The writings of John Greenleaf WhittierVolume 1.John Greenleaf WhittierTrustees of Tufts UniversityMedford, MAPerseus Project
This text may be freely distributed, subject to the following
restrictions:
You credit Perseus, as follows, whenever you use the document:
Text provided by Perseus Digital Library. Original version available for viewing and download at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/.You leave this availability statement intact.You use it for non-commercial purposes only.You offer Perseus any modifications you make.
Boston and New York, Houghton, Mifflin and company, 1888-89
English German Latin Greek French Italian Spanish
Proem I love the old melodious laysWhich 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 hoursTo breathe their marvellous notes I try;I feel them, as the leaves and flowersIn 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 rhymeBeat 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.The secrets of the heart and mind;To drop the plummet-line belowOur common world of joy and woe,A more intense despair or brighter hope to find.Yet here at least an earnest senseOf 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 belongNor mighty Milton's gift divine,Nor Marvell's wit and graceful song,Still with a love as deep and strongAs theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on thy shrine!
Amesbury, 11thmo., 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 ofMogg 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 thrownIn such a quarrel rings like steel.
Even ThomasJefferson, 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 republish, 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 in 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 ProfessorG.deFelice, of Montauban, and further naturalized by ProfessorAlexandreRodolpheVinet, 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 curlsWhich 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 behindHath had its pure and perfect work on that highborn 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 streetHeard 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 embraceThey 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 prayerRose through the damp and noisome air,Giving thee to thy God;Nor flower, nor cross, nor hallowed taper gaveGrace 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 theeAs if beneath the convent-treeThy sisterhood were kneeling,At vesper hours, like sorrowing angels, keepingTheir tearful watch around thy place of sleeping.For thou wast one in whom the lightOf 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, whereThe 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 dreadFor the wrung dying, and the unconscious dead.And, where the sickly taper shedIts light through vapors, damp, confined,Hushed as a seraph's fell thy tread,A new Electra by the bedOf suffering human-kind!Pointing the spirit, in its dark dismay,To that pure hope which fadeth not away.Innocent teacher of the highAnd 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 oneWho, turning from the world, as thou,Before life's pathway had begunTo 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 hereCould be for thee a meet reward;Thine is a treasure far more dear;Eye hath not seen it, nor the earOf living mortal heardThe joys prepared, the promised bliss above,The holy presence of Eternal Love!Sleep on in peace.
The earth has notA 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; thineShall 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 heartShall live in Heaven, of which it was a part.
1833.
Extract from a New England legend.
Originally a part of the author's 2 Mol 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 yellAnd fire-dance round the magic rock,Forgotten like the Druid's spellAt moonrise by his holy oak!No more along the shadowy glenGlide the dim ghosts of murdered men;No more the unquiet churchyard deadGlimpse 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 revelOf witch, or ghost, or goblin evil;No pale blue flame sends out its flashesThrough creviced roof and shattered sashes!The witch-grass round the hazel springMay sharply to the night-air sing, But there no more shall withered hagsRefresh at ease their broomstick nags,Or taste those hazel-shadowed watersAs 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 laughterOf the fell demon following after!The cautious goodman nails no moreA horseshoe on his outer door,Lest some unseemly hag should fitTo his own mouth her bridle-bit;The goodwife's churn no more refusesIts wonted culinary usesUntil, with heated needle burned,The witch has to her place returned!Our witches are no longer oldAnd wrinkled beldames, Satan-sold,But young and gay and laughing creatures,With the heart's sunshine on their features;Their sorcery—the light which dancesWhere 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 moanAbove her nightly closing flowers,Sweeter than that which sighed of yoreAlong the charmed Ausonian shore!Even she, our own weird heroine,Sole Pythoness of ancient Lynn,
The Pythoness of ancient Lynn was the redoubtable Moll Pitcher, who lived under the shadow of High Rock in that town, and was sought far and wide for her supposed powers of divination.
She died about 1810. Mr.Upham, in his Salem Witchcraft, has given an account of her.
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 MelroseAbbey sleeping,His charmed torch beside his knee,That even the dead himself might seeThe magic scroll within his keeping.And now our modern Yankee seesNor 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 eyesFamiliar 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 fiena of Faust was a faithful one,Agrippa's demon wrought in fear,And the devil of MartinLuther satBy the stout monk's side in social chat.The Old Man of the Sea, on the neck of himWho 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 castThe evil weight from his back at last.But the demon that cometh day by dayTo my quiet room and fireside nook,Where the casement light falls dim and grayOn faded painting and ancient book,Is a sorrier one than any whose namesAre chronicled well by good KingJames.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 hatSlouched 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 newFall 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 lookOf one who reads to himself alone;And hour after hour on my senses comeThat 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 thejeu 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 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 seemsTo 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 lowHer 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 layWhich 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 treatOf demons of every name and sizeWhich 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 wallOnce worn by a learned Judge, they say,At Salem court in the witchcraft day! “Coijuro te, sceleratissime,Abire ad tuum locum” —stillLike a visible nightmare he sits by me,—The exorcism has lost its skill;And I hear again in my haunted roomThe husky wheeze and the dolorous hum!Ah!
commend me to Mary MagdalenWith her sevenfold plagues, to the wandering Jew,To the terrors which haunted Orestes whenThe 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 journeytoiling By the swift Powow,With the summer sunshine fallingOn thy heated brow,Listen, while all else is still,To the brooklet from the hill.Wild and sweet the flowers are blowingBy that streamlet's side,And a greener verdure showingWhere its waters glide, Down the hill-slope murmuring on,Over root and mossy stone.Where yon oak his broad arms flingethO'er the sloping hill,Beautiful and freshly springethThat soft-flowing rill,Through its dark roots wreathed and bare,Gushing up to sun and air.Brighter waters sparkled neverIn that magic well,Of whose gift of life foreverAncient legends tell,In the lonely desert wasted,And by mortal lip untasted.Waters which the proud CastilianSought with longing eyes,Underneath the bright pavilionOf the Indian skies,Where his forest pathway layThrough the blooms of Florida.Years ago a lonely stranger,With the dusky browOf the outcast forest-ranger,Crossed the swift Powow,And betook him to the rillAnd the oak upon the hill.O'er his face of moody sadnessFor an instant shone Something like a gleam of gladness,As he stooped him downTo the fountain's grassy side,And his eager thirst supplied.With the oak its shadow throwingO'er his mossy seat,And the cool, sweet waters flowingSoftly at his feet,Closely by the fountain's rimThat lone Indian seated him.Autumn's earliest frost had givenTo the woods belowHues of beauty, such as heavenLendeth to its bow;And the soft breeze from the westScarcely broke their dreamy rest.Far behind was Ocean strivingWith 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 meadowGazed that stranger man,Sadly, till the twilight shadowOver all things ran,Save where spire and westward paneFlashed the sunset back again.Gazing thus upon the dwellingOf his warrior sires,Where no lingering trace was tellingOf their wigwam fires,Who the gloomy thoughts might knowOf that wandering child of woe?Naked lay, in sunshine glowing,Hills that once had stoodDown their sides the shadows throwingOf a mighty wood,Where the deer his covert kept,And the eagle's pinion swept!Where the birch canoe had glidedDown the swift Powow,Dark and gloomy bridges stridedThose 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 ringingSmote upon his ear;And the thick and sullen smokeFrom the blackened forges broke.Could it be his fathers everLoved to linger here?These bare hills, this conquered river,—Could they hold them dear,With their native lovelinessTamed and tortured into this?Sadly, as the shades of evenGathered o'er the hill,While the western half of heavenBlushed with sunset still,From the fountain's mossy seatTurned the Indian's weary feet.Year on year hath flown forever,But he came no moreTo the hillside on the riverWhere he came before.But the villager can tellOf that strange man's visit well.And the merry children, ladenWith their fruits or flowers,—Roving boy and laughing maiden,In their school-day hours,Love the simple tale to tellOf 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 HerteldeRouville, the infamous 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, and among them HerteldeRouville.
The minister of the place, BenjaminRolfe, 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 townThe mellow light of sunset shone!Each small, bright lake, whose waters stillMirror the forest and the hill,Reflected from its waveless breastThe beauty of a cloudless west,Glorious as if a glimpse were givenWithin the western gates of heaven,Left, by the spirit of the starOf sunset's holy hour, ajar!Beside the river's tranquil floodThe dark and low-walled dwellings stood,Where many a rood of open landStretched up and down on either hand,With corn-leaves waving freshly greenThe 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 yetWas 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 hearthRose 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 fateWhich made its dwellings desolate!Hours passed away.
By moonlight spedThe Merrimac along his bed.Bathed in the pallid lustre, stoodDark 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 stoodJust 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 hearSwelled on the night air, far and clear;Then smote the Indian tomahawkOn crashing door and shattering lock; Then rang the rifle-shot, and thenThe 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 glaredOn still dead men and scalp-knives bared.The morning sun looked brightly throughThe 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 smokeFrom smouldering ruins slowly broke;And on the greensward many a stain,And, here and there, the mangled slain,Told how that midnight bolt had spedPentucket, on thy fated head!Even now the villager can tellWhere Rolfe beside his hearthstone fell,Still show the door of wasting oak,Through which the fatal death-shot broke,And point the curious stranger whereDeRouville'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 overliesThe 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 northeast coast of North America and probably New England, some centuries before the discovery of the western world by Columbus, is now very generally admitted.
gift from the cold and silent Past!A relic to the present cast,Left on the ever-changing strandOf shifting and unstable sand,Which wastes beneath the steady chimeAnd beating of the waves of Time!Who from its bed of primal rockFirst wrenched thy dark, unshapely block?Whose hand, of curious skill untaught,Thy rude and savage outline wrought?The waters of my native streamAre glancing in the sun's warm beam;From sail-urged keel and flashing oarThe circles widen to its shore;And cultured field and peopled townSlope to its willowed margin down.Yet, while this morning breeze is bringingThe home-life sound of school-bells ringing,And rolling wheel, and rapid jarOf the fire-winged and steedless car,And voices from the wayside nearCome 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 moreStretches along the sail-thronged shore;Like palace-domles 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 handI 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 throwIts wild arms o'er the stream below.Unchanged, alone, the same bright riverFlows on, as it will flow forever!I listen, and I hear the lowSoft 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 brinkThe 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 throwThe light spray from each rushing prow?Have they not in the North Sea's blastBowed to the waves the straining mast?Their frozen sails the low, pale sunOf Thules night has shone upon;Flapped by the sea-wind's gusty sweepRound icy drift, and headland steep.Wild Jutland's wives and Lochlin's daughtersHave 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 viewTheir 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 asideIts 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 bear,Keeping a harsh and fitting timeTo Saga's chant, and Runic rhyme;Such lays as Zetland's Scald has sung,His gray and naked isles among;Or muttered low at hourRound Odin's mossy stone of power.The wolf beneath the Arctic moonHas answered to that startling rune;The Gael has heard its stormy swell,The light Frank knows its summons well;Iona's sable-stoled CuldeeHas heard it sounding o'er the sea,And swept, with hoary beard and hair,His altar's foot in trembling prayer!Tis past,—the 'wildering vision diesIn darkness on my dreaming eyes IThe 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 aloneA broken mass of common stone;And if it be the chiselled limbOf 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 traceIts name, or origin, or place.Yet, for this vision of the Past,This glance upon its darkness cast,My spirit bows in gratitudeBefore 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 showThe buried forms of long ago.As if a portion of that ThoughtBy which the Eternal will is wrought,Whose impulse fills anew with breathThe frozen solitude of Death,To mortal mind were sometimes lent,To mortal musings sometimes sent,To whisper—even when it seemsBut 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 Indiansswayed or bent down a young tree until its roots were upturned, placed the body of their chief beneath it, and 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 lakeThere lingers not a breeze to breakThe 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 liePiled 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 wingThe lingering frosts of winter cling.Fresh grasses fringe the meadow-brooks,And mildly from its sunny nooksThe 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 careHath Nature scattered everywhere,In bud and flower, and warmer air.But in their hour of bitterness,What reck the broken Sokokis,Beside their slaughtered chief, of this?The turf's red stain is yet undried,Scarce have the death-shot echoes diedAlong Sebago's wooded side;And silent now the hunters stand,Grouped darkly, where a swell of landSlopes upward from the lake's white sand.Fire and the axe have swept it bare,Save one lone beech, unclosing thereIts 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 pressedBeneath the heavy arms, which restUpon his scarred and naked breast.Tis done: the roots are backward sent,The beechen-tree stands up unbent,The Indian's fitting monument!When of that sleeper's broken raceTheir green and pleasant dwelling-place,Which knew them once, retains no trace;Oh, long may sunset's light be shedAs 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 breakForever round that lonely lakeA 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 lessThese bronzed forms of the wildernessShe foldeth in her long caress?As sweet o'er them her wild-flowers blow,As if with fairer hair and browThe blue-eyed Saxon slept below.What though the places of their restNo 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 roundThe Indian's lowliest forest-mound,—And they have made it holy ground.There ceases man's frail judgment; allHis powerless bolts of cursing fallUnheeded 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 aloneThe secret of the heart is known,—The hidden language traced thereon;Who from its many cumberingsOf 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 CharlesdeLa 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.
LadyLa 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 shallopHe gazed, as the sun,From its bed in the ocean,Streamed up the St. John.O'er the blue western watersThat shallop had passed,Where the mists of PenobscotClung damp on her mast.St. Saviour had lookedOn the heretic sail,As the songs of the HuguenotRose on the gale.The pale, ghostly fathersRemembered her well,And had cursed her while passing,With taper and bell;But the men of Monhegan,Of Papists abhorred,Had welcomed and feastedThe heretic Lord.They had loaded his shallopWith dun-fish and ball,With stores for his larder,And steel for his wall.Pemaquid, from her bastionsAnd turrets of stone,Had welcomed his comingWith banner and gun.And the prayers of the eldersHad 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 PheasantThe morning sun shone,On the plane-trees which shadedThe shores of St. John. “Now, why from yon battlementsSpeaks not my love!Why waves there no bannerMy fortress above?” Dark and wild, from his deckSt. Estienne gazed about,On fire-wasted dwellings,And silent redoubt;From the low, shattered wallsWhich the flame had o'errun,There floated no banner,There thundered no gun!But beneath the low archOf its doorway there stoodA 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 PapistHe fastened his hand. “Speak, son of the WomanOf scarlet and sin!What wolf has been prowlingMy castle within?” From the grasp of the soldierThe 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 mercyI hitherward came,While the walls of thy castleYet spouted with flame.Pentagoet's dark vesselsWere moored in the bay,Grim sea-lions, roaringAloud for their prey. “‘But what of my lady?’ Cried Charles of Estienne.” On the shot-crumbled turretThy lady was seen:Half-veiled in the smoke-cloud,Her hand grasped thy pennon,While her dark tresses swayedIn the hot breath of cannon.But woe to the heretic,Evermore woe!When the son of the churchAnd the cross is his foe! “In the track of the shell,In the path of the ball, Pentagoet swept overThe breach of the wall!Steel to steel, gun to gun,One moment,—and thenAlone stood the victor,Alone with his men! “Of its sturdy defenders,Thy lady aloneSaw the cross-blazoned bannerFloat over St. John.”‘Let the dastard look to it!’ Cried fiery Estienne, “Were D'Aulnay KingLouis,I'd free her again!” “Alas for thy lady!No service from theeIs needed by herWhom 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 smittenLa Tour staggered back;His hand grasped his sword-hilt,His forehead grew black.He sprang on the deckOf his shallop again. “We cruise now for vengeance!Give way!” cried Estienne. “Massachusetts shall hearOf the Huguenot's wrong,And from island and creeksideHer fishers shall throng!Pentagoet shall rueWhat his Papists have done,When his palisades echoThe Puritan's gun!” Oh, the loveliest of heavensHung tenderly o'er him,There were waves in the sunshine,And green isles before him:But a pale hand was beckoningThe Huguenot on;And in blackness and ashesBehind 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 watchfulnessThe sacred cypress-tree about,And, from beneath old wrinkled brows,Their failing eyes looked out.Gray Age and Sickness waiting thereThrough weary night and lingering day,—Grim as the idols at their side,And motionless as they.Unheeded in the boughs aboveThe song of Ceylon's birds was sweet;Unseen of them the island flowersBloomed 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 danceOf Ceylon's maids, the passing gleamOf battle-flag and lance?They waited for that falling leafOf which the wandering Jogees sing:Which lends once more to wintry ageThe greenness of its spring.Oh, if these poor and blinded onesIn trustful patience wait to feelO'er torpid pulse and failing limbA youthful freshness steal;Shall we, who sit beneath that TreeWhose 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 shedA light and life divineShall we grow weary in our watch,And murmur at the long delay?Impatient of our Father's timeAnd His appointed way?Or shall the stir of outward thingsAllure and claim the Christian's eye,When on the heathen watcher's earTheir powerless murmurs die?Alas!
a deeper test of faithThan prison cell or martyr's stake,The self-abasing watchfulnessOf silent prayer may make.We gird us bravely to rebukeOur erring brother in the wrong,—And in the ear of Pride and PowerOur warning voice is strong.Easier to smite with Peter's swordThan ‘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 banksAnd Pharpar's brighter wave.O Thou, who in the garden's shadeDidst wake Thy weary ones again,Who slumbered at that fearful hourForgetful of Thy pain;Bend o'er us now, as over them,And set our sleep-bound spirits free,Nor leave us slumbering in the watchOur souls should keep with Thee!
1841.
The exiles.
The incidents upon which the following ballad has its foundation occurred about the year 1660.
ThomasMacy was one of the first, if not the first white settler of Nantucket.
The career of Macy is briefly but carefully outlined in JamesS.Pike's The New Puritan.
the goodman sat beside his doorOne sultry afternoon,With his young wife singing at his sideAn 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-cloudHung over the western hill.Black, thick, and vast arose that cloudAbove the wilderness, As some dark world from upper airWere stooping over this.At times the solemn thunder pealed,And all was still again,Save a low murmur in the airOf 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 hopeWas in his quiet glance,And peace, like autumn's moonlight, clothedHis tranquil countenance,—A look, like that his Master woreIn Pilate's council-hall:It told of wrongs, but of a loveMeekly 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 menAre following in my track;The traces of the torturer's whipAre on my aged back;And much, I fear, 't will peril theeWithin thy doors to takeA 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 nightBeneath the storm-cloud's frown.But while the sudden lightning's blazeFilled every cottage nook,And with the jarring thunder-rollThe loosened casements shook,A heavy tramp of horses' feetCame sounding up the lane,And half a score of horse, or more,Came plunging through the rain. “Now, GoodmanMacy, 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 stripesRepay 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-guestMade welcome to my hearth.” Down from his cottage wall he caughtThe matchlock, hotly triedAt 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 freeTo bring the wrath and violenceOf 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 doorBack on its hinges fell. “Come forth, old graybeard, yea and nay,”The reckless scoffers cried,As to a horseman's saddle-bowThe old man's arms were tied.And of his bondage hard and longIn 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 pastBrood o'er that evil day.‘Ho, sheriff!’ quoth the ardent priest, “Take GoodmanMacy too;The sin of this day's heresyHis 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 shoreWas 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 thereThe goodman wields his oar;‘Ill luck betide them all,’ he cried,‘The laggards on the shore.’Down through the crashing underwood,The burly sheriff caine:— “Stand, GoodmanMacy, 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, hungHis wig upon a thorn.‘Come back,—come back!’ the parson cried,‘The church's curse beware.’ ‘Curse, an' thou wilt,’ said Macy, “butThy 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 quietlyFrom the twain upon the shore.Now in the west, the heavy cloudsScattered and fell asunder,While feebler came the rush of rain,And fainter growled the thunder.And through the broken clouds, the sunLooked out serene and warm,Painting its holy symbol-lightUpon 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 slopeThe small boat glided fast;The watchers of the Block-house sawThe strangers as they passed.That night a stalwart garrisonSat 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 oarUpon their waters play.Deer-Island's rocks and fir-trees threwTheir sunset-shadows o'er them,And Newbury's spire and weathercockPeered 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 eyeThe harbor-bar was crossed;A plaything of the restless wave,The boat on ocean tossed.The glory of the sunset heavenOn 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 garrisonShone like a setting star.How brightly broke the morningOn Massachusetts Bay!Blue wave, and bright green island,Rejoicing in the day.On passed the bark in safetyRound isle and headland steep;No tempest broke above them,No fog-cloud veiled the deep.Far round the bleak and stormy CapeThe venturous Macy passed,And on Nantucket's naked isleDrew 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 heavenNantucket's sails were spread;How pale Want alternatedWith Plenty's golden smile;Behold, is it not writtenin the annals of the isle?And yet that isle remainethA refuge of the free,As when true-hearted MacyBeheld it from the sea.Free as the winds that winnowHer shrubless hills of sand,Free as the waves that batterAlong her yielding land.Than hers, at duty's summons,No loftier spirit stirs,Nor falls o'er human sufferingA readier tear than hers.God bless the sea-beat island!And grant forevermore,That charity and freedom dwellAs now upon her shore!
1841.
The knight of St. John. ere down yon blue Carpathian hillsThe 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 oldIs on my heart alway.For since the day when Warkworth woodClosed 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'erThe waste of wave and sky;So from the desert of my fateI gaze across the past;Forever on life's dial-plateThe 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 floorWhere Bethlehem's tapers shine;And by the Holy SepulchreI've pledged my knightly swordTo 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 lifeTo-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 keepAgainst my feeble will.And still the loves and joys of oldDo evermore uprise;I see the flow of locks of gold,The shine of loving eyes!Ah me!
upon another's breastThose golden locks recline;I see upon another restThe 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 vowsCrush down thy human heart! “In vain!
This heart its grief must know,Till life itself hath ceased,And falls beneath the self-same blowThe 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 hillThe sun shall fall again.
1843.
CassandraSouthwick.
In 1658two young persons, son and daughter of LawrenceSouthwick 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 freeLast night I saw the sunset melt through my prisonbars,Last night across my damp earth-floor fell the palegleam 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 beThe dull and heavy beating of the pulses of the sea;All night I sat unsleeping, for I knew that on the morrowThe 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 mirthThy 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 mailers 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 fearsWrung 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 streetCame 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 outThe 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 brokeOn 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 lockOf the poor hearts thou hast hunted, thou wolf amid the flock!” Dark lowered the brows of Endicott, and with a deeper redO'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 readThat law the wicked rulers against the poor have made,Who to their house of Rimmon and idol priest-hood bringNo 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 baySink 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 halfway 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 handmaid 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 calmUplift 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 marvelous legends connected with the famous General M—, of Hampton, New Hampshire, who was regarded by his neighbors as a YankeeFaust, 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 oneBlooming 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 breezeMoaning through the graveyard trees;And the great sea-waves below,Pulse of the midnight beating slow.From the brief dream of a brideShe 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 bedSprings that fair dishevelled head,And a feeling, new, intense,Half of shame, half innocence,Maiden fear and wonder speaksThrough her lips and changing cheeks.From the oaken mantel glowing,Faintest light the lamp is throwingOn 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 traceOn that hard and haughty face;And that forehead's knitted thoughtLove'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 beHard and stern to all save me!” While she speaketh, falls the lightO'er her fingers small and white;Gold and gem, and costly ringBack the timid lustre fling,—Love's selectest gifts, and rare,His proud hand had fastened there.Gratefully she marks the glowFrom those tapering lines of snow;Fondly o'er the sleeper bendingHis black hair with golden blending,In her soft and light caress,Cheek and lip together press.Ha!—that start of horror!
whyThat 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 coldSpectral hands her own enfold,Drawing silently from themLove's fair gifts of gold and gem.‘Waken!
save me!’ still as deathAt 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 borneGem and band her own hath worn.‘Wake thee!
wake thee!’ Lo, his eyesOpen 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 gleamTremblingly 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 restSoothed and childlike on his breast,And in trustful innocenceDraw new strength and courage thence;He, the proud man, feels withinBut the cowardice of sin!She can murmur in her thoughtSimple 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 dreadFrom his look, or word, or tread,Unto whom her early graveWas 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 blendDarkly 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 behindAn 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 tile ceremonies closed with a great feast.
According to the usages of the chiefs, Passaconawav 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 daysThrough the rough northern country.
We had beenThe sunset, with its bars of purple cloud,Like a new heaven, shine upward from the lakeOf Winnepiseogee; and had feltThe sunrise breezes, midst the leafy islesWhich stoop their summer beauty to the lipsOf the bright waters.
We had checked our steeds,Silent with wonder, where the mountain wallIs piled to heaven; and, through the narrow riftOf the vast rocks, against whose rugged feetBeats the mad torrent with perpetual roar,Where noonday is as twilight, and the windComes burdened with the everlasting moanOf 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 cragsO'er-roofing the vast portal of the landBeyond the wall of mountains.
We had passed The high source of the Saco; and bewilderedIn the dwarf spruce-belts of the Crystal Hills,Had heard above us, like a voice in the cloud,The horn of Fabyan sounding; and atopOf old Agioochook had seen the mountainsPiled to the northward, shagged with wood, and thickAs 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 KearsargeLifting his granite forehead to the sun!And we had rested underneath the oaksShadowing the bank, whose grassy spires are shakenBy the perpetual beating of the fallsOf the wild Ammonoosuc.
We had trackedThe winding Pemigewasset, overhungBy beechen shadows, whitening down its rocks,Or lazily gliding through its intervals,From waving rye-fields sending up the gleamOf sunlit waters.
We had seen the moonRising behind Umbagog's eastern pines,Like a great Indian camp-fire; and its beamsAt spanning with a bridge of silverThe Merrimac by Uncanoonuc's falls.There were five souls of us whom travel's chanceHad thrown together in these wild north hills:A city lawyer, for a month escapingFrom his dull office, where the weary eyeSaw only hot brick walls and close thronged streets; Briefless as yet, but with an eye to seeLife's sunniest side, and with a heart to takeIts chances all as godsends; and his brother,Pale from long pulpit studies, yet retainingThe warmth and freshness of a genial heart,Whose mirror of the beautiful and true,In Man and Nature, was as yet undimmedBy dust of theologic strife, or breathOf sect, or cobwebs of scholastic lore;Like a clear crystal calm of water, takingThe 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.
Twas, in truth, a study,To mark his spirit, alternating betweenA decent and professional gravityAnd an irreverent mirthfulness, which oftenLaughed in the face of his divinity,Plucked off the sacred ephod, quite unshrinedThe oracle, and for the pattern priestLeft us the man. A shrewd, sagacious merchant,To whom the soiled sheet found in Crawford's inn,Giving the latest news of city stocksAnd sales of cotton, had a deeper meaningThan the great presence of the awful mountainsGlorified by the sunset; and his daughter,A delicate flower on whom had blown too longThose evil winds, which, sweeping from the iceAnd winnowing the fogs of Labrador,Shed their cold blight round Massachusetts Bay,With the same breath which stirs Spring's opening leavesAnd lifts her half-formed flower-bell on its stem,Poisoning our seaside atmosphere.It chancedThat as we turned upon our homeward way,A drear northeastern storm came howling upThe valley of the Saco; and that girlWho had stood with us upon Mount Washington,Her brown locks ruffled by the wind which whirledIn gusts around its sharp, cold pinnacle,Who had joined our gay trout-fishing in the streamsWhich lave that giant's feet; whose laugh was heardLike a bird's carol on the sunrise breezeWhich swelled our sail amidst the lake's green islands,Shrank from its harsh, chill breath, and visibly droopedLike a flower in the frost.
So, in that quiet innWhich looks from Conway on the mountains piledHeavily 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 longBeat their sad music upon roof and pane,We strove to cheer our gentle invalid.The lawyer in the pauses of the stormWent angling down the Saco, and, returning,Recounted his adventures and mishaps;Gave us the history of his scaly clients,Mingling with ludicrous yet apt citationsOf barbarous law Latin, passagesFrom IzaakWalton's Angler, sweet and freshAs the flower-skirted streams of Staffordshire,There, under aged trees, the southwest windOf 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 textIs music, its illumining, sweet smiles.He sang the songs she loved; and in his low,Deep, earnest voice, recited many a pageOf poetry, the holiest, tenderest linesOf the sad bard of Olney, the sweet songs,Simple and beautiful as Truth and Nature,Of him whose whitened locks on RydalMountAre lifted yet by morning breezes blowingFrom 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 picturesOf scaly fiends and angels not unlike them;Watts' unmelodious psalms; Astrology'sLast home, a musty pile of almanacs,And an old chronicle of border warsAnd Indian history.
And, as I readA story of the marriage of the ChiefOf Saugus to the dusky Weetamoo,Daughter of Passaconaway, who dweltIn the old time upon the Merrimac,Our fair one, in the playful exerciseOf her prerogative,—the right divineOf youth and beauty,—bade us versifyThe legend, and with ready pencil sketchedIts plan and outlines, laughingly assigningTo each his part, and barring our excusesWith absolute will.
So, like the cavaliersWhose voices still are heard in the RomanceOf silver-tongued Boccaccio, on the banksOf Arno, with soft tales of love beguilingThe ear of languid beauty, plague-exiledFrom stately Florence, we rehearsed our rhymesTo their fair auditor, and shared by turnsHer kind approval and her playful censure.It may be that these fragments owe aloneO the fair setting of their circumstances,—The associations of time, scene, and audience,—Their place amid the pictures which fill upThe chambers of my memory.
Yet I trustThat some, who sigh, while wandering in thought,Pilgrims of Romance o'er the olden world,That our broad land,—our sea-like lakes and mountainsPiled to the clouds, our rivers overhungBy forests which have known no other changeFor ages than the budding and the fallOf leaves, our valleys lovelier than thoseWhich the old poets sang of,—should but figureOn the apocryphal chart of speculationAs pastures, wood-lots, mill-sites, with the privileges,Rights, and appurtenances, which make upA Yankee Paradise, unsung, unknown,To beautiful tradition; even their names,Whose melody yet lingers like the lastVibration of the red man's requiem,Exchanged for syllables significant,Of cotton-mill and rail-car, will look kindlyUpon this effort to call up the ghostOf our dim Past, and listen with pleased earTo the responses of the questioned Shade.
I. The Merrimac. O child of that white-crested mountain whose springsGush 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 treesStretched 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 fallThy 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 woodThe 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 youngTo the pike and the white-perch their baited lines flung;There the boy shaped his arrows, and there the shy maidWove her many-hued baskets and bright wampum braid.O Stream of the Mountains!
if answer of thineCould rise from thy waters to question of mine,Methinks through the din of thy thronged banks a moanOf 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
Bashaba was the name which the Indians of New England gave to two or three of their principal chiefs, to whom all their inferior sagamores acknowledged allegiance.
Passaconaway seems to have been one of these chiefs.
His residence was at Pennacook.
(mass. Hist. Coll., vol.
III. pp. 21, 22.) he was regarded, says Hubbard, as a great sorcerer, and his fame was widely spread.
It was said of him that he could cause a green leaf to grow in winter, trees to dance, water to burn, etc. He was, undoubtedly, one of those shrewd and powerful men whose achievements are always regarded by a barbarous people as the result of supernatural aid. The Indians gave to such the names of Powahs or Panisees.
the Panisees are men of great courage and wisdom, and to these the Devill appeareth more familiarly than to others. —Winslow's Relation.
Lift we the twilight curtains of the Past,And, turning from familiar sight and sound,Sadly and full of reverence let us castA glance upon Tradition's shadowy ground,Led by the few pale lights which, glimmering roundThat 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 lineOn 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.Gloomned behind the changeless shadeBy 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 BashabaHeld his long-unquestioned sway,From the White Hills, far away,To the great sea's sounding shore;Chief of chiefs, his regal wordAll 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 swungGrimly to and fro.Nightly down the river going,Swifter was the hunter's rowing,When he saw that lodge-fire glowingO'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 lookOf that wise dark man.Tales of him the gray squaw told,When the winter night-wind coldPierced her blanket's thickest fold,And her fire burned low and small,Till the very child abed,Drew its bear-skin over head,Shrinking from the pale lights shedOn the trembling wall.All the subtle spirits hidingUnder earth or wave, abidingIn the caverned rock, or ridingMisty clouds or morning breeze;Every dark intelligence,Secret soul, and influenceOf all things which outward senseFeels, or hears, or sees,—These the wizard's skill confessed,At his bidding banned or blessed,Stormful woke or lulled to restWind and cloud, and fire and flood;Burned for him the drifted snow,Bade through ice fresh lilies blow,And the leaves of summer growOver winter's wood!Not untrue that tale of old!Now, as then, the wise and boldAll the powers of Nature holdSubject 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 elementsWith their sterner laws dispense,And the chain of consequenceBroken in their pathway lies;Time and change their vassals making,Flowers from icy pillows waking,Tresses of the sunrise shakingOver midnight skies.Still, to th' earnest soul, the sunRests on towered Gibeon,And the moon of AjalonLights the battle-grounds of life;To his aid the strong reversesHidden 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 yellOf 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 wildTo the din World of Souls, alone,In her young beauty passed the mother of his child.Three bow-shots from the Sachem's dwellingThey laid her in the walnut shade,Where a green hillock gently swellingHer 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 spedTheir 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 sometimesThe tempest-smitten tree receivesFrom one small root the sap which limbsIts topmost spray and crowning leaves,So from his child the Sachem drewA life of Love and Hope, and feltHis cold and rugged nature throughThe softness and the warmth of her young being melt.A laugh which in the woodland rangBemocking April's gladdest bird,—A light and graceful form which sprangTo meet him when his step was heard,—Eyes by his lodge-fire flashing dark,Small fingers stringing bead and shellOr weaving mats of bright-hued bark,—With these the household-god3 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 moonHer snow-shoes tracked the hunter's way;And dazzling in the summer noonThe 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.
