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Title: The Bridal of Pennacook

Author: John Greenleaf Whittier

Release date: December 1, 2005 [eBook #9561]

Most recently updated: January 2, 2021

Language: English

Credits: This eBook was produced by David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK ***

This eBook was produced by David Widger

NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY

POEMS

BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK I. THE MERRIMAC II. THE BASHABA III. THE DAUGHTER IV. THE WEDDING V. THE NEW HOME VI. AT PENNACOOK VII. THE DEPARTURE VIII. SONG OF INDIAN WOMEN

THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK.

Winnepurkit, otherwise called George, Sachem of Saugus, married a daughter of Passaconaway, the great Pennacook chieftain, in 1662. The wedding took place at Pennacook (now Concord, N. H.), and the ceremonies closed with a great feast. According to the usages of the chiefs, Passaconaway ordered a select number of his men to accompany the newly-married couple to the dwelling of the husband, where in turn there was another great feast. Some time after, the wife of Winnepurkit expressing a desire to visit her father's house was permitted to go, accompanied by a brave escort of her husband's chief men. But when she wished to return, her father sent a messenger to Saugus, informing her husband, and asking him to come and take her away. He returned for answer that he had escorted his wife to her father's house in a style that became a chief, and that now if she wished to return, her father must send her back, in the same way. This Passaconaway refused to do, and it is said that here terminated the connection of his daughter with the Saugus chief.—Vide MORTON'S New Canaan.

WE had been wandering for many days

Through the rough northern country. We had seen

The sunset, with its bars of purple cloud,

Like a new heaven, shine upward from the lake

Of Winnepiseogee; and had felt

The sunrise breezes, midst the leafy isles

Which stoop their summer beauty to the lips

Of the bright waters. We had checked our steeds,

Silent with wonder, where the mountain wall

Is piled to heaven; and, through the narrow rift

Of the vast rocks, against whose rugged feet

Beats the mad torrent with perpetual roar,

Where noonday is as twilight, and the wind

Comes burdened with the everlasting moan

Of forests and of far-off waterfalls,

We had looked upward where the summer sky,

Tasselled with clouds light-woven by the sun,

Sprung its blue arch above the abutting crags

O'er-roofing the vast portal of the land

Beyond the wall of mountains. We had passed

The high source of the Saco; and bewildered

In the dwarf spruce-belts of the Crystal Hills,

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

The horn of Fabyan sounding; and atop

Of old Agioochook had seen the mountains'

Piled to the northward, shagged with wood, and thick

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

A white gleam on the horizon of the east;

Fair lakes, embosomed in the woods and hills;

Moosehillock's mountain range, and Kearsarge

Lifting his granite forehead to the sun!

And we had rested underneath the oaks

Shadowing the bank, whose grassy spires are shaken

By the perpetual beating of the falls

Of the wild Ammonoosuc. We had tracked

The winding Pemigewasset, overhung

By beechen shadows, whitening down its rocks,

Or lazily gliding through its intervals,

From waving rye-fields sending up the gleam

Of sunlit waters. We had seen the moon

Rising behind Umbagog's eastern pines,

Like a great Indian camp-fire; and its beams

At midnight spanning with a bridge of silver

The Merrimac by Uncanoonuc's falls.

There were five souls of us whom travel's chance

Had thrown together in these wild north hills

A city lawyer, for a month escaping

From his dull office, where the weary eye

Saw only hot brick walls and close thronged streets;

Briefless as yet, but with an eye to see

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

Its chances all as godsends; and his brother,

Pale from long pulpit studies, yet retaining

The warmth and freshness of a genial heart,

Whose mirror of the beautiful and true,

In Man and Nature, was as yet undimmed

By dust of theologic strife, or breath

Of sect, or cobwebs of scholastic lore;

Like a clear crystal calm of water, taking

The hue and image of o'erleaning flowers,

Sweet human faces, white clouds of the noon,

Slant starlight glimpses through the dewy leaves,

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

To mark his spirit, alternating between

A decent and professional gravity

And an irreverent mirthfulness, which often

Laughed in the face of his divinity,

Plucked off the sacred ephod, quite unshrined

The oracle, and for the pattern priest

Left us the man. A shrewd, sagacious merchant,

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

Giving the latest news of city stocks

And sales of cotton, had a deeper meaning

Than the great presence of the awful mountains

Glorified by the sunset; and his daughter,

A delicate flower on whom had blown too long

Those evil winds, which, sweeping from the ice

And winnowing the fogs of Labrador,

Shed their cold blight round Massachusetts Bay,

With the same breath which stirs Spring's opening leaves

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

Poisoning our seaside atmosphere.

