over;

On cheek and lip, from summer fields,

She caught the bloom of clover.

"For health comes sparkling in the streams

From cool Chocorua stealing

There's iron in our Northern winds;

Our pines are trees of healing.

"She sat beneath the broad-armed elms

That skirt the mowing-meadow,

And watched the gentle west-wind weave

The grass with shine and shadow.

"Beside her, from the summer heat

To share her grateful screening,

With forehead bared, the farmer stood,

Upon his pitchfork leaning.

"Framed in its damp, dark locks, his face

Had nothing mean or common,--

Strong, manly, true, the tenderness

And pride beloved of woman.

"She looked up, glowing with the health

The country air had brought her,

And, laughing, said: 'You lack a wife,

Your mother lacks a daughter.

"'To mend your frock and bake your bread

You do not need a lady

Be sure among these brown old homes

Is some one waiting ready,--

"'Some fair, sweet girl with skilful hand

And cheerful heart for treasure,

Who never played with ivory keys,

Or danced the polka's measure.'

"He bent his black brows to a frown,

He set his white teeth tightly.

''T is well,' he said, 'for one like you

To choose for me so lightly.

"You think, because my life is rude

I take no note of sweetness

I tell you love has naught to do

With meetness or unmeetness.

"'Itself its best excuse, it asks

No leave of pride or fashion

When silken zone or homespun frock

It stirs with throbs of passion.

"'You think me deaf and blind: you bring

Your winning graces hither

As free as if from cradle-time

We two had played together.

"'You tempt me with your laughing eyes,

Your cheek of sundown's blushes,

A motion as of waving grain,

A music as of thrushes.

"'The plaything of your summer sport,

The spells you weave around me

You cannot at your will undo,

Nor leave me as you found me.

"'You go as lightly as you came,

Your life is well without me;

What care you that these hills will close

Like prison-walls about me?

"'No mood is mine to seek a wife,

Or daughter for my mother

Who loves you loses in that love

All power to love another!

"'I dare your pity or your scorn,

With pride your own exceeding;

I fling my heart into your lap

Without a word of pleading.'

"She looked up in his face of pain

So archly, yet so tender

'And if I lend you mine,' she said,

'Will you forgive the lender?

"'Nor frock nor tan can hide the man;

And see you not, my farmer,

How weak and fond a woman waits

Behind this silken armor?

"'I love you: on that love alone,

And not my worth, presuming,

Will you not trust for summer fruit

The tree in May-day blooming?'

"Alone the hangbird overhead,

His hair-swung cradle straining,

Looked down to see love's miracle,--

The giving that is gaining.

"And so the farmer found a wife,

His mother found a daughter

There looks no happier home than hers

On pleasant Bearcamp Water.

"Flowers spring to blossom where she walks

The careful ways of duty;

Our hard, stiff lines of life with her

Are flowing curves of beauty.

"Our homes are cheerier for her sake,

Our door-yards brighter blooming,

And all about the social air

Is sweeter for her coming.

"Unspoken homilies of peace

Her daily life is preaching;

The still refreshment of the dew

Is her unconscious teaching.

"And never tenderer hand than hers

Unknits the brow of ailing;

Her garments to the sick man's ear

Have music in their trailing.

"And when, in pleasant harvest moons,

The youthful huskers gather,

Or sleigh-drives on the mountain ways

Defy the winter weather,--

"In sugar-camps, when south and warm

The winds of March are blowing,

And sweetly from its thawing veins

The maple's blood is flowing,--

"In summer, where some lilied pond

Its virgin zone is baring,

Or where the ruddy autumn fire

Lights up the apple-paring,--

"The coarseness of a ruder time

Her finer mirth displaces,

A subtler sense of pleasure fills

Each rustic sport she graces.

"Her presence lends its warmth and health

To all who come before it.

If woman lost us Eden, such

As she alone restore it.

"For larger life and wiser aims

The farmer is her debtor;

Who holds to his another's heart

Must needs be worse or better.

"Through her his civic service shows

A purer-toned ambition;

No double consciousness divides

The man and politician.

"In party's doubtful ways he trusts

Her instincts to determine;

At the loud polls, the thought of her

Recalls Christ's Mountain Sermon.

"He owns her logic of the heart,

And wisdom of unreason,

Supplying, while he doubts and weighs,

The needed word in season.

"He sees with pride her richer thought,

Her fancy's freer ranges;

And love thus deepened to respect

Is proof against all changes.