‘The Indians,’ says RogerWilliams, ‘have a god whom they call Wetuomanit, who presides over the household.’Her only lore, the legends toldAround 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 skillWith which the artist-eye can traceIn rock and tree and lake and hillThe outlines of divinest grace;Unknown the fine soul's keen unrest,Which sees, admires, yet yearns alway;Too closely on her mother's breastTo note her smiles of love the child of Nature lay!It is enough for such to beOf 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 ThoughtGrieve like the stranger-tended child,Which seeks its mother's arms, and sees but feels them not.The garden rose may richly bloomIn cultured soil and genial air,To cloud the light of Fashion's roomOr droop in Beauty's midnight hair;In lonelier grace, to sun and dewThe sweetbrier on the hillside showsIts single leaf and fainter hue,Untrained and wildly free, yet still a sister rose!Thus o'er the heart of WeetamooTheir mingling shades of joy and illThe 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 dreamsThe 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-firesShot 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 wooThe Bashaba's daughter Weetamoo, And laid at her father's feet that nightHis softest furs and wampum white.From the Crystal Hills to the far southeastThe river Sagamores came to the feast;And chiefs whose homes the sea-winds shookSat down on the mats of Pennacook.They came from Sunapee's shore of rock,From the snowy sources of Snooganock,And from rough Cobs whose thick woods shakeTheir pine-cones in Umbagog Lake.From Ammonoosuc's mountain pass,Wild as his home, came Chepewass;And the Keenomps of the hills which throwTheir 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 largeFrom the rocky slopes of the Kearsarge;Delicate trout from Babboosuck brook,And salmon speared in the Contoocook;Squirrels which fed where nuts fell thickIn the gravelly bed of the Otternic;And small wild-hens in reed-snares caughtFrom 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 standsIn the river scooped by a spirit's hands,
There are rocks in the river at the Falls of Amoskeag, in the cavities of which, tradition says, the Indians formerly stored and concealed their corn.
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 dayThe bridal feast of the Bashaba.And merrily when that feast was doneOn the fire-lit green the dance begun,With squaws' shrill stave, and deeper humOf 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 shadeAround 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 drewThe Saugus Sachem and Weetamoo.The moons of forty winters had shedTheir snow upon that chieftain's head,And toil and care and battle's chanceHad 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 besideThe triumph of a sullen pride?Ask why the graceful grape entwinesThe rough oak with her arm of vines;And why the gray rock's rugged cheekThe soft lips of the mosses seek:Why, with wise instinct, Nature seemsTo 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 spursAnd sharp, gray splinters of the wind-swept ledgePierced 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 dayGurgled 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 allIts beautiful affections overgrewTheir rugged prop.
As o'er some granite wallSoft vine-leaves open to the moistening dewAnd warm bright sun, the love of that young wifeFound 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 woreThrough 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 aloneSat on his mat and slumbered at his side;That he whose fame to her young ear had flownNow looked upon her proudly as his bride;That he whose name the Mohawk trembling heardVouchsafed 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 disgraceOf 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 lastBroke link by link the frost chain of the rills,And the warm breathings of the southwest passedOver 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 whetherThe rigid rules of forest etiquettePermitted Weetamoo once more to lookUpon 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 herUp to her father's home of pride and strength,Impressing thus on Pennacook a senseOf Winnepurkit's power and regal consequence.So through old woods which Aukeetamit's
The SpringGod.-See RogerWilliams's Key to the Indian Language.
hand,A soft and many-shaded greenness lent,Over high breezy hills, and meadow landYellow 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 trainOf painted Saugus braves, their Weetamoo again.
Vi.
At Pennacook. The hills are dearest which our childish feetHave 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-lightShines round the helmsman plunging through the night;And still, with inward eye, the traveller seesIn close, dark, stranger streets his native trees.The home-sick dreamer's brow is nightly fannedBy breezes whispering of his native land,And on the stranger's dim and dying eyeThe soft, sweet pictures of his childhood lie.Joy then for Weetamoo, to sit once moreA child upon her father's wigwam floor!Once more with her old fondness to beguileFrom his cold eye the strange light of a smile.The long, bright days of summer swiftly passed,The dry leaves whirled ill autumn's rising blast,And evening cloud and whitening sunrise rimeTold 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 broughtThe 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 doveMourns for the shelter of thy wings of love.” But the dark chief of Saugus turned asideIn 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 foundOf 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 moreShall child of mine sit on his wigwam floor.Go, let him seek some meaner squaw to spreadThe stolen bear-skin of his beggar's bed;Son of a fish-hawk!
let him dig his clamsFor some vile daughter of the Agawams,Or coward Nipmucks!
may his scalp dry blackIn 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 impartHis iron hardness to thy woman's heart?Or cold self-torturing pride like his atoneFor love denied and life's warm beauty flown?On Autumn's gray and mournful grave the snowHung its white wreaths; with stifled voice and low The river crept, by one vast bridge o'er-crossed,Built by the hoar-locked artisan of Frost.And many a moon in beauty newly bornPierced the red sunset with her silver horn,Or, from the east, across her azure fieldRolled the wide brightness of her full-orbed shield.Yet Winnepurkit came not,—on the matOf 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 longThe snowy mountains of the North among,Making each vale a watercourse, each hillBright 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 MerrimacBore the huge ruin crashing down its track.On that strong turbid water, a small boatGuided 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 meatOn 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 wifeHad 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 canoeIn 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 spiritsShe wanders alone.The song of the wood-dove has died on our shore:Mat wonck kunna-monee!‘Mat wonck kunna-monee.’ We shall see thee or her no more.—See RogerWilliams's Key. We hear it no more!O dark water Spirit!We cast on thy waveThese furs which may neverHang over her grave;Bear down to the lost one the robes that she wore:Mat wonck kunna-monee!
e see her no more!Of the strange land she walks inNo 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 treadingShall soon be our own;Each gliding in shadowUnseen and alone!In vain shall we call on the souls gone before:Mat wonck kunna-monee!
They hear us no more!O mighty Sowanna!‘The Great South West God.’ —See RogerWilliams's Observations, etc.Thy gateways unfold,From thy wigwam of sunsetLift 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 besideThe 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 GustavusAdolphus, 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, lateFed and clothed at Ury's gate,Cursed him as he passed her.Yet, with calm and stately mien,Up the streets of AberdeenCame 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 townDrive the Quaker coward!” But from out the thickening crowdCried a sudden voice and loud:‘Barclay!
Ho! a Barclay!’ And the old man at his sideSaw 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 stoodAnkle deep in Lutizen'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
The barbarities of CountdeTilly after the siege of Magdeburg made such an impression upon our forefathers that the phrase ‘like old Tilly’ is still heard sometimes in New England of any piece of special ferocity.
line,And his Walloon lancers,Smiting through their midst we'll teachCivil look and decent speechTo these boyish prancers! “ “Marvel not, mine ancient friend,Like beginning, like the end:”Quoth the Laird of Ury; “Is the sinful servant moreThan his gracious Lord who boreBonds and stripes in Jewry?Give me joy that in His nameI 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 renownFrom 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 nightFaith beholds a feeble lightUp the blackness streaking;Knowing God's own time is best,In a patient hope I restFor the full day-breaking! “So the Laird of Ury said,Turning slow his horse's headTowards the Tolbooth prison,Where, through iron gates, he heardPoor disciples of the WordPreach of Christ arisen!Not in vain, Confessor old,Unto us the tale is toldOf thy day of trial;Every age on him who straysFrom its broad and beaten waysPours its seven-fold vial.Happy he whose inward earAngel comfortings can hear,O'er the rabble's laughter;And while Hatred's fagots burn,Glimpses through the smoke discernOf the good hereafter.Knowing this, that never yetShare of Truth was vainly setIn the world's wide fallow;After hands shall sow the seed,After hands from hill and meadReap the harvests yellow.Thus, with somewhat of the Seer,Must the moral pioneerFrom the Future borrow;Clothe the waste with dreams of grain,And, on midnight's sky of rain,Paint the golden morrow!
1847
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!
how it thickens!
now retreat and now advance!Right 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 heart's 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 moreOn the blessed cross before thee!
Mercy! 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 CharlesSumner], 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.Jame-son'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 wearThe 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 livesThat 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 yearsThe chance of trade or conquest gave.Forth-looking from the castle tower,Beyond the hills with almonds dark,The straining eye could scarce discernThe chapel of the good St. Mark.And there, when bitter word or fareThe 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 saintsThe 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 nightThey 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 appealMoans 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 manAre scattered at his lightest breath,Like chaff before the winnower's fan.Not always shall the slave upliftHis 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 seeYour helpers in their downward flight;Nor hear the sound of silver wingsSlow beating through the hush of night!But not the less gray Dothan shone,With sunbright watchers bending low,That Fear's dim eye beheld aloneThe 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-sideIs white with many an angel tent!They hear the heralds whom our LordSends down his pathway to prepare;And light, from others hidden, shinesOn 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 MargaretSmith'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 songOf 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 straved 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-firesOf her the gleeman sung. “As sweet and good is young KathleenAs 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 townAnd to a seaman soldThis daughter of an Irish lordFor 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 howledTo 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 careIf 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 dayYou 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 knowThe 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 waysShe doth her cost requite. “So up they walked through Boston town,And met a maiden fair,A little basket on her armSo snowy-white and bare. “Come hither, child, and say hast thouThis 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 oneThe Lord hath early ta'en;But, since her heart's in Ireland,We give her back again! “Oh, for that same the saints in heavenFor his poor soul shall pray,And Mary Mother wash with tearsHis heresies away.Sure now they dwell in Ireland;As you go up ClaremoreYe'll see their castle looking downThe 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 MareeA little isle reposes; A shadow woven of the oakAnd 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 thoughtAnd sense of peace returning.O restless heart and fevered brain,Unquiet and unstable,That holy well of Loch MareeIs more than idle fable!Life's changes vex, its discords stun,Its glaring sunshine blindeth,And blest is he who on his wayThat fount of healing findeth!The shadows of a humbled willAnd 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 BernardinHenriSaintPierre'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 tome, 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 Fenelon had lived, you would have been a Catholic.He exclaimed, with tears in his eyes, Oh, if Fenelon 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 forgiuen, for he loved much.
“I do believe, and yet, in grief,I pray for help to unbelief;For needful strength aside to layThe 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 themWho touched His seamless garment's hem;Who saw the tears of love He weptAbove the grave where Lazarus slept; And heard, amidst the shadows dimOf 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 lookOn Siloa's pool, and Kedron's brook;Kneel at Gethsemane, and byGennesaret walk, before I die!Methinks this cold and northern nightWould 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 awayBeneath us, and above the brownRed curtains of the woods shut down.Then said I,—for I could not brookThe 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 hadRemains 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 beenAs High Priest or as Pilate then!What thought Chorazin's scribes?
What faithIn Him had Nain and Nazareth?Of the few followers whom He ledOne 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 earTo 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 dayA 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 tipsThe golden-spired Apocalypse! “Then, when my good friend shook his head,And, sighling, sadly smiled, I said: “Thou mind'st me of a story toldIn rare Bernardin's leaves of gold.” and while the slanted sunbeams woveThe shadows of the frost-stained grove,And, picturing all, the river ranO'er cloud and wood, I thus began:—In Mount Valerien's chestnut woodThe Chapel of the Hermits stood;And thither, at the close of day,Came two old pilgrims, worn and gray.One, whose impetuous youth defiedThe storms of Baikal's wintry side,And mused and dreamed where tropic dayFlamed o'er his lost Virginia's bay.His simple tale of love and woeAll hearts had melted, high or low;— A blissful pain, a sweet distress,Immortal in its tenderness.Yet, while above his charmed pageBeat 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 grayPale 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 moreThe peasant's welcome from his doorBy 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 keysTo 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 sawThe beauty of her perfect law.The language of her signs he 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 songWhich swept, of old, the stars along;And to his eyes the earth once moreIts 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 skiesHis 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 cellThey dropped, and kindled as they fell.Beneath the pomps of state, belowThe mitred juggler's masque and show,A prophecy, a vague hope, ranHis burning thought from man to man,For peace or rest too well he sawThe 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 trueTo 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 glowedOf simple faith, and loves of home,And virtue's golden days to come.But weakness, shame, and folly madeThe 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 clingsTo earth, like other creeping things!So rich in words, in acts so mean;So high, so low; chance-swung betweenThe foulness of the penal pitAnd 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 deniedThe 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,
Dr.Hooker, who accompanied SirJamesRoss in his expedition of 1841, thus describes the appearance of that unknown land of frost and fire which was seen in latitude 77° south,—a stupendous chain of mountains, the whole mass of which, from its highest point to the ocean, was covered with everlasting snow and ice:—
‘The water and the sky were both as blue, or rather more intensely blue, than I have ever seen them in the tropics, and all the coast was one mass of dazzlingly beautiful peaks of snow, which, when the sun approached the horizon, reflected the most brilliant tints of golden yellow and scarlet; and then, to see the dark cloud of smoke, tinged with flame, rising from the volcano in a perfect unbroken column, one side jet-black, the other giving back the colors of the sun, sometimes turning off at a right angle by some current of wind, and stretching many miles to leeward!
This was a sight so surpassing everything that can be imagined, and so heightened by the consciousness that we had penetrated, under the guidance of our commander, into regions far beyond what was ever deemed practicable, that it caused a feeling of awe to steal over us at the consideration of our own comparative insignificance and helplessness, and at the same time an indescribable feeling of the greatness of the Creator in the works of his hand.’
Seen southward from his sleety mast,About whose brows of changeless frostA wreath of flame the wild winds tossed.Far round the mournful beauty playedOf lambent light and purple shade,Lost on the fixed and dumb despairOf frozen earth and sea and air!A man apart, unknown, unlovedBy 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 strayedTo Mount Valerien's chestnut shade.To them the green fields and the woodLent something of their quietude,And golden-tinted sunset seemedProphetical of all they dreamed.The hermits from their simple caresThe bell was calling home to prayers,And, listening to its sound, the twainSeemed lapped in childhood's trust again.Wide open stood the chapel door;A sweet old music, swelling o'erLow prayerful murmurs, issued thence,—The Litanies of Providence!Then Rousseau spake: “Where two or threeIn His name meet, He there will be!”And then, in silence, on their kneesThey sank beneath the chestnut-trees.As to the blind returning light,As daybreak to the Arctic night,Old faith revived; the doubts of yearsDissolved in reverential tears.That gush of feeling overpast,‘Ah me!’ Bernardin sighed at last, “I would thy bitterest foes could seeThy heart as it is seen of me!No church of God hast thou denied;Thou hast but spurned in scorn asideA bare and hollow counterfeit,Profaning the pure name of it!With dry dead moss and marish weedsHis fire the western herdsman feeds,And greener from the ashen plainThe sweet spring grasses rise again.Nor thunder-peal nor mighty windDisturb the solid sky behind;And through the cloud the red bolt rendsThe 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 findIts touch pollute, its darkness blind;And learn, as latent fraud is shownIn others' faith, to doubt his own.With dream and falsehood, simple trustAnd pious hope we tread in dust;Lost the calm faith in goodness,—lostThe baptism of the Pentecost!Alas!—the blows for error meantToo oft on truth itself are spent,As through the false and vile and baseLooks 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 sameThe skeptic's praise, the bigot's blame;—I cannot doubt, if thou hadst beenAmong the highly favored menWho walked on earth with Fenelon,He would have owned thee as his son;And, bright with wings of cherubimVisibly waving over him,Seen through his life, the Church had seemedAll that its old confessors dreamed. “‘I would have been,’ JeanJaques replied, “The humblest servant at his side,Obscure, unknown, content to seeHow beautiful man's life may be!Oh, more than thrice-blest relic, moreThan solemn rite or sacred lore,The holy life of one who trodThe foot-marks of the Christ of God!Amidst a blinded world he sawThe 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 reconciledThe strong man Reason, Faith the child;In him belief and act were one,The homilies of duty done! “So speaking, through the twilight grayThe 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 foldGreen Summer in her brown and gold;Time passed, and Winter's tears of snowDropped 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 cursedThe mournful doubts its falsehood nursed.Ahwell 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 grayComes up a low, sad whisper, “MakeThe truth thine own, for truth's own sake.Why wait to see in thy brief spanIts perfect flower and fruit in man?No saintly touch can save; no balmOf healing hath the martyr's palm.Midst soulless forms, and false pretenceOf 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 heardThe wanton's wish, the bigot's word,And pomp of state and ritual showScarce hid the loathsome death below,—Midst fawning priests and courtiers foul,The losel swarm of crown and cowl,White-robed walked FrancoisFenelon,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 hemNo 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 blendWith false professor, faithless friend.Search thine own heart.
What paineth theeIn 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, trodThe 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 grayStill 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 woodAcross the waters leaned to holdThe yellow leaves like lamps of gold.Then spake my friend: “Thy words are true;Forever old, forever new,These home-seen splendors are the sameWhich over Eden's sunsets came.To these bowed heavens let wood and hillLift voiceless praise and anthem still;Fall, warm with blessing, over them,Light of the New Jerusalem!Flow on, sweet river, like the streamOf John's Apocalyptic dream!
This mapled ridge shall Horeb be,Yon green-banked lake our Galilee!Henceforth my heart shall sigh no moreFor 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 sameOld prayer with which, for half a score of years,Morning, and noon, and evening, lip and hearthad 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 pathA sound as of an old man's staff amongThe 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 lifeSad as the grave it leads to.” “Nay, my son,Our times are in God's hands, and all our daysAre as our needs; for shadow as for sun,For cold as heat, for want as wealth, alikeOur 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 TrinityOf Knowledge, Goodness, and Almighty Power.” Silently wondering, for a little space,Stood the great preacher; then he spake as oneWho, suddenly grappling with a haunting thoughtWhich long has followed, whispering through the darkStrange 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,— One arm, Humility, takes hold uponHis dear Humanity; the other, Love,Clasps his Divinity.
So where I goHe goes; and better fire-walled Hell with HimThan golden-gated Paradise without.” Tears sprang in Tauler's eyes.
A sudden light,Like the first ray which fell on chaos, cloveApart the shadow wherein he had walkedDarkly at . And, as the strange old manWent his slow way, until his silver hairSet like the white moon where the hills of vineSlope to the Rhine, he bowed his head and said: “My prayer is answered.
God hath sent the manLong sought, to teach me, by his simple trust,Wisdom the weary schoolmen never knew.” So, entering with a changed and cheerful stepThe city gates, he saw, far down the street,A mighty shadow break the light of noon,Which tracing backward till its airy linesHardened to stony plinths, he raised his eyesO'er broad facade and lofty pediment,O'er architrave and frieze and sainted niche,Up the stone lace-work chiselled by the wiseErwin of Steinbach, dizzily up to whereIn 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 earthThe dark triangle of its shade alone When the clear day is shining on its top,So, darkness in the pathway of Man's lifeIs 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 breathOf soul and heart!From pastoral toil, from traffic's din,Alone, in crowds, at home, abroad,Unheard of man, ye enter inThe ear of God.Ye brook no forced and measured tasks,Nor weary rote, nor formal chains;The simple heart, that freely asksIn 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 aboveOur common needs.Which brings to God's all-perfect willThat trust of His undoubting childWhereby all seeming good and illAre reconciled.And, seeking not for special signsOf favor, is content to fallWithin the providence which shinesAnd rains on all.Alone, the Thebaid hermit leanedAt noontime o'er the sacred word.Was it an angel or a fiendWhose voice he heard?It broke the desert's hush of awe,A human utterance, sweet and mild;And, looking up, the hermit sawA little child.A child, with wonder-widened eyes,O'erawed and troubled by the sightOf hot, red sands, and brazen skies,And anchorite. “What dost thou here, poor man?
No shadeOf 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 palmHis providence. “The child gazed round him. “Does God liveHere only?—where the desert's rimIs green with corn, at morn and eve,We pray to Him.My brother tills beside the NileHis little field; beneath the leavesMy sisters sit and spin, the whileMy mother weaves.And when the millet's ripe heads fall,And all the bean-field hangs in pod,My mother smiles, and says that allAre gifts from God.And when to share our evening meal,She calls the stranger at the door,She says God fills the hands that dealFood to the poor. “Adown the hermit's wasted cheeksGlistened 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 forsookReturned 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 meThere is no place where God is not;That love will make, wherever 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 guideHe followed, as the small hand ledTo 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 joyAnd dumb surprise.And lo!—with sudden warmth and lightA tender memory thrilled his frame;New-born, the world-lost anchoriteA 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!’ “O kin of blood!
Thy life of useAnd patient trust is more than mine;And wiser than the gray recluseThis 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 contentWith 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.
MaudMuller.
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.
MaudMuller on a summer's day,Raked the meadow sweet with hay.Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealthOf simple beauty and rustic health.Singing, she wrought, and her merry gleeThe 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 unrestAnd 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 shadeOf the apple-trees, to greet the maid,And asked a draught from the spring that flowedThrough 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 downOn her feet so bare, and her tattered gown.‘Thanks!’ said the Judge; “a sweeter draughtFrom 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 whetherThe 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 surpriseLooked from her long-lashed hazel eyes.At last, like one who for delaySeeks a vain excuse, he rode away.MaudMuller 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 MaudMuller 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 airShow 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 wellTill 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 MaudMuller's hazel eyesLooked 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 roomsTo 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 hotOn the new-mown hay in the meadow lot,And she heard the little spring brook fallOver the roadside, through the wall,In the shade of the apple-tree againShe saw a rider draw his rein.And, gazing down with timid grace,She felt his pleased eyes read her face.Sometimes her narrow kitchen wallsStretched 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 liesDeeply buried from human eyes;And, in the hereafter, angels mayRoll the stone from its grave away!
1854.
MaryGarvin. from the heart of Waumbek Methna, from the lake that never fails,Falls the Saco in the green lap of Conway's inter-vales;There, in wild and virgin freshness, its waters foam and flow,As when Darby Fieldfirst 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 ChampernoonHeard 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 fastThe 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 Spur-wink 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 GoodmanGarvin, 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 GoodmanGarvin.
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 ElkanahGarvin?’ ‘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 fairIn her large, moist eyes, and over soft folds of dark brown hair.DameGarvin 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 MaryGarvin's child!She sleeps by wooded Simcoe, but on her dying dayShe bade my father take me to her kinsfolk far away.And when the priest besought her to do me no such wrong,She said, “MayGod 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 besideNever 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 paraphrase,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 EnglishChristian's homeA 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, “GoodmanGarvin and his wifeFain 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 proveNot 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 maidenhood.Thought the elders, grave and doubting, ‘She is Papist born and bred;’ Thought the young men, “Tis an angel in MaryGarvin's stead.”
The ranger.
Originally published as MarthaMason; a Song of the Old French War.
RobertRawlin!—Frosts were fallingWhen the ranger's horn was callingThrough 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 growingIn the hearts that mourn his stay.Where the lion, crouching high onAbraham'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 lyingIn their red graves far away.Straggling rangers, worn with dangers,Homeward faring, weary strangersPass 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 bearerThrough his painted woodlands stray, Than where hillside oaks and beechesOverlook 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 mainlandsStands 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-broodedBy the hazy autumn day.Gayly chattering to the clatteringOf 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 hollowChasing, weave their web of play. “MarthaMason, MarthaMason,Prithee tell us of the reasonWhy 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 beginningMake the task of life a play.” Overbending, till she's blendingWith the flaxen skein she's tendingPale brown tresses smoothed awayFrom 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 sparrowAnd 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 mellowsOn 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 RobertRawlinIs 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!’ “MarthaMason, 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 tryingSome new hope for each new day.When the shadows veil the meadows,And the sunset's golden laddersSink from twilight's walls of gray,— From the window of my dreaming,I can see his sickle gleaming,Cheery-voiced, can hear him teamingDown 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 makingSeems a footstep of his taking;Then I hush the thought, and say, Nay, nay, he's away!
Ah! my heart, my heart is breakingFor 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 red leaves in December'sHoary 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 spanOf 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 blendA 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 dinOf its loud life hints and echoes from the life behind steal in;And the lore of home and 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 re-touch 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 moon-light overlaid.On his slow round walked the sentry, south and eastward looking forthO'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 soonGrew to warriors, plumed and painted, grimly marching in the moon.‘Ghosts or witches,’ said the captain, ‘thus I foil the EvilOne!’ 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 callRoused 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 manSaw 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 youthAnd 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 highBreaks 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 wherebyHis thoughts went upward broken by that cry;And, looking from the casement, saw belowA wretched woman, with gray hair a-flow,And withered hands held up to him, who criedFor alms as one who might not be denied.She cried, “For the dear love of Him who gaveHis life for ours, my child from bondage save,—My beautiful, brave first-born, chained with slavesIn the Moor's galley, where the sun-smit wavesLap the white walls of Tunis! ‘—’ What I canI give,‘Tritemius said,’ my prayers.‘—’ O manOf 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 doorNone 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 candlesticksOn 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 prizeAbove the gifts upon his altar piled!)Take what thou askest, and redeem thy child.” But his hand trembled as the holy almsHe 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 cameHe woke to find the chapel all aflame,And, dumb with grateful wonder, to beholdUpon 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 CaptainIreson, 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.
Iknew 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,
JohnG.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 Calender's horse of brass,Witch astride of a human back,Islam's prophet on Al-Borak,—The strangest ride that ever was spedWas Ireson's, out from Marblehead!Old FloydIreson, for his hard heart,Tarred and feathered and carried in a cartBy 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 corrtBy the women oa Morble'ead!” Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips,Girls in bloom of cheek and lips,Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chaseBacchus 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 Maenads sang: “Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrtBy the women oa Morble'ead!” Small pity for him!—He sailed awayFrom a leaking ship, in Chaleur Bay,—--Sailed away from a sinking wreck,With his own town's-people on her deck I‘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 FloydIreson, for his hard heart,Tarred and feathered and carried in a cartBy the women of Marblehead!Fathoms deep in dark ChaleurThat wreck shall lie forevermore.Mother and sister, wife and maid,Looked from the rocks of MarbleheadOver the moaning and rainy sea,—Looked for the coming that might not be!What did the winds and the sea-birds sayOf the cruel captain who sailed away?—Old FloydIreson, for his hard heart,Tarred and feathered and carried in a cartBy 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 corrtBy the women oa Morble'ead!” Sweetly along the Salem roadBloom of orchard and lilac showed.Little the wicked skipper knewOf the fields so green and the sky so blue.Riding there in his sorry trim,Like an Indian idol glum and grim,Scarcely he seemed the sound to hearOf voices shouting, far and near: “Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrtBy the women oa Morble'ead!” ‘Hear me, neighbors!’ at last he cried,— “What to me is this noisy ride?What is the shame that clothes the skinTo 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 dreadThe hand of God and the face of the dead!”Said old FloydIreson, for his hard heart,Tarred and feathered and carried in a cartBy the women of Marblehead!Then the wife of the skipper lost at seaSaid, ‘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, theÿ cut him loose,And gave him a cloak to hide him in,And left him alone with his shame and sin.Poor FloydIreson, for his hard heart,Tarred and feathered and carried in a cartBy the women of Marblehead!
1857.
The sycamores.
HughTallant was the firstIrish 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 gleemanBroke 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, thou poor HughTallant!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 SaxonsOf 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 minglesWith 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 riverLighted up the swarming shad,And the bulging nets swept shoreward,ith 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 ErinAnd the Woman of Three Cows,By the blazing hearths of winter,Pleasant seemed his simple tales,Midst the grimmer Yorkshire legendsAnd the mountain myths of Wales.How the souls in PurgatoryScrambled up from fate forlorn,On St. Even's sackcloth ladder,Slyly hitched to Satan's horn.Of the fiddler who at TaraPlayed all night to ghosts of kings;Of the brown dwarfs, and the fairiesDancing 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 HughTallant,Hath Tradition handed down.Not a stone his grave discloses;But if yet his spirit walks,Tis beneath the trees he planted,And when Bob-o-Lincoln talks;Green memorials of the gleeman!Linking still the river-shores,With their shadows cast by sunset,Stand HughTallant's sycamores!When the Father of his CountryThrough the north-land riding came,And the roofs were starred with banners,And the steeples rang acclain,—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 PresenceDown the thronged and shouting street;Village girls as white as angels,Scattering flowers around his feet.Midway, where the plane-tree's shadowDeepest 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 downOn the hills of Gold and SilverRimming round the little town,—On the river, full of sunshine,To the lap of greenest valesWinding down from wooded headlands,Willow-skirted, white with sails.And he said, the landscape sweepingSlowly with his ungloved hand, “I have seen no prospect fairerIn this goodly Eastern land.” Then the bugles of his escortStirred to life the cavalcade:And that head, so bare and stately,Vanished down the depths of shade.Ever since, in town and tarm-house,Life has had its ebb and flow;Thrice hath passed the human harvestTo its garner green and low.But the trees the gleeman planted,Through the changes, changeless stand;As the marble calm of TadmorMocks the desert's shifting sand.Still the level moon at risingSilvers 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 floatingRound his rosy ample face,—Now a thousandSaxon craftsmenStitch and hammer in his place.All the pastoral lanes so grassyNow 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 HughTallant'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 castleThe Scottish pipes are dear;—Sweet sounds the ancient pibrochO'er mountain, loch, and glade; But the sweetest of all musicThe pipes at Lucknow played.Day by day the Indian tigerLouder yelled, and nearer crept;Round and round the jungle-serpentNear and nearer circles swept. “Pray for rescue, wives and mothers,—Pray to-day!” the soldier said; “To-morrow, death's between usAnd the wrong and shame we dread.” Oh, they listened, looked, and waited,Till their hope became despair;And the sobs of low bewailingFilled 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 oa Havelock sound!” Hushed the wounded man his groaning;Hushed the wife her little ones;Alone they heard the drum-rollAnd the roar of Sepoy guns:But to sounds of home and childhoodThe Highland ear was true;—As her mother's cradle-crooningThe mountain pipes she knew.Like the march of soundless musicThrough 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 oa them all!” Oh, they listened, dumb and breathless,And they caught the sound at last;Faint and far beyond the GoomteeRose and fell the piper's blast!Then a burst of wild thanksgivingMingled 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-cloudTo plaided legions grew,Full tenderly and blithesomelyThe 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-drumsRose that sweet and homelike strain;And the tartan clove the turban,As the Goomtee cleaves the plain.Dear to the corn-land reaperAnd plaided mountaineer,— To the cottage and the castleThe piper's song is dear.Sweet sounds the Gaelic pibrochO'er mountain, glen, and glade;But the sweetest of all musicThe 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 hillRuns 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 brinkOf 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 blows, 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 warmTangles his wings of fire in the trees,Setting, as then, over Fernside farm.I mind me how with a lover's careFrom my Sunday coatI 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 lastOn the little red gate and the well-sweep near.I can see it all now,—the slantwise rainOf 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 sunHad the chill of snow;For I knew she was telling the bees of oneGone on the journey we all must go!Then I said to myself, “My Mary weepsFor the dead to-day:Haply her blind old grandsire sleepsThe 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 stillSung to the bees stealing out and in.And the song she was singing ever sinceIn my ear sounds on:— “Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence!MistressMary is dead and gone!”
1858.
The Swan song of Parson Avery.
In Young's Chronicles of Massachusetts Bay from 1623 to1636 may be found AnthonyThacher's Narrative of his Shipwreck. Thacher was Avery's companion and survived to tell the tale.
MIather'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 breadTo 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 , 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 beforeTo 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 FatherAvery'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, hearHow 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 FatherAvery 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!
1858.
The Double-Headed snake of New-Bury.
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.ChristopherToppanto Cotton Mather.
far away in the twilight timeOf 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 mudAnd ooze of the old Deucalion flood,Crawl and wriggle and foam with rage,Through dusk tradition and ballad age.So from the childhood of NewburytownAnd its time of fable the tale comes downOf a terror which haunted bush and brake,The Amphisbaena, the Double Snake!Thou who makest the tale thy mirth,Consider that strip of Christian earthOn the desolate shore of a sailless sea,Full of terror and mystery, Half redeemed from the evil holdOf the wood so dreary, and dark, and old,Which drank with its lips of leaves the dewWhen 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 nerveAnd a feebler faith thy need might serve;And own to thyself the wonder moreThat the snake had two heads, and not a score!Whether he lurked in the Oldtown fenOr 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 headIn 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 heads, 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 declineThe Common Pasture for sheep or kine,The terrible double-ganger heardIn 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 downAll 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 poolOf his brains for the lore he learned at school,To garnish the story, with here a streakOf 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 stillIn Byfield Meadows, on Pipestave HillAnd still, whenever husband and wifePublish the shame of their daily strife,And, with mad cross-purpose, tug and strainAt either end of the marriage-chain,The gossips say, with a knowing shakeOf their gray heads, “Look at the Double Snake!One in body and two in will,The Amphisbaena is living still!”
1859.
MabelMartin.
A harvest idyl.
SusannaMartin, 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 SirEdmundAndros on his way to Falmouth (afterward Portland) and Pemaquid, which was frustrated by a warning timely given.
GoodyMartin was the only woman hanged on the north side of the Merrimac during the dreadful delusion.