It chanced that as we turned upon our homeward way,

A drear northeastern storm came howling up

The valley of the Saco; and that girl

Who had stood with us upon Mount Washington,

Her brown locks ruffled by the wind which whirled

In gusts around its sharp, cold pinnacle,

Who had joined our gay trout-fishing in the streams

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

Like a bird's carol on the sunrise breeze

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

Shrank from its harsh, chill breath, and visibly drooped

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

Which looks from Conway on the mountains piled

Heavily against the horizon of the north,

Like summer thunder-clouds, we made our home

And while the mist hung over dripping hills,

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

Beat their sad music upon roof and pane,

We strove to cheer our gentle invalid.

The lawyer in the pauses of the storm

Went angling down the Saco, and, returning,

Recounted his adventures and mishaps;

Gave us the history of his scaly clients,

Mingling with ludicrous yet apt citations

Of barbarous law Latin, passages

From Izaak Walton's Angler, sweet and fresh

As the flower-skirted streams of Staffordshire,

Where, under aged trees, the southwest wind

Of soft June mornings fanned the thin, white hair

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

Our youthful candidate forsook his sermons,

His commentaries, articles and creeds,

For the fair page of human loveliness,

The missal of young hearts, whose sacred text

Is music, its illumining, sweet smiles.

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

Deep, earnest voice, recited many a page

Of poetry, the holiest, tenderest lines

Of the sad bard of Olney, the sweet songs,

Simple and beautiful as Truth and Nature,

Of him whose whitened locks on Rydal Mount

Are lifted yet by morning breezes blowing

From the green hills, immortal in his lays.

And for myself, obedient to her wish,

I searched our landlord's proffered library,—

A well-thumbed Bunyan, with its nice wood pictures

Of scaly fiends and angels not unlike them;

Watts' unmelodious psalms; Astrology's

Last home, a musty pile of almanacs,

And an old chronicle of border wars

And Indian history. And, as I read

A story of the marriage of the Chief

Of Saugus to the dusky Weetamoo,

Daughter of Passaconaway, who dwelt

In the old time upon the Merrimac,

Our fair one, in the playful exercise

Of her prerogative,—the right divine

Of youth and beauty,—bade us versify

The legend, and with ready pencil sketched

Its plan and outlines, laughingly assigning

To each his part, and barring our excuses

With absolute will. So, like the cavaliers

Whose voices still are heard in the Romance

Of silver-tongued Boccaccio, on the banks

Of Arno, with soft tales of love beguiling

The ear of languid beauty, plague-exiled

From stately Florence, we rehearsed our rhymes

To their fair auditor, and shared by turns

Her kind approval and her playful censure.

It may be that these fragments owe alone

To the fair setting of their circumstances,—

The associations of time, scene, and audience,—

Their place amid the pictures which fill up

The chambers of my memory. Yet I trust

That some, who sigh, while wandering in thought,

Pilgrims of Romance o'er the olden world,

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

Piled to the clouds, our rivers overhung

By forests which have known no other change

For ages than the budding and the fall

Of leaves, our valleys lovelier than those

Which the old poets sang of,—should but figure

On the apocryphal chart of speculation

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

Rights, and appurtenances, which make up

A Yankee Paradise, unsung, unknown,

To beautiful tradition; even their names,

Whose melody yet lingers like the last

Vibration of the red man's requiem,

Exchanged for syllables significant,

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

Upon this effort to call up the ghost

Of our dim Past, and listen with pleased ear

To the responses of the questioned Shade.