"And if she walks at ease in ways

His feet are slow to travel,

And if she reads with cultured eyes

What his may scarce unravel,

"Still clearer, for her keener sight

Of beauty and of wonder,

He learns the meaning of the hills

He dwelt from childhood under.

"And higher, warmed with summer lights,

Or winter-crowned and hoary,

The ridged horizon lifts for him

Its inner veils of glory.

"He has his own free, bookless lore,

The lessons nature taught him,

The wisdom which the woods and hills

And toiling men have brought him:

"The steady force of will whereby

Her flexile grace seems sweeter;

The sturdy counterpoise which makes

Her woman's life completer.

"A latent fire of soul which lacks

No breath of love to fan it;

And wit, that, like his native brooks,

Plays over solid granite.

"How dwarfed against his manliness

She sees the poor pretension,

The wants, the aims, the follies, born

Of fashion and convention.

"How life behind its accidents

Stands strong and self-sustaining,

The human fact transcending all

The losing and the gaining.

"And so in grateful interchange

Of teacher and of hearer,

Their lives their true distinctness keep

While daily drawing nearer.

"And if the husband or the wife

In home's strong light discovers

Such slight defaults as failed to meet

The blinded eyes of lovers,

"Why need we care to ask?--who dreams

Without their thorns of roses,

Or wonders that the truest steel

The readiest spark discloses?

"For still in mutual sufferance lies

The secret of true living;

Love scarce is love that never knows

The sweetness of forgiving.

"We send the Squire to General Court,

He takes his young wife thither;

No prouder man election day

Rides through the sweet June weather.

"He sees with eyes of manly trust

All hearts to her inclining;

Not less for him his household light

That others share its shining."

Thus, while my hostess spake, there grew

Before me, warmer tinted

And outlined with a tenderer grace,

The picture that she hinted.

The sunset smouldered as we drove

Beneath the deep hill-shadows.

Below us wreaths of white fog walked

Like ghosts the haunted meadows.

Sounding the summer night, the stars

Dropped down their golden plummets;

The pale arc of the Northern lights

Rose o'er the mountain summits,

Until, at last, beneath its bridge,

We heard the Bearcamp flowing,

And saw across the mapled lawn

The welcome home lights glowing.

And, musing on the tale I heard,

'T were well, thought I, if often

To rugged farm-life came the gift

To harmonize and soften;

If more and more we found the troth

Of fact and fancy plighted,

And culture's charm and labor's strength

In rural homes united,--

The simple life, the homely hearth,

With beauty's sphere surrounding,

And blessing toil where toil abounds

With graces more abounding.

1868.

THE DOLE OF JARL THORKELL.

THE land was pale with famine

And racked with fever-pain;

The frozen fiords were fishless,

The earth withheld her grain.

Men saw the boding Fylgja

Before them come and go,

And, through their dreams, the Urdarmoon

From west to east sailed slow.

Jarl Thorkell of Thevera

At Yule-time made his vow;

On Rykdal's holy Doom-stone

He slew to Frey his cow.

To bounteous Frey he slew her;

To Skuld, the younger Norn,

Who watches over birth and death,

He gave her calf unborn.

And his little gold-haired daughter

Took up the sprinkling-rod,

And smeared with blood the temple

And the wide lips of the god.

Hoarse below, the winter water

Ground its ice-blocks o'er and o'er;

Jets of foam, like ghosts of dead waves,

Rose and fell along the shore.

The red torch of the Jokul,

Aloft in icy space,

Shone down on the bloody Horg-stones

And the statue's carven face.

And closer round and grimmer

Beneath its baleful light

The Jotun shapes of mountains

Came crowding through the night.

The gray-haired Hersir trembled

As a flame by wind is blown;

A weird power moved his white lips,

And their voice was not his own.

"The AEsir thirst!" he muttered;

"The gods must have more blood

Before the tun shall blossom

Or fish shall fill the flood.

"The AEsir thirst and hunger,

And hence our blight and ban;

The mouths of the strong gods water

For the flesh and blood of man!

"Whom shall we give the strong ones?

Not warriors, sword on thigh;

But let the nursling infant

And bedrid old man die."

"So be it!" cried the young men,

"There needs nor doubt nor parle."

But, knitting hard his red brows,

In silence stood the Jarl.

A sound of woman's weeping

At the temple door was heard,

But the old men bowed their white heads,

And answered not a word.