The aged wife of JudgeBradbury 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 hidebus 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 layIn tender memory of the summer dayWhen, where our native river lapsed away,We dreamed it over, while the thrushes madeSongs of their own, and the great pine-trees laidOn warm noonlights the masses of their shade.And she was with us, living o'er againHer life in ours, despite of years and pain,—The Autumn's brightness after latter rain.Beautiful in her holy peace as oneWho stands, at evening, when the work is done,Glorified in the setting of the sun!Her memory makes our common landscape seemFairer than any of which painters dream;Lights the brown hills and sings in every stream;For she whose speech was always truth's pure goldHeard, 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 sprayAnd stunted growth of cedar, leadsTo where you see the dull plain fallSheer off, steep-slanted, ploughed by allThe seasons' rainfalls.
On its brinkThe over-leaning harebells swing,With roots half bare the pine-trees cling;And, through the shadow looking west,You see the wavering river flowAlong a vale, that far belowHolds to the sun, the sheltering hillsAnd glimmering water-line between,Broad fields of corn and meadows green,And fruit-bent orchards grouped aroundThe low brown roofs and painted eaves,And chimney-tops half hid in leaves.No warmer valley hides behindYon wind-scourged sand-dunes, cold and bleak;No fairer river comes to seekThe wave-sung welcome of the sea,Or mark the northmost border lineOf sun-loved growths of nut and vine.Here, ground-fast in their native fields,Untempted by the city's gain,The quiet farmer folk remainWho bear the pleasant name of Friends,And keep their fathers' gentle waysAnd simple speech of Bible days;In whose neat homesteads woman holdsWith modest ease her equal place,And wears upon her tranquil faceThe look of one who, merging notHer self-hood in another's will,Is love's and duty's handmaid still.Pass with me down the path that windsThrough birches to the open land,Where, close upon the river strandYou mark a cellar, vine o'errun,Above whose wall of loosened stonesThe sumach lifts its reddening cones,And the black nightshade's berries shine,And broad, unsightly burdocks foldThe household ruin, century-old.Here, in the dim colonial timeOf 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 dayFalls slantwise down the quiet vale,And, haply ere yon loitering sail,That rounds the upper headland, fallsBelow Deer Island's pines, or seesBehind it Hawkswood's belt of treesRise 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 seamsThrough which the moted sunlight streams,And winds blow freshly in, to shakeThe 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 EsekHarden'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 voiceOr sweet smile guided to their choice.How pleasantly the rising moon,Between theshadow of the mows,Looked on them through the great elmboughs!On sturdy boyhood, sun-embrowned,On girlhood with its solid curvesOf healthful strength and painless nerves!And jests went round, and laughs that madeThe house-dog answer with his howl,And kept astir the barn-yard fowl;And quaint old songs their fathers sungIn Derby dales and Yorkshire moors,Ere NormanWilliam trod their shores;And tales, whose merry license shookThe fat sides of the Saxon thane,Forgetful of the hovering Dane,—Rude plays to Celt and Cimbri known,The charms and riddles that beguiledOn Oxus' banks the young world's child,—That primal picture-speech whereinHave youth and maid the story told,So new in each, so dateless old,Recalling pastoral Ruth in herWho waited, blushing and demure,The red-ear's kiss of forfeiture.
Iii.
The Witchs daughter. But still the sweetest voice was muteThat river-valley ever heardFrom lips of maid or throat of bird;For MabelMartin sat apart,And let the hay-mow's shadow fallUpon the loveliest face of all.She sat apart, as one forbid,Who knew that none would condescendTo own the Witch-wife's child a friend.The seasons scarce had gone their round,Since curious thousands thronged to seeHer mother at the gallows-tree;And mocked the prison-palsied limbsThat 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, overturnOur bloody altars; let us seeThyself in Thy humanity!Young Mabel from her mother's graveCrept 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 nightsWhen, one by one, the neighboring lightsWent out, and human sounds grew still,And all the phantom-peopled darkClosed round her hearth-fire's dying spark.And summer days were sad and long,And sad the uncompanioned eves,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 doorShe saw the horseshoe's curvied 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 keptHer faith, and trusted that her way,So dark, would somewhere meet the day.And still her weary wheel went roundDay after day, with no relief:Small leisure have the poor for grief.
Iv.
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 gazeOf one who, in her better days,Had been her warm and steady friend,Ere yet her mother's doom had madeEven EsekHarden 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 ministersUnto no whiter soul than hers.Let GoodyMartin rest in peace;I never knew her harm a fly,And witch or not, God knows—not II know who swore her life away;And as God lives, I'd not condemnAn 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 “
V. In the shadow. Poor Mabel, homeward turning, passedThe 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 gaveA chill as from her mother's grave.How dreary seemed the silent house!Wide in the moonbeams' ghastly glareIts windows had a dead man's stare!And, like a gaunt and spectral hand,The tremulous shadow of a birchReached out and touched the door's low porch,As if to lift its latch; hard by,A sudden warning call she heard,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 throughBy voices such as childhood's earHad heard in moonlights long ago;And through the willow-boughs belowShe 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 allA sense of some transforming spell,The shadow of her sick heart fell.And still across the wooded spaceThe 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 cryOf utter misery: “Let me die!Oh!
take me from the scornful eyes,And hide me where the cruel speechAnd mocking finger may not reach!I dare not breathe my mother's name:A daughter's right I dare not craveTo weep above her unblest grave!Let me not live until my heart,With few to pity, and with noneTo 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 becameA voice whose burden was her name.
Vi.
The Betrothal. Had then God heard her?
Had He sentHis angel down?
In flesh and blood,Before her EsekHarden 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 EsekHarden well;And if he seems no suitor gay,And if his hair is touched with gray, The maiden grown shall never findHis 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 Haxden'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 ranThe 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 offenceFalls harmless from her innocence.Henceforth she stands no more alone;You know what EsekHarden is;—He brooks no wrong to him or his.Now let the merriest tales be told,And let the sweetest songs be sungThat 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 elmboughs!On Mabel's curls of golden hair,On Esek's shaggy strength it fell;And the wind whispered, ‘It is well!’
The prophecy of SamuelSewall.
The prose version of this prophecy is to be found in Sewall's The New Heaven upon the New Earth, 1697, quoted in JoshuaCoffin's History of Newbury. JudgeSewall's father, HenrySewall, was one of the pioneers of Newbury.
up and down the village streetsStrange are the forms my fancy meets,For the thoughts and things of to-day are hid,And through the veil of a closed lidThe 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 swhitened hair,Walks the Judge of the great Assize,SamuelSewall 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 neverthelessWith 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
It was the custom in Sewall's time for churches and individuals to hold fasts whenever any public or private need suggested the fitness; and as state and church were very closely connected, the General Court sometimes ordered a fast.
Out of this custom sprang the annual fast in spring, now observed, but it is of comparatively recent date.
Such a fast was ordered on the 14th of January, 1697, when Sewall made his special confession of guilt in condemning innocent persons under the supposition that they were witches.
He is said to have observed the day privately on each annual return thereafter.
With a haunting sorrow that never slept,As the circling year brought round the timeOf 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 wordThat gave the witch's neck to the cord,And piled the oaken planks that pressedThe feeble life from the warlock's breast IAll 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 charmsOf penitent tears, and prayers, and psalms,And, with precious proofs from the sacred wordOf the boundless pity and love of the Lord,His faith confirmed and his trust renewedThat the sin of his ignorance, sorely rued,Might be washed away in the mingled floodOf his human sorrow and Christ's dear blood!Green forever the memory beOf the Judge of the old Theocracy,Whom even his errors glorified,Like a far-seen, sunlit mountain-sideBy the cloudy shadows which o'er it glide!Honor and praise to the PuritanWho the halting step of his age outran,And, seeing the infinite worth of manIn 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-grenadeWhich God shall cast down upon his head!” Widely as heaven and hell, contrastThat brave old jurist of the pastAnd the cunning trickster and knave of courtsWho 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 weakDeaf as Egypt's gods of leek;Scoffing aside at party's nodOrder 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 seekAs 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 mistCrimson, 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 canGladden or sadden the heart of man,Over whose thresholds of oak and stoneLife 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 crackBy the earthquake made a century back.Up from their midst springs the village spireWith 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 daysFlit dimly by in the veiling haze,With measured movement and rhythmic chimeWeaving like shuttles my web of rhyme.
I think of the old man wise and goodWho 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 windTo read in the ear of the musing mind:— “As long as Plum Island, to guard the coastAs God appointed, shall keep its post;As long as a salmon shall haunt the deepOf 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 knowTheir time to come and their time to go;As long as cattle shall roam at willThe green, grass meadows by Turkey Hill;As long as sheep shall look from the sideOf Oldtown Hill on marishes wide,And Parker River, and salt-sea tide;As long as a wandering pigeon shall searchThe 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 feedsOn hillside berries and marish seeds,—All the beautiful signs remain,From spring-time sowing to autumn rainThe good man's vision returns again!And let us hope, as well we can,That the Silent Angel who garners manMay find some grain as of old he foundIn the human cornfield ripe and sound,And the Lord of the Harvest deign to ownThe precious seed by the fathers sown!
1859.
The red river voyageur. out and in the river is windingThe links of its long, red chain,Through belts of dusky pine-landAnd gusty leagues of plain.Only, at times, a smoke-wreathWith the drifting cloud-rack joins,—The smoke of the hunting-lodgesOf the wild Assiniboins!Drearily blows the north-windFrom 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 warningThat 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-windThe tones of a far-off bell?The voyageur smiles as he listensTo the sound that grows apace;Well he knows the vesper ringingOf 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 journeyThe bitter north-winds blow,And thus upon life's Red RiverOur hearts, as oarsmen, row.And when the Angel of ShadowRests his feet on wave and shore,And our eyes grow dim with watchingAnd our hearts faint at the oar,Happy is he who hearethThe signal of his releaseIn the bells of the Holy City,The chimes of eternal peace!
1859.
The preacher.
GeorgeWhitefield, 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 IBeheld the old and quiet town;The ghostly sails that out at seaFlapped their white wings of mystery;The beaches glimmering in the sun,And the low wooded capes that runInto 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-landsA crimson-tinted shadow lay,Of clouds through which the setting dayFlung 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'erThe steeples with their veering vanes!Awhile my friend with rapid searchO'erran the landscape. “Yonder spireOver 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 themeThe outward glory seemed to stream,And Nature's self interpretedThe doubtful record of the dead;And every level beam that smoteThe sails upon the dark afloatA symbol of the light became,Which touched the shadows of our blame,With tongues of Pentecostal flame.Over the roofs of the pioneersGathers the moss of a hundred years;On man and his works has passed the changeWhich 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 oldA dead profession their children hold;To the lust of office and greed of tradeA 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 meantBut as a pilgrim's wayside tent,—A nightly shelter to fold awayWhen 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 rootsOf 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 bentThe iron links of his argument,Which strove to grasp in its mighty spanThe purpose of God and the fate of man!Yet faithful still, in his daily roundTo the weak, and the poor, and sin-sick found,The schoolman's lore and the casuist's artDrew warmth and life from his fervent heart.Had he not seen in the solitudesOf his deep and dark Northampton woodsA vision of love about him fall?Not the blinding splendor which fell on Saul,But the tenderer glory that rests on themWho 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 countenanceOf the wife of his bosom rapt in trance,Had he not treasured each broken wordOf the mystical wonder seen and heard;And loved the beautiful dreamer moreThat thus to the desert of earth she boreClusters of Eshcol from Canaan's shore?As the barley-winnower, holding with painAloft in waiting his chaff and grain,Joyfully welcomes the far-off breezeSounding the pine-tree's slender keys,So he who had waited long to hearThe sound of the Spirit drawing near,Like that which the son of Iddo heardWhen 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 breakTo 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 pinesIn the name of the Highest called to prayer,As the muezzin calls from the minaret stair.Through ceiled chambers of secret sinSudden and strong the light shone in;A guilty sense of his neighbor's needsStartled the man of title-deeds;The trembling hand of the worldling shookThe 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 courseOf waters moved by a central force;The tide of spiritual life rolled downFrom inland mountains to seaboard town.Prepared and ready the altar standsWaiting the prophet's outstretched handsAnd prayer availing, to downward callThe fiery answer in view of all.Hearts are like wax in the furnace; whoShall mould, and shape, and cast them anew?Lo!
by the Merrimac Whitefield standsIn 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 nameBlown 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 gaugeThe moral lapse of his race and age, And, sharp as truth, the contrast drawOf human frailty and perfect law;Possessed by the one dread thought that lentIts 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 lightOn one side leaves the other in night.Never was saint so good and greatAs to give no chance at St. Peter's gateFor 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 canWorship Allah by loving man.Thus he,—to whom, in the painful stressOf zeal on fire from its own excess,Heaven seemed so vast and earth so smallThat 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 unshodThe 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 withstandThe shaping will of the potter's hand?In the Indian fable Arjoon hearsThe 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 oddsTo each, immortal as Indra's gods!” So by Savannah's banks of shade,The stones of his mission the preacher laidOn 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 goldCoined from the hearts in its groaning hold.What could it matter, more or lessOf 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 planTo honor God through the wrong of man.Of all his labors no trace remainsSave the bondman lifting his hands in chains.The woof he wove in the righteous warpOf freedom-loving Oglethorpe,Clothes with curses the goodly land,Changes its greenness and bloom to sand;And a century's lapse reveals once moreThe slave-ship stealing to Georgia's shore.Father of Light!
how blind is heWho sprinkles the altar he rears to TheeWith 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 goodThat 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 passedSwayed as the reeds sway in the blast,Under the spell of a voice which tookIn its compass the flow of Siloa's brook,And the mystical chime of the bells of goldOn the ephod's hem of the priest of old,—Now the roll of thunder, and now the aweOf the trumpet heard in the Mount of Law.A solemn fear on the listening crowdFell like the shadow of a cloud.The sailor reeling from out the shipsWhose masts stood thick in the river-slipsFelt 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, feltTheir hearts in a closer union melt,And saw the flowers of their love in bloomDown the endless vistas of life to come.Old age sat feebly brushing awayFrom his ears the scanty locks of gray;And careless boyhood, living the freeUnconscious life of bird and tree,Suddenly wakened to a senseOf sin and its guilty consequence.It was as if an angel's voiceCalled the listeners up for their final choice—As if a strong hand rent apartThe veils of sense from soul and heart,Showing in light ineffableThe joys of heaven and woes of hell!All about in the misty airThe 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 lentAn undertone as of low lament; And the rote of the sea from its sandy 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 deathWith terrible warnings under breath,Now shouting for joy, as if he viewedThe vision of Heaven's beatitude!And CelticTennant, his long coat boundLike 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 pewsThat 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 easeTo settle quietly on his lees,And, self-concentred, to count as doneThe 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 paceTo catch the falling manna of grace,He hugged the closer his little storeOf 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 wentStep 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 vainSet the heart on fire and crazed the brain?That over the holy oraclesFolly sported with cap and bells?That goodly women and learned menMarvelling told with tongue and penHow unweaned children chirped like birdsTexts of Scripture and solemn words,Like the infant seers of the rocky glensIn the Puy de Dome of wild Cevennes:Or baby Lamas who pray and preachFrom Tartar cradles in Buddha's speech?In the war which Truth or Freedom wagesWith impious fraud and the wrong of ages,Hate and malice and self-love marThe notes of triumph with painful jar,And the helping angels turn asideTheir sorrowing faces the shame to hide.Never on custom's oiled groovesThe world to a higher level moves,But grates and grinds with friction hardOn 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 findThe Vices wearing their badge behind,And Graces and Charities feel the fireWherein the sins of the age expire;The fiend still rends as of old he rentThe tortured body from which he went.But Time tests all. In the over-driftAnd 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-landThat 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 strongTroubled the land as it swept along,But left a result of holier lives,Tenderer mothers and worthier wives.The husband and father whose children fledAnd sad wife wept when his drunken treadFrightened peace from his roof-tree's shade,And a rock of offence his hearthstone made,In a strength that was not his own beganTo rise from the brute's to the plane of man.Old friends embraced, long held apartBy 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 churchStops in the shade of its belfry-porch,And ponders the wonderful life of himWho lies at rest in that charnel dim.Long shall the traveller strain his eyeFrom the railroad car, as it plunges by,And the vanishing town behind him searchFor 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 sinLike a tide from the harbor-bar sets in,And over a life of time and senseThe church-spires lift their vain defence,As if to scatter the bolts of GodWith 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 MajorWaldron 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 jell;Tear from the wild Cocheco's trackThe dams that hold its torrents back;And let the loud-rejoicing fallPlunge, roaring, down its rocky wall;And let the Indian's paddle playOn the unbridged Piscataqua!Wide over hill and valley spreadOnce more the forest, dusk and dread,With here and there a clearing cutFrom 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 boundWith bristling palisades around.So, haply shall before thine eyesThe dusty veil of centuries rise,The old, strange scenery overlayThe tamer pictures of to-day,While, like the actors in a play,Pass in their ancient guise alongThe figures of my border song:What time beside Cocheco's floodThe white man and the red man stood,With words of peace and brotherhood;When passed the sacred calumetFrom lip to lip with fire-draught wet,And, puffed in scorn, the peace-pipe's smokeThrough the gray beard of Waldron broke,And Squando's voice, in suppliant pleaFor mercy, struck the haughty keyOf 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 strandsDropping from her careless hands,Listening ever for the fleetPatter of a dead child's feet! When the moon a year agoTold the flowers the time to blow,In that lonely wigwam smiledMenewee, 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 thirdnight-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 lightWith its blaze his steps aright.All-uncalled, he dares not showEmpty hands to Manito:Better gifts he cannot bearThan 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 earAll that spirits hear can hear,—I, whose eyes are wide to seeAll the things that are to be,—Well I knew the dreadful signsIn 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-treesMany a scalp the totem sees.Blood for blood!
But evermoreSquando's heart is sad and sore;And his poor squaw waits at homeFor 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 freeThrough the prophet-charmed sea,Captive mother, wife, and childThrough the dusky terror filed.One alone, a little maid,Middleway her steps delayed,Glancing, with quick, troubled sighsRound about from red to white.Then his hand the Indian laidOn the little maiden's head,Lightly from her forehead fairSmoothing 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 beIn 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 childChristian-born to heathens wild?As God lives, from Satan's handI 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 maidOwned 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 hungOn that neck so fair and young.Silence-shod, as phantoms seemIn the marches of a dream,Single-filed, the grim arrayThrough 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 daySinging came a child from play,Tossing from her loose-locked headGold in sunshine, brown in shade.Pride was in the mother's look,But her head she gravely shook,And with lips that fondly smiledFeigned 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 treeTried his best to mimic me. “Where the hemlocks grew so darkThat 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 mildAs 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 seeWhat 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 woodsCalled the birds, and winds, and floods.Well, O painful minister!Watch thy flock, but blame not her,If her ear grew sharp to hearAll their voices whispering near.Blame her not, as to her soulAll the desert's glamour stole,That a tear for childhood's lossDropped upon the Indian's cross.When, that night, the Book was read,And she bowed her widowed head,And a prayer for each loved nameRose like incense from a flame,With a hope the creeds forbidIn her pitying bosom hid,To the listening ear of HeavenLo!
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 windWere falling like the snow.The blossoms drifted at our feet,The orchard birds sang clear;The sweetest and the saddest dayIt 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 boyWho fed her father's kine?She left us in the bloom of May:The constant years told o'erTheir seasons with as sweet May morns,But she came back no more.I walk, with noiseless feet, the roundOf uneventful years;Still o'er and o'er I sow the springAnd reap the autumn ears.She lives where all the golden yearHer summer roses blow;The dusky children of the sunBefore her come and go.There haply with her jewelled handsShe smooths her silken gown,—No more the homespun lap whereinI 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 sweetThe woods of Follymill.The lilies blossom in the pond,The bird builds in the tree,The dark pines sing on Ramoth hillThe slow song of the sea.I wonder if she thinks of them,And how the old time seems,—If ever the pines of Ramoth woodAre sounding in her dreams.I see her face, I hear her voice;Does she remember mine?And what to her is now the boyWho fed her father's kine?What cares she that the orioles buildFor 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 fernA sweeter memory blow;And there in spring the veeries singThe song of long ago.And still the pines of Ramoth woodAre moaning like the sea,—The moaning of the sea of changeBetween 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 timberWith patient teeth that day,The minks were fish-wards, and the crowsSurveyors of highway,—When Keezar sat on the hillsideUpon his cobbler's form,With a pan of coals on either handTo 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 TeutonWho brewed the stoutest ale,And he paid the goodwife's reckoningIn the coin of song and tale.The songs they still are singingWho dress the hills of vine,The tales that haunt the BrockenAnd whisper down the Rhine.Woodsy and wild and lonesome,The swift stream wound away,Through birches and scarlet maplesFlashing in foam and spray,—Down on the sharp-horned ledgesPlunging in steep cascade,Tossing its white-maned watersAgainst the hemlock's shade.Woodsy and wild and lonesome,East and west and north and south;Only the village of fishersDown 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 feetThe merry violin stirred.‘Why should folk be glum,’ said Keezar, “When Nature herself is glad,And the painted woods are laughingAt the faces so sour and sad?” Small heed had the careless cobblerWhat sorrow of heart was theirsWho 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.‘Tis work, work, work,’ he muttered,—‘And for rest a snuffle of psalms!’ He smote on his leathern apronWith his brown and waxen palms. “Oh for the purple harvestsOf 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 blowDown 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 mingledWith the marvels of the New.Well he knew the tricks of magic,And the lapstone on his kneeHad the gift of the Mormon's gogglesOr the stone of DoctorDee.
Dr.JohnDee was a man of erudition, who had an extensive museum, library, and apparatus; he claimed to be an astrologer, and had acquired the reputation of having dealings with evil spirits, and a mob was raised which destroyed the greater part of his possessions He professed to raise the dead and had a magic crystal.
He died a pauper in 1608.
For the mighty masterAgrippaWrought it with spell and rhymeFrom a fragment of mystic moonstoneIn the tower of Nettesheim.To a cobbler MinnesingerThe 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 comingBy 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 blacknessRolled from the magic stone,And a marvellous picture mingledThe 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 brokenBy 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 villageThe flags were floating gay,And shone on a thousand facesThe light of a holiday.Swiftly the rival ploughmenTurned 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 blushesFrom the girls who shook them down.And with blooms of hill and wildwood,That shame the toil of art,Mingled the gorgeous blossomsOf the garden's tropic heart.‘What is it I see?’ said Keezar: “Am I here, or am 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 jollyPuzzles 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 bridalOf 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 worryAnd 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 willowsIn the shadow of the hill,But oft the idle fisherSits on the shadowy bank,And his dreams make marvellous picturesWhere the wizard's lapstone sank.And still, in the summer twilights,When the river seems to runOut from the inner glory,Warm with the melted sun,The weary mill-girl lingersBeside the charmed stream,And the sky and the golden waterShape and color her dream.Fair wave the sunset gardens,The rosy signals fly;Her homestead beckons from the cloud,And love goes sailing by.
1861.
AmyWentworth.
To WilliamBradford. As they who watch by sick-beds find reliefUnwittingly from the great stress of griefAnd anxious care, in fantasies outwroughtFrom the hearth's embers flickering low, or caughtFrom whispering wind, or tread of passing feet,Or vagrant memory calling up some sweetSnatch of old song or romance, whence or whyThey scarcely know or ask,—so, thou and I,Nursed in the faith that Truth alone is strongIn 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 shareWith 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 allWho give their loved ones for the living wall'Twixt law and treason,—in this evil dayMay haply find, through automatic playOf pen and pencil, solace to our pain,And hearten others with the strength we gain.I know it has been said our times requireNo play of art, nor dalliance with the lyre,No weak essay with Fancy's chloroformTo calm the hot, mad pulses of the storm,But the stern war-blast rather, such as setsThe battle's teeth of serried bayonets, And pictures grim as Vernet's. Yet with theseSome softer tints may blend, and milder keysRelieve the storm-stunned ear. Let us keep sweet,If so we may, our hearts, even while we eatThe bitter harvest of our own deviceAnd 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 PuritanThe 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 nightAnd slavery all our vantage-ground of light.Let Treason boast its savagery, and shakeFrom 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 dullBy 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 teachTheir vandal manners and barbaric speech.And while, with hearts of thankfulness, we bearOf the great common burden our full share,Let none upbraid us that the waves enticeThy sea-dipped pencil, or some quaint device,Rhythmic and sweet, beguiles my pen awayFrom the sharp strifes and sorrows of to-day.Thus, while the east-wind keen from LabradorSings in the leafless elms, and from the shore Of the great sea comes the monotonous roarOf the long-breaking surf, and all the skyIs gray with cloud, home-bound and dull, I tryTo time a simple legend to the soundsOf winds in the woods, and waves on pebbled bounds,—A song for oars to chime with, such as mightBe sung by tired sea-painters, who at nightLook from their hemlock camps, by quiet coveOr beach, moon-lighted, on the waves they love.(So hast thou looked, when level sunset layOn the calm bosom of some Eastern bay,And all the spray-moist rocks and waves that rolledUp 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 downFrom 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 keysThey dance so light along;The bloom upon her parted lipsIs 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 shipThat at its anchor swings;The murmur of the stranded shellIs in the song she sings.She sings, and, smiling, hears her praise,But dreams the while of oneWho watches from his sea-blown deckThe icebergs in the sun.She questions all the winds that blow,And every fog-wreath dim,And bids the sea-birds flying northBear messages to him.She speeds them with the thanks of menHe perilled life to save,And grateful prayers like holy oilTo smooth for him the wave.Brown Viking of the fishing-smack!Fair toast of all the town!—The skipper's jerkin ill beseemsThe lady's silken gown!But ne'er shall AmyWentworth wearFor him the blush of shameWho dares to set his manly giftsAgainst her ancient name.The stream is brightest at its spring,And blood is not like wine;Nor honored less than he who heirsIs he who founds a line.Full lightly shall the prize be won,If love be Fortune's spur;And never maiden stoops to himWho lifts himself to her.Her home is brave in Jaffrey Street,With stately stairways wornBy feet of old Colonial knightsAnd ladies gentle-born.Still green about its ample porchThe English ivy twines,Trained back to show in English oakThe 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 floorAs if she trod her sailor's deckBy 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-barTo see the white gulls fly;His greeting from the Northern seaIs ill their clanging cry.She hums a song, and dreams that he,As in its romance old,Shall homeward ride with silken sailsAnd masts of beaten gold!Oh, rank is good, and gold is fair,And high and low mate ill;But love has never known a lawBeyond its own sweet will!
1862.
The Countess.
To E. W.
I inscribed this poem to Dr.EliasWeld 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.
CountFranccoisdeVipart with his cousinJosephRochemontdePoyen 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 CountVipart was MaryIngalls, 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 handSmoothed his hard pathway to the wonder-landOf thought and fancy, in gray manhood yetKeeps green the memory of his early debt.To-day, when truth and falsehood speak their wordsThrough hot-lipped cannon and the teeth of swords,Listening with quickened heart and ear intentTo each sharp clause of that stern argument,I still can hear at times a softer noteOf the old pastoral music round me float,While through the hot gleam of our civil strifeLooms the green mirage of a simpler life.As, at his alien post, the sentinelDrops the old bucket in the homestead well,And hears old voices in the winds that tossAbove his head the live-oak's beard of moss,So, in our trial-time, and under skiesShadowed by swords like Islam's paradise,I wait and watch, and let my fancy strayTo milder scenes and youth's Arcadian day;And howsoe'er the pencil dipped in dreamsShades the brown woods or tints the sunset streams,The country doctor in the foreground seems,Whose ancient sulky down the village lanesDragged, 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 oa the woods and rocks, and knew the soundOf each small brook, and what the hillside treesSaid to the winds that touched their leafy keys; Who saw so keenly and so well could paintThe 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 bridgeThe 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 curvesTo meet, in ebb and flow,The single broken wharf that servesFor sloop and gundelow.With salt sea-scents along its shoresThe heavy hay-boats crawl,The long antennae of their oarsIn lazy rise and fall.Along the gray abutment's wallThe idle shad-net dries;The toll-man in his cobbler's stallSits smoking with closed eyes.You hear the pier's low undertoneOf waves that chafe and gnaw;You start,—a skipper's horn is blownTo raise the creaking draw.At times a blacksmith's anvil soundsWith slow and sluggard beat,Or stage-coach on its dusty roundsWakes up the staring street.A place for idle eyes and ears,A cobwebbed nook of dreams;Left by the stream whose waves are yearsThe 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 pinesInstead of railroad-train.Go where, along the tangled steepThat slopes against the west,The hamlet's buried idlers sleepIn still profounder rest.Throw back the locust's flowery plume,The birch's pale-green scarf,And break the web of brier and bloomFrom name and epitaph.A simple muster-roll of death,Of pomp and romance shorn,The dry, old names that common breathHas cheapened and outworn.Yet pause by one low mound, and partThe wild vines o'er it laced,And read the words by rustic artUpon its headstone traced.Haply yon white-haired villagerOf fourscore years can sayWhat means the noble name of herWho sleeps with common clay.An exile from the Gascon landFound 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 scornsStole in her faith's surprise.Her simple daily life he sawBy homeliest duties tried,In all things by an untaught lawOf fitness justified.For her his rank aside he laid;He took the hue and toneOf lowly life and toil, and madeHer simple ways his own.Yet still, in gay and careless ease,To harvest-field or danceHe brought the gentle courtesies,The nameless grace of France.And she who taught him love not lessFrom him she loved in turnCaught in her sweet unconsciousnessWhat love is quick to learn.Each grew to each in pleased accord,Nor knew the gazing townIf she looked upward to her lordOr 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 stillWithin his scutcheoned tomb.The Gascon lord, the village maid,In death still clasp their hands;The love that levels rank and gradeUnites their severed lands.What matter whose the hillside grave,Or whose the blazoned stone?Forever to her western waveShall whisper blue Garonne!O Love!—so hallowing every soilThat gives thy sweet flower room,Wherever, nursed by ease or toil,The human heart takes bloom!—Plant of lost Eden, from the sodOf sinful earth unriven,White blossom of the trees of GodDropped down to us from heaven –This tangled waste of mound and stoneIs holy for thy sake;A sweetness which is all thy ownBreathes out from fern and brake.And while ancestral pride shall twineThe Gascon's tomb with flowers,Fall sweetly here, O song of mine,With summer's bloom and showers!And let the lines that severed seemUnite again in thee,As western wave and Gallic streamAre mingled in one sea!
1863.
Among the hills.
This poem, when originally published, was dedicated to Annie Fields, wife of the distinguished publisher, JamesT.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, inDecember 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 goldThat tawny Incas for their gardens wrought,Heavy with sunshine droops the golden-rod,And the red pennons of the cardinal-flowersHang motionless upon their upright staves.The sky is hot and hazy, and the wind,Wing-weary with its long flight from the south,Unfelt; yet, closely scanned, yon maple leafWith faintest motion, as one stirs in dreams,Confesses it. The locust by the wallStabs the noon-silence with his sharp alarm.A single hay-cart down the dusty roadCreaks slowly, with its driver fast asleepOn the load's top. Against the neighboring hill,Huddled along the stone wall's shady side,The sheep show white, as if a snowdrift stillDefied the dog-star.
Through the open doorA drowsy smell of flowers—gray heliotrope,And white sweet clover, and shy mignonette—Comes faintly in, and silent chorus lendsTo the pervading symphony of peace.
No time is this for hands long over-wornTo task their strength: and (unto Him be praiseWho giveth quietness!) the stress and strainOf years that did the work of centuriesHave ceased, and we can drawour breath once moreFreely and full.
So, asyon harvestersMake glad their nooning underneath the elmsWith tale and riddle and old snatch of song,I lay aside grave themes, and idly turnThe leaves of memory's sketch-book, dreaming o'erOld 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 feelingAll their fine possibilities, how richAnd restful even poverty and toilBecome when beauty, harmony, and loveSit at their humble hearth as angels satAt evening in the patriarch's tent, when manMakes labor noble, and his farmer's frockThe symbol of a Christian chivalryTender and just and generous to herWho clothes with grace all duty; still, I knowToo well the picture has another side,—How wearily the grind of toil goes onWhere love is wanting, how the eye and earAnd heart are starved amidst the plenitudeOf nature, and how hard and colorlessIs life without an atmosphere.
I lookAcross the lapse of half a century, And call to mind old homesteads, where no flowerTold that the spring had come, but evil weeds,Nightshade and rough-leaved burdock in the placeOf the sweet doorway greeting of the roseAnd honeysuckle, where the house walls seemedBlistering in sun, without a tree or vineTo cast the tremulous shadow of its leavesAcross the curtainless windows, from whose panesFluttered the signal rags of shiftlessness.Within, the cluttered kitchen-floor, unwashed(Broom-clean I think they called it); the best roomStifling with cellar damp, shut from the airIn hot midsummer, bookless, picturelessSave the inevitable sampler hungOver the fireplace, or a mourning piece,A green-haired woman, peony-cheeked, beneathImpossible willows; the wide-throated hearthBristling with faded pine-boughs half concealingThe 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 ownMonotonous 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 bobolinkSang not, nor winds made music in the leaves;For them in vain October's holocaustBurned, 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 soulsAnd winter pork with the least possible outlayOf salt and sanctity; in daily lifeShowing as little actual comprehensionOf Christian charity and love and duty,As if the Sermon on the Mount had beenOutdated 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 landWhere whoso wisely wills and acts may dwellAs king and lawgiver, in broad-acred state,With beauty, art, taste, culture, books, to makeHis hour of leisure richer than a lifeOf fourscore to the barons of old time,Our yeoman should be equal to his homeSet in the fair, green valleys, purple walled,A man to match his mountains, not to creepDwarfed and abased below them.