I. THE MERRIMAC.

O child of that white-crested mountain whose

springs

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

wings,

Down whose slopes to the lowlands thy wild waters

shine,

Leaping gray walls of rock, flashing through the

dwarf pine;

From that cloud-curtained cradle so cold and so

lone,

From the arms of that wintry-locked mother of

stone,

By hills hung with forests, through vales wide and

free,

Thy mountain-born brightness glanced down to the

sea.

No bridge arched thy waters save that where the

trees

Stretched their long arms above thee and kissed in

the breeze:

No sound save the lapse of the waves on thy

shores,

The plunging of otters, the light dip of oars.

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

Thy twin Uncanoonucs rose stately and tall,

Thy Nashua meadows lay green and unshorn,

And the hills of Pentucket were tasselled with

corn.

But thy Pennacook valley was fairer than these,

And greener its grasses and taller its trees,

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

Or the mower his scythe in the meadows had

swung.

In their sheltered repose looking out from the

wood

The bark-builded wigwams of Pennacook stood;

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

And against the red war-post the hatchet was

thrown.

There the old smoked in silence their pipes, and

the young

To the pike and the white-perch their baited lines

flung;

There the boy shaped his arrows, and there the

shy maid

Wove her many-hued baskets and bright wampum

braid.

O Stream of the Mountains! if answer of thine

Could rise from thy waters to question of mine,

Methinks through the din of thy thronged banks

a moan

Of sorrow would swell for the days which have

gone.

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

The gliding of shuttles, the ringing of steel;

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

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

II. THE BASHABA.

Lift we the twilight curtains of the Past,

And, turning from familiar sight and sound,

Sadly and full of reverence let us cast

A glance upon Tradition's shadowy ground,

Led by the few pale lights which, glimmering round

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

And that which history gives not to the eye,

The faded coloring of Time's tapestry,

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

Roof of bark and walls of pine,

Through whose chinks the sunbeams shine,

Tracing many a golden line

On the ample floor within;

Where, upon that earth-floor stark,

Lay the gaudy mats of bark,

With the bear's hide, rough and dark,

And the red-deer's skin.

Window-tracery, small and slight,

Woven of the willow white,

Lent a dimly checkered light;

And the night-stars glimmered down,

Where the lodge-fire's heavy smoke,

Slowly through an opening broke,

In the low roof, ribbed with oak,

Sheathed with hemlock brown.

Gloomed behind the changeless shade

By the solemn pine-wood made;

Through the rugged palisade,

In the open foreground planted,

Glimpses came of rowers rowing,

Stir of leaves and wild-flowers blowing,

Steel-like gleams of water flowing,

In the sunlight slanted.

Here the mighty Bashaba

Held his long-unquestioned sway,

From the White Hills, far away,

To the great sea's sounding shore;

Chief of chiefs, his regal word

All the river Sachems heard,

At his call the war-dance stirred,

Or was still once more.

There his spoils of chase and war,

Jaw of wolf and black bear's paw,

Panther's skin and eagle's claw,

Lay beside his axe and bow;

And, adown the roof-pole hung,

Loosely on a snake-skin strung,

In the smoke his scalp-locks swung

Grimly to and fro.

Nightly down the river going,

Swifter was the hunter's rowing,

When he saw that lodge-fire, glowing

O'er the waters still and red;

And the squaw's dark eye burned brighter,

And she drew her blanket tighter,

As, with quicker step and lighter,

From that door she fled.

For that chief had magic skill,

And a Panisee's dark will,

Over powers of good and ill,

Powers which bless and powers which ban;

Wizard lord of Pennacook,

Chiefs upon their war-path shook,

When they met the steady look

Of that wise dark man.

Tales of him the gray squaw told,

When the winter night-wind cold

Pierced her blanket's thickest fold,

And her fire burned low and small,

Till the very child abed,

Drew its bear-skin over bead,

Shrinking from the pale lights shed

On the trembling wall.

All the subtle spirits hiding

Under earth or wave, abiding

In the caverned rock, or riding

Misty clouds or morning breeze;

Every dark intelligence,

Secret soul, and influence

Of all things which outward sense

Feels, or bears, or sees,—

These the wizard's skill confessed,

At his bidding banned or blessed,

Stormful woke or lulled to rest

Wind and cloud, and fire and flood;

Burned for him the drifted snow,

Bade through ice fresh lilies blow,

And the leaves of summer grow

Over winter's wood!