Then the Dream-wife of Thingvalla,

A Vala young and fair,

Sang softly, stirring with her breath

The veil of her loose hair.

She sang: "The winds from Alfheim

Bring never sound of strife;

The gifts for Frey the meetest

Are not of death, but life.

"He loves the grass-green meadows,

The grazing kine's sweet breath;

He loathes your bloody Horg-stones,

Your gifts that smell of death.

"No wrong by wrong is righted,

No pain is cured by pain;

The blood that smokes from Doom-rings

Falls back in redder rain.

"The gods are what you make them,

As earth shall Asgard prove;

And hate will come of hating,

And love will come of love.

"Make dole of skyr and black bread

That old and young may live;

And look to Frey for favor

When first like Frey you give.

"Even now o'er Njord's sea-meadows

The summer dawn begins

The tun shall have its harvest,

The fiord its glancing fins."

Then up and swore Jarl Thorkell

"By Gimli and by Hel,

O Vala of Thingvalla,

Thou singest wise and well!

"Too dear the AEsir's favors

Bought with our children's lives;

Better die than shame in living

Our mothers and our wives.

"The full shall give his portion

To him who hath most need;

Of curdled skyr and black bread,

Be daily dole decreed."

He broke from off his neck-chain

Three links of beaten gold;

And each man, at his bidding,

Brought gifts for young and old.

Then mothers nursed their children,

And daughters fed their sires,

And Health sat down with Plenty

Before the next Yule fires.

The Horg-stones stand in Rykdal;

The Doom-ring still remains;

But the snows of a thousand winters

Have washed away the stains.

Christ ruleth now; the Asir

Have found their twilight dim;

And, wiser than she dreamed, of old

The Vala sang of Him

1868.

THE TWO RABBINS.

THE Rabbi Nathan two-score years and ten

Walked blameless through the evil world, and then,

Just as the almond blossomed in his hair,

Met a temptation all too strong to bear,

And miserably sinned. So, adding not

Falsehood to guilt, he left his seat, and taught

No more among the elders, but went out

From the great congregation girt about

With sackcloth, and with ashes on his head,

Making his gray locks grayer. Long he prayed,

Smiting his breast; then, as the Book he laid

Open before him for the Bath-Col's choice,

Pausing to hear that Daughter of a Voice,

Behold the royal preacher's words: "A friend

Loveth at all times, yea, unto the end;

And for the evil day thy brother lives."

Marvelling, he said: "It is the Lord who gives

Counsel in need. At Ecbatana dwells

Rabbi Ben Isaac, who all men excels

In righteousness and wisdom, as the trees

Of Lebanon the small weeds that the bees

Bow with their weight. I will arise, and lay

My sins before him."

And he went his way

Barefooted, fasting long, with many prayers;

But even as one who, followed unawares,

Suddenly in the darkness feels a hand

Thrill with its touch his own, and his cheek fanned

By odors subtly sweet, and whispers near

Of words he loathes, yet cannot choose but hear,

So, while the Rabbi journeyed, chanting low

The wail of David's penitential woe,

Before him still the old temptation came,

And mocked him with the motion and the shame

Of such desires that, shuddering, he abhorred

Himself; and, crying mightily to the Lord

To free his soul and cast the demon out,

Smote with his staff the blankness round about.

At length, in the low light of a spent day,

The towers of Ecbatana far away

Rose on the desert's rim; and Nathan, faint

And footsore, pausing where for some dead saint

The faith of Islam reared a domed tomb,

Saw some one kneeling in the shadow, whom

He greeted kindly: "May the Holy One

Answer thy prayers, O stranger!" Whereupon

The shape stood up with a loud cry, and then,

Clasped in each other's arms, the two gray men

Wept, praising Him whose gracious providence

Made their paths one. But straightway, as the sense

Of his transgression smote him, Nathan tore

Himself away: "O friend beloved, no more

Worthy am I to touch thee, for I came,

Foul from my sins, to tell thee all my shame.

Haply thy prayers, since naught availeth mine,

May purge my soul, and make it white like thine.

Pity me, O Ben Isaac, I have sinned!"

Awestruck Ben Isaac stood. The desert wind

Blew his long mantle backward, laying bare

The mournful secret of his shirt of hair.

"I too, O friend, if not in act," he said,

"In thought have verily sinned. Hast thou not read,

'Better the eye should see than that desire

Should wander?' Burning with a hidden fire

That tears and prayers quench not, I come to thee

For pity and for help, as thou to me.