I would fainIn this light way (of which I needs must ownWith 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 feelThe beauty and the joy within their reach,—Home, and home loves, and the beatitudesOf nature free to all. Haply in years That wait to take the places of our own,Heard where some breezy balcony looks downOn happy homes, or where the lake in the moonSleeps dreaming of the mountains, fair as Ruth,In the old Hebrew pastoral, at the feetOf Boaz, even this simple lay of mineMay seem the burden of a prophecy,Finding its late fulfillment in a changeSlow as the oak's growth, lifting manhood upThrough broader culture, finer manners, love,And reverence, to the level of the hills.O GoldenAge, whose light is of the dawn,And not of sunset, forward, not behind,Flood the new heavens and earth, and with thee bringAll the old virtues, whatsoever thingsAre pure and honest and of good repute,But add thereto whatever bard has sungOr seer has told of when in trance and dreamThey saw the Happy Isles of prophecy!Let Justice hold her scale, and Truth divideBetween the right and wrong; but give the heartThe freedom of its fair inheritance;Let the poor prisoner, cramped and starved so long,At Nature's table feast his ear and eyeWith joy and wonder; let all harmoniesOf sound, form, color, motion, wait uponThe princely guest, whether in soft attireOf 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 divineWith the ineffable tenderness of God;Let common need, the brotherhood of prayer,The heirship of an unknown destiny,The unsolved mystery round about us, makeA man more precious than the gold of Ophir.Sacred, inviolate, unto whom all thingsShould minister, as outward types and signsOf the eternal beauty which fulfilsThe one great purpose of creation, Love,The sole necessity of Earth and HeavenFor weeks the clouds had raked the hillsAnd vexed the vales with raining,And all the woods were sad with mist,And all the brooks complaining.At last, a sudden night-storm toreThe mountain veils asunder,And swept the valleys clean beforeThe besom of the thunder.Through Sandwich notch the west-wind sangGood morrow to the cotter;And once again Chocorua's hornOf shadow pierced the water.Above his broad lake Ossipee,Once more the sunshine wearing,Stooped, tracing on that silver shieldHis grim armorial bearing.Clear drawn against the hard blue sky.The peaks had winter's keenness;And, close on autumn's frost, the valesHad more than June's fresh greenness.Again the sodden forest floorsWith golden lights were checkered,Once more rejoicing leaves in windAnd sunshine danced and flickered.It was as if the summer's lateAtoning for its sadnessHad borrowed every season's charmTo end its days in gladness.I call to mind those banded valesOf shadow and of shining,Through which, my hostess at my side,I drove in day's declining.We held our sideling way aboveThe river's whitening shallows,By homesteads old, with wide-flung barnsSwept through and through by swallows;By maple orchards, belts of pineAnd larches climbing darklyThe mountain slopes, and, over all,The great peaks rising starkly.You should have seen that long hill-rangeWith gaps of brightness riven,—How through each pass and hollow streamedThe purpling lights of heaven,—Rivers of gold-mist flowing downFrom far celestial fountains,—The great sun flaming through the riftsBeyond the wall of mountains!We paused at last where home-bound cowsBrought down the pasture's treasure,And in the barn the rhythmic flailsBeat out a harvest measure.We heard the night-hawk's sullen plunge,The crow his tree-mates calling:The shadows lengthening down the slopesAbout our feet Were falling.And through them smote the level sunIn broken lines of splendor,Touched the gray rocks and made the greenOf the shorn grass more tender.The maples bending o'er the gate,Their arch of leaves just tintedWith yellow warmth, the golden glowOf coming autumn hinted.Keen white between the farm-house showed,And smiled on porch and trellis,The fair democracy of flowersThat equals cot and palace.And weaving garlands for her dog,'Twixt chidings and caresses,A human flower of childhood shookThe sunshine from her tresses.On either hand we saw the signsOf fancy and of shrewdness,Where taste had wound its arms of vinesRound thrift's uncomely rudeness.The sun-brown farmer in his frockShook hands, and called to Mary:Bare-armed, as Juno might, she came,White-aproned from her dairy.Her air, her smile, her motions, toldOf womanly completeness;A music as of household songsWas 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 lackedOf culture or appliance,—The warmth of genial courtesy,The calm of self-reliance.Before her queenly womanhoodHow dared our hostess utterThe paltry errand of her needTo buy her fresh-churned butter?She led the way with housewife pride,Her goodly store disclosing,Full tenderly the golden ballsWith practised hands disposing.Then, while along the western hillsWe watched the changeful gloryOf sunset, on our homeward way,I heard her simple story.The early crickets sang; the streamPlashed through my friend's narration:Her rustic patois of the hillsLost in my free translation.‘More wise,’ she said, “than those who swarmOur 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 airBeside the Bearcamp Water.Her step grew firmer on the hillsThat watch our homesteads over;On cheek and lip, from summer fields,She caught the bloom of clover.For health comes sparkling in the streamsFrom cool Chocorua stealing:There's iron in our Northern winds;Our pines are trees of healing.She sat beneath the broad-armed elmsThat skirt the mowing-meadow,And watched the gentle west-wind weaveThe grass with shine and shadowBeside her, from the summer heatTo share her grateful screening,With forehead bared, the farmer stood,Upon his pitchfork leaning.Framed ill its damp, dark locks, his faceHad nothing mean or common,—Strong, manly, true, the tendernessAnd pride beloved of woman.She looked up, glowing with the healthThe country air had brought her,And, laughing, said: “You lack a wife,Your mother lacks a daughter.To mend your frock and bake your breadYou do not need a lady:Be sure among these brown old homesIs some one waiting ready,—Some fair, sweet girl with skilful handAnd 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. Tis well, he said, “for one like youTo choose for me so lightly.“You think, because my life is rudeI take no note of sweetness:I tell you love has naught to doWith meetness or unmeetness.
“Itself its best excuse, it asksNo leave of pride or fashionWhen silken zone or homespun frockIt stirs with throbs of passion.“You think me deaf and blind: you bringYour winning graces hitherAs free as if from cradle-timeWe 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 meYou 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 closeLike prison-walls about me?“No mood is mine to seek a wife,Or daughter for my mother:Who loves you loses in that loveAll power to love another!“I dare your pity or your scorn,With pride your own exceeding;I fling my heart into your lapWithout a word of pleading.”She looked up in his face of painSo 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 waitsBehind this silken armor?“I love you: on that love alone,And not my worth, presuming,Will you not trust for summer fruitThe 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 hersOn pleasant Bearcamp Water.Flowers spring to blossom where she walksThe careful ways of duty;Our hard, stiff lines of life with herAre flowing curves of beauty.O'Cur homes are cheerier for her sake,Our door-yards brighter blooming,And all about the social airIs sweeter for her coming.Unspoken homilies of peaceHer daily life is preaching;The still refreshment of the dewIs her unconscious teaching.And never tenderer hand than hersUnknits the brow of ailing;Her garments to the sick man's earHave music in their trailing.And when, in pleasant harvest moons,The youthful huskers gather,Or sleigh-drives on the mountain waysDefy the winter weather,—In sugar-camps, when south and warmThe winds of March are blowing,And sweetly from its thawing veinsThe maple's blood is flowing,—In summer, where some lilied pondIts virgin zone is baring,Or where the ruddy autumn fireLights up the apple-paring,—The coarseness of a ruder timeHer finer mirth displaces,A subtler sense of pleasure fillsEach rustic sport she graces. Her presence lends its warmth and healthTo all who come before it.If woman lost us Eden, suchAs she alone restore it.For larger life and wiser aimsThe farmer is her debtor;Who holds to his another's heartMust needs be worse or better.Through her his civic service showsA purer-toned ambition;No double consciousness dividesThe mall and politician.In party's doubtful ways he trustsHer instincts to determine;At the loud polls, the thought of herRecalls Christ's Mountain Sermon.He owns her logic of the heart,And wisdom of unreason,Supplying, while lie 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 respectIs proof against all changes.And if she walks at ease in waysHis feet are slow to travel,And if she reads with cultured eyesWhat his may scarce unravel,Still clearer, for her keener sightOf beauty and of wonder,He learns the meaning of the hillsHe dwelt from childhood under. And higher, warmed with summer lights,Or winter-crowned and hoary,The ridged horizon lifts for himIts inner veils of glory.He has his own free, bookless lore,The lessons nature taught him,The wisdom which the woods and hillsAnd toiling men have brought him:The steady force of will wherebyHer flexile grace seems sweeter;The sturdy counterpoise which makesHer woman's life completer;A latent fire of soul which lacksNo breath of love to fan it;And wit, that, like his native brooks,Plays over solid granite.How dwarfed against his manlinessShe sees the poor pretension,The wants, the aims, the follies, bornOf fashion and convention!How life behind its accidentsStands strong and self-sustaining,The human fact transcending allThe losing and the gaining.And so in grateful interchangeOf teacher and of hearer,Their lives their true distinctness keepWhile daily drawing nearer.And if the husband or the wifeIn home's strong light discoversSuch slight defaults as failed to meetThe blinded eyes of lovers,Why need we care to ask?—who dreamsWithout their thorns of roses,Or wonders that the truest steelThe readiest spark discloses?For still in mutual sufferance liesThe secret of true living;Love scarce is love that never knowsThe sweetness of forgiving.We send the Squire to General Court,He takes his young wife thither;No prouder man election dayRides through the sweet June weather.He sees with eyes of manly trustAll hearts to her inclining;Not less for him his household lightThat others share its shining. “Thus, while my hostess spake, there grewBefore me, warmer tintedAnd outlined with a tenderer grace,The picture that she hinted.The sunset smouldered as we droveBeneath the deep hill-shadows.Below us wreaths of white fog walkedLike ghosts the haunted meadows.Sounding the summer night, the starsDropped down their golden plummets;The pale arc of the Northern lightsRose o'er the mountain summits,Until, at last, beneath its bridge,We heard the Bearcamp flowing,And saw across the mapled lawnThe welcome home-lights glowing.And, musing on the tale I heard,Twere well, thought I, if oftenTo rugged farm-life came the giftTo harmonize and soften;If more and more we found the trothOf fact and fancy plighted,And culture's charm and labor's strengthIn rural homes united,—The simple life, the homely hearth,With beauty's sphere surrounding,And blessing toil where toil aboundsWith graces more abounding.
1868.
The dole of Jarl Thorkell. the land was pale with famineAnd racked with fever-pain;The frozen fiords were fishless,The earth withheld her grain.Men saw the boding FylgjaBefore them come and go,And, through their dreams, the UrdarmoonFrom west to east sailed slow!Jarl Thorkell of TheveraAt Yule-time made his vow;On Rykdal's holy Doom-stoneHe 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 daughterTook up the sprinkling-rod,And smeared with blood the templeAnd the wide lips of the god.Hoarse below, the winter waterGround 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-stonesAnd the statue's carven face.And closer round and grimmerBeneath its baleful lightThe Jotun shapes of mountainsCame crowding through the night.The gray-haired Hersir trembledAs a flame by wind is blown;A weird power moved his white lips,And their voice was not his own!‘The Ae;sir thirst!’ he muttered; “The gods must have more bloodBefore the tun shall blossomOr fish shall fill the flood. “The Ae;sir thirst and hunger,And hence our blight and ban;The mouths of the strong gods waterFor the flesh and blood of man! “Whom shall we give the strong ones?Not warriors, sword on thigh;But let the nursling infantAnd 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 weepingAt 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 breathThe veil of her loose hair.She sang: “The winds from AlfheimBring never sound of strife;The gifts for Frey the meetestAre 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-ringsFalls 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 breadThat old and young may live;And look to Frey for favorWhen first like Frey you give. “Even now o'er Njord's sea-meadowsThe 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 Ae;sir's favorsBought with our children's lives;Better die than shame in livingOur mothers and our wives. “The full shall give his portionTo him who hath most need;Of curdled skyr and black bread,Be daily dole decreed.” He broke from off his neck-chainThree 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 PlentyBefore the next Yule fires.The Horg-stones stand in Rykdal;The Doom-ring still remains;But the snows of a thousand wintersHave washed away the stains.Christ ruleth now; the Ae;sirHave found their twilight dim;And, wiser than she dreamed, of oldThe Vala sang of Him!
1868.
The two Rabbins. the Rabbi Nathantwo score years and tenWalked 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 notFalsehood to guilt, he left his seat, and taughtNo more among the elders, but went outFrom the great congregation girt aboutWith sackcloth, and with ashes on his head,Making his gray locks grayer.
Long he prayed,Smiting his breast; then, as the Book he laidOpen before him for the Bath-Col's choice,Pausing to hear that Daughter of a Voice,Behold the royal preacher's words: “A friendLoveth at all times, yea, unto the end;And for the evil day thy brother lives.”Marvelling, he said: “It is the Lord who givesCounsel in need.
At Ecbatana dwellsRabbiBenIsaac, who all men excelsIn righteousness and wisdom, as the treesOf Lebanon the small weeds that the beesBow with their weight.
I will arise, and layMy sins before him.” And he went his wayBarefooted, fasting long, with many prayers;But even as one who, followed unawares,Suddenly in the darkness feels a handThrill with its touch his own, and his cheek fanned By odors subtly sweet, and whispers nearOf words he loathes, yet cannot choose but hear,So, while the Rabbi journeyed, chanting lowThe wail of David's penitential woe,Before him still the old temptation came,And mocked him with the motion and the shameOf such desires that, shuddering, he abhorredHimself; and, crying mightily to the LordTo 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 awayRose on the desert's rim; and Nathan, faintAnd footsore, pausing where for some dead saintThe faith of Islam reared a domed tomb,Saw some one kneeling in the shadow.
whomHe greeted kindly: “May the HolyOneAnswer thy prayers, O stranger” WhereuponThe shape stood up with a loud cry, and then,Clasped in each other's arms, the two gray menWept, praising Him whose gracious providenceMade their paths one.
But straightway, as the senseOf his transgression smote him, Nathan toreHimself away: “0 friend beloved, no moreWorthy 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 BenIsaac, I have sinned!” Awestruck BenIsaac stood.
The desert windBlew his long mantle backward, laying bareThe 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 fireThat tears and prayers quench not, I come to theeFor pity and for help, as thou to me.Pray for me, O my friend!” But Nathan cried,‘Pray thou for me, BenIsaac!’Side by sideIn the low sunshine by the turban stoneThey knelt; each made his brother's woe his own,Forgetting, in the agony and stressOf 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 OnkelosIn RabbiNathan's hand these words were read: “Hope not the cure of sin till Self is dead;Forget it in love's service, and the debtThou 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 1604Champlain 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 takesThe 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 underneathWan flowers without a name;Life tangled with decay and death,League after league the same.Unbroken over swamp and hillThe rounding shadow lay,Save where the river cut at willA pathway to the day.Beside that track of air and light,Weak as a child unweaned,At shut of day a Christian knightUpon his henchman leaned.The embers of the sunset's firesAlong the clouds burned down;‘I see,’ he said, “the domes and spiresOf Norembega town.” Alack!
the domes, O master mine,Are golden clouds on high;Yon spire is but the branchless pineThat cuts the evening sky. “ “Oh, hush and hark!
What sounds are theseBut chants and holy hymns?” “Thou hear'st the breeze that stirs the treesThrough all their leafy limbs.” “Is it a chapel bell that fillsThe 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 meA blessed cross in sight!” “Now, nay, 't is but yon blasted treeWith 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 seeMy home-set sails again;The sweetest eyes of NormandieShall watch for me in vain. “Yet onward still to ear and eyeThe baffling marvel calls;I fain would look before I dieOn Norembega's walls. “So, haply, it shall be thy partAt Christian feet to layThe mystery of the desert's heartMy dead hand plucked away. “Leave me an hour of rest; go thouAnd look from yonder heights;Perchance the valley even nowIs 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 thingsWhose 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 loonLaugh from his reedy pond.He turned him back: “O master dear,We are but men misled;And thou hast sought a city hereTo find a grave instead.” “As God shall will!
what matters whereA true man's cross may stand,So Heaven be o'er it here as thereIn pleasant Norman land? “These woods, perchance, no secret hideOf lordly tower and hall;Yon river in its wanderings wideHas washed no city wall; “Yet mirrored in the sullen streamThe holy stars are given:Is Norembega, then, a dreamWhose waking is in Heaven? “No builded wonder of these landsMy weary eyes shall see;A city never made with handsAlone awaiteth me — “ Urbs Syon mystica; I seeIts mansions passing fair, Condita coe;lo; let me be,Dear Lord, a dweller there!” Above the dying exile hungThe vision of the bard,As faltered on his failing tongueThe song of good Bernard.The henchman dug at dawn a graveBeneath the hemlocks brown,And to the desert's keeping gaveThe lord of fief and town.Years after, when the Sieur ChamplainSailed up the unknown stream,And Norembega proved againA shadow and a dream,He found the Norman's nameless' graveWithin the hemlock's shade,And, stretching wide its arms to save,The sign that God had made,The cross-boughed tree that marked the spotAnd made it holy ground:He needs the earthly city notWho hath the heavenly found.
1869.
Miriam.
To FrederickA.P.Barnard. the years are many since, in youth and hope,Under the Charter Oak, our horoscopeWe drew thick-studded with all favoring stars.Now, with gray beards, and faces seamed with scarsFrom life's hard battle, meeting once again,We smile, half sadly, over dreams so vain;Knowing, at last, that it is not in manWho walketh to direct his steps, or plan His permanent house of life.
Alike we lovedThe muses' haunts, and all our fancies movedTo measures of old song.
How since that dayOur feet have parted from the path that laySo fair before us!
Rich, from lifelong searchOf truth, within thy Academic porchThou sittest now, lord of a realm of fact,Thy servitors the sciences exact;Still listening with thy hand on Nature's keys,To hear the Samian's spheral harmoniesAnd rhythm of law. I called from dream and song,Thank God!
so early to a strife so long,That, ere it closed, the black, abundant hairOf boyhood rested silver-sown and spareOn manhood's temples, now at sunset-chimeTread with fond feet the path of morning time.And if perchance too late I linger whereThe flowers have ceased to blow, and trees are bare,Thou, wiser in thy choice, wilt scarcely blameThe friend who shields his folly with thy name.
Amessbury, 10thmo., 1870.
One Sabbath day my friend and IAfter the meeting, quietlyPassed from the crowded village lanes,White with dry dust for lack of rains,And climbed the neighboring slope, with feetSlackened and heavy from the heat,Although the day was wellnigh done,And the low angle of the sun Along the naked hillside castOur shadows as of giants vast.We reached, at length, the topmost swell,Whence, either way, the green turf fellIn terraces of nature downTo fruit-hung orchards, and the townWith white, pretenceless houses, tallChurch-steeples, and, overshadowing all,Huge mills whose windows had the lookOf eager eyes that ill could brookThe Sabbath rest.
We traced the trackOf the sea-seeking river back,Glistening for miles above its mouth,Through the long valley to the south,And, looking eastward, cool to view,Stretched the illimitable blueOf ocean, from its curved coast-line;Sombred and still, the warm sunshineFilled with pale gold-dust all the reachOf slumberous woods from hill to beach,—Slanted on walls of thronged retreatsFrom city toil and dusty streets,On grassy bluff, and dune of sand,And rocky islands miles from land;Touched the far-glancing sails, and showedWhite lines of foam where long waves flowedDumb in the distance.
In the north,Dim through their misty hair, looked forthThe space-dwarfed mountains to the sea,From mystery to mystery!So, sitting on that green hill-slope,We talked of human life, its hope And fear, and unsolved doubts, and whatIt might have been, and yet was not.And, when at last the evening airGrew sweeter for the bells of prayerRinging in steeples far below,We watched the people churchward go,Each to his place, as if thereonThe true shekinah only shone;And my friend queried how it cameTo pass that they who owned the sameGreat Master still could not agreeTo worship Him in company.Then, broadening in his thought, he ranOver the whole vast field of man,—The varying forms of faith and creedThat somehow served the holders' need;In which, unquestioned, undenied,Uncounted millions lived and died;The bibles of the ancient folk,Through which the heart of nations spoke;The old moralities which lentTo home its sweetness and content,And rendered possible to bearThe life of peoples everywhere:And asked if we, who boast of light,Claim not a too exclusive rightTo truths which must for all be meant,Like rain and sunshine freely sent.In bondage to the letter still,We give it power to cramp and kill,—To tax God's fulness with a schemeNarrower than Peter's house-top dream,His wisdom and his love with plans Poor and inadequate as man's.It must be that He witnessesSomehow to all men that He is:That something of His saving graceeReaches the lowest of the race,Who, through strange creed and rite, may drawThe hints of a diviner law.We walk in clearer light;—but then,Is He not God?—are they not men?Are His responsibilitiesFor us alone and not for these?And I made answer: “Truth is one;And, in all lands beneath the sun,Whoso hath eyes to see may seeThe tokens of its unity.No scroll of creed its fulness wraps,We trace it not by school-boy maps,Free as the sun and air it isOf latitudes and boundaries.In Vedic verse, in dull Koran,Are messages of good to man;The angels to our Aryan siresTalked by the earliest household fires;The prophets of the elder day,The slant-eyed sages of Cathay,Read not the riddle all amissOf higher life evolved from this. “Nor doth it lessen what He taught,Or make the gospel Jesus broughtLess precious, that His lips retoldSome portion of that truth of old; Denying not the proven seers,The tested wisdom of the years;Confirming with his own impressThe common law of righteousness.We search the world for truth; we cullThe good, the pure, the beautiful,From graven stone and written scroll,From all old flower-fields of the soul;And, weary seekers of the best,We come back laden from our quest,To find that all the sages saidIs in the Book our mothers read,And all our treasure of old thoughtIn His harmonious fulness wroughtWho gathers in one sheaf completeThe scattered blades of God's sown wheat,The common growth that maketh goodHis all-embracing Fatherhood. “Wherever through the ages riseThe altars of self-sacrifice,Where love its arms has opened wide,Or man for man has calmly died,I see the same white wings outspreadThat hovered o'er the Master's head!Up from undated time they come,The martyr souls of heathendom,And to His cross and passion bringTheir fellowship of suffering.I trace His presence in the blindPathetic gropings of my kind,—In prayers from sin and sorrow wrung,In cradle-hymns of life they sung, Each, in its measure, but a partOf the unmeasured Over-Heart;And with a stronger faith confessThe greater that it owns the less.Good cause it is for thankfulnessThat the world-blessing of His lifeWith the long past is not at strife;That the great marvel of His deathTo the one order witnesseth,No doubt of changeless goodness wakes,No link of cause and sequence breaks,But, one with nature, rooted isIn the eternal verities;Whereby, while differing in degreeAs finite from infinity,The pain and loss for others borne,Love's crown of suffering meekly worn,The life man giveth for his friendBecome vicarious in the end;Their healing place in nature take,And make life sweeter for their sake. “So welcome I from every sourceThe tokens of that primal Force,Older than heaven itself, yet newAs the young heart it reaches to,Beneath whose steady impulse rollsThe tidal wave of human souls;Guide, comforter, and inward word,The eternal spirit of the Lord!Nor fear I aught that science bringsFrom searching through material things;Content to let its glasses prove, Not by the letter's oldness move,The myriad worlds on worlds that courseThe spaces of the universe;Since everywhere the Spirit walksThe garden of the heart, and talksWith man, as under Eden's trees,In all his varied languages.Why mourn above some hopeless flawIn the stone tables of the law,When scripture every day afreshIs traced on tablets of the flesh?By inward sense, by outward signs,God's presence still the heart divines;Through deepest joy of Him we learn,In sorest grief to Him we turn,And reason stoops its pride to shareThe child-like instinct of a prayer.” And then, as is my wont, I toldA story of the days of old,Not found in printed books,—in sooth,A fancy, with slight hint of truth,Showing how differing faiths agreeIn one sweet law of charity.Meanwhile the sky had golden grown,Our faces in its glory shone;But shadows down the valley swept,And gray below the ocean slept,As time and space I wandered o'erTo tread the Mogul's marble floor,And see a fairer sunset fallOn Jumna's wave and Agra's wall.The good Shah Akbar (peace be his alway!)Came forth from the Divan at close of dayBowed with the burden of his many cares,Worn with the hearing of unnumbered prayers,—Wild cries for justice, the importunateAppeals of greed and jealousy and hate,And all the strife of sect and creed and rite,Santon and Gouroo waging holy fight:For the wise monarch, claiming not to beAllah's avenger, left his people free,With a faint hope, his Book scarce justified,That all the paths of faith, though severed wide,O'er which the feet of prayerful reverence passed,Met at the gate of Paradise at last.He sought an alcove of his cool hareem,Where, far beneath, he heard the Jumna's streamLapse soft and low along his palace wall,And all about the cool sound of the fallOf fountains, and of water circling freeThrough marble ducts along the balcony;The voice of women in the distance sweet,And, sweeter still, of one who, at his feet,Soothed his tired ear with songs of a far landWhere Tagus shatters on the salt sea-sandThe mirror of its cork-grown hills of drouthAnd vales of vine, at Lisbon's harbor-mouth.The date-palms rustled not; the peepul laidIts topmost boughs against the balustrade,Motionless as the mimic leaves and vinesThat, light and graceful as the shawl-designs Of Delhi or Umritsir, twined in stone;And the tired monarch, who aside had thrownThe day's hard burden, sat from care apart,And let the quiet steal into his heartFrom the still hour.
Below him Agra slept,By the long light of sunset overswept:The river flowing through a level land,By mango-groves and banks of yellow sand,Skirted with lime and orange, gay kiosks,Fountains at play, tall minarets of mosques,Fair pleasure-gardens, with their flowering treesRelieved against the mournful cypresses;And, air-poised lightly as the blown sea-foam,The marble wonder of some holy domeHung a white moonrise over the still wood,Glassing its beauty in a stiller flood.Silent the monarch gazed, until the nightSwift-falling hid the city from his sight;Then to the woman at his feet he said: “Tell me, O Miriam, something thou hast readIn childhood of the Master of thy faith,Whom Islam also owns.
Our Prophet saith:He was a true apostle, yea, a Word And Spirit sent before me from the Lord.Thus the Book witnesseth; and well I knowBy what thou art, O dearest, it is so.As the lute's tone the maker's hand betrays,The sweet disciple speaks her Master's praise.” Then Miriam, glad of heart, (for in some sortShe cherished in the Moslem's liberal courtThe sweet traditions of a Christian child;And, through her life of sense, the undefiled And chaste ideal of the sinless OneGazed on her with an eye she might not shun,—The sad, reproachful look of pity, bornOf love that hath no part in wrath or scorn,)Began, with low voice and moist eyes, to tellOf the all-loving Christ, and what befellWhen the fierce zealots, thirsting for her blood,Dragged to his feet a shame of womanhood.How, when his searching answer pierced withinEach heart, and touched the secret of its sin,And her accusers fled his face before,He bade the poor one go and sin no more.And Akbar said, after a moment's thought, “Wise is the lesson by thy prophet taught;Woe unto him who judges and forgetsWhat hidden evil his own heart besets!Something of this large charity I findIn all the sects that sever human kind;I would to Allah that their lives agreedMore nearly with the lesson of their creed!Those yellow Lamas who at Meerut prayBy wind and water power, and love to say: He who forgiveth not shall, unforgiven, Fail of the rest of Buddha, and who evenSpare the black gnat that stings them, vex my earsWith the poor hates and jealousies and fearsNursed in their human hives.
That lean, fierce priestOf thy own people, (be his heart increasedBy Allah's love!) his black robes smelling yetOf Goa's roasted Jews, have I not metMeek-faced, barefooted, crying in the streetThe saying of his prophet true and sweet,— He who is merciful shall mercy meet! ” But, next day, so it chanced, as night beganTo fall, a murmur through the hareem ranThat one, recalling in her dusky faceThe full-lipped, mild-eyed beauty of a raceKnown as the blameless Ethiops of Greek song,Plotting to do her royal master wrong,Watching, reproachful of the lingering light,The evening shadows deepen for her flight,Love-guided, to-her home in a far land,Now waited death at the great Shah's command.Shapely as that dark princess for whose smileA world was bartered, daughter of the NileHerself, and veiling in her large, soft eyesThe passion and the languor of her skies,The Abyssinian knelt low at the feetOf her stern lord: “O king, if it be meet,And for thy honor's sake, ‘she said,’ that I,Who am the humblest of thy slaves, should die,I will not tax thy mercy to forgive.Easier it is to die than to outliveAll that life gave me,—him whose wrong of theeWas but the outcome of his love for me,Cherished from childhood, when, beneath the shadeOf templed Axum, side by side we played.Stolen from his arms, my lover followed meThrough weary seasons over land and sea;And two days since, sitting disconsolateWithin the shadow of the hareem gate,Suddenly, as if dropping from the sky,Down from the lattice of the balconyFell the sweet song by Tigre's cowherds sungIn the old music of his native tongue.
He knew my voice, for love is quick of ear,Answering in song.This night he waited nearTo fly with me. The fault was mine alone:He knew thee not, he did but seek his own;Who, in the very shadow of thy throne,Sharing thy bounty, knowing all thou art,Greatest and best of men, and in her heartGrateful to tears for favor undeserved,Turned ever homeward, nor one moment swervedFrom her young love.
He looked into my eyes,He heard my voice, and could not otherwiseThan he hath done; yet, save one wild embraceWhen first we stood together face to face,And all that fate had done since last we metSeemed but a dream that left us children yet,He hath not wronged thee nor thy royal bed;Spare him, O king!
and slay me in his stead! “But over Akbar's brows the frown hung black,And, turning to the eunuch at his back,‘Take them,’ he said, “and let the Jumna's wavesHide both my shame and these accursed slaves!”His loathly length the unsexed bondman bowed:‘On my head be it!’Straightway from a cloudOf dainty shawls and veils of woven mistThe ChristianMiriam rose, and, stooping, kissedThe monarch's hand.
Loose down her shoulders bareSwept all the rippled darkness of her hair,Veiling the bosom that, with high, quick swellOf fear and pity, through it rose and fell.‘Alas!’ she cried, “hast thou forgotten quiteThe words of Him we spake of yesternight?Or thy own prophet's, Whoso doth endure And pardon, of eternal life is sure ?O great and good!
be thy revenge aloneFelt in thy mercy to the erring shown;Let thwarted love and youth their pardon plead,Who sinned but in intent, and not in deed!” One moment the strong frame of Akbar shookWith the great storm of passion.
Then his lookSoftened to her uplifted face, that stillPleaded more strongly than all words, untilIts pride and anger seemed like overblown,Spent clouds of thunder left to tell aloneOf strife and overcoming.
With bowed head,And smiting on his bosom: ‘God,’ he said, “Alone is great, and let His holy nameBe honored, even to His servant's shame!Well spake thy prophet, Miriam,—he aloneWho hath not sinned is meet to cast a stoneAt such as these, who here their doom await,Held like myself in the strong grasp of fate.They sinned through love, as I through love for. give;Take them beyond my realm, but let them live!” And, like a chorus to the words of grace,The ancient Fakir, sitting in his place,Motionless as an idol and as grim,In the pavilion Akbar built for himUnder the court-yard trees, (for he was wise,Knew Menu's laws, and through his close-shut eyes Saw things far off, and as an open bookInto the thoughts of other men could look,)Began, half chant, half howling, to rehearseThe fragment of a holy Vedic verse;And thus it ran: “He who all things forgivesConquers himself and all things else, and livesAbove the reach of wrong or hate or fear,Calm as the gods, to whom he is most dear.” Two leagues from Agra still the traveller seesThe tomb of Akbar through its cypress-trees;And, near at hand, the marble walls that hideThe Christian Begum sleeping at his side.And o'er her vault of burial (who shall tellIf it be chance alone or miracle?)The Mission press with tireless hand unrollsThe words of Jesus on its lettered scrolls,—Tells, in all tongues, the tale of mercy o'er,And bids the guilty, ‘Go and sin no more!’It now was dew-fall; very stillThe night lay on the lonely hill,Down which our homeward steps we bent,And, silent, through great silence went,Save that the tireless crickets playedTheir long, monotonous serenade.A young moon, at its narrowest,Curved sharp against the darkening west;And, momently, the beacon's star,Slow wheeling o'er its rock afar,From out the level darkness shotOne instant and again was not.And then my friend spake quietlyThe thought of both: “Yon crescent see!Like Islam's symbol-moon it givesHints of the light whereby it lives:Somewhat of goodness, something trueFrom sun and spirit shining throughAll faiths, all worlds, as through the darkOf ocean shines the lighthouse spark,Attests the presence everywhereOf love and providential care.The faith the old Norse heart confessedIn one dear name,—the hopefulestAnd tenderest heard from mortal lipsIn pangs of birth or death, from shipsIce-bitten in the winter sea,Or lisped beside a mother's knee,—The wiser world hath not outgrown,And the All-Father is our own!”
Nauhaught, the Deacon. Nauhaught, the Indian deacon, who of oldDwelt, poor but blameless, where his narrowing CapeStretches its shrunk arm out to all the windsAnd the relentless smiting of the waves,Awoke one morning from a pleasant dreamOf a good angel dropping in his handA fair, broad gold-piece, in the name of God.He rose and went forth with the early dayFar inland, where the voices of the waves Mellowed and mingled with the whispering leaves,As, through the tangle of the low, thick woods,He searched his traps.
