The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 4.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

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[375]
     And waters glancing bright and fast,
A softened voice was in my ear,
     Sweet as those lulling sounds and fine
The hunter lifts his head to hear,
     Now far and faint, now full and near—
The murmur of the wind-swept pine.
     A manly form was ever nigh,
A bold, free hunter, with an eye
     Whose dark, keen glance had power to wake
Both fear and love, to awe and charm;
     Twas as the wizard rattlesnake,
Whose evil glances lure to harm—
     Whose cold and small and glittering eye,
And brilliant coil, and changing dye,
     Draw, step by step, the gazer near,
With drooping wing and cry of fear,
     Yet powerless all to turn away,
A conscious, but a willing prey!

Fear, doubt, thought, life itself, erelong
     Merged in one feeling deep and strong.
Faded the world which I had known,
     A poor vain shadow, cold and waste;
In the warm present bliss alone
     Seemed I of actual life to taste.
Fond longings dimly understood,
     The glow of passion's quickening blood,
And cherished fantasies which press
     The young lip with a dream's caress;
The heart's forecast and prophecy
     Took form and life before my eye,
Seen in the glance which met my own,
     Heard in the soft and pleading tone,
Felt in the arms around me cast,
     And warm heart-pulses beating fast.
Ah! scarcely yet to God above
     With deeper trust, with stronger love,
Has prayerful saint his meek heart lent,
     Or cloistered nun at twilight bent,
Than I, before a human shrine,
     As mortal and as frail as mine,
With heart, and soul, and mind, and form,
     Knelt madly to a fellow-worm.

“Full soon, upon that dream of sin,
     An awful light came bursting in.
The shrine was cold at which I knelt,
     The idol of that shrine was gone;
A humbled thing of shame and guilt,
     Outcast, and spurned and lone,
Wrapt in the shadows of my crime,
     With withering heart and burning brain,