The Project Gutenberg eBook of Among the Hills, and other poems

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Title: Among the Hills, and other poems

Author: John Greenleaf Whittier

Release date: December 1, 2005 [eBook #9564]

Most recently updated: January 2, 2021

Language: English

Credits: This eBook was produced by David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMONG THE HILLS, AND OTHER POEMS ***

This eBook was produced by David Widger

NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY

POEMS

BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

CONTENTS:

AMONG THE HILLS PRELUDE AMONG THE HILLS

THE DOLE OF JARL THORKELL THE TWO RABBINS NOREMBEGA MIRIAM MAUD MULLER MARY GARVIN THE RANGER NAUHAUGHT, THE DEACON THE SISTERS MARGUERITE THE ROBIN

AMONG THE HILLS

This poem, when originally published, was dedicated to Annie Fields, wife of the distinguished publisher, James T. Fields, of Boston, in grateful acknowledgment of the strength and inspiration I have found in her friendship and sympathy. The poem in its first form was entitled The Wife: an Idyl of Bearcamp Water, and appeared in The Atlantic Monthly for January, 1868. When I published the volume Among the Hills, in December of the same year, I expanded the Prelude and filled out also the outlines of the story.

PRELUDE.

ALONG the roadside, like the flowers of gold

That tawny Incas for their gardens wrought,

Heavy with sunshine droops the golden-rod,

And the red pennons of the cardinal-flowers

Hang motionless upon their upright staves.

The sky is hot and hazy, and the wind,

Vying-weary with its long flight from the south,

Unfelt; yet, closely scanned, yon maple leaf

With faintest motion, as one stirs in dreams,

Confesses it. The locust by the wall

Stabs the noon-silence with his sharp alarm.

A single hay-cart down the dusty road

Creaks slowly, with its driver fast asleep

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

Huddled along the stone wall's shady side,

The sheep show white, as if a snowdrift still

Defied the dog-star. Through the open door

A drowsy smell of flowers-gray heliotrope,

And white sweet clover, and shy mignonette—

Comes faintly in, and silent chorus lends

To the pervading symphony of peace.

No time is this for hands long over-worn

To task their strength; and (unto Him be praise

Who giveth quietness!) the stress and strain

Of years that did the work of centuries

Have ceased, and we can draw our breath once more

Freely and full. So, as yon harvesters

Make glad their nooning underneath the elms

With tale and riddle and old snatch of song,

I lay aside grave themes, and idly turn

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

Old summer pictures of the quiet hills,

And human life, as quiet, at their feet.

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

Proud of field-lore and harvest craft, and feeling

All their fine possibilities, how rich

And restful even poverty and toil

Become when beauty, harmony, and love

Sit at their humble hearth as angels sat

At evening in the patriarch's tent, when man

Makes labor noble, and his farmer's frock

The symbol of a Christian chivalry

Tender and just and generous to her

Who clothes with grace all duty; still, I know

Too well the picture has another side,—

How wearily the grind of toil goes on

Where love is wanting, how the eye and ear

And heart are starved amidst the plenitude

Of nature, and how hard and colorless

Is life without an atmosphere. I look

Across the lapse of half a century,

And call to mind old homesteads, where no flower

Told that the spring had come, but evil weeds,

Nightshade and rough-leaved burdock in the place

Of the sweet doorway greeting of the rose

And honeysuckle, where the house walls seemed

Blistering in sun, without a tree or vine

To cast the tremulous shadow of its leaves

Across the curtainless windows, from whose panes

Fluttered the signal rags of shiftlessness.

Within, the cluttered kitchen-floor, unwashed

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

Stifling with cellar damp, shut from the air

In hot midsummer, bookless, pictureless,

Save the inevitable sampler hung

Over the fireplace, or a mourning piece,

A green-haired woman, peony-cheeked, beneath

Impossible willows; the wide-throated hearth

Bristling with faded pine-boughs half concealing

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

And, in sad keeping with all things about them,

Shrill, querulous-women, sour and sullen men,

Untidy, loveless, old before their time,

With scarce a human interest save their own

Monotonous round of small economies,

Or the poor scandal of the neighborhood;

Blind to the beauty everywhere revealed,

Treading the May-flowers with regardless feet;

For them the song-sparrow and the bobolink

Sang not, nor winds made music in the leaves;

For them in vain October's holocaust

Burned, gold and crimson, over all the hills,

The sacramental mystery of the woods.

Church-goers, fearful of the unseen Powers,

But grumbling over pulpit-tax and pew-rent,

Saving, as shrewd economists, their souls

And