Therein nor beast nor birdHe found; though meanwhile in the reedy poolsThe otter plashed, and underneath the pinesThe partridge drummed: and as his thoughts went backTo the sick wife and little child at home,What marvel that the poor man felt his faithToo weak to bear its burden,—like a ropeThat, strand by strand uncoiling, breaks aboveThe hand that grasps it. “Even now, O Lord!Send me,” he prayed, “the angel of my dream!Nauhaught is very poor; he cannot wait.” Even as he spake he heard at his bare feetA low, metallic clink, and, looking down,He saw a dainty purse with disks of goldCrowding its silken net. Awhile he heldThe treasure up before his eyes, aloneWith his great need, feeling the wondrous coinsSlide through his eager fingers, one by one.So then the dream was true.
The angel broughtOne broad piece only; should he take all these?Who would be wiser, in the blind, dumb woods?The loser, doubtless rich, would scarcely missThis dropped crumb from a table always full.Still, while he mused, he seemed to hear the cryOf a starved child; the sick face of his wifeTempted him. Heart and flesh in fierce revoltUrged the wild license of his savage youthAgainst his later scruples.
Bitter toil, Prayer, fasting, dread of blame, and pitiless eyesTo watch his halting,—had he lost for theseThe freedom of the woodss;—the hunting-groundsOf happy spirits for a walled — in heavenOf everlasting psalms?
One healed the sickVery far off thousands of moons ago:Had he not prayed him night and day to comeAnd cure his bed-bound wife?
Was there a hell?Were all his fathers' people writhing there—Like the poor shell-fish set to boil alive—Forever, dying never?
If he keptThis gold, so needed, would the dreadful GodTorment him like a Mohawk's captive stuckWith slow-consuming splinters?
Would the saintsAnd the white angels dance and laugh to see himBurn like a pitch-pine torch?
His Christian garbSeemed falling from him; with the fear and shameOf Adam naked at the cool of day,He gazed around.
A black snake lay in coilOn the hot sand, a crow with sidelong eyeWatched from a dead bough.
All his Indian loreOf evil blending with a convert's faithIn the supernal terrors of the Book,He saw the Tempter in the coiling snakeAnd ominous, black-winged bird; and all the whileThe low rebuking of the distant wavesStole in upon him like the voice of GodAmong the trees of Eden.
Girding upHis soul's loins with a resolute hand, he thrustThe base thought from him: “Nauhaught, be a man!
Starve, if need be; but, while you live, look outFrom honest eyes on all men, unashamed.God help me!
I am deacon of the church,A baptized, praying Indian!
Should I doThis secret meanness, even the barken knotsOf the old trees would turn to eyes to see it,The birds would tell of it, and all the leavesWhisper above me: Nauhaught is a thief!The sun would know it, and the stars that hideBehind his light would watch me, and at nightFollow me with their sharp, accusing eyes.Yea, thou, God, seest me!” Then Nauhaught drewCloser his belt of leather, dulling thusThe pain of hunger, and walked bravely backTo the brown fishing-hamlet by the sea;And, pausing at the inn-door, cheerily asked:‘Who hath lost aught to-day?’ “I,” said a voice; “Ten golden pieces, in a silken purse,My daughter's handiwork.” He looked, and lo!One stood before him in a coat of frieze,And the glazed hat of a seafaring man,Shrewd-faced, broad-shouldered, with no trace of wings.Marvelling, he dropped within the stranger's handThe silken web, and turned to go his way.But the man said: “A tithe at least is yours;Take it in God's name as an honest man.”And as the deacon's dusky fingers closedOver the golden gift, “Yea, in God's nameI take it, with a poor man's thanks,” he said.
So down the street that, like a river of sand,Ran, white in sunshine, to the summer sea,He sought his home, singing and praising God;And when his neighbors in their careless waySpoke of the owner of the silken purse—A Wellfleet skipper, known in every portThat the Cape opens in its sandy wall—He answered, with a wise smile, to himself:‘I saw the angel where they see a man.’
1870.
The sisters. Annie and Rhoda, sisters twain,Woke in the night to the sound of rain,The rush of wind, the ramp and roarOf great waves climbing a rocky shore.Annie rose up in her bed-gown white,And looked out into the storm and night.‘Hush, and hearken!’ she cried in fear,‘Hearest thou nothing, sister dear?’ “I hear the sea, and the plash of rain,And roar of the northeast hurricane. “Get thee back to the bed so warm,No good comes of watching a storm. “What is it to thee, I fain would know,That waves are roaring and wild winds blow?‘No lover of thine's afloat to missThe harbor-lights on a night like this.’ “But I heard a voice cry out my name,Up from the sea on the wind it came! “Twice and thrice have I heard it call,And the voice is the voice of Estwick Hall!” On her pillow the sister tossed her head.‘Hall of the Heron is safe,’ she said. “In the tautest schooner that ever swamHe rides at anchor in Anisquam. “And, if in peril from swamping seaOr lee shore rocks, would he call on thee?” But the girl heard only the wind and tide,And wringing her small white hands she cried: “O sisterRhoda, there's something wrong;I hear it again, so loud and long. “ Annie!
Annie!I hear it call,And the voice is the voice of Estwick Hall!” Up sprang the elder, with eyes aflame, “Thou liest!
He never would call thy name! “If he did, I would pray the wind and seaTo keep him forever from thee and me!” Then out of the sea blew a dreadful blast;Like the cry of a dying man it passed.The young girl hushed on her lips a groan,But through her tears a strange light shone,—The solemn joy of her heart's releaseTo own and cherish its love in peace.‘Dearest!’ she whispered, under breath, “Life was a lie, but true is death. “The love I hid from myself awayShall crown me now in the light of day. “My ears shall never to wooer list,Never by lover my lips be kissed. “Sacred to thee am I henceforth,Thou in heaven and I on earth!” She came and stood by her sister's bed:‘Hall of the Heron is dead!’ she said. “The wind and the waves their work have done,We shall see him no more beneath the sun. “Little will reck that heart of thine,It loved him not with a love like mine. “I, for his sake, were he but here,Could hem and 'broider thy bridal gear, “Though hands should tremble and eyes be wet,And stitch for stitch in my heart be set. “But now my soul with his soul I wed;Thine the living, and mine the dead!”
1871.
Marguerite.
Massachusetts Bay, 1760.
Upwards of one thousand of the Acadian peasants forcibly taken from their homes on the Gaspereau and Basin of Minas were assigned to the several towns of the Massachusetts colony, the children being bound by the authorities to service or labor.
the robins sang in the orchard, the buds into blossoms grew;Little of human sorrow the buds and the robins knew!Sick, in an alien household, the poor French neutral lay;Into her lonesome garret fell the light of the April day,Through the dusty window, curtained by the spider's warp and woof,On the loose-laid floor of hemlock, on oaken ribs of roof,The bedquilt's faded patchwork, the teacups on the stand,The wheel with flaxen tangle, as it dropped from her sick hand!What to her was the song of the robin, or warm morning light,As she lay in the trance of the dying, heedless of sound or sight?Done was the work of her hands, she had eaten her bitter bread;The world of the alien people lay behind her dim and dead.But her soul went back to its child-time; she saw the sun o'erflowWith gold the Basin of Minas, and set over Gas-pereau;The low, bare flats at ebb-tide, the rush of the sea at flood,Through inlet and creek and river, from dike to upland wood;The gulls in the red of morning, the fish-hawk's rise and fall,The drift of the fog in moonshine, over the dark coast-wall.She saw the face of her mother, she heard the song she sang;And far off, faintly, slowly, the bell for vespers rang!By her bed the hard-faced mistress sat, smoothing the wrinkled sheet,Peering into the face, so helpless, and feeling the ice-cold feet.With a vague remorse atoning for her greed and long abuse,By care no longer heeded and pity too late for use.Up the stairs of the garret softly the son of the mistress stepped,Leaned over the head-board, covering his face with his hands, and wept.Outspake the mother, who watched him sharply, with brow a-frown:‘What!
love you the Papist, the beggar, the charge of the town?’ “Be she Papist or beggar who lies here, I know and God knowsI love her, and fain would go with her wherever she goes! “O mother!
that sweet face came pleading, for love so athirst.You saw but the town-charge; I knew her God's angel at first.” Shaking her gray'head, the mistress hushed down a bitter cry;And awed by the silence and shadow of death drawing nigh,She murmured a psalm of the Bible; but closer the young girl pressed,With the last of her life in her fingers, the cross to her breast.‘My son, come away,’ cried the mother, her voice cruel grown.‘She is joined to her idols, like Ephraim; let her alone!’But he knelt with his hand on her forehead, his lips to her ear,And he called back the soul that was passing: ‘Marguerite, do you hear?’She paused on the threshold of Heaven; love, pity, surprise,Wistful, tender, lit up for an instant the cloud of her eyes.With his heart on his lips he kissed her, but never her cheek grew red,And the words the living long for he spake in the ear of the dead.And the robins sang in the orchard, where buds to blossoms grew;Of the folded hands and the still face never the robins knew!
1871.
The robin. my old Welsh neighbor over the wayCrept slowly out in the sun of spring,Pushed from her ears the locks of gray,And listened to hear the robin sing.Her grandson, playing at marbles, stopped,And, cruel in sport as boys will be,Tossed a stone at the bird, who hoppedFrom bough to bough in the apple-tree.‘Nay!’ said the grandmother; “have you not heard,My poor, bad boy!
of the fiery pit,And how, drop by drop, this merciful birdCarries the water that quenches it? “He brings cool dew in his little bill,And lets it fall on the souls of sin:You can see the mark on his red breast stillOf fires that scorch as he drops it in. “My poor Bron rhuddyn!
my breast-burned bird,Singing so sweetly from limb to limb,Very dear to the heart of Our LordIs he who pities the lost like Him!” ‘Amen!’ I said to the beautiful myth; “Sing, bird of God, in my heart as well:Each good thought is a drop wherewithTo cool and lessen the fires of hell. “Prayers of love like rain-drops fall,Tears of pity are cooling dew,And dear to the heart of Our Lord are allWho suffer like Him in the good they do!”
1871.
The Pennsylvania Pilgrim.
Introductory note.
The beginning of German emigration to America may be traced to the personal influence of WilliamPenn, who in 1677 visited the Continent, and made the acquaintance of an intelligent and highly cultivated circle of Pietists, or Mystics, who, reviving in the seventeenth century the spiritual faith and worship of Tauler and the Friends of God in the fourteenth, gathered about the pastor Spener, and the young and beautiful EleonoraJohannaVonMerlau.
In this circle originated the Frankfort Land Company, which bought of WilliamPenn, the Governor of Pennsylvania, a tract of land near the new city of Philadelphia.
The company's agent in the New World was a rising young lawyer, FrancisDanielPastorius, son of JudgePastorius, of Windsheim, who, at the age of seventeen, entered the University of Altorf.
He studied law at Strasburg, Basle, and Jena, and at Ratisbon, the seat of the Imperial Government, obtained a practical knowledge of international polity.
Successful in all his examinations and disputations, he received the degree of Doctor of Law at Nuremberg in 1676.
In 1679 he was a law-lecturer at Frankfort, where he became deeply interested in the teachings of Dr.Spener.
In 1680-81 he travelled in France, England, Ireland, and Italy with his friend HerrVonRodeck. I was, he says, glad to enjoy again the company of my Christian friends, rather than be with VonRodeck feasting and dancing.In 1683, in company with a small number of German Friends, he emigrated to America, settling upon the Frankfort Company's tract between the Schuylkill and the Delaware rivers.
The township was divided into four hamlets, namely, Germantown, Krisheim, Crefield, and Sommerhausen.
Soon after his arrival he united himself with the Society of Friends, and became one of its most able and devoted members, as well as the recognized head and lawgiver of the settlement.
He married, two years after his arrival, Anneke (Anna), daughter of Dr.Klosterman, of Muhlheim.
In the year 1688 he drew up a memorial against slaveholding, which was adopted by the Germantown Friends and sent up to the Monthly Meeting, and thence to the Yearly Meeting at Philadelphia.
It is noteworthy as the first protest made by a religious body against Negro Slavery.
The original document was discovered in 1844 by the Philadelphia antiquarian, NathanKite, and published in The Friend (Vol.
XVIII. No. 16). It is a bold and direct appeal to the best instincts of the heart.
Have not, he asks, these negroes as much right to fight for their freedom as you have to keep them slaves?
Under the wise direction of Pastorius, the Germantown settlement grew and prospered.
The inhabitants planted orchards and vineyards, and surrounded themselves with souvenirs of their old home.
A large number of them were linen-weavers, as well as small farmers.
The Quakers were the principal sect, but men of all religions were tolerated, and lived together in harmony.
In 1692 Richard Frame published, in what he called verse, a Description of Pennsylvania, in whichhe alludes to the settlement:—
“The German town of which I spoke before,Which is at least in length one mile or more,Where lives High German people and Low Dutch,Whose trade in weaving linen cloth is much,—There grows the flax, as also you may knowThat from the same they do divide the tow.Their trade suits well their habitation,—We find convenience for their occupation.”
Pastorius seems to have been on intimate terms with WilliamPenn, ThomasLloyd, Chief JusticeLogan, Thomas Story, and other leading men in the Province belonging to his own religious society, as also with Kelpius, the learned Mystic of the Wissahickon, with the pastor of the Swedes' church, and the leaders of the Mennonites.
He wrote a description of Pennsylvania, which was published at Frankfort and Leipsic in 1700 and 1701.
His Lives of the Saints, etc., written in German and dedicated to ProfessorSchurmberg, his old teacher, was published in 1690.
He left behind him nlany unpublished manuscripts covering a very wide range of subjects, most of which are now lost.
One huge manuscript folio, entitled Hive Beestock, Melliotropheum Alucar, or Rusca Apium, still remains, containing one thousand pages with about one hundred lines to a page.
It is a medley of knowledge and fancy, history, philosophy, and poetry, written in seven languages.
A large portion of his poetry is devoted to the pleasures of gardening, the description of flowers, and the care of bees.
The following specimen of his punning Latin is addressed to an orchard-pilferer:—
“Quisquis in hae;c furtim reptas viridaria nostraTangere fallaci poma caveto manu,Si non obsequeris faxit Deus omne quod opto,Cum malis nostris ut mala cuncta feras.”
ProfessorOswaldSeidensticker, to whose papers in Der Deutsche Pioneer and that able periodical the Penn Monthly, of Philadelphia, I am indebted for many of the foregoing facts in regard to the German pilgrims of the New World, thus closes his notice of Pastorius:—
No tombstone, not even a record of burial, indicates where his remains have found their last resting-place, and the pardonable desire to associate the homage due to this distinguished man with some visible memento cannot be gratified.
There is no reason to suppose that he was interred in any other place than the Friends' old burying-ground in Germantown, though the fact is not attested by any definite source of information.
After all, this obliteration of the last trace of his earthly existerce is but typical of what has overtaken the times which he represents; thatGermantown which he founded, which saw him live and move, is at present but a quaint idyl of the past, almost a myth, barely remembered and little cared for by the keener race that has succeeded.
The Pilgrims of Plymouth have not lacked historian and poet.
Justice has been done to their faith, courage, and self-sacrifice, and to the mighty influence of their endeavors to establish righteousness on the earth.
The Quaker pilgrims of Pennsylvania, seeking the same object by different means, have not been equally fortunate.
The power of their testimony for truth and holiness, peace and freedom, enforced only by what Milton calls the unresistible might of meekness, has been felt through two centuries in the amelioration of penal severities, the abolition of slavery, the reform of the erring, the relief of the poor and suffering,—felt, in brief, in every step of human progress.
But of the men themselves, with the single exception of WilliamPenn, scarcely anything is known.
Contrasted, from the outset, with the stern, aggressive Puritans of New England, they have come to be regarded as a feeble folk, with a personality as doubtful as their unrecorded graves.
They were not soldiers, like Miles Standish; they had no figure so picturesque as Vane, no leader so rashly brave and haughty as Endicott.
No Cotton Mather wrote their Magnalia; they had no awful drama of supernaturalism in which Satan and his angels were actors;and the only witch mentioned in their simple annals was a poor old Swedish woman, who, on complaint of her countrywomen, was tried and acquitted of everything but imbecility and folly.
Nothing but common place offices of civility came to pass between them and the Indians; indeed, their enemies taunted them with the fact that the savages did not regard them as Christians, but just such men as themselves.
Yet it must be apparent to every careful observer of the progress of American civilization that its two principal currents had their sources in the entirely opposite directions of the Puritan and Quaker colonies.
To use the words of a late writer:
Mulford's Nation, pp. 267, 268.
The historical forces, with which no others may be compared in their influence on the people, have been those of the Puritan and the Quaker.
The strength of the one was in the confession of an invisible Presence, a righteous, eternal Will, which would establish righteousness on earth; and thence arose the conviction of a direct personal responsibility, which could be tempted by no external splendor and could be shaken by no internal agitation, and could not be evaded or transferred.
The strength of the other was the witness in the human spirit to an eternal Word, an Inner Voice which spoke to each alone, while yet it spoke to every man; a Light which each was to follow, and which yet was the light of the world; and all other voices were silent before this, and the solitary path whither it led was more sacred than the worn ways of cathedral-aisles.
It will be sufficiently apparent to the reader that, in the poem which follows, I have attempted nothing beyond a study of the life and times of the Pennsylvania colonist,—a simple picture of a noteworthy man and his locality.
The colors of my sketch are all very sober, toned down to the quiet and dreamy atmosphere through which its subject is visible.
Whether, in the glare and tumult of the present time, such a picture will find favor may well be questioned.
I only know that it has be guiled for me some hours of weariness, and that, whatever may be its measure of public appreciation, it has been to me its own reward.
J. G. W.Amesbury, 5th mo., 1872.
hail to posterity!Hail, future men of Germanopolis!Let the young generations yet to beLook kindly upon this.Think how your fathers left their native land,—Dear German-land!
O sacred hearths and homes!—And, where the wild beast roams,In patience plannedNew forest-homes beyond the mighty sea,There undisturbed and freeTo live as brothers of one family.What pains and cares befell,What trials and what fears,Remember, and wherein we have done wellFollow our footsteps, men of coming years!Where we have failed to doAright, or wisely live,Be warned by us, the better way pursue,And, knowing we were human, even as you,Pity us and forgive!Farewell, Posterity!Farewell, dear Germany!Forevermore farewell!
From the Latin ofFrancisDanelPastoriusin the Germatown Records. 1688.
Prelude. I sing the Pilgrim of a softer climeAnd milder speech than those brave men's who broughtTo the ice and iron of our winter timeA will as firm, a creed as stern, and wroughtWith one mailed hand, and with the other fought.Simply, as fits my theme, in homely rhymeI sing the blue-eyed GermanSpener taught,Through whose veiled, mystic faith the Inward Light,Steady and still, an easy brightness, shone,Transfiguring all things in its radiance white.The garland which his meekness never soughtI bring him; over fields of harvest sownWith seeds of blessing, now to ripeness grown,I bid the sower pass before the reapers' sight.Never in tenderer quiet lapsed the dayFrom Pennsylvania's vales of spring away,Where, forest-walled, the scattered hamlets layAlong the wedded rivers.
One long barOf purple cloud, on which the evening starShone like a jewel on a scimitar,Held the sky's golden gateway.
Through the deepHush of the woods a murmur seemed to creep,The Schuylkill whispering in a voice of sleep.All else was still.
The oxen from their ploughsRested at last, and from their long day's browseCame the dun files of Krisheim's home-bound cows.And the young city, round whose virgin zoneThe rivers like two mighty arms were thrown,Marked by the smoke of evening fires alone,Lay in the distance, lovely even thenWith its fair women and its stately menGracing the forest court of WilliamPenn,Urban yet sylvan; in its rough-hewn framesOf oak and pine the dryads held their claims,And lent its streets their pleasant woodland names.AnnaPastorius down the leafy laneLooked city-ward, then stooped to prune againHer vines and simples, with a sigh of pain.For fast the streaks of ruddy sunset paledIn the oak clearing, and, as daylight failed,Slow, overhead, the dusky night-birds sailed.Again she looked: between green walls of shade.With low-bent head as if with sorrow weighed,DanielPastorius slowly came and said,‘God's peace be with thee, Anna!’ Then he stoodSilent before her, wrestling with the moodOf one who sees the evil and not good.‘What is it, my Pastorius?’ As she spoke,A slow, faint smile across his features broke,Sadder than tears. ‘Dear heart,’ he said, “our folk “Are even as others.
Yea, our goodliest FriendsAre frail; our elders have their selfish ends,And few dare trust the Lord to make amends “For duty's loss.
So even our feeble wordFor the dumb slaves the startled meeting heardAs if a stone its quiet waters stirred; “And, as the clerk ceased reading, there beganA ripple of dissent which downward ranIn widening circles, as from man to man. “Somewhat was said of running before sent,Of tender fear that some their guide outwent,Troublers of Israel.
I was scarce intent “On hearing, for behind the reverend rowOf gallery Friends, in dumb and piteous show,I saw, methought, dark faces full of woe. “And, in the spirit, I was taken whereThey toiled and suffered; I was made awareOf shame and wrath and anguish and despair! “And while the meeting smothered our poor pleaWith cautious phrase, a Voice there seemed to be,As ye have done to these ye do to me! “So it all passed; and the old tithe went onOf anise, mint, and cumin, till the sunSet, leaving still the weightier work undone. “Help, for the good man faileth!
Who is strong,If these be weak?
Who shall rebuke the wrong,If these consent?
How long, O Lord!
how long!” He ceased; and, bound in spirit with the bound,With folded arms, and eyes that sought the ground,Walked musingly his little garden round.About him, beaded with the falling dew,Rare plants of power and herbs of healing grew,Such as VanHelmont and Agrippa knew.For, by the lore of Gorlitz' gentle sage,With the mild mystics of his dreamy ageHe read the herbal signs of nature's page,As once he heard in sweet VonMerlau's
Eleonora JohannaVonMerlau, or, as Sewall the Quaker Historian gives it, VonMerlane, a noble young lady of Frankfort, seems to have held among the Mystics of that city very much such a position as AnnaMariaSchurmaus did among the Labadists of Holland.
WilliamPenn appears to have shared the admiration of her own immediate circle for this accomplished and gifted lady.
bowersFair as herself, in boyhood's happy hours,The pious Spener read his creed in flowers.‘The dear Lord give us patience!’ said his wife,Touching with finger-tip an aloe, rifeWith leaves sharp-pointed like an Aztec knifeOr Carib spear, a gift to WilliamPennFrom the rare gardens of JohnEvelyn,Brought from the Spanish Main by merchantmen. “See this strange plant its steady purpose hold,And, year by year, its patient leaves unfold,Till the young eyes that watched it first are old. “But some time, thou hast told me, there shall comeA sudden beauty, brightness, and perfume,The century-moulded bud shall burst in bloom. “So may the seed which hath been sown to-dayGrow with the years, and, after long delay,Break into bloom, and God's eternal Yea “Answer at last the patient prayers of themWho now, by faith alone, behold its stemCrowned with the flowers of Freedom's diadem. “Meanwhile, to feel and suffer, work and wait,Remains for us. The wrong indeed is great,But love and patience conquer soon or late.” ‘Well hast thou said, my Anna!’ TendererThan youth's caress upon the head of herPastorius laid his hand. “Shall we demur “Because the vision tarrieth?
In an hourWe dream not of, the slow-grown bud may flower,And what was sown in weakness rise in power!” Then through the vine-draped door whose legend read,‘Procul este profani!’ Anna ledTo where their child upon his little bedLooked up and smiled. ‘Dear heart,’ she said, “if weMust bearers of a heavy burden be,Our boy, God willing, yet the day shall see “When from the gallery to the farthest seat,Slave and slave-owner shall no longer meet,But all sit equal at the Master's feet.” On the stone hearth the blazing walnut blockSet the low walls a-glimmer, showed the cockRebuking Peter on the Van Wyck clock,Shone on old tomes of law and physic, sideBy side with Fox and Behmen, played at hideAnd seek with Anna, midst her household prideOf flaxen webs, and on the table, bareOf costly cloth or silver cup, but where,Tasting the fat shads of the Delaware,The courtly Penn had praised the goodwife's cheer,And quoted Horace o'er her home-brewed beer,Till even grave Pastorius smiled to hear.In such a home, beside the Schuylkill's wave,He dwelt in peace with God and man, and gaveFood to the poor and shelter to the slave.For all too soon the New World's scandal shamedThe righteous code by Penn and Sidney framed,And men withheld the human rights they claimed.And slowly wealth and station sanction lent,And hardened avarice, on its gains intent,Stifled the inward whisper of dissent.Yet all the while the burden rested soreOn tender hearts.
At last Pastorius boreTheir warning message to the Church's doorIn God's name; and the leaven of the wordWrought ever after in the souls who heard,And a dead conscience in its grave-clothes stirredTo troubled life, and urged the vain excuseOf Hebrew custom, patriarchal use,Good in itself if evil in abuse.Gravely Pastorius listened, not the lessDiscerning through the decent fig-leaf dressOf the poor plea its shame of selfishness.One Scripture rule, at least, was unforgot;He hid the outcast, and bewrayed him not;And, when his prey the human hunter sought,He scrupled not, while Anna's wise delayAnd proffered cheer prolonged the master's stay,To speed the black guest safely on his way.Yet, who shall guess his bitter grief who lendsHis life to some great cause, and finds his friendsShame or betray it for their private ends?How felt the Master when his chosen stroveIn childish folly for their seats above;And that fond mother, blinded by her love,Besought him that her sons, beside his throne,Might sit on either hand?
Amidst his ownA stranger oft, companionless and lone,God's priest and prophet stands.
The martyr's painIs not alone from scourge and cell and chain;Sharper the pang when, shouting in his train,His weak disciples by their lives denyThe loud hosannas of their daily cry,And make their echo of his truth a lie.His forest home no hermit's cell he found,Guests, motley-minded, drew his hearth around,And held armed truce upon its neutral ground.There Indian chiefs with battle-bows unstrung,Strong, hero-limbed, like those whom Homer sung,Pastorius fancied, when the world was young,Came with their tawny women, lithe and tall,Like bronzes in his friend Von Rodeck's hall,Comely, if black, and not unpleasing all.There hungry folk in homespun drab and grayDrew round his board on Monthly Meeting day,Genial, half merry in their friendly way.Or, haply, pilgrims from the Fatherland,Weak, timid, homesick, slow to understandThe New World's promise, sought his helping hand.Or painful Kelpius,
MagisterJohannKelpius, a graduate of the University of Helmstadt, came to Pennsylvania in 1694, with a company of German Mystics.
They made their home in the woods on the Wissahickon, a little west of the Quaker settlement of Germantown.
Kelpius was a believer in the near approach of the Millennium, and was adevout student of the Book of Revelation, and the Morgen-Rothe of JacobBehmen.
He called his settlement ‘The Woman in the Wilderness’ (Das Weib in der Wueste). He was only twenty-four years of age when he came to America, but his gravity, learning, and devotion placed him at the head of the settlement.
He disliked the Quakers, because he thought they were too exclusive in the matter of ministers.
He was, like most of the Mystics, opposed to the severe doctrinal views of Calvin and even Luther, declaring ‘that he could as little agree with the Damnamus of the Augsburg Confession as with the Anathema of the Council of Trent.’
He died in 1704, sitting in his little garden surrounded by his grieving disciples.
Previous to his death it is said that he cast his famous ‘Stone of Wisdom’ into the river, where that mystic souvenir of the times of VanHelmont, Paracelsus, and Agrippa has lain ever since, undisturbed.
from his hermit denBy Wissahickon, maddest of good men,Dreamed o'er the Chiliast dreams of Petersen.Deep in the woods, where the small river slidSnake-like in shade, the Helmstadt Mystic hid,Weird as a wizard, over arts forbid,Reading the books of Daniel and of John,And Behmen's Morninig-Redness, through the StoneOf Wisdom, vouchsafed to his eyes alone,Whereby he read what man ne'er read before,And saw the visions man shall see no more,Till the great angel, striding sea and shore,Shall bid all flesh await, on land or ships,The warning trump of the Apocalypse,Shattering the heavens before the dread eclipse.Or meek-eyed Mennonist his bearded chinLeaned o'er the gate; or Ranter, pure within,Aired his perfection in a world of sin.Or, talking of old home scenes, Op der GraafTeased the low back-log with his shodden staff,Till the red embers broke into a laughAnd dance of flame, as if they fain would cheerThe rugged face, half tender, half austere,Touched with the pathos of a homesick tear!Or Sluyter,
PeterSluyter, or Schluter, a native of Wesel, united himself with the sect of Labadists, who believed in the Divine commission of JohnDeLabadie, a RomanCatholic priest converted to Protestantism, enthusiastic, eloquent, and evidently sincere in his special calling and election to separate the true and living members of the Church of Christ from the formalism and hypocrisy of the ruling sects.
GeorgeKeith and RobertBarclay visited him at Amsterdam, and afterward at the communities of Herford and Wieward; and, according to GerardCroes, found him so near to them on some points, that they offered to take him into the Society of Friends.
This offer, if it was really made, which is certainly doubtful, was, happily for the Friends at least, declined.
Invited to Herford in Westphalia by Elizabeth, daughter of the Elector Palatine, DeLabadie and his followers preached incessantly, and succeeded in arousing a wild enthusiasm among the people, who neglected their business and gave way to excitements and strange practices.
Men and women, it was said, at the Communion drank and danced together, and private marriages, or spiritual unions, were formed.
Labadie died in 1674 at Altona, in Denmark, maintaining his testimonies to the last. ‘Nothing remains for me,’ he said, ‘except to go to my God.
Death is merely ascending from a lowerand narrower chamber to one higher and holier.’
In 1679, PeterSluyter and JasperDankers were sent to America by the community at the Castle of Wieward.
Their journal, translated from the Dutch and edited by HenryC.Murphy, has been recently published by the Long Island Historical Society.
They made some converts,and among them was the eldest son of Hermanns, the proprietor of a rich tract of land at the head of Chesapeake Bay, known as Bohemia Manor.
Sluyter obtained a grant of this tract, and established upon it a community numbering at one time a hundred souls.
Very contradictory statements are on record regarding his headship of this spiritual family, the discipline of which seems to have been of more than monastic manifested more interest in the world's goods than became a believer in the near Millennium.
He evinces in his journal an overweening spiritual pride, and speaks contemptuously of other professors, especially the Quakers whom he met in his travels.
The latter, on the contrary, seem to have looked favorably upon the Labadists, and uniformly speak of them courteously and kindly.
His journal shows him to have been destitute of common gratitude and Christian charity.
He threw himself upon the generous hospitality of the Friends wherever he went, and repaid their kindness by the coarsest abuse and misrepresentation.
saintly familist, whose wordAs law the Brethren of the Manor heard,Announced the speedy terrors of the Lord,And turned, like Lot at Sodom, from his race,Above a wrecked world with complacent faceRiding secure upon his plank of grace!Haply, from Finland's birchen groves exiled,Manly in thought, in simple ways a child,His white hair floating round his visage mild,The Swedish pastor sought the Quaker's door,Pleased from his neighbor's lips to hear once moreHis long-disused and half-forgotten lore.For both could baffle Babel's lingual curse,And speak in Bion's Doric, and rehearseCleanthes' hymn or Virgil's sounding verse.And oft Pastorius and the meek old manArgued as Quaker and as Lutheran,Ending in Christian love, as they began.With lettered Lloyd on pleasant morns he strayedWhere Sommerhausen over vales of shadeLooked miles away, by every flower delayed,Or song of bird, happy and free with oneWho loved, like him, to let his memory runOver old fields of learning, and to sunHimself in Plato's wise philosophies,And dream with Philo over mysteriesWhereof the dreamer never finds the keys;To touch all themes of thought, nor weakly stopFor doubt of truth, but let the buckets dropDeep down and bring the hidden waters up.
Among the pioneer Friends were many men of learning and broad and liberal views.
Penn was conversant with every department of literature and philosophy.
ThomasLloyd was a ripe and rare scholar.
The great Loganian Library of Philadelphia bears witness to the varied learning and classical taste of its donor, JamesLogan.
Thomas Story, member of the Council of State, Master of the Rolls, and Commissioner of Claims under WilliamPenn, and an able minister of his Society, took a deep interest in scientific questions, and in a letter to his friend Logan, written while on a religious visit to Great Britain, seems to have anticipated the conclusion of modern geologists. ‘I spent,’ he says, ‘some months, especially at Scarborough, during the season attending meetings, at whose high cliffs and the variety of strata therein and their several positions I further learned and was confirmed in some things,—that the earth is of much older date as to the beginning of it than the time assigned in the Holy Scriptures as commonly understood, which is suited to the common capacities of mankind, as to six days of progressive work, by which I understand certain long and competent periods of time, and not natural days.’ It was sometimes made a matter of reproach by the Anabaptists and other sects, that the Quakers read profane writings and philosophies, and that they quoted heathen moralists in support of their views.
Sluyter and Dankers, in their journal of American travels, visiting a Quaker preacher's house at Burlington, on the Delaware, found ‘a volume of Virgil lying on the window, as if it were a common hand-book; also Helmont's book on Medicine (Ortus Mledicince, id est Initia Physica inaudita progressus medicine novus in morborum ultionam ad vitam longam), whom, in an introduction they have made to it, they make to pass for one of their own sect, although in his lifetime he did not know anything about Quakers.’ It would appear from this that the half-mystical, halfscientific writings of the alchemist and philosopher of Vilverde had not escaped the notice of Friends, and that they had included him in their broad eclecticism.