Pray for me, O my friend!" But Nathan cried,

"Pray thou for me, Ben Isaac!"

Side by side

In the low sunshine by the turban stone

They knelt; each made his brother's woe his own,

Forgetting, in the agony and stress

Of pitying love, his claim of selfishness;

Peace, for his friend besought, his own became;

His prayers were answered in another's name;

And, when at last they rose up to embrace,

Each saw God's pardon in his brother's face!

Long after, when his headstone gathered moss,

Traced on the targum-marge of Onkelos

In Rabbi Nathan's hand these words were read:

"_Hope not the cure of sin till Self is dead;

Forget it in love's service, and the debt

Thou, canst not pay the angels shall forget;

Heaven's gate is shut to him who comes alone;

Save thou a soul, and it shall save thy own!_"

1868.

NOREMBEGA.

Norembega, or Norimbegue, is the name given by early French fishermen

and explorers to a fabulous country south of Cape Breton, first

discovered by Verrazzani in 1524. It was supposed to have a magnificent

city of the same name on a great river, probably the Penobscot. The site

of this barbaric city is laid down on a map published at Antwerp in

1570. In 1604 Champlain sailed in search of the Northern Eldorado,

twenty-two leagues up the Penobscot from the Isle Haute. He supposed the

river to be that of Norembega, but wisely came to the conclusion that

those travellers who told of the great city had never seen it. He saw no

evidences of anything like civilization, but mentions the finding of a

cross, very old and mossy, in the woods.

THE winding way the serpent takes

The mystic water took,

From where, to count its beaded lakes,

The forest sped its brook.

A narrow space 'twixt shore and shore,

For sun or stars to fall,

While evermore, behind, before,

Closed in the forest wall.

The dim wood hiding underneath

Wan flowers without a name;

Life tangled with decay and death,

League after league the same.

Unbroken over swamp and hill

The rounding shadow lay,

Save where the river cut at will

A pathway to the day.

Beside that track of air and light,

Weak as a child unweaned,

At shut of day a Christian knight

Upon his henchman leaned.

The embers of the sunset's fires

Along the clouds burned down;

"I see," he said, "the domes and spires

Of Norembega town."

"Alack! the domes, O master mine,

Are golden clouds on high;

Yon spire is but the branchless pine

That cuts the evening sky."

"Oh, hush and hark! What sounds are these

But chants and holy hymns?"

"Thou hear'st the breeze that stirs the trees

Though all their leafy limbs."

"Is it a chapel bell that fills

The air with its low tone?"

"Thou hear'st the tinkle of the rills,

The insect's vesper drone."

"The Christ be praised!--He sets for me

A blessed cross in sight!"

"Now, nay, 't is but yon blasted tree

With two gaunt arms outright!"

"Be it wind so sad or tree so stark,

It mattereth not, my knave;

Methinks to funeral hymns I hark,

The cross is for my grave!

"My life is sped; I shall not see

My home-set sails again;

The sweetest eyes of Normandie

Shall watch for me in vain.

"Yet onward still to ear and eye

The baffling marvel calls;

I fain would look before I die

On Norembega's walls.

"So, haply, it shall be thy part

At Christian feet to lay

The mystery of the desert's heart

My dead hand plucked away.

"Leave me an hour of rest; go thou

And look from yonder heights;

Perchance the valley even now

Is starred with city lights."

The henchman climbed the nearest hill,

He saw nor tower nor town,

But, through the drear woods, lone and still,

The river rolling down.

He heard the stealthy feet of things

Whose shapes he could not see,

A flutter as of evil wings,

The fall of a dead tree.

The pines stood black against the moon,

A sword of fire beyond;

He heard the wolf howl, and the loon

Laugh from his reedy pond.

He turned him back: "O master dear,

We are but men misled;

And thou hast sought a city here

To find a grave instead."

"As God shall will! what matters where

A true man's cross may stand,

So Heaven be o'er it here as there

In pleasant Norman land?

"These woods, perchance, no secret hide

Of lordly tower and hall;

Yon river in its wanderings wide

Has washed no city wall;

"Yet mirrored in the sullen stream

The holy stars are given

Is Norembega, then, a dream

Whose waking is in Heaven?

"No builded wonder of these lands

My weary eyes shall see;

A city never made with hands

Alone awaiteth me--

"'_Urbs Syon mystica_;' I see