Not untrue that tale of old!

Now, as then, the wise and bold

All the powers of Nature hold

Subject to their kingly will;

From the wondering crowds ashore,

Treading life's wild waters o'er,

As upon a marble floor,

Moves the strong man still.

Still, to such, life's elements

With their sterner laws dispense,

And the chain of consequence

Broken in their pathway lies;

Time and change their vassals making,

Flowers from icy pillows waking,

Tresses of the sunrise shaking

Over midnight skies.

Still, to th' earnest soul, the sun

Rests on towered Gibeon,

And the moon of Ajalon

Lights the battle-grounds of life;

To his aid the strong reverses

Hidden powers and giant forces,

And the high stars, in their courses,

Mingle in his strife!

III. THE DAUGHTER.

The soot-black brows of men, the yell

Of women thronging round the bed,

The tinkling charm of ring and shell,

The Powah whispering o'er the dead!

All these the Sachem's home had known,

When, on her journey long and wild

To the dim World of Souls, alone,

In her young beauty passed the mother of his child.

Three bow-shots from the Sachem's dwelling

They laid her in the walnut shade,

Where a green hillock gently swelling

Her fitting mound of burial made.

There trailed the vine in summer hours,

The tree-perched squirrel dropped his shell,—

On velvet moss and pale-hued flowers,

Woven with leaf and spray, the softened sunshine fell!

The Indian's heart is hard and cold,

It closes darkly o'er its care,

And formed in Nature's sternest mould,

Is slow to feel, and strong to bear.

The war-paint on the Sachem's face,

Unwet with tears, shone fierce and red,

And still, in battle or in chase,

Dry leaf and snow-rime crisped beneath his

foremost tread.

Yet when her name was heard no more,

And when the robe her mother gave,

And small, light moccasin she wore,

Had slowly wasted on her grave,

Unmarked of him the dark maids sped

Their sunset dance and moonlit play;

No other shared his lonely bed,

No other fair young head upon his bosom lay.

A lone, stern man. Yet, as sometimes

The tempest-smitten tree receives

From one small root the sap which climbs

Its topmost spray and crowning leaves,

So from his child the Sachem drew

A life of Love and Hope, and felt

His cold and rugged nature through

The softness and the warmth of her young

being melt.

A laugh which in the woodland rang

Bemocking April's gladdest bird,—

A light and graceful form which sprang

To meet him when his step was heard,—

Eyes by his lodge-fire flashing dark,

Small fingers stringing bead and shell

Or weaving mats of bright-hued bark,—

With these the household-god [3] had graced

his wigwam well.

Child of the forest! strong and free,

Slight-robed, with loosely flowing hair,

She swam the lake or climbed the tree,

Or struck the flying bird in air.

O'er the heaped drifts of winter's moon

Her snow-shoes tracked the hunter's way;

And dazzling in the summer noon

The blade of her light oar threw off its shower

of spray!

Unknown to her the rigid rule,

The dull restraint, the chiding frown,

The weary torture of the school,

The taming of wild nature down.

Her only lore, the legends told

Around the hunter's fire at night;

Stars rose and set, and seasons rolled,

Flowers bloomed and snow-flakes fell, unquestioned

in her sight.

Unknown to her the subtle skill

With which the artist-eye can trace

In rock and tree and lake and hill

The outlines of divinest grace;

Unknown the fine soul's keen unrest,

Which sees, admires, yet yearns alway;

Too closely on her mother's breast

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

It is enough for such to be

Of common, natural things a part,

To feel, with bird and stream and tree,

The pulses of the same great heart;

But we, from Nature long exiled,

In our cold homes of Art and Thought

Grieve like the stranger-tended child,

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

them not.

The garden rose may richly bloom

In cultured soil and genial air,

To cloud the light of Fashion's room

Or droop in Beauty's midnight hair;

In lonelier grace, to sun and dew

The sweetbrier on the hillside shows

Its single leaf and fainter hue,

Untrained and wildly free, yet still a sister rose!