For there was freedom in that wakening timeOf tender souls; to differ was not crime;The varying bells made up the perfect chime.On lips unlike was laid the altar's coal,The white, clear light, tradition-colored, stoleThrough the stained oriel of each human soul.Gathered from many sects, the Quaker broughtHis old beliefs, adjusting to the thoughtThat moved his soul the creed his fathers taught.One faith alone, so broad that all mankindWithin themselves its secret witness find,The soul's communion with the Eternal Mind,The Spirit's law, the Inward Rule and Guide,Scholar and peasant, lord and serf, allied,The polished Penn and Cromwell's Ironside.As still in Hemskerck's Quaker Meeting,‘The Quaker's Meeting,’ a painting by E.Hemskerck (supposed to be EgbertHemskerck the younger, son of EgbertHemskerck the old), in which WilliamPenn and others—among them CharlesII., or the Duke of York—are represented along with the rudest and most stolid class of the British rural population at that period.
Hemskerck came to London from Holland with KingWilliam in 1689.
He delighted in wild, grotesque subjects, such as the nocturnal intercourse of witches and the temptation of St. Anthony.
Whatever was strange and uncommon attracted his free pencil.
Judging from the portrait of Penn, he must have drawn his faces, figures, and costumes from life, although there may be something of caricature in the convulsed attitudes of two or three of the figures. faceBy face in Flemish detail, we may traceHow loose-mouthed boor and fine ancestral graceSat in close contrast,—the clipt-headed churl,Broad market-dame, and simple serving-girlBy skirt of silk and periwig in curl!For soul touched soul; the spiritual treasuretroveMade all men equal, none could rise aboveNor sink below that level of God's love.So, with his rustic neighbors sitting down,The homespun frock beside the scholar's gown,Pastorius to the manners of the townAdded the freedom of the woods, and soughtThe bookless wisdom by experience taught,And learned to love his new-found home, while notForgetful of the old; the seasons wentTheir rounds, and somewhat to his spirit lentOf their own calm and measureless content.Glad even to tears, he heard the robin singHis song of welcome to the Western spring,And bluebird borrowing from the sky his wing.And when the miracle of autumn came,And all the woods with many-colored flameOf splendor, making summer's greenness tame,Burned, unconsumed, a voice without a soundSpake to him from each kindled bush around,And made the strange, new landscape holy ground!And when the bitter north-wind, keen and swift,Swept the white street and piled the dooryard drift,He exercised, as Friends might say, his giftOf verse, Dutch, English, Latin, like the hashOf corn and beans in Indian succotash;Dull, doubtless, but with here and there a flashOf wit and fine conceit,—the good man's playOf quiet fancies, meet to while awayThe slow hours measuring off an idle day.At evening, while his wife put on her lookOf love's endurance, from its niche he tookThe written pages of his ponderous book.And read, in half the languages of man,His ‘Rusca Apium,’ which with bees began,And through the gamut of creation ran.Or, now and then, the missive of some friendIn gray Altorf or storied Niirnberg pennedDropped in upon him like a guest to spendThe night beneath his roof-tree.
MysticalThe fair VonMerlau spake as waters fallAnd voices sound in dreams, and yet withalHuman and sweet, as if each far, low tone,Over the roses of her gardens blownBrought the warm sense of beauty all her own.WiseSpener questioned what his friend could traceOf spiritual influx or of saving graceIn the wild natures of the Indian race.And learned Schurmberg, fain, at times, to lookFrom Talmud, Koran, Veds, and Pentateuch,Sought out his pupil in his far-off nook,To query with him of climatic change,Of bird, beast, reptile, in his forest range,Of flowers and fruits and simples new and strange.And thus the Old and New World reached their handsAcross the water, and the friendly landsTalked with each other from their severed strands.Pastorius answered all: while seed and rootSent from his new home grew to flower and fruitAlong the Rhine and at the Spessart's foot;And, in return, the flowers his boyhood knewSmiled at his door, the same in form and hue,And on his vines the Rhenish clusters grew.No idler he; whoever else might shirk,He set his hand to every honest work,—Farmer and teacher, court and meeting clerk.Still on the town seal his device is found,Grapes, flax, and thread-spool on a trefoil ground,With ‘Vinum, Linum et Textrinum’ wound.One house sufficed for gospel and for law,Where Paul and Grotius, Scripture text and saw,Assured the good, and held the rest in awe.Whatever legal maze he wandered through,He kept the Sermon on the Mount in view,And justice always into mercy grew.No whipping-post he needed, stocks, nor jail,Nor ducking-stool; the orchard-thief grew paleAt his rebuke, the vixen ceased to rail,The usurer's grasp released the forfeit land;The slanderer faltered at the witness-stand,And all men took his counsel for command.Was it caressing air, the brooding loveOf tenderer skies than German land knew of,Green calm below, blue quietness above,Still flow of water, deep repose of woodThat, with a sense of loving FatherhoodAnd childlike trust in the Eternal Good,Softened all hearts, and dulled the edge of hate,Hushed strife, and taught impatient zeal to waitThe slow assurance of the better state?Who knows what goadings in their sterner wayO'er jagged ice, relieved by granite gray,Blew round the men of Massachusetts Bay?What hate of heresy the east-wind woke?What hints of pitiless power and terror spokeIn waves that on their iron coast-line broke?Be it as it may: within the Land of PennThe sectary yielded to the citizen,And peaceful dwelt the many-creeded men.Peace brooded over all. No trumpet stungThe air to madness, and no steeple flungAlarums down from bells at rung.The land slept well.
The Indian from his faceWashed all his war-paint off, and in the placeOf battle-marches sped the peaceful chase,Or wrought for wages at the white man's side,—Giving to kindness what his native prideAnd lazy freedom to all else denied.And well the curious scholar loved the oldTraditions that his swarthy neighbors toldBy wigwam-fires when nights were growing cold,Discerned the fact round which their fancy drewIts dreams, and held their childish faith more trueTo God and man than half the creeds he knew.
In one of his letters addressed to German friends, Pastorius says: ‘These wild men, who never in their life heard Christ's teachings about temperance and contentment, herein far surpass the Christians.
They live far more contented and unconcerned for the morrow.
They do not overreach in trade.
They know nothing of our everlasting pomp and stylishness.
They neither curse nor swear, are temperate in food and drink, and if any of them get drunk, the mouth-Christians are at fault, who, for the sake of accursed lucre, sell them strong drink.’
Again he wrote in 1698 to his father that he finds the Indians reasonable people, willing to accept good teaching and manners, evincing an inward piety toward God, and more eager, in fact, to understand things divine than many among you who in the pulpit teach Christ in word, but by ungodly life deny him.
‘It is evident,’ says ProfessorSeidensticker, ‘Pastorius holds up the Indian as Nature's unspoiled child to the eyes of the European Babel, somewhat after the same manner in which Tacitus used the barbarian Germani to shame his degenerate countrymen.’
As believers in the universality of the Saving Light, the outlook of early Friends upon the heathen was a very cheerful and hopeful one. God was as near to them as to Jew or Anglo-Saxon; as accessible at Timbuctoo as at Rome or Geneva.
Not the letter of Scripture, but the spirit which dictated it, was of saving efficacy.
RobertBarclay is nowhere more powerful than in his argument for the salvation of the heathen, who live according to their light, without knowing even the name of Christ.
WilliamPenn thought Socrates as good a Christian as RichardBaxter.
Early Fathers of the Church, as Origen and JustinMartyr, held broader views on this point than modern Evangelicals.
Even Augustine, from whom Calvin borrowed his theology, admits that he has no controversy with the admirable philosophers Plato and Plotinus. ‘Nor do I think,’ he says in De CIV.
Dei, lib. XVIII., cap. 47, ‘that the Jews dare affirm that none belonged unto God but the Israelites.’
The desert blossomed round him; wheat-fields rolledBeneath the warm wind waves of green and gold;The planted ear returned its hundred-fold.Great clusters ripened in a warmer sunThan that which by the Rhine stream shines uponThe purpling hillsides with low vines o'errun.About each rustic porch the humming-birdTried with light bill, that scarce a petal stirred,The Old World flowers to virgin soil transferred;And the first-fruits of pear and apple, bendingThe young boughs down, their gold and russet blending,Made glad his heart, familiar odors lendingTo the fresh fragrance of the birch and pine,Life-everlasting, bay, and eglantine,And all the subtle scents the woods combine.Fair First-Day mornings, steeped in summer calm,Warm, tender, restful, sweet with woodland balm,Came to him, like some mother-hallowed psalmTo the tired grinder at the noisy wheelOf labor, winding off from memory's reelA golden thread of music.
With no pealOf bells to call them to the house of praise,The scattered settlers through green forest-waysWalked meeting-ward.
In reverent amazeThe Indian trapper saw them, from the dimShade of the alders on the rivulet's rim,Seek the Great Spirit's house to talk with Him.There, through the gathered stillness multipliedAnd made intense by sympathy, outsideThe sparrows sang, and the gold-robin cried,A-swing upon his elm. A faint perfumeBreathed through the open windows of the roomFrom locust-trees, heavy with clustered bloom.Thither, perchance, sore-tried confessors came,Whose fervor jail nor pillory could tame,Proud of the cropped ears meant to be their shame,Men who had eaten slavery's bitter breadIn Indian isles; pale women who had bledUnder the hangman's lash, and bravely saidGod's message through their prison's iron bars;And gray old soldier-converts, seamed with scarsFrom every stricken field of England's wars.Lowly before the Unseen Presence kneltEach waiting heart, till haply some one feltOn his moved lips the seal of silence melt.Or, without spoken words, low breathings stoleOf a diviner life from soul to soul,Baptizing in one tender thought the whole.When shaken hands announced the meeting o'er,The friendly group still lingered at the door,Greeting, inquiring, sharing all the storeOf weekly tidings.
Meanwhile youth and maidDown the green vistas of the woodland strayed,Whispered and smiled and oft their feet delayed.Did the boy's whistle answer back the thrushes?Did light girl laughter ripple through the bushes,As brooks make merry over roots and rushes?Unvexed the sweet air seemed.
Without a woundThe ear of silence heard, and every soundIts place in nature's fine accordance found.And solemn meeting, summer sky and wood,Old kindly faces, youth and maidenhoodSeemed, like God's new creation, very good!And, greeting all with quiet smile and word,Pastorius went his way. The unscared birdSang at his side; scarcely the squirrel stirredAt his hushed footstep on the mossy sod;And, wheresoe'er the good man looked or trod,He felt the peace of nature and of God.His social life wore no ascetic form,He loved all beauty, without fear of harm,And in his veins his Teuton blood ran warm.Strict to himself, of other men no spy,He made his own no circuit-judge to tryThe freer conscience of his neighbors by.With love rebuking, by his life alone,Gracious and sweet, the better way was shown,The joy of one, who, seeking not his own,And faithful to all scruples, finds at lastThe thorns and shards of duty overpast,And daily life, beyond his hope's forecast,Pleasant and beautiful with sight and sound,And flowers upspringing in its narrow round,And all his days with quiet gladness crowned.He sang not; but, if sometimes tempted strong,He hummed what seemed like Altorf's Burschensong;His good wife smiled, and did not count it wrong.For well he loved his boyhood's brother band;His Memory, while he trod the New World's strand,A double-ganger walked the Fatherland!If, when on frosty Christmas eves the lightShone on his quiet hearth, he missed the sightOf Yule-log, Tree, and Christ-child all in white;And closed his eyes, and listened to the sweetOld wait-songs sounding down his native street,And watched again the dancers' mingling feet;Yet not the less, when once the vision passed,He held the plain and sober maxims fastOf the dear Friends with whom his lot was cast.Still all attuned to nature's melodies,He loved the bird's song in his dooryard trees,And the low hum of home-returning bees;The blossomed flax, the tulip-trees in bloomDown the long street, the beauty and perfumeOf apple-boughs, the mingling light and gloomOf Sommerhausen's woodlands, woven throughWith sun—threads; and the music the wind drew,Mournful and sweet, from leaves it overblew.And evermore, beneath this outward sense,And through the common sequence of events,He felt the guiding hand of ProvidenceReach out of space.
A Voice spake in his ear,And lo!
all other voices far and nearDied at that whisper, full of meanings clear.The Light of Life shone round him; one by oneThe wandering lights, that all-misleading run,Went out like candles paling in the sun.That Light he followed, step by step, where'erIt led, as in the vision of the seerThe wheels moved as the spirit in the clearAnd terrible crystal moved, with all their eyesWatching the living splendor sink or rise,Its will their will, knowing no otherwise.Within himself he found the law of right,He walked by faith and not the letter's sight,And read his Bible by the Inward Light.And if sometimes the slaves of form and rule,Frozen in their creeds like fish in winter's pool,Tried the large tolerance of his liberal school,His door was free to men of every name,He welcomed all the seeking souls who came,And no man's faith he made a cause of blame.But best he loved in leisure hours to seeHis own dear Friends sit by him knee to knee,In social converse, genial, frank, and free.There sometimes silence (it were hard to tellWho owned it first) upon the circle fell,Hushed Anna's busy wheel, and laid its spellOn the black boy who grimaced by the hearth,To solemnize his shining face of mirth;Only the old clock ticked amidst the dearthOf sound; nor eye was raised nor hand was stirredIn that soul-sabbath, till at last some wordOf tender counsel or low prayer was heard.Then guests, who lingered but farewell to sayAnd take love's message, went their homeward way;So passed in peace the guileless Quaker's day.His was the Christian's unsung Age of Gold,A truer idyl than the bards have toldOf Arno's banks or Arcady of old.Where still the Friends their place of burial keep,And century-rooted mosses o'er it creep,The Niirnberg scholar and his helpmeet sleep.And Anna's aloe?
If it flowered at lastIn Bartram's garden, did JohnWoolman castA glance upon it as he meekly passed?And did a secret sympathy possessThat tender soul, and for the slave's redressLend hope, strength, patience?
It were vain to guess.Nay, were the plant itself but mythical,Set in the fresco of tradition's wallLike Jotham's bramble, mattereth not at all.Enough to know that, through the winter's frostAnd summer's heat, no seed of truth is lost,And every duty pays at last its cost.For, ere Pastorius left the sun and air,God sent the answer to his life-long prayer;The child was born beside the Delaware,Who, in the power a holy purpose lends,Guided his people unto nobler ends,And left them worthier of the name of Friends.And lo!
the fulness of the time has come,And over all the exile's Western home,From sea to sea the flowers of freedom bloom!And joy-bells ring, and silver trumpets blow;But not for thee, Pastorius!
Even soThe world forgets, but the wise angels know.KingVolmer and Elsie.
After the Danish of Christian winter. where, over heathen doom-rings and gray stones of the Horg,In its little Christian city stands the church of Vordingborg,In merry mood KingVolmer sat, forgetful of his power,As idle as the Goose of Gold that brooded on his tower.Out spake the King to Henrik, his young and faithful squire:‘Dar'st trust thy little Elsie, the maid of thy desire?’ “Of all the men in Denmark she loveth only me:As true to me is Elsie as thy Lily is to thee.” Loud laughed the king: “To-morrow shall bring another day,
A common saying of Valdemar; hence his sobriquet Alterday.
When I myself will test her; she will not say me nay.”Thereat the lords and gallants, that round about him stood,Wagged all their heads in concert and smiled as courtiers should.The gray lark sings o'er Vordingborg, and on the ancient townFrom the tall tower of Valdemar the Golden Goose looks down;The yellow grain is waving in the pleasant wind of morn,The wood resounds with cry of hounds and blare of hunter's horn.In the garden of her father little Elsie sits and spins,And, singing with the early birds, her daily task begins.Gay tulips bloom and sweet mint curls around her garden-bower,But she is sweeter than the mint and fairer than the flower.About her form her kirtle blue clings lovingly, and, whiteAs snow, her loose sleeves only leave her small, round wrists in sight;Below, the modest petticoat can only half concealThe motion of the lightest foot that ever turned a wheel.The cat sits purring at her side, bees hum in sunshine warm;But, look!
she starts, she lifts her face, she shade sit with her arm.And, hark!
a train of horsemen, with sound of dog and horn,Come leaping o'er the ditches, come trampling down the corn!Merrily rang the bridle-reins, and scarf and plume streamed gay,As fast beside her father's gate the riders held their way;And one was brave in scarlet cloak, with golden spur on heel,And, as he checked his foaming steed, the maiden checked her wheel. “All hail among thy roses, the fairest rose to me!For weary months in secret my heart has longed for thee!”What noble knight was this?
What words for modest maiden's ear?She dropped a lowly courtesy of bashfulness and fear.She lifted up her spinning-wheel; she fain would seek the door,Trembling in every limb, her cheek with blushes crimsoned o'er. “Nay, fear me not,” the rider said, “I offer heart and hand,Bear witness these good Danish knights who round about me stand. “I grant you time to think of this, to answer as you may,For to-morrow, little Elsie, shall bring another day.”He spake the old phrase slyly as, glancing round his train,He saw his merry followers seek to hide their smiles in vain. “The snow of pearls I'll scatter in your curls of golden hair,I'll line with furs the velvet of the kirtle that you wear;All precious gems shall twine your neck; and in a chariot gayYou shall ride, my little Elsie, behind four steeds of gray. “And harps shall sound, and flutes shall play, and brazen lamps shall glow;On marble floors your feet shall weave the dances to and fro.At frosty eventide for us the blazing hearth shall shine,While, at our ease, we play at draughts, and drink the blood-red wine.” Then Elsie raised her head and met her wooer face to face;A roguish smile shone in her eye and on her lip found place.Back from her low white forehead the curls of gold she threw,And lifted up her eyes to his, steady and clear and blue. “I am a lowly peasant, and you a gallant knight;I will not trust a love that soon may cool and turn to slight.If you would wedme henceforth be a peasant, not a lord;I bid you hang upon the wall your tried and trusty sword.” “To please you, Elsie, I will lay keen Dynadel away,And in its place will swing the scythe and mow your father's hay.” “Nay, but your gallant scarlet cloak my eyes can never bear;A Vadmal coat, so plain and gray, is all that you must wear.” ‘Well, Vadmal will I wear for you,’ the rider gayly spoke,‘And on the Lord's high altar I'll lay my scarlet cloak.’ ‘But mark,’ she said, “no stately horse my peasant love must ride,A yoke of steers before the plough is all that he must guide.” The knight looked down upon his steed: “Well, let him wander free:No other man must ride the horse that has been backed by me.Henceforth I'll tread the furrow and to my oxen talk,If only little Elsie beside my plough will walk.” “You must take from out your cellar cask of wine and flask and can;The homely mead I brew you may serve a peasant man.” “Most willingly, fair Elsie, I'll drink that mead of thine,And leave my minstrel's thirsty throat to drain my generous wine.” “Now break your shield asunder, and shatter sign and boss,Unmeet for peasant-wedded arms, your knightly knee across.And pull me down your castle from top to basement wall,And let your plough trace furrows in the ruins of your hall!” Then smiled he with a lofty pride; right well at last he knewThe maiden of the spinning-wheel was to her troth plight true. “Ah, roguish little Elsie!
you act your part full well:You know that I must bear my shield and in my castle dwell! “The lions ramping on that shield between the hearts aflameKeep watch o'er Denmark's honor, and guard her ancient name.
For know that I am Volmer; I dwell in yonder towers,Who ploughs them ploughs up Denmark, this goodly home of ours! “I tempt no more, fair Elsie!
your heart I know is true;Would God that all our maidens were good and pure as you!Well have you pleased your monarch, and he shall well repay;God's peace!
Farewell! To-morrow will bring another day!” He lifted up his bridle hand, he spurred his good steed then,And like a whirl-blast swept away with all his gallant men.The steel hoofs beat the rocky path; again on winds of mornThe wood resounds with cry of hounds and blare of hunter's horn.‘Thou true and ever faithful!’ the listening Henrik cried;And, leaping o'er the green hedge, he stood by Elsie's side.None saw the fond embracing, save, shining from afar,The Golden Goose that watched them from the tower of Valdemar.O darling girls of Denmark!
of all the flowers that throngHer vales of spring the fairest, I sing for you my song.No praise as yours so bravely rewards the singer's skill;Thank God!
of maids like Elsie the land has plenty still!
1872.
The Three Bells. beneath the low-hung night cloudThat raked her splintering mastThe good ship settled slowly,The cruel leak gained fast.Over the awful oceanHer signal guns pealed out.Dear God!
was that Thy answerFrom the horror round about?A voice came down the wild wind,‘Ho!
ship ahoy!’ its cry: “Our stout Three Bells of GlasgowShall lay till daylight by!” Hour after hour crept slowly,Yet on the heaving swellsTossed up and down the ship-lights,The lights of the Three Bells!And ship to ship made signals,Man answered back to man,While oft, to cheer and hearten,The Three Bells nearer ran;And the captain from her taffrailSent down his hopeful cry:‘Take heart!
Hold on!’ he shouted‘The Three Bells shall lay by!’All night across the watersThe tossing lights shone clear;All night from reeling taffrailThe Three Bells sent her cheer.And when the dreary watchesOf storm and darkness passed,Just as the wreck lurched under,All souls were saved at last.Sail on, Three Bells, forever,In grateful memory sail!Ring on, Three Bells of rescue,Above the wave and gale!Type of the Love eternal,Repeat the Master's cry,As tossing through our darknessThe lights of God draw nigh!
1872.
JohnUnderhill. A score of years had come and goneSince the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth stone,When CaptainUnderhill, bearing scarsFrom Indian ambush and Flemish wars,Left three-hilled Boston and wandered down,East by north, to Cocheco town.With Vane the younger, in counsel sweet,He had sat at AnnaHutchinson's feet,And, when the bolt of banishment fellOn the head of his saintly oracle,He had shared her ill as her good report,And braved the wrath of the General Court.He shook from his feet as he rode awayThe dust of the Massachusetts Bay.The world might bless and the world might ban,What did it matter the perfect man,To whom the freedom of earth was given,Proof against sin, and sure of heaven?He cheered his heart as he rode alongWith screed of Scripture and holy song,Or thought how he rode with his lances freeBy the Lower Rhine and the Zuyder-Zee,Till his wood-path grew to a trodden road,And Hilton Point in the distance showed.He saw the church with the block-house nigh,The two fair rivers, the flakes thereby, And, tacking to windward, low and crank,The little shallop from Strawberry Bank;And he rose in his stirrups and looked abroadOver land and water, and praised the Lord.Goodly and stately and grave to see,Into the clearing's space rode he,With the sun on the hilt of his sword in sheath,And his silver buckles and spurs beneath,And the settlers welcomed him, one and all,From swift Quampeagan to Gonic Fall.And he said to the elders: “Lo, I comeAs the way seemed open to seek a home.Somewhat the Lord hath wrought by my handsIn the Narragansett and Netherlands,And if here ye have work for a Christian man,I will tarry, and serve ye as best I can.I boast not of gifts, but fain would ownThe wonderful favor God hath shown,The special mercy vouchsafed one dayOn the shore of Narragansett Bay,As I sat, with my pipe, from the camp aside,And mused like Isaac at eventide.A sudden sweetness of peace I found,A garment of gladness wrapped me roundI felt from the law of works released,The strife of the flesh and spirit ceased,My faith to a full assurance grew,And all I had hoped for myself I knew.Now, as God appointeth, I keep my way,I shall not stumble, I shall not stray;He hath taken away my fig-leaf dress,I wear the robe of His righteousness;And the shafts of Satan no more availThan Pequot arrows on Christian mail. “‘Tarry with us,’ the settlers cried,‘Thou man of God, as our ruler and guide.’ And CaptainUnderhill bowed his head.‘The will of the Lord be done!’ he said.And the morrow beheld him sitting downIn the ruler's seat in Cocheco town.And he judged therein as a just man should;His words were wise arid his rule was good;He coveted not his neighbor's land,From the holding of bribes he shook his hand;And through the camps of the heathen ranA wholesome fear of the valiant man.But the heart is deceitful, the good Book saith,And life hath ever a savor of death.Through hymns of triumph the tempter calls,And whoso thinketh he standeth falls.Alas!
ere their round the seasons ran,There was grief in the soul of the saintly man.The tempter's arrows that rarely failHad found the joints of his spiritual mail;And men took note of his gloomy air,The shame in his eye, the halt in his prayer,The signs of a battle lost within,The pain of a soul in the coils of sin.Then a whisper of scandal linked his nameWith broken vows and a life of blame;And the people looked askance on himAs he walked among them sullen and grim,Ill at ease, and bitter of word,And prompt of quarrel with hand or sword.None knew how, with prayer and fasting still,He strove in the bonds of his evil will;But he shook himself like Samson at length,And girded anew his loins of strength,And bade the crier go up and downAnd call together the wondering town.Jeer and murmur and shaking of headCeased as he rose in his place and said: “Men, brethren, and fathers, well ye knowHow I came among you a year ago,Strong in the faith that my soul was freedFrom sin of feeling, or thought, or deed.I have sinned, I own it with grief and shame,But not with a lie on my lips I came.In my blindness I verily thought my heartSwept and garnished in every part.He chargeth His angels with folly; He seesThe heavens unclean.
Was I more than these?I urge no plea.
At your feet I layThe trust you gave me, and go my way.Hate me or pity me, as you will,The Lord will have mercy on sinners still;And I, who am chiefest, say to all,Watch and pray, lest ye also fall. “No voice made answer: a sob so lowThat only his quickened ear could knowSmote his heart with a bitter pain,As into the forest he rode again,And the veil of its oaken leaves shut downOn his latest glimpse of Cocheco town.Crystal-clear on the man of sinThe streams flashed up, and the sky shone in;On his cheek of fever the cool wind blew,The leaves dropped on him their tears of dew,And angels of God, in the pure, sweet guiseOf flowers, looked on him with sad surprise.Was his ear at fault that brook and breezeSang in their saddest of minor keys?What was it the mournful wood-thrush said?What whispered the pine-trees overhead?Did he hear the Voice on his lonely wayThat Adam heard in the cool of day?Into the desert alone rode he,Alone with the Infinite Purity;And, bowing his soul to its tender rebuke,As Peter did to the Master's look,He measured his path with prayers of painFor peace with God and nature again.And in after years to Cocheco cameThe bruit of a once familiar name;How among the Dutch of New Netherlands,From wild Danskamer to Haarlem sandls,A penitent soldier preached the Word,And smote the heathen with Gideon's sword!And the heart of Boston was glad to hearHow he harried the foe on the long frontier,And heaped on the land against him barredThe coals of his generous watch and ward.Frailest and bravest!
the Bay State stillCounts with her worthies JohnUnderhill.
1873.
Conductor Bradley.
A railway conductor who lost his life in an accident on a Connecticut railway, May9, 1873.
Conductor Bradley, (always may his nameBe said with reverence!) as the swift doom came,Smitten to death, a crushed and mangled frame,Sank, with the brake he grasped just where he stoodTo do the utmost that a brave man could,And die, if needful, as a true man should.Men stooped above him; women dropped their tearsOn that poor wreck beyond all hopes or fears,Lost in the strength and glory of his years.What heard they?
Lo! the ghastly lips of pain,Dead to all thought save duty's, moved again:‘Put out the signals for the other train!’No nobler utterance since the world beganFrom lips of saint or martyr ever ran,Electric, through the sympathies of man.Ah me!
how poor and noteless seem to thisThe sick-bed dramas of self-consciousness,Our sensual fears of pain and hopes of bliss!Oh, grand, supreme endeavor!
Not in vainThat last brave act of failing tongue and brain!Freighted with life the downward rushing train,Following the wrecked one, as wave follows wave,Obeyed the warning which the dead lips gave.Others he saved, himself he could not save.Nay, the lost life was saved.
He is not deadWho in his record still the earth shall treadWith God's clear aureole shining round his head.We bow as in the dust, with all our prideOf virtue dwarfed the noble deed beside.God give us grace to live as Bradley died!
1873.
The witch of Wenham.
The house is still standing in Danvers, Mass., where, it is said, a suspected witch was confined overnight in the attic, which was bolted fast.
In the morning when the constable came to take her to Salem for trial she was missing, although the door was still bolted.
Her escape was doubtless aided by her friends, but at the time it was attributed to Satanic interference.
I along Crane River's sunny slopesBlew warm the winds of May,And over Naumkeag's ancient oaksThe green outgrew the gray.The grass was green on Rial-side,The early birds at willWaked up the violet in its dell,The wind-flower on its hill. “Where go you, in your Sunday coat,Son Andrew, tell me, pray.” “For striped perch in Wenham LakeI go to fish to-day.” “Unharmed of thee in Wenham LakeThe mottled perch shall be:A blue-eyed witch sits on the bankAnd weaves her net for thee.She weaves her golden hair; she singsHer spell-song low and faint;The wickedest witch in Salem jailIs to that girl a saint. “ “Nay, mother, hold thy cruel tongue;God knows,” the young man cried, “He never made a whiter soulThan hers by Wenham side.She tends her mother sick and blind,And every want supplies;To her above the blessed BookShe lends her soft blue eyes.Her voice is glad with holy songs,Her lips are sweet with prayer;Go where you will, in ten miles roundIs none more good and fair. “ “Son Andrew, for the love of GodAnd of thy mother, stay!”She clasped her hands, she wept aloud,But Andrew rode away. “O reverend sir, my Andrew's soulThe Wenham witch has caught;She holds him with the curled goldWhereof her snare is wrought. She charms him with her great blue eyes,She binds him with her hair;Oh, break the spell with holy words,Unbind him with a prayer! “‘Take heart,’ the painful preacher said, “This mischief shall not be;The witch shall perish in her sinsAnd Andrew shall go free.Our poor AnnPutnam testifiesShe saw her weave a spell,Bare-armed, loose-haired, at full of moon,Around a dried — up well.Spring up, O well!
she softly sangThe Hebrew's old refrain(For Satan uses Bible words),Till water flowed amain.And many a goodwife heard her speakBy Wenham water wordsThat made the buttercups take wingsAnd turn to yellow birds.They say that swarming wild bees seekThe hive at her command;And fishes swim to take their foodFrom out her dainty hand.Meek as she sits in meeting-time,The godly ministerNotes well the spell that doth compelThe young men's eyes to her.The mole upon her dimpled chinIs Satan's seal and sign;Her lips are red with evil breadAnd stain of unblest wine.For Tituba, my Indian, saithAt Quasycung she tookThe Black Man's godless sacramentAnd signed his dreadful book.Last night my sore-afflicted childAgainst the young witch cried.To take her MarshalHerrick ridesEven now to Wenham side. “The marshal in his saddle sat,His daughter at his knee; “I go to fetch that arrant witch,Thy fair playmate,” quoth he. “Her spectre walks the parsonage,And haunts both hall and stair;They know her by the great blue eyesAnd floating gold of hair.” “They lie, they lie, my father dear!No foul old witch is she,But sweet and good and crystal-pureAs Wenham waters be.” “I tell thee, child, the Lord hath setBefore us good and ill,And woe to all whose carnal lovesOppose His righteous will. Between Him and the powers of hellChoose thou, my child, to-day:No sparing hand, no pitying eye,When God commands to slay! “He went his way; the old wives shookWith fear as he drew nigh;The children in the dooryards heldTheir breath as he passed by.Too well they knew the gaunt gray horseThe grim witch-hunter rodeThe pale Apocalyptic beastBy grisly Death bestrode.
Ii. Oh, fair the face of Wenham LakeUpon the young girl's shone,Her tender mouth, her dreaming eyes,Her yellow hair outblown.By happy youth and love attunedTo natural harmonies, The singing birds, the whispering wind,She sat beneath the trees.Sat shaping for her bridal dressHer mother's wedding gown,When lo!
the marshal, writ in hand,From Alford hill rode down.His face was hard with cruel fear,He grasped the maiden's hands: “Come with me unto Salem town,For so the law commands!” “Oh, let me to my mother sayFarewell before I go!”He closer tied her little handsUnto his saddle bow.‘Unhand me,’ cried she piteously,‘For thy sweet daughter's sake.’ ‘I'll keep my daughter safe,’ he said,‘From the witch of Wenham Lake.’ “Oh, leave me for my mother's sake,She needs my eyes to see.” “Those eyes, young witch, the crows shall peckFrom off the gallows-tree.” He bore her to a farm-house old,And up its stairway long,And closed on her the garret-doorWith iron bolted strong.The day died out, the night came down:Her evening prayer she said,While, through the dark, strange faces seemedTo mock her as she prayed.The present horror deepened allThe fears her childhood knew;The awe wherewith the air was filledWith every breath she drew.And could it be, she trembling asked,Some secret thought or sinHad shut good angels from her heartAnd let the bad ones in?Had she in some forgotten dreamLet go her hold on Heaven,And sold herself unwittinglyTo spirits unforgiven?Oh, weird and still the dark hours passed;No human sound she heard,But up and down the chimney stackThe swallows moaned and stirred.And o'er her, with a dread surmiseOf evil sight and sound,The blind bats on their leathern wingsWent wheeling round and round.Low hanging in the midnight skyLooked in a half-faced moon.Was it a dream, or did she hearHer lover's whistled tune?She forced the oaken scuttle back;A whisper reached her ear:‘Slide down the roof to me,’ it said,‘So softly none may hear.’She slid along the sloping roofTill from its eaves she hung,And felt the loosened shingles yieldTo which her fingers clung.Below, her lover stretched his handsAnd touched her feet so small; “Drop down to me, dear heart,” he said,‘My arms shall break the fall.’He set her on his pillion soft,Her arms about him twined;And, noiseless as if velvet-shod,They left the house behind.But when they reached the open way,Full free the rein he cast;Oh, never through the mirk midnightRode man and maid more fast.Along the wild wood-paths they sped,The bridgeless streams they swam;At set of moon they passed the Bass,At sunrise Agawam.At high noon on the MerrimacThe ancient ferrymanForgot, at times, his idle oars,So fair a freight to scan.And when from off his grounded boatHe saw them mount and ride, “God keep her from the evil eye,And harm of witch!” he cried.The maiden laughed, as youth will laughAt all its fears gone by;‘He does not know,’ she whispered low,‘A little witch am
I.’All day he urged his weary horse,And, in the red sundown,Drew rein before a friendly doorIn distant Berwick town.A fellow-feeling for the wrongedThe Quaker people felt;And safe beside their kindly hearthsThe hunted maiden dwelt,Until from off its breast the landThe haunting horror threw,And hatred, born of ghastly dreams,To shame and pity grew.Sad were the year's spring morns, and sadIts golden summer day,But blithe and glad its withered fields,And skies of ashen gray;For spell and charm had power no more,The spectres ceased to roam,And scattered households knelt againAround the hearths of home.And when once more by Beaver DamThe meadow-lark outsang,And once again on all the hillsThe early violets sprang,And all the windy pasture slopesLay green within the armsOf creeks that bore the salted seaTo pleasant inland farms,The smith filed off the chains he forged,The jail-bolts backward fell;And youth and hoary age came forthLike souls escaped from hell.