Thus o'er the heart of Weetamoo

Their mingling shades of joy and ill

The instincts of her nature threw;

The savage was a woman still.

Midst outlines dim of maiden schemes,

Heart-colored prophecies of life,

Rose on the ground of her young dreams

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

IV. THE WEDDING.

Cool and dark fell the autumn night,

But the Bashaba's wigwam glowed with light,

For down from its roof, by green withes hung,

Flaring and smoking the pine-knots swung.

And along the river great wood-fires

Shot into the night their long, red spires,

Showing behind the tall, dark wood,

Flashing before on the sweeping flood.

In the changeful wind, with shimmer and shade,

Now high, now low, that firelight played,

On tree-leaves wet with evening dews,

On gliding water and still canoes.

The trapper that night on Turee's brook,

And the weary fisher on Contoocook,

Saw over the marshes, and through the pine,

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

For the Saugus Sachem had come to woo

The Bashaba's daughter Weetamoo,

And laid at her father's feet that night

His softest furs and wampum white.

From the Crystal Hills to the far southeast

The river Sagamores came to the feast;

And chiefs whose homes the sea-winds shook

Sat down on the mats of Pennacook.

They came from Sunapee's shore of rock,

From the snowy sources of Snooganock,

And from rough Coos whose thick woods shake

Their pine-cones in Umbagog Lake.

From Ammonoosuc's mountain pass,

Wild as his home, came Chepewass;

And the Keenomps of the bills which throw

Their shade on the Smile of Manito.

With pipes of peace and bows unstrung,

Glowing with paint came old and young,

In wampum and furs and feathers arrayed,

To the dance and feast the Bashaba made.

Bird of the air and beast of the field,

All which the woods and the waters yield,

On dishes of birch and hemlock piled,

Garnished and graced that banquet wild.

Steaks of the brown bear fat and large

From the rocky slopes of the Kearsarge;

Delicate trout from Babboosuck brook,

And salmon speared in the Contoocook;

Squirrels which fed where nuts fell thick in the gravelly bed of the Otternic; And small wild-hens in reed-snares caught from the banks of Sondagardee brought;

Pike and perch from the Suncook taken,

Nuts from the trees of the Black Hills shaken,

Cranberries picked in the Squamscot bog,

And grapes from the vines of Piscataquog:

And, drawn from that great stone vase which stands

In the river scooped by a spirit's hands,[4]

Garnished with spoons of shell and horn,

Stood the birchen dishes of smoking corn.

Thus bird of the air and beast of the field,

All which the woods and the waters yield,

Furnished in that olden day

The bridal feast of the Bashaba.

And merrily when that feast was done

On the fire-lit green the dance begun,

With squaws' shrill stave, and deeper hum

Of old men beating the Indian drum.

Painted and plumed, with scalp-locks flowing,

And red arms tossing and black eyes glowing,

Now in the light and now in the shade

Around the fires the dancers played.

The step was quicker, the song more shrill,

And the beat of the small drums louder still

Whenever within the circle drew

The Saugus Sachem and Weetamoo.

The moons of forty winters had shed

Their snow upon that chieftain's head,

And toil and care and battle's chance

Had seamed his hard, dark countenance.

A fawn beside the bison grim,—

Why turns the bride's fond eye on him,

In whose cold look is naught beside

The triumph of a sullen pride?

Ask why the graceful grape entwines

The rough oak with her arm of vines;

And why the gray rock's rugged cheek

The soft lips of the mosses seek.

Why, with wise instinct, Nature seems

To harmonize her wide extremes,

Linking the stronger with the weak,

The haughty with the soft and meek!

V. THE NEW HOME.

A wild and broken landscape, spiked with firs,

Roughening the bleak horizon's northern edge;

Steep, cavernous hillsides, where black hemlock

spurs

And sharp, gray splinters of the wind-swept

ledge

Pierced the thin-glazed ice, or bristling rose,

Where the cold rim of the sky sunk down upon

the snows.

And eastward cold, wide marshes stretched away,

Dull, dreary flats without a bush or tree,

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

Gurgled the waters of the moon-struck sea;

And faint with distance came the stifled roar,

The melancholy lapse of waves on that low shore.

No cheerful village with its mingling smokes,

No laugh of children wrestling in the snow,

No camp-fire blazing through the hillside oaks,

No fishers kneeling on the ice below;

Yet midst all desolate things of sound and view,

Through the long winter moons smiled dark-eyed

Weetamoo.

Her heart had found a home; and freshly all

Its beautiful affections overgrew

Their rugged prop. As o'er some granite wall

Soft vine-leaves open to the moistening dew

And warm bright sun, the love of that young wife

Found on a hard cold breast the dew and warmth

of life.

The steep, bleak hills, the melancholy shore,

The long, dead level of the marsh between,

A coloring of unreal beauty wore

Through the soft golden mist of young love seen.

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

Nightly she welcomed home her hunter chief again.

No warmth of heart, no passionate burst of feeling,

Repaid her welcoming smile and parting kiss,

No fond and playful dalliance half concealing,

Under the guise of mirth, its tenderness;

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

And vanity's pleased smile with homage satisfied.

Enough for Weetamoo, that she alone

Sat on his mat and slumbered at his side;

That he whose fame to her young ear had flown

Now looked upon her proudly as his bride;

That he whose name the Mohawk trembling heard

Vouchsafed to her at times a kindly look or word.

For she had learned the maxims of her race,

Which teach the woman to become a slave,

And feel herself the pardonless disgrace

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

The scandal and the shame which they incur,

Who give to woman all which man requires of her.

So passed the winter moons. The sun at last

Broke link by link the frost chain of the rills,

And the warm breathings of the southwest passed

Over the hoar rime of the Saugus hills;

The gray and desolate marsh grew green once more,

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

Sachem's door.

Then from far Pennacook swift runners came,

With gift and greeting for the Saugus chief;

Beseeching him in the great Sachem's name,

That, with the coming of the flower and leaf,

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

Young Weetamoo might greet her lonely sire again.

And Winnepurkit called his chiefs together,

And a grave council in his wigwam met,

Solemn and brief in words, considering whether

The rigid rules of forest etiquette

Permitted Weetamoo once more to look

Upon her father's face and green-banked

Pennacook.

With interludes of pipe-smoke and strong water,

The forest sages pondered, and at length,

Concluded in a body to escort her

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

Impressing thus on Pennacook a sense

Of Winnepurkit's power and regal consequence.

So through old woods which Aukeetamit's[5] hand,

A soft and many-shaded greenness lent,

Over high breezy hills, and meadow land

Yellow with flowers, the wild procession went,

Till, rolling down its wooded banks between,

A broad, clear, mountain stream, the Merrimac

was seen.

The hunter leaning on his bow undrawn,

The fisher lounging on the pebbled shores,

Squaws in the clearing dropping the seed-corn,

Young children peering through the wigwam doors,

Saw with delight, surrounded by her train

Of painted Saugus braves, their Weetamoo again.

VI. AT PENNACOOK.

The hills are dearest which our childish feet

Have climbed the earliest; and the streams most sweet

Are ever those at which our young lips drank,

Stooped to their waters o'er the grassy bank.

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

Shines round the helmsman plunging through the night;

And still, with inward eye, the traveller sees

In close, dark, stranger streets his native trees.

The home-sick dreamer's brow is nightly fanned

By breezes whispering of his native land,

And on the stranger's dim and dying eye

The soft, sweet pictures of his childhood lie.

Joy then for Weetamoo, to sit once more

A child upon her father's wigwam floor!

Once more with her old fondness to beguile

From his cold eye the strange light of a smile.

The long, bright days of summer swiftly passed,

The dry leaves whirled in autumn's rising blast,

And evening cloud and whitening sunrise rime

Told of the coming of the winter-time.

But vainly looked, the while, young Weetamoo,

Down the dark river for her chief's canoe;

No dusky messenger from Saugus brought

The grateful tidings which the young wife sought.

At length a runner from her father sent,

To Winnepurkit's sea-cooled wigwam went

"Eagle of Saugus,—in the woods the dove

Mourns for the shelter of thy wings of love."