1877.
KingSolomon and the Ants. out from JerusalemThe king rode with his greatWar chiefs and lords of state,And Sheba's queen with them;Comely, but black withal,To whom, perchance, belongsThat wondrous Song of songs,Sensuous and mystical,Whereto devout souls turnIn fond, ecstatic dream,And through its earth-born themeThe Love of loves discern.Proud in the Syrian sun,In gold and purple sheen,The dusky Ethiop queenSmiled on KingSolomon.Wisest of men, he knewThe languages of allThe creatures great or smallThat trod the earth or flew.Across an ant-hill ledThe king's path, and he heardIts small folk, and their wordHe thus interpreted: “Here comes the king men greetAs wise and good and just,To crush us in the dustUnder his heedless feet.” The great king bowed his head,And saw the wide surpriseOf the Queen of Sheba's eyesAs he told her what they said.‘O king!’ she whispered sweet, “Too happy fate have theyWho perish in thy wayBeneath thy gracious feet! “Thou of the God-lent crown,Shall these vile creatures dareMurmur against thee whereThe knees of kings kneel down?” ‘Nay,’ Solomon replied, “The wise and strong should seekThe welfare of the weak,”And turned his horse aside.His train, with quick alarm,Curved with their leader roundThe ant-hill's peopled mound,And left it free from harm.The jewelled head bent low;‘O king!’ she said, “henceforthThe secret of thy worthAnd wisdom well I know. “Happy must be the StateWhose ruler heedeth moreThe murmurs of the poorThan flatteries of the great.”
1877.
In the old South.
On the 8th of July, 1677,MargaretBrewster with four other Friends went into the South Church in time of meeting, in sackcloth, with ashes upon her head, barefoot, and her face blackened, and delivered a warning from the great God of Heaven and Earth to the Rulers and Magistrates of Boston.For the offence she was sentenced to be whipped at a cart's tail up and down the Town, with twenty lashes.
she came and stood in the Old South Church,A wonder and a sign,With a look the old-time sibyls wore,Half-crazed and half-divine.Save the mournful sackcloth about her wound,Unclothed as the primal mother,With limbs that trembled and eyes that blazedWith a fire she dare not smother.Loose on her shoulders fell her hair,With sprinkled ashes gray;She stood in the broad aisle strange and weirdAs a soul at the judgment day.And the minister paused in his sermon's midst,And the people held their breath,For these were the words the maiden spokeThrough lips as the lips of death: “Thus saith the Lord, with equal feetAll men my courts shall tread,And priest and ruler no more shall eatMy people up like bread!Repent!
repent! ere the Lord shall speakIn thunder and breaking seals!Let all souls worship Him in the wayHis light within reveals. “She shook the dust from her naked feet,And her sackcloth closer drew,And into the porch of the awe-hushed churchShe passed like a ghost from view.They whipped her away at the tail oa the cartThrough half the streets of the town,But the words she uttered that day nor fireCould burn nor water drown.And now the aisles of the ancient churchBy equal feet are trod,And the bell that swings in its belfry ringsFreedom to worship God!And now whenever a wrong is doneIt thrills the conscious walls;The stone from the basement cries aloudAnd the beam from the timber calls.There are steeple-houses on every hand,And pulpits that bless and ban,And the Lord will not grudge the single churchThat is set apart for man.For in two commandments are all the lawAnd the prophets under the sun,And the first is last and the last is first,And the twain are verily one.So, long as Boston shall Boston be,And her bay-tides rise and fall,Shall freedom stand in the Old South ChurchAnd plead for the rights of all!
1877.
The henchman. my lady walks her morning round,My lady's page her fleet greyhound,My lady's hair the fond winds stir,And all the birds make songs for her.Her thrushes sing in Rathburn bowers,And Rathburn side is gay with flowers;But ne'er like hers, in flower or bird,Was beauty seen or music heard.The distance of the stars is hers;The least of all her worshippers,The dust beneath her dainty heel,She knows not that I see or feel.Oh, proud and calm!—she cannot knowWhere'er she goes with her I go;Oh, cold and fair!—she cannot guessI kneel to share her hound's caress!Gay knights beside her hunt and hawk,I rob their ears of her sweet talk;Her suitors come from east and west,I steal her smiles from every guest.Unheard of her, in loving words,I greet her with the song of birds;I reach her with her green-armed bowers,I kiss her with the lips of flowers.The hound and I are on her trail,The wind and I uplift her veil;As if the calm, cold moon she were,And I the tide, I follow her.As unrebuked as they, I shareThe license of the sun and air, And in a common homage hideMy worship from her scorn and pride.World-wide apart, and yet so near,I breathe her charmed atmosphere,Wherein to her my service bringsThe reverence due to holy things.Her maiden pride, her haughty name,My dumb devotion shall not shame;The love that no return doth craveTo knightly levels lifts the slave.No lance have I, in joust or fight,To splinter in my lady's sight ;But, at her feet, how blest were IFor any need of hers to die!
1877.
The dead feast of the Kol-folk.
E.B.Tylor in his Primitive Culture, chapter XII., gives an account of the reverence paid the dead by the Kol tribes of Chota Nagpur, Assam.
When a Ho or Munda, he says, has been burned on the funeral pile, collected morsels of his bones are carried in procession with a solemn, ghostly, sliding step, keeping time to the deep-sounding drum, and when the old woman who carries the bones on her bamboo tray lowers it from time to time, then girls who carry pitchers and brass vessels mournfully reverse them to show that they are empty; thus the remains are taken to visit every house in the village, and every dwelling of a friend or relative for miles, and the inmates come out to mourn and praise the goodness of the departed; the bones are carried to all the dead man's favorite haunts, to the fields he cultivated, to the grove he planted, to the threshing-floor where he worked, to the village dance-room where he made merry.
At last they are taken to the grave, and buried in an earthen vase upon a store of food, covered with one of those huge stone slabs which European visitors wonder at in the districts of the aborigines of India.In the Journal of the Asiatic Society, Bengal, vol.
IX., p. 795, is a Ho dirge.
we have opened the door,Once, twice, thrice!We have swept the floor,We have boiled the rice.Come hither, come hither!Come from the far lands,Come from the star lands,Come as before!We lived long together,We loved one another;Come back to our life.Come father, come mother,Come sister and brother,Child, husband, and wife,For you we are sighing.Come take your old places,Come look in our faces,The dead on the dying,Come home!We have opened the door,Once, twice, thrice!We have kindled the coals,And we boil the riceFor the feast of souls.Come hither, come hither!Think not we fear you,Whose hearts are so near you.Come tenderly thought on,Come all unforgotten, Come from the shadow-lands,From the dim meadow-landsWhere the pale grasses bendLow to our sighing.Come father, come mother,Come sister and brother,Come husband and friend,The dead to the dying,Come home!We have opened the doorYou entered so oft;For the feast of soulsWe have kindled the coals,And we boil the rice soft.Come you who are dearestTo us who are nearest,Come hither, come hither,From out the wild weather;The storm clouds are flying,The peepul is sighing;Come in from the rain.Come father, come mother,Come sister and brother,Come husband and lover,Beneath our roof-cover.Look on us again,The dead on the dying,Come home!We have opened the door!For the feast of soulsWe have kindled the coalsWe may kindle no more!
Snake, fever, and famine,The curse of the Brahmin,The sun and the dew,They burn us, they bite us,They waste us and smite usOur days are but few!In strange lands far yonderTo wonder and wanderWe hasten to you.List then to our sighing,While yet we are here:Nor seeing nor hearing,We wait without fearing,To feel you draw near.O dead, to the dyingCome home!
1879.
The Khan's Devil. the Khan came from Bokhara townTo Hamza, santon of renown. “My head is sick, my hands are weak;Thy help, O holy man, I seek.” In silence marking for a spaceThe Khan's red eyes and purple face,Thick voice, and loose, uncertain tread,‘Thou hast a devil!’ Hamza said.‘Allah forbid!’ exclaimed the Khan.‘Rid me of him at once, O man!’‘Nay,’ Hamza said, “no spell of mineCan slay that cursed thing of thine.Leave feast and wine, go forth and drinkWater of healing on the brinkWhere clear and cold from mountain snows,The Nahr el Zeben downward flows.Six moons remain, then come to me;MayAllah's pity go with thee! “Awestruck, from feast and wine the KhanWent forth where Nahr el Zeben ran.Roots were his food, the desert dustHis bed, the water quenched his thirst;And when the sixth moon's scimetarCurved sharp above the evening star,He sought again the santon's door,Not weak and trembling as before,But strong of limb and clear of brain;‘Behold,’ he said, ‘the fiend is slain.’‘Nay,’ Hamza answered, “starved and drowned,The curst one lies in death-like swound.But evil breaks the strongest gyves,And jins like him have charmed lives.One beaker of the juice of grapeMay call him up in living shape.When the red wine of BadakshanSparkles for thee, beware, O Khan!With water quench the fire within,And drown each day thy devilkin! “Thenceforth the great Khan shunned the cupAs Shitan's own, though offered up,With laughing eyes and jewelled hands,By Yarkand's maids and Samarcand's.And, in the lofty vestibuleOf the medress of Kaush Kodul,The students of the holy lawA golden-lettered tablet saw,With these words, by a cunning hand,Graved on it at the Khan's command: “In Allah's name, to him who hathA devil, Khan el Hamed saith,Wisely our Prophet cursed the vine:The fiend that loves the breath of wineNo prayer can slay, no maraboutNor Meccan dervis can drive out.I, Khan el Hamed, know the charmThat robs him of his power to harm.Drown him, O Islam's child!
the spellTo save thee lies in tank and well! “
1879.
The King's missive.
1661.
This ballad, originally written for The Memorial History of Boston, describes, with pardonable poetic license, a memorable incident in the annals of the city.
The interview between Shattuck and the Governor took place, I have since learned, in the residence of the latter, and not in the Council Chamber.
The publication of the ballad led to some discussion as to the historical truthfulness of the picture, but I have seen no reason to rub out any of the figures or alter the lines and colors.
under the great hill sloping bareTo cove and meadow and Common lot,In his council chamber and oaken chair,Sat the worshipful GovernorEndicott.A grave, strong man, who knew no peerIn the pilgrim land, where he ruled in fearOf God, not man, and for good or illHeld his trust with an iron will.He had shorn with his sword the cross from outThe flag, and cloven the May-pole down,Harried the heathen round about,And whipped the Quakers from town to town.
Earnest and honest, a man at needTo burn like a torch for his own harsh creed,He kept with the flaming brand of his zealThe gate of the holy common weal.His brow was clouded, his eye was stern,With a look of mingled sorrow and wrath;‘Woe's me!’ he murmured: “at every turnThe pestilent Quakers are in my path!Some we have scourged, and banished some,Some banged, more doomed, and still they come,Fast as the tide of yon bay sets in,Sowing their heresy's seed of sin.Did we count on this?
Did we leave behindThe graves of our kin, the comfort and easeOf our English hearths and homes, to findTroublers of Israel such as these?Shall I spare?
Shall I pity them?
God forbid!I will do as the prophet to Agag did:They come to poison the wells of the Word,I will hew them in pieces before the Lord! “The door swung open, and Rawson the clerkEntered, and whispered under breath, “There waits below for the hangman's workA fellow banished on pain of death—Shattuck, of Salem, unhealed of the whip,Brought over in MasterGoldsmith's shipAt anchor here in a Christian port,With freight of the devil and all his sort!” Twice and thrice on the chamber floorStriding fiercely from wall to wall, ‘The Lord do so to me and more,’ The Governor cried, “if I hang not all!Bring hither the Quaker.” Calm, sedate,With the look of a man at ease with fate,Into that presence grim and dreadCame SamuelShattuck, with hat on head.‘Off with the knave's hat!’ An angry handSmote down the offence; but the wearer said,With a quiet smile, “By the king's commandI bear his message and stand in his stead.”In the Governor's hand a missive he laidWith the royal arms on its seal displayed,And the proud man spake as he gazed thereat,Uncovering, ‘Give Mr.Shattuck his hat.’He turned to the Quaker, bowing low,— “The king commandeth your friends' releaseDoubt not he shall be obeyed, althoughTo his subjects' sorrow and sin's increase.What he here enjoineth, JohnEndicott,His loyal servant, questioneth not.You are free!
God grant the spirit you ownMay take you from us to parts unknown.” So the door of the jail was open cast,And, like Daniel, out of the lion's denTender youth and girlhood passed,With age-bowed women and gray-locked men.And the voice of one appointed to dieWas lifted in praise and thanks on high,And the little maid from New NetherlandsKissed, in her joy, the doomed man's hands.And one, whose call was to ministerTo the souls in prison, beside him went,An ancient woman, bearing with herThe linen shroud for his burial meant.For she, not counting her own life dear,In the strength of a love that cast out fear,Had watched and served where her brethren died,Like those who waited the cross beside.One moment they paused on their way to lookOn the martyr graves by the Common side,And much scourged Wharton of Salem tookHis burden of prophecy up and cried: “Rest, souls of the valiant!
Not in vainHave ye borne the Master's cross of pain;Ye have fought the fight, ye are victors crowned,With a fourfold chain ye have Satan bound!” The autumn haze lay soft and stillOn wood and meadow and upland farms;On the brow of Snow Hill the great windmillSlowly and lazily swung its arms;Broad in the sunshine stretched away,With its capes and islands, the turquoise bay;And over water and dusk of pinesBlue hills lifted their faint outlines.The topaz leaves of the walnut glowed,The sumach added its crimson fleck,And double in air and water showedThe tinted maples along the Neck;Through frost flower clusters of pale star-mist,And gentian fringes of amethyst, And royal plumes of golden-rod,The grazing cattle on Centry trod.But as they who see not, the Quakers sawThe world about them; they only thoughtWith deep thanksgiving and pious aweOn the great deliverance God had wrought.Through lane and alley the gazing townNoisily followed them up and down;Some with scoffing and brutal jeer,Some with pity and words of cheer.One brave voice rose above the din.Upsall, gray with his length of days,Cried from the door of his Red Lion Inn: “Men of Boston, give God the praise!No more shall innocent blood call downThe bolts of wrath on your guilty town.The freedom of worship, dear to you,Is dear to all, and to all is due.I see the vision of days to come,When your beautiful City of the BayShall be Christian liberty's chosen home,And none shall his neighbor's rights gainsay.The varying notes of worship shall blendAnd as one great prayer to God ascend,And hands of mutual charity raiseWalls of salvation and gates of praise. “So passed the Quakers through Boston town,Whose painful ministers sighed to seeThe walls of their sheep-fold falling down,And wolves of heresy prowling free.
But the years went on, and brought no wrong;With milder counsels the State grew strong,As outward Letter and inward LightKept the balance of truth aright.The Puritan spirit perishing not,To Concord's yeomen the signal sent,And spake in the voice of the cannon-shotThat severed the chains of a continent.With its gentler mission of peace and good-willThe thought of the Quaker is living still,And the freedom of soul he prophesiedIs gospel and law where the martyrs died.
1880.
Valuation. the old Squire said, as he stood by his gate,And his neighbor, the Deacon, went by, “In spite of my bank stock and real estate,You are better off, Deacon, than I.
We're both growing old, and the end's drawing ear,You have less of this world to resign,But in Heaven's appraisal your assets, I fear,Will reckon up greater than mine.They say I am rich, but I'm feeling so poor,I wish I could swap with you even:The pounds I have lived for and laid up in storeFor the shillings and pence you have given. “‘Well, Squire,’ said the Deacon, with shrewd common sense,While his eye had a twinkle of fun, “Let your pounds take the way of my shillings and pence,And the thing can be easily done!”
1880.
Rabbi Ishmael.
RabbiIshmaelBenElisha said, Once, I entered into the Holy of Holies [as High Priest] to burn incense, when I saw Aktriel [the Divine Crown] Jah, Lord of Hosts, sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, who said unto me, Ishmael, my son, bless me.I answered, May it please Thee to make Thy compassion prevail over Thine anger; may it be revealed above Thy other attributes; mayest Thou deal with Thy children according to it, and not according to the strict measure of judgment.It seemed to me that He bowed His head, as though to answer Amen to my blessing.Talmud Berachoth, i. f. 6.
b.)
the Rabbi Ishmael, with the woe and sinOf the world heavy upon him, entering inThe Holy of Holies, saw an awful FaceWith terrible splendor filling all the place.‘O IshmaelBenElisha!’ said a voice,‘What seekest thou?
What blessing is thy choice?’ And, knowing that he stood before the Lord,Within the shadow of the cherubim,Wide-winged between the blinding light and him,He bowed himself, and uttered not a word,But in the silence of his soul was prayer: “O Thou Eternal!
I am one of all,And nothing ask that others may not share.
Thou art almighty; we are weak and small,And yet Thy children: let Thy mercy spare!”Trembling, he raised his eyes, and in the placeOf the insufferable glory, lo!
a faceOf more than mortal tenderness, that bentGraciously down in token of assent,And, smiling, vanished!
With strange joy elate,The wondering Rabbi sought the temple's gate.Radiant as Moses from the Mount, he stoodAnd cried aloud unto the multitude: “O Israel, hear!
The Lord our God is good!Mine eyes have seen his glory and his grace;Beyond his judgments shall his love endure;The mercy of the All Merciful is sure!”
1881.
The rock-tomb of Bradore.
H.Y.Hind, in
Explorations in the Interior of the Labrador Peninsula (ii.
166) mentions the finding of a rock tomb near the little fishing port of Bradore, with the inscription upon it which is given in the poem.A drear and desolate shore!Where no tree unfolds its leaves,And never the spring wind weavesGreen grass for the hunter's tread;A land forsaken and dead,Where the ghostly icebergs goAnd come with the ebb and flowOf the waters of Bradore!A wanderer, from a landBy summer breezes fanned, Looked round him, awed, subdued,By the dreadful solitude,Hearing alone the cryOf sea-birds clanging by,The crash and grind of the floe,Wail of wind and wash of tide.‘O wretched land!’ he cried, “Land of all lands the worst,God forsaken and curst!Thy gates of rock should showThe words the Tuscan seerRead in the Realm of Woe:Hope entereth not here!” Lo!
at his feet there stoodA block of smooth larch wood,Waif of some wandering wave,Beside a rock-closed caveBy Nature fashioned for a grave;Safe from the ravening bearAnd fierce fowl of the air,Wherein to rest was laidA twenty summers' maid,Whose blood had equal shareOf the lands of vine and snow,Half French, half Eskimo.In letters uneffaced,Upon the block were tracedThe grief and hope of man,And thus the legend ran: “We loved her!Words cannot tell how well!We loved her!God loved her! And called her home to peace and rest. We love her!” The stranger paused and read.‘O winter land!’ he said, “Thy right to be I own;God leaves thee not alone.And if thy fierce winds blowOver drear wastes of rock and snow,And at thy iron gatesThe ghostly iceberg waits,Thy homes and hearts are dear.Thy sorrow o'er thy sacred dustIs sanctified by hope and trust;God's love and man's are here.And love where'er it goesMakes its own atmosphere;Its flowers of ParadiseTake root in the eternal ice,And bloom through Polar snows!”
1881.
The Bay of Seven Islands.
The volume in which
The Bay of Seven Islands was published was dedicated to the late Edwin Percy Whipple, to whom more than to any other person I was indebted for public recognition as one worthy of a place in American literature, at a time when it required a great degree of courage to urge such a claim for a proscribed abolitionist.
Although younger than I, he had gained the reputation of a brilliant essayist, and was regarded as the highest American authority in criticism.
His wit and wisdom enlivened a small literary circle of young men including ThomasStarrKing, the eloquent preacher, and DanielN.Haskell of the Daily Tracnscrintzzz, who gathered about our common friend JamesT.Fields at the Old Corner Bookstore.
The poem which gave title to the volume I inscribed to my friend and neighbor HarrietPrescottSpofford, whose poems have lent a new interest to our beautiful river-valley.from the green Amesbury hill which bears the nameOf that half mythic ancestor of mineWho trod its slopes two hundred years ago,Down the long valley of the Merrimac,Midway between me and the river's mouth,I see thy home, set like an eagle's nestAmong Deer Island's immemorial pines,Crowning the crag on which the sunset breaksIts last red arrow.
Many a tale and song,Which thou hast told or sung, I call to mind,Softening with silvery mist the woods and hills,The out-thrust headlands and inreaching baysOf our northeastern coast-line, trending whereThe Gulf, midsummer, feels the chill blockadeOf icebergs stranded at its northern gate.To thee the echoes of the Island SoundAnswer not vainly, nor in vain the moanOf the South Breaker prophesying storm.And thou hast listened, like myself, to menSea-periled oft where Anticosti liesLike a fell spider in its web of fog,Or where the Grand Bank shallows with the wrecksOf sunken fishers, and to whom strange islesAnd frost-rimmed bays and trading stations seemFamiliar as Great Neck and Kettle Cove,Nubble and Boon, the common names of home.
So let me offer thee this lay of mine,Simple and homely, lacking much thy playOf color and of fancy.
If its themeAnd treatment seem to thee befitting youthRather than age, let this be my excuse:It has beguiled some heavy hours and calledSome pleasant memories up; and, better still,Occasion lent me for a kindly wordTo one who is my neighbor and my friend.
1883.
The skipper sailed out of the harbor mouth,Leaving the apple-bloom of the SouthFor the ice of the Eastern seas,In his fishing schoonerBreeze.Handsome and brave and young was he,And the maids of Newbury sighed to seeHis lessening white sail fallUnder the sea's blue wall.Through the Northern Gulf and the misty screenOf the isles of Mingan and Madeleine,St. Paul's and BlancSablon,The little Breeze sailed on,Backward and forward, along the shoreOf lorn and desolate Labrador,And found at last her wayTo the Seven Islands Bay.The little hamlet, nestling belowGreat hills white with lingering snow, With its tin-roofed chapel stoodHalf hid in the dwarf spruce wood;Green-turfed, flower-sown, the last outpostOf summer upon the dreary coast,With its gardens small and spare,Sad in the frosty air.Hard by where the skipper's schooner lay,A fisherman's cottage looked awayOver isle and bay, and behindOn mountains dim-defined.And there twin sisters, fair and young,Laughed with their stranger guest, and sungIn their native tongue the laysOf the old Provencal days.Alike were they, save the faint outlineOf a scar on Suzette's forehead fine;And both, it so befell,Loved the heretic stranger well.Both were pleasant to look upon,But the heart of the skipper clave to one;Though less by his eye than heartHe knew the twain apart.Despite of alien race and creed,Well did his wooing of Marguerite speed;And the mother's wrath was vainAs the sister's jealous pain.The shrill-tongued mistress her house forbade,And solemn warning was sternly saidBy the black-robed priest, whose wordAs law the hamlet heard.But half by voice and half by signsThe skipper said, “A warm sun shinesOn the green-banked Merrimac;Wait, watch, till I come back.And when you see, from my mast head,The signal fly of a kerchief red,My boat on the shore shall wait;Come, when the night is late. “Ah!
weighed with childhood's haunts and friends,And all that the home sky overbends,Did ever young love failTo turn the trembling scale?Under the night, on the wet sea sands,Slowly unclasped their plighted hands:One to the cottage hearth,And one to his sailor's berth.What was it the parting lovers heard?Nor leaf, nor ripple, nor wing of bird,But a listener's stealthy treadOn the rock-moss, crisp and dead.He weighed his anchor, and fished once moreBy the black coast-line of Labrador;And by love and the north wind driven,Sailed back to the IslandsSeven.In the sunset's glow the sisters twainSaw the Breeze come sailing in again;Said Suzette, “Mother dear,The heretic's sail is here.” “Go, Marguerite, to your room, and hide;Your door shall be bolted!” the mother cried:While Suzette, ill at ease,Watched the red sign of the Breeze.At , down to the waiting skiffShe stole in the shadow of the cliff;And out of the Bay's mouth ranThe schooner with maid and man.And all night long, on a restless bed,Her prayers to the Virgin Marguerite said:And thought of her lover's painWaiting for her in vain.Did he pace the sands?
Did he pause to hearThe sound of her light step drawing near?And, as the slow hours passed,Would he doubt her faith at last?But when she saw through the misty pane,The morning break on a sea of rain,Could even her love availTo follow his vanished sail?Meantime the Breeze, with favoring wind,Left the rugged Moisic hills behind,And heard from an unseen shoreThe falls of Manitou roar.On the morrow's morn, in the thick, gray weatherThey sat on the reeling deck together,Lover and counterfeit,Of hapless Marguerite.With a lover's hand, from her forehead fairHe smoothed away her jet-black hair.What was it his fond eyes met?The scar of the false Suzette!Fiercely he shouted: “Bear awayEast by north for Seven Isles Bay!”The maiden wept and prayed,But the ship her helm obeyed.Once more the Bay of the Isles they found:They heard the bell of the chapel sound,And the chant of the dying sungIn the harsh, wild Indian tongue.A feeling of mystery, change, and aweWas in all they heard and all they saw:Spell-bound the hamlet layIn the hush of its lonely bay.And when they came to the cottage door,The mother rose up from her weeping sore,And with angry gestures metThe scared look of Suzette.‘Here is your daughter,’ the skipper said;‘Give me the one I love instead.’ But the woman sternly spake;‘Go, see if the dead will wake!’He looked.
Her sweet face still and whiteAnd strange in the noonday taper light,She lay on her little bed,With the cross at her feet and head.In a passion of grief the strong man bentDown to her face, and, kissing it, wentBack to the waiting Breeze,Back to the mournful seas.Never again to the MerrimacAnd Newbury's homes that bark came back.Whether her fate she metOn the shores of Carraquette,Miscou, or Tracadie, who can say?But even yet at Seven Isles BayIs told the ghostly taleOf a weird, unspoken sail,In the pale, sad light of the Northern daySeen by the blanketed Montagnais,Or squaw, in her small kyack,Crossing the spectre's track.On the deck a maiden wrings her hands;Her likeness kneels on the gray coast sands;One in her wild despair,And one in the trance of prayer.She flits before no earthly blast,The red sign fluttering from her mast, Over the solemn seas,The ghost of the schoonerBreeze!
1882.
The Wishing Bridge. among the legends sung or saidAlong our rocky shore,The Wishing Bridge of MarbleheadMay well be sung once more.An hundred years ago (so ranThe old-time story) allGood wishes said above its spanWould, soon or late, befall.If pure and earnest, never failedThe prayers of man or maidFor him who on the deep sea sailed,For her at home who stayed.Once thither came two girls from school,And wished in childish glee:And one would be a queen and rule,And one the world would see.Time passed; with change of hopes and fears,And in the self-same place,Two women, gray with middle years,Stood, wondering, face to face.With wakened memories, as they met,They queried what had been: ‘A poor man's wife am I, and yet,’ Said one, “I am a queen.My realm a little homestead is,Where, lacking crown and throne,I rule by loving servicesAnd patient toil alone. “The other said: “The great world liesBeyond me as it lay;O'er love's and duty's boundariesMy feet may never stray. I see but common sights of home,Its common sounds I hear,My widowed mother's sick-bed roomSufficeth for my sphere.I read to her some pleasant pageOf travel far and wide,And in a dreamy pilgrimageWe wander side by side.And when, at last, she falls asleep,My book becomes to meA magic glass: my watch I keep,But all the world I see.A farm-wife queen your place you fill,While fancy's privilegeIs mine to walk the earth at will,Thanks to the Wishing Bridge. “‘Nay, leave the legend for the truth,’ The other cried, “and sayGod gives the wishes of our youth,But in His own best way!”
1882.
How the women went from Dover.
The following is a copy of the warrant issued by MajorWaldron, of Dover, in 1662.
The Quakers, as was their wont, prophesied against him, and saw, as they supposed, the fulfilment of their prophecy when, many years after, he was killed by the Indians.
To the constables of Dover, Hampton, Salisbury, Newbury, Rowley, Ipswich, Wenham, Lynn, Boston, Roxbury, Dedham, and until these vagabond Quakers are carried out of this jurisdiction.
You, and every one of you, are required, in the King's Majesty's name, to take these vagabond Quakers, AnneColman, MaryTomkins, and AliceAmbrose, and make them fast to the cart's tail, and driving the cart through your several towns, to whip them upon their naked backs not exceeding ten stripes apiece on each of them, in each town; and so to convey them from constable to constable till they are out of this jurisdiction, as you will answer it at your peril; and this shall be your warrant.
RichardWaldron.Dated at Dover, December22, 1662.
This warrant was executed only in Dover and Hampton.
At Salisbury the constable refused to obey it. He was sustained by the town's people, who were under the influence of MajorRobertPike, the leading man in the lower valley of the Merrimac, who stood far in advance of his time, as an advocate of religious freedom, and an opponent of ecclesiastical authority.
He had the moral courage to address an able and manly letter to the court at Salem, remonstrating against the witchcraft trials.
the tossing spray of Cocheco's fallHardened to ice on its rocky wall,As through Dover town in the chill, gray dawn,Three women passed, at the cart-tail drawn!Bared to the waist, for the north wind's gripAnd keener sting of the constable's whip,The blood that followed each hissing blowFroze as it sprinkled the winter snow.Priest and ruler, boy and maidFollowed the dismal cavalcade;And from door and window, open thrown,Looked and wondered gaffer and crone.‘God is our witness,’ the victims cried, “We suffer for Him who for all men died;The wrong ye do has been done before,We bear the stripes that the Master bore!And thou, O RichardWaldron, for whomWe hear the feet of a coming doom,On thy cruel heart and thy hand of wrongVengeance is sure, though it tarry long.In the light of the Lord, a flame we seeClimb and kindle a proud roof-tree;And beneath it an old man lying dead,With stains of blood on his hoary head. “ “Smite, Goodman Hate-Evil!—harder still!”The magistrate cried, “lay on with a will!Drive out of their bodies the Father of Lies,Who through them preaches and prophesies!” So into the forest they held their way,By winding river and frost-rimmed bay,Over wind-swept hills that felt the beatOf the winter sea at their icy feet.The Indian hunter, searching his traps,Peered stealthily through the forest gaps;And the outlying settler shook his head,—‘They're witches going to jail,’ he said.At last a meeting-house came in view;A blast on his horn the constable blew;And the boys of Hampton cried up and down,‘The Quakers have come!’ to the wondering town.From barn and woodpile the goodman came;The goodwife quitted her quilting frame,With her child at her breast; and, hobbling slow,The grandam followed to see the show.Once more the torturing whip was swung,Once more keen lashes the bare flesh stung.‘Oh, spare!
they are bleeding!’ a little maid cried,And covered her face the sight to hide.A murmur ran round the crowd: ‘Good folks,’ Quoth the constable, busy counting the strokes, “No pity to wretches like these is due,They have beaten the gospel black and blue!” Then a pallid woman, in wild-eyed fear,With her wooden noggin of milk drew near.‘Drink, poor hearts!’ a rude hand smoteHer draught away from a parching throat.‘Take heed,’ one whispered, “they'll take your cowFor fines, as they took your horse and plough, And the bed from under you.” ‘Even so,’ She said; ‘they are cruel as death, I know.’Then on they passed, in the waning day,Through Seabrook woods, a weariful way;By great salt meadows and sand-hills bare,And glimpses of blue sea here and there.By the meeting-house in Salisbury town,The sufferers stood, in the red sundown,Bare for the lash!
O pitying Night,Drop swift thy curtain and hide the sight!With shame in his eye and wrath on his lipThe Salisbury constable dropped his whip.‘This warrant means murder foul and red;Cursed is he who serves it,’ he said.‘Show me the order, and meanwhile strikeA blow at your peril!’ said JusticePike.Of all the rulers the land possessed,Wisest and boldest was he and best.He scoffed at witchcraft; the priest he metAs man meets man; his feet he setBeyond his dark age, standing upright,Soul-free, with his face to the morning light.He read the warrant: “These conveyFrom our precincts; at every town on the wayGive each ten lashes.” “God judge the brute!I tread his order under my foot!Cut loose these poor ones and let them go;Come what will of it, all men shall knowNo warrant is good, though backed by the Crown,For whipping women in Salisbury town! “The hearts of the villagers, half releasedFrom creed of terror and rule of priest,By a primal instinct owned the rightOf human pity in law's despite.For ruth and chivalry only slept,His Saxon manhood the yeoman kept;Quicker or slower, the same blood ranIn the Cavalier and the Puritan.The Quakers sank on their knees in praiseAnd thanks.
A last, low sunset blazeFlashed out from under a cloud, and shedA golden glory on each bowed head.The tale is one of an evil time,When souls were fettered and thought was crime,And heresy's whisper above its breathMeant shameful scourging and bonds and death!What marvel, that hunted and sorely tried,Even woman rebuked and prophesied,And soft words rarely answered backThe grim persuasion of whip and rack!If her cry from the whipping-post and jailPierced sharp as the Kenite's driven nail,O woman, at ease in these happier days,Forbear to judge of thy sister's ways!How much thy beautiful life may oweTo her faith and courage thou canst not know,Nor how from the paths of thy calm retreatShe smoothed the thorns with her bleeding feet.
1883.
Saint Gregory's guest. A tale for Roman guides to tellTo careless, sight-worn travellers still,Who pause beside the narrow cellOf Gregory on the Cae;lian Hill.One day before the monk's door cameA beggar, stretching empty palms,Fainting and fast-sick, in the nameOf the Most Holy asking alms.And the monk answered, “All I haveIn this poor cell of mine I give,The silver cup my mother gave;In Christ's name take thou it, and live.” Years passed; and, called at last to bearThe pastoral crook and keys of Rome,The poor monk, in Saint Peter's chair,Sat the crowned lord of Christendom.‘Prepare a feast,’ Saint Gregory cried,‘And let twelve beggars sit thereat.’ The beggars came, and one beside,An unknown stranger, with them sat.‘I asked thee not,’ the Pontiff spake, “O stranger; but if need be thine,I bid thee welcome, for the sakeOf Him who is thy Lord and mine.” A grave, calm face the stranger raised,Like His who on Gennesaret trod,Or His on whom the Chaldeans gazed,Whose form was as the Son of God.‘Know'st thou,’ he said, ‘thy gift of old?’ And in the hand he lifted upThe Pontiff marvelled to beholdOnce more his mother's silver cup. “Thy prayers and alms have risen, and bloomSweetly among the flowers of heaven.I am The Wonderful, through whomWhate'er thou askest shall be given.” He spake and vanished.
Gregory fellWith his twelve guests in mute accordProne on their faces, knowing wellTheir eyes of flesh had seen the Lord,The old-time legend is not vain;Nor vain thy art, Verona's Paul,Telling it o'er and o'er againOn gray Vicenza's frescoed wall.Still wheresoever pity sharesIts bread with sorrow, want, and sin,And love the beggar's feast prepares,The uninvited Guest comes in.Unheard, because our ears are dull,Unseen, because our eyes are dim,He walks our earth, The Wonderful,And all good deeds are done to Him.
1883.
Birchbrook mill. A noteless stream, the Birchbrook runsBeneath its leaning trees;That low, soft ripple is its own,That dull roar is the sea's.Of human signs it sees aloneThe distant church spire's tip,And, ghost-like, on a blank of gray,The white sail of a ship.No more a toiler at the wheel,It wanders at its will;Nor dam nor pond is left to tellWhere once was Birchbrook mill.The timbers of that mill have fedLong since a farmer's fires;His doorsteps are the stones that groundThe harvest of his sires.Man trespassed here; but Nature lostNo right of her domain;She waited, and she brought the oldWild beauty back again.By day the sunlight through the leavesFalls on its moist, green sod,And wakes the violet bloom of springAnd autumn's golden-rod.Its birches whisper to the wind,The swallow dips her wingsIn the cool spray, and on its banksThe gray song-sparrow sings.But from it, when the dark night falls,The school-girl shrinks with dread;The farmer, home-bound from his fields,Goes by with quickened tread.They dare not pause to hear the grindOf shadowy stone on stone;The plashing of a water-wheelWhere wheel there now is none.Has not a cry of pain been heardAbove the clattering mill?The pawing of an unseen horse,Who waits his mistress still?Yet never to the listener's eyeHas sight confirmed the sound;A wavering birch line marks aloneThe vacant pasture ground.No ghostly arms fling up to heavenThe agony of prayer;No spectral steed impatient shakesHis white mane on the air.The meaning of that common dreadNo tongue has fitly told;The secret of the dark surmiseThe brook and birches hold.What nameless horror of the pastBroods here forevermore?What ghost his unforgiven sinIs grinding o'er and o'er?Does, then, immortal memory playThe actor's tragic part,Rehearsals of a mortal lifeAnd unveiled human heart?God's pity spare a guilty soulThat drama of its ill,And let the scenic curtain fallOn Birchbrook's haunted mill!
1884.
The two Elizabeths.
Read at the unveiling of the bust of ElizabethFry at the Friends' School, Providence, R. I.
A. D. 1207. amidst Thuringia's wooded hills she dwelt,A high-born princess, servant of the poor,Sweetening with gracious words the food she dealtTo starving throngs at Wartburg's blazoned door.A blinded zealot held her soul in chains,Cramped the sweet nature that he could not kill,Scarred her fair body with his penance-pains,And gauged her conscience by his narrow will.God gave her gifts of beauty and of grace,With fast and vigil she denied them all;Unquestioning, with sad, pathetic face,She followed meekly at her stern guide's call.So drooped and died her home-blown rose of blissIn the chill rigor of a disciplineThat turned her fond lips from her children's kiss,And made her joy of motherhood a sin.To their sad level by compassion led,One with the low and vile herself she made,While thankless misery mocked the hand that fed,And laughed to scorn her piteous masquerade.But still, with patience that outwearied hate,She gave her all while yet she had to give;And then her empty hands, importunate,In prayer she lifted that the poor might live.Sore pressed by grief, and wrongs more hard to bear,And dwarfed and stifled by a harsh control,She kept life fragrant with good deeds and prayer,And fresh and pure the white flower of her soul.Death found her busy at her task: one wordAlone she uttered as she paused to die, ‘Silence!’ —then listened even as one who heardWith song and wing the angels drawing nigh!Now Fra Angelico's roses fill her hands,And, on Murillo's canvas, Want and PainKneel at her feet.
Her marble image standsWorshipped and crowned in Marburg's holy fane.Yea, wheresoe'er her Church its cross uprears,Wide as the world her story still is told;In manhood's reverence, woman's prayers and tears,She lives again whose grave is centuries old.And still, despite the weakness or the blameOf blind submission to the blind, she hathA tender place in hearts of every name,And more than Rome owns Saint Elizabeth!
A. D. 1780. Slow ages passed: and lo!
another came,An English matron, in whose simple faithNor priestly rule nor ritual had claim,A plain, uncanonized Elizabeth.No sackcloth robe, nor ashen-sprinkled hair,Nor wasting fast, nor scourge, nor vigil long,Marred her calm presence.
God had made her fair,And she could do His goodly work no wrong.Their yoke is easy and their burden lightWhose sole confessor is the Christ of God;Her quiet trust and faith transcending sightSmoothed to her feet the difficult paths she trod.And there she walked, as duty bade her go,Safe and unsullied as a cloistered nun,Shamed with her plainness Fashion's gaudy show,And overcame the world she did not shun.In Earlham's bowers, in Plashet's liberal hall,In the great city's restless crowd and din,Her ear was open to the Master's call,And knew the summons of His voice within.Tender as mother, beautiful as wife,Amidst the throngs of prisoned crime she stoodIn modest raiment faultless as her life,The type of England's worthiest womanhood!To melt the hearts that harshness turned to stoneThe sweet persuasion of her lips sufficed,And guilt, which only hate and fear had known,Saw in her own the pitying love of Christ.So wheresoe'er the guiding Spirit wentShe followed, finding every prison cellIt opened for her sacred as a tentPitched by Gennesaret or by Jacob's well.And Pride and Fashion felt her strong appeal,And priest and ruler marvelled as they sawHow hand in hand went wisdom with her zeal,And woman's pity kept the bounds of law.She rests in God's peace; but her memory stirsThe air of earth as with an angel's wings,And warms and moves the hearts of men like hers,The sainted daughter of Hungarian kings.United now, the Briton and the Hun,Each, in her own time, faithful unto death,Live sister souls!
in name and spirit one,Thuringia's saint and our Elizabeth!
1885.
Requital. As Islam's Prophet, when his last day drewNigh to its close, besought all men to sayWhom he had wronged, to whom he then should payA debt forgotten, or for pardon sue,And, through the silence of his weeping friends,A strange voice cried: ‘Thou owest me a debt,’ ‘Allah be praised’ he answered. “Even yetHe gives me power to make to thee amends.O friend!
I thank thee for thy timely word.”So runs the tale.
Its lesson all may heed,For all have sinned in thought, or word, or deed,Or, like the Prophet, through neglect have erred.All need forgiveness, all have debts to payEre the night cometh, while it still is day.
1885.
The homestead. against the wooded hills it stands,Ghost of a dead home, staring throughIts broken lights on wasted landsWhere old-time harvests grew.Unploughed, unsown, by scythe unshorn,The poor, forsaken farm-fields lie,Once rich and rife with golden cornAnd pale green breadths of rye.Of healthful herb and flower bereft,The garden plot no housewife keeps;Through weeds and tangle only left,The snake, its tenant, creeps.A lilac spray, still blossom-clad,Sways slow before the empty rooms;Beside the roofless porch a sadPathetic red rose blooms.His track, in mould and dust of drouth,On floor and hearth the squirrel leaves,And in the fireless chimney's mouthHis web the spider weaves.The leaning barn, about to fall,Resounds no more on husking eves;No cattle low in yard or stall,No thresher beats his sheaves.So sad, so drear!
It seems almostSome haunting Presence makes its sign;That down yon shadowy lane some ghostMight drive his spectral kine!O home so desolate and lorn!Did all thy memories die with thee?Were any wed, were any born,Beneath this low roof-tree?Whose axe the wall of forest broke,And let the waiting sunshine through?What goodwife sent the earliest smokeUp the great chimney flue?Did rustic lovers hither come?Did maidens, swaying back and forthIn rhythmic grace, at wheel and loom,Make light their toil with mirth?Did child feet patter on the stair?Did boyhood frolic in the snow?Did gray age, in her elbow chair,Knit, rocking to and fro?The murmuring brook, the sighing breeze,The pine's slow whisper, cannot tell;Low mounds beneath the hemlock-treesKeep the home secrets well.Cease, mother-land, to fondly boastOf sons far off who strive and thrive,Forgetful that each swarming hostMust leave an emptier hive!O wanderers from ancestral soil,Leave noisome mill and chaffering store:Gird up your loins for sturdier toil,And build the home once more!Come back to bayberry-scented slopes,And fragrant fern, and ground-nut vine;Breathe airs blown over holt and copseSweet with black birch and pine.What matter if the gains are smallThat life's essential wants supply?Your homestead's title gives you allThat idle wealth can buy.All that the many-dollared crave,The brick-walled slaves of 'Change and mart,Lawns, trees, fresh air, and flowers, you have,More dear for lack of art.Your own sole masters, freedom-willed,With none to bid you go or stay,Till the old fields your fathers tilled,As manly men as they!With skill that spares your toiling hands,And chemic aid that science brings,Reclaim the waste and outworn lands,And reign thereon as kings!
1886.
How the robin came.
An Algonquin legend. happy young friends, sit by me,Under May's blown apple-tree,While these home-birds in and outThrough the blossoms flit about.Hear a story, strange and old,By the wild red Indians told,How the robin came to be: Once a great chief left his son,—Well-beloved, his only one,—When the boy was well-nigh grown,In the trial-lodge alone.Left for tortures long and slowYouths like him must undergo,Who their pride of manhood test,Lacking water, food, and rest.Seven days the fast he kept,Seven nights he never slept.Then the young boy, wrung with pain,Weak from nature's overstrain,Faltering, moaned a low complaint:‘Spare me, father, for I faint!’ But the chieftain, haughty-eyed,Hid his pity in his pride. “You shall be a hunter good,Knowing never lack of food;You shall be a warrior great,Wise as fox and strong as bear;Many scalps your belt shall wear,If with patient heart you waitBravely till your task is done.Better you should starving dieThan that boy and squaw should cryShame upon your father's son!” When next morn the sun's first raysGlistened on the hemlock sprays,Straight that lodge the old chief sought,And boiled samp and moose meat brought.‘Rise and eat, my son!’ he said. “Lo, he found the poor boy dead!
As with grief his grave they made,And his bow beside him laid,Pipe, and knife, and wampum-braid,On the lodge-top overhead,Preening smooth its breast of redAnd the brown coat that it wore,Sat a bird, unknown before.And as if with human tongue,‘Mourn me not,’ it said, or sung;I, a bird, am still your son,Happier than if hunter fleet,Or a brave, before your feetLaying scalps in battle won.Friend of man, my song shall cheerLodge and corn-land; hovering near,To each wigwam I shall bringTidings of the coining spring;Every child my voice shall knowIn the moon of melting snow,When the maple's red bud swells,And the wind-flower lifts its bells.As their fond companionMen shall henceforth own your son,And my song shall testifyThat of human kin am I.”
Thus the Indian legend saithHow, at first, the robin cameWith a sweeter life from death,Bird for boy, and still the same.If my young friends doubt that thisIs the robin's genesis,Not in vain is still the myth If a truth be found therewith:Unto gentleness belongGifts unknown to pride and wrong;Happier far than hate is praise,—He who sings than he who slays.
Banished from Massachusetts.
1660.
On a painting by E.A.Abbey.
The General Court of Massachueetts enacted Oct.19, 1658, that any person or persons of the cursed sect of Quakers should, on conviction of the same, be banished, on pain of death, from the jurisdiction of the commonwealth.
over the threshold of his pleasant homeSet in green clearings passed the exiled Friend,In simple trust, misdoubting not the end.‘Dear heart of mine!’ he said, “the time has comeTo trust the Lord for shelter.” One long gazeThe goodwife turned on each familiar thing,—The lowing kine, the orchard blossoming,The open door that showed the hearth-fire's blaze,—And calmly answered, ‘Yes, He will provide.’ Silent and slow they crossed the homestead's bound,Lingering the longest by their child's grave-mound.‘Move on, or stay and hang!’ the sheriff cried.They left behind them more than home or land,And set sad faces to an alien strand.
Safer with winds and waves than human wrath,With ravening wolves than those whose zeal for GodWas cruelty to man, the exiles trodDrear leagues of forest without guide or path,Or launching frail boats on the uncharted sea,Round storm-vexed capes, whose teeth of granite groundThe waves to foam, their perilous way they wound,Enduring all things so their souls were free.Oh, true confessors, shaming them who didAnew the wrong their PilgrimFathers bore!For you the Mayflower spread her sail once more,Freighted with souls, to all that duty bidFaithful as they who sought an unknown land,O'er wintry seas, from Holland's Hook of Sand!So from his lost home to the darkening main,Bodeful of storm, stout Macy held his way,And, when the green shore blended with the gray,His poor wife moaned: ‘Let us turn back again.’ ‘Nay, woman, weak of faith, kneel down,’ said he,‘And say thy prayers: the Lord himself will steer;And led by Him, nor man nor devils I fear!He [Macy] shook the dust from off his feet, and departed with all his worldly goods and his family.
He encountered a severe storm, and his wife, influenced by some omens of disaster, besought him to put back.
He told her not to fear, for his faith was perfect.
But she entreated him again.
Then the spirit that impelled him broke forth: Woman, go below and seek thy God.
I fear not the witches on earth, or the devils in hell!
Life of Robert Pike, page 55.’ So the gray Southwicks, from a rainy sea,Saw, far and faint, the loom of land, and gaveWith feeble voices thanks for friendly groundWhereon to rest their weary feet, and found A peaceful death-bed and a quiet graveWhere, ocean-walled, and wiser than his age,The lord of Shelter scorned the bigot's rage.Aquidneck's isle, Nantucket's lonely shores,And Indian-haunted Narragansett sawThe way-worn travellers round their camp-fire draw,Or heard the plashing of their weary oars.And every place whereon they rested grewHappier for pure and gracious womanhood,And men whose names for stainless honor stood,Founders of States and rulers wise and true.The Muse of history yet shall make amendsTo those who freedom, peace, and justice taught,Beyond their dark age led the van of thought,And left unforfeited the name of Friends.O mother State, how foiled was thy design!The gain was theirs, the loss alone was thine.
The brown Dwarf of Rugen.
The hint of this ballad is found in Arndt's Marchen, Berlin, 1816.
The ballad appeared first in St. Nicholas, whose young readers were advised, while smiling at the absurd superstition, to remember that bad companionship and evil habits, desires, and passions are more to be dreaded now than the Elves and Trolls who frightened the children of past ages.
the pleasant isle of Riigen looks the Baltic water o'er,To the silver-sanded beaches of the Pomeranian shore;And in the town of Rambin a little boy and maidPlucked the meadow-flowers together and in the sea-surf played.Alike were they in beauty if not in their degree:He was the Amptman's first-born, the miller's child was she.Now of old the isle of Riigen was full of Dwarfs and Trolls,The brown-faced little Earth-men, the people without souls;And for every man and woman in Riigen's island foundWalking in air and sunshine, a Troll was underground.It chanced the little maiden, one morning, strolled awayAmong the haunted Nine Hills, where the elves and goblins play.That day, in barley-fields below, the harvesters had knownOf evil voices in the air, and heard the small horns blown.She came not back; the search for her in field and wood was vain:They cried her east, they cried her west, but she came not again.‘She's down along the Brown Dwarfs,’ said the dream-wives wise and old,And prayers were made, and masses said, and Rambin's church bell tolled.Five years her father mourned her; and then JohnDeitrich said:‘I will find my little playmate, be she alive or dead.’He watched among the Nine Hills, he heard the Brown Dwarfs sing,And saw them dance by moonlight merrily in a ring.And when their gay-robed leader tossed up his cap of red,Young Deitrich caught it as it fell, and thrust it on his head.The Troll came crouching at his feet and wept for lack of it.‘Oh, give me back my magic cap, for your great head unfit!’‘Nay,’ Deitrich said; “the Dwarf who throws his charmed cap away,Must serve its finder at his will, and for his folly pay.You stole my pretty Lisbeth, and hid her in the earth;And you shall ope the door of glass and let me lead her forth. “‘She will not come; she's one of us; she's mine!’ the Brown Dwarf said;‘The day is set, the cake is baked, to-morrow we shall wed.’‘The fell fiend fetch thee!’ Deitrich cried, “and keep thy foul tongue still.Quick!
open, to thy evil world, the glass door of the hill!” The Dwarf obeyed; and youth and Troll down the long stair-way passed,And saw in dim and sunless light a country strange and vast.Weird, rich, and wonderful, he saw the elfin under-land,—Its palaces of precious stones, its streets of golden sand.He came unto a banquet-hall with tables richly spread,Where a young maiden served to him the red wine and the bread.How fair she seemed among the Trolls so ugly and so wild!Yet pale and very sorrowful, like one who never smiled!Her low, sweet voice, her gold-brown hair, her tender blue eyes seemedLike something he had seen elsewhere or something he had dreamed.He looked; he clasped her in his arms; he knew the long-lost one;‘O Lisbeth!
See thy playmate—I am the Amptman's son!’She leaned her fair head on his breast, and through her sobs she spoke: “Oh, take me from this evil place, and from the elfin folk!And let me tread the grass-green fields and smell the flowers again,And feel the soft wind on my cheek and hear the dropping rain!And oh, to hear the singing bird, the rustling of the tree,The lowing cows, the bleat of sheep, the voices of the sea; And oh, upon my father's knee to sit beside the door,And hear the bell of vespers ring in Rambin church once more! “He kissed her cheek, he kissed her lips; the Brown Dwarf groaned to see,And tore his tangled hair and ground his long teeth angrily.But Deitrich said: “For five long years this tender Christian maidHas served you in your evil world and well must she be paid!Haste!—hither bring me precious gems, the richest in your store;Then when we pass the gate of glass, you'll take your cap once more. “No choice was left the baffled Troll, and, murmuring, he obeyed,And filled the pockets of the youth and apron of the maid.They left the dreadful under-land and passed the gate of glass;They felt the sunshine's warm caress, they trod the soft, green grass.And when, beneath, they saw the Dwarf stretch up to them his brownAnd crooked claw-like fingers, they tossed his red cap down.Oh, never shone so bright a sun, was never sky so blue,As hand in hand they homeward walked the pleasant meadows through!And never sang the birds so sweet in Rambin's woods before,And never washed the waves so soft along the Baltic shore;And when beneath his door-yard trees the father met his child,The bells rung out their merriest peal, the folks with joy ran wild.And soon from Rambin's holy church the twain came forth as one,The Amptman kissed a daughter, the miller blest a son.JohnDeitrich's fame went far and wide, and nurse and maid crooned o'erTheir cradle song: ‘Sleep on, sleep well, the Trolls shall come no more!’For in the haunted Nine Hills he set a cross of stone;And Elf and Brown Dwarf sought in vain a door where door was none.The tower he built in Rambin, fair Ruigen's pride and boast,Looked o'er the Baltic water to the Pomeranian coast;And, for his worth ennobled, and rich beyond compare,CountDeitrich and his lovely bride dwelt long and happy there.
1888.
Notes.
Note 1, page 24. The Pythoness of ancient Lynn was the redoubtable Moll Pitcher, who lived under the shadow of High Rock in that town, and was sought far and wide for her supposed powers of divination.
She died about 1810. Mr.Upham, in his Salem Witchcraft, has given an account of her.
Note 2, page 88. Bashaba was the name which the Indians of New England gave to two or three of their principal chiefs, to whom all their inferior sagamores acknowledged allegiance.
Passaconaway seems to have been one of these chiefs.
His residence was at Pennacook. (Mass.
Hist. Coll., vol.
III. pp. 21, 22.) He was regarded, says Hubbard, as a great sorcerer, and his fame was widely spread.
It was said of him that he could cause a green leaf to grow in winter, trees to dance, water to burn, etc. He was, undoubtedly, one of those shrewd and powerful men whose achievements are always regarded by a barbarous people as the result of supernatural aid. The Indians gave to such the names of Powahs or Panisees.
The Panisees are men of great courage and wisdom, and to these the Devill appeareth more familiarly than to others. —Winslow's Relation.
Note 3, page 93. The Indians, says RogerWilliams, have a god whom they call Wetuomanit, who presides over the household.
Note 4, page 97. There are rocks in the river at the Falls of Amoskeag, in the cavities of which, tradition says, the Indians formerly stored and concealed their corn.
Note 5, page 101. The SpringGod.-See RogerWilliams's Key to the Indian Language.
Note 6, page 106. Mat wonck kunna-monee.We shall see thee or her no more.—See RogerWilliams's Key.
Note 7, page 106. The Great South West God. —See RogerWilliams's Observations, etc.
Note 8, page 109. The barbarities of CountdeTilly after the siege of Magdeburg made such an impression upon our forefathers that the phrase like old Tilly is still heard sometimes in New England of any piece of special ferocity.
Note 9, page 134. Dr.Hooker, who accompanied SirJamesRoss in his expedition of 1841, thus describes the appearance of that unknown land of frost and fire which was seen in latitude 77° south,—a stupendous chain of mountains, the whole mass of which, from its highest point to the ocean, was covered with everlasting snow and ice:—
The water and the sky were both as blue, or rather more intensely blue, than I have ever seen them in the tropics, and all the coast was one mass of dazzlingly beautiful peaks of snow, which, when the sun approached the horizon, reflected the most brilliant tints of golden yellow and scarlet; and then, to see the dark cloud of smoke, tinged with flame, rising from the volcano in a perfect unbroken column, one side jet-black, the other giving back the colors of the sun, sometimes turning off at a right angle by some current of wind, and stretching many miles to leeward!
This was a sight so surpassing everything that can be imagined, and so heightened by the consciousness that we had penetrated, under the guidance of our commander, into regions far beyond what was ever deemed practicable, that it caused a feeling of awe to steal over us at the consideration of our own comparative insignificance and helplessness, and at the same time an indescribable feeling of the greatness of the Creator in the works of his hand.
Note 10, page 210. It was the custom in Sewall's time for churches and individuals to hold fasts whenever any public or private need suggested the fitness; and as state and church were very closely connected, the General Court sometimes ordered a fast.
Out of this custom sprang the annual fast in spring, now observed, but it is of comparatively recent date.
Such a fast was ordered on the 14th of January, 1697, when Sewall made his special confession of guilt in condemning innocent persons under the supposition that they were witches.
He is said to have observed the day privately on each annual return thereafter.
Note 11, page 244. Dr.JohnDee was a man of erudition, who had an extensive museum, library, and apparatus; he claimed to be an astrologer, and had acquired the reputation of having dealings with evil spirits, and a mob was raised which destroyed the greater part of his possessions He professed to raise the dead and had a magic crystal.
He died a pauper in 1608.
Note 12, page 325. Eleonora JohannaVonMerlau, or, as Sewall the Quaker Historian gives it, VonMerlane, a noble young lady of Frankfort, seems to have held among the Mystics of that city very much such a position as AnnaMariaSchurmaus did among the Labadists of Holland.
WilliamPenn appears to have shared the admiration of her own immediate circle for this accomplished and gifted lady.
Note 13, page 330. MagisterJohannKelpius, a graduate of the University of Helmstadt, came to Pennsylvania in 1694, with a company of German Mystics.
They made their home in the woods on the Wissahickon, a little west of the Quaker settlement of Germantown.
Kelpius was a believer in the near approach of the Millennium, and was adevout student of the Book of Revelation, and the Morgen-Rothe of JacobBehmen.
He called his settlement The Woman in the Wilderness (Das Weib in der Wueste). He was only twenty-four years of age when he came to America, but his gravity, learning, and devotion placed him at the head of the settlement.
He disliked the Quakers, because he thought they were too exclusive in the matter of ministers.
He was, like most of the Mystics, opposed to the severe doctrinal views of Calvin and even Luther, declaring that he could as little agree with the Damnamus of the Augsburg Confession as with the Anathema of the Council of Trent.
He died in 1704, sitting in his little garden surrounded by his grieving disciples.
Previous to his death it is said that he cast his famous Stone of Wisdom into the river, where that mystic souvenir of the times of VanHelmont, Paracelsus, and Agrippa has lain ever since, undisturbed.
Note 14, page 331. PeterSluyter, or Schluter, a native of Wesel, united himself with the sect of Labadists, who believed in the Divine commission of JohnDeLabadie, a RomanCatholic priest converted to Protestantism, enthusiastic, eloquent, and evidently sincere in his special calling and election to separate the true and living members of the Church of Christ from the formalism and hypocrisy of the ruling sects.
GeorgeKeith and RobertBarclay visited him at Amsterdam, and afterward at the communities of Herford and Wieward; and, according to GerardCroes, found him so near to them on some points, that they offered to take him into the Society of Friends.
This offer, if it was really made, which is certainly doubtful, was, happily for the Friends at least, declined.
Invited to Herford in Westphalia by Elizabeth, daughter of the Elector Palatine, DeLabadie and his followers preached incessantly, and succeeded in arousing a wild enthusiasm among the people, who neglected their business and gave way to excitements and strange practices.
Men and women, it was said, at the Communion drank and danced together, and private marriages, or spiritual unions, were formed.
Labadie died in 1674 at Altona, in Denmark, maintaining his testimonies to the last.
Nothing remains for me, he said, except to go to my God.
Death is merely ascending from a lowerand narrower chamber to one higher and holier.
In 1679, PeterSluyter and JasperDankers were sent to America by the community at the Castle of Wieward.
Their journal, translated from the Dutch and edited by HenryC.Murphy, has been recently published by the Long Island Historical Society.
They made some converts,and among them was the eldest son of Hermanns, the proprietor of a rich tract of land at the head of Chesapeake Bay, known as Bohemia Manor.
Sluyter obtained a grant of this tract, and established upon it a community numbering at one time a hundred souls.
Very contradictory statements are on record regarding his headship of this spiritual family, the discipline of which seems to have been of more than monastic manifested more interest in the world's goods than became a believer in the near Millennium.
He evinces in his journal an overweening spiritual pride, and speaks contemptuously of other professors, especially the Quakers whom he met in his travels.
The latter, on the contrary, seem to have looked favorably upon the Labadists, and uniformly speak of them courteously and kindly.
His journal shows him to have been destitute of common gratitude and Christian charity.
He threw himself upon the generous hospitality of the Friends wherever he went, and repaid their kindness by the coarsest abuse and misrepresentation.
Note 15, page 332. Among the pioneer Friends were many men of learning and broad and liberal views.
Penn was conversant with every department of literature and philosophy.
ThomasLloyd was a ripe and rare scholar.
The great Loganian Library of Philadelphia bears witness to the varied learning and classical taste of its donor, JamesLogan.
Thomas Story, member of the Council of State, Master of the Rolls, and Commissioner of Claims under WilliamPenn, and an able minister of his Society, took a deep interest in scientific questions, and in a letter to his friend Logan, written while on a religious visit to Great Britain, seems to have anticipated the conclusion of modern geologists.
I spent, he says, some months, especially at Scarborough, during the season attending meetings, at whose high cliffs and the variety of strata therein and their several positions I further learned and was confirmed in some things,—that the earth is of much older date as to the beginning of it than the time assigned in the Holy Scriptures as commonly understood, which is suited to the common capacities of mankind, as to six days of progressive work, by which I understand certain long and competent periods of time, and not natural days.It was sometimes made a matter of reproach by the Anabaptists and other sects, that the Quakers read profane writings and philosophies, and that they quoted heathen moralists in support of their views.
Sluyter and Dankers, in their journal of American travels, visiting a Quaker preacher's house at Burling ton, on the Delaware, found a volume of Virgil lying on the window, as if it were a common hand-book; also Helmont's book on Medicine (Ortus Mledicince, id est Initia Physica inaudita progressus medicine novus in morborum ultionam ad vitam longam), whom, in an introduction they have made to it, they make to pass for one of their own sect, although in his lifetime he did not know anything about Quakers.It would appear from this that the half-mystical, halfscientific writings of the alchemist and philosopher of Vilverde had not escaped the notice of Friends, and that they had included him in their broad eclecticism.
Note 16, page 333. The Quaker's Meeting, a painting by E.Hemskerck (supposed to be EgbertHemskerck the younger, son of EgbertHemskerck the old), in which WilliamPenn and others—among them CharlesII., or the Duke of York—are represented along with the rudest and most stolid class of the British rural population at that period.
Hemskerck came to London from Holland with KingWilliam in 1689.
He delighted in wild, grotesque subjects, such as the nocturnal intercourse of witches and the temptation of St. Anthony.
Whatever was strange and uncommon attracted his free pencil.
Judging from the portrait of Penn, he must have drawn his faces, figures, and costumes from life, although there may be something of caricature in the convulsed attitudes of two or three of the figures.
Note 17, page 337. In one of his letters addressed to German friends, Pastorius says: These wild men, who never in their life heard Christ's teachings about temperance and contentment, herein far surpass the Christians.
They live far more contented and unconcerned for the morrow.
They do not overreach in trade.
They know nothing of our everlasting pomp and stylishness.
They neither curse nor swear, are temperate in food and drink, and if any of them get drunk, the mouth-Christians are at fault, who, for the sake of accursed lucre, sell them strong drink.
Again he wrote in 1698 to his father that he finds the Indians reasonable people, willing to accept good teaching and manners, evincing an inward piety toward God, and more eager, in fact, to understand things divine than many among you who in the pulpit teach Christ in word, but by ungodly life deny him.
It is evident, says ProfessorSeidensticker, Pastorius holds up the Indian as Nature's unspoiled child to the eyes of the European Babel, somewhat after the same manner in which Tacitus used the barbarian Germani to shame his degenerate countrymen.
As believers in the universality of the Saving Light, the outlook of early Friends upon the heathen was a very cheerful and hopeful one. God was as near to them as to Jew or Anglo-Saxon; as accessible at Timbuctoo as at Rome or Geneva.
Not the letter of Scripture, but the spirit which dictated it, was of saving efficacy.
RobertBarclay is nowhere more powerful than in his argument for the salvation of the heathen, who live according to their light, without knowing even the name of Christ.
WilliamPenn thought Socrates as good a Christian as RichardBaxter.
Early Fathers of the Church, as Origen and JustinMartyr, held broader views on this point than modern Evangelicals.
Even Augustine, from whom Calvin borrowed his theology, admits that he has no controversy with the admirable philosophers Plato and Plotinus.
Nor do I think, he says in De CIV.
Dei, lib. XVIII., cap. 47, that the Jews dare affirm that none belonged unto God but the Israelites.
Note 18, page 346. A common saying of Valdemar; hence his sobriquet Alterday.
Note 19, page 420. He [Macy] shook the dust from off his feet, and departed with all his worldly goods and his family.
He encountered a severe storm, and his wife, influenced by some omens of disaster, besought him to put back.
He told her not to fear, for his faith was perfect.
But she entreated him again.
Then the spirit that impelled him broke forth: Woman, go below and seek thy God.
I fear not the witches on earth, or the devils in hell!
— Life of Robert Pike, page 55.