But the dark chief of Saugus turned aside

In the grim anger of hard-hearted pride;

I bore her as became a chieftain's daughter,

Up to her home beside the gliding water.

If now no more a mat for her is found

Of all which line her father's wigwam round,

Let Pennacook call out his warrior train,

And send her back with wampum gifts again."

The baffled runner turned upon his track,

Bearing the words of Winnepurkit back.

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

Shall child of mine sit on his wigwam floor.

"Go, let him seek some meaner squaw to spread

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

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

For some vile daughter of the Agawams,

"Or coward Nipmucks! may his scalp dry black

In Mohawk smoke, before I send her back."

He shook his clenched hand towards the ocean wave,

While hoarse assent his listening council gave.

Alas poor bride! can thy grim sire impart

His iron hardness to thy woman's heart?

Or cold self-torturing pride like his atone

For love denied and life's warm beauty flown?

On Autumn's gray and mournful grave the snow

Hung its white wreaths; with stifled voice and low

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

Built by the boar-locked artisan of Frost.

And many a moon in beauty newly born

Pierced the red sunset with her silver horn,

Or, from the east, across her azure field

Rolled the wide brightness of her full-orbed shield.

Yet Winnepurkit came not,—on the mat

Of the scorned wife her dusky rival sat;

And he, the while, in Western woods afar,

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

Dry up thy tears, young daughter of a chief!

Waste not on him the sacredness of grief;

Be the fierce spirit of thy sire thine own,

His lips of scorning, and his heart of stone.

What heeds the warrior of a hundred fights,

The storm-worn watcher through long hunting nights,

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

Her home-bound grief and pining loneliness?

VII. THE DEPARTURE.

The wild March rains had fallen fast and long

The snowy mountains of the North among,

Making each vale a watercourse, each hill

Bright with the cascade of some new-made rill.

Gnawed by the sunbeams, softened by the rain,

Heaved underneath by the swollen current's strain,

The ice-bridge yielded, and the Merrimac

Bore the huge ruin crashing down its track.

On that strong turbid water, a small boat

Guided by one weak hand was seen to float;

Evil the fate which loosed it from the shore,

Too early voyager with too frail an oar!

Down the vexed centre of that rushing tide,

The thick huge ice-blocks threatening either side,

The foam-white rocks of Amoskeag in view,

With arrowy swiftness sped that light canoe.

The trapper, moistening his moose's meat

On the wet bank by Uncanoonuc's feet,

Saw the swift boat flash down the troubled stream;

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

The straining eye bent fearfully before,

The small hand clenching on the useless oar,

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

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

Sick and aweary of her lonely life,

Heedless of peril, the still faithful wife

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

To seek the wigwam of her chief once more.

Down the white rapids like a sear leaf whirled,

On the sharp rocks and piled-up ices hurled,

Empty and broken, circled the canoe

In the vexed pool below—but where was Weetamoo.

VIII. SONG OF INDIAN WOMEN.

The Dark eye has left us,

The Spring-bird has flown;

On the pathway of spirits

She wanders alone.

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

Mat wonck kunna-monee![6] We hear it no more!

O dark water Spirit

We cast on thy wave

These furs which may never

Hang over her grave;

Bear down to the lost one the robes that she wore

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

Of the strange land she walks in

No Powah has told:

It may burn with the sunshine,

Or freeze with the cold.

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

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

The path she is treading

Shall soon be our own;

Each gliding in shadow

Unseen and alone!

In vain shall we call on the souls gone before:

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

O mighty Sowanna![7]

Thy gateways unfold,

From thy wigwam of sunset

Lift curtains of gold!

Take home the poor Spirit whose journey is o'er

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

So sang the Children of the Leaves beside

The broad, dark river's coldly flowing tide;

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

On the high wind their voices rose and fell.

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

The scream of birds, the wailing of the breeze,

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

Mingled and murmured in that farewell song.

1844.

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Table of Contents

NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY

THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK I. THE MERRIMAC II. THE BASHABA III. THE DAUGHTER IV. THE WEDDING V. THE NEW HOME VI. AT PENNACOOK VII. THE DEPARTURE VIII. SONG OF INDIAN WOMEN

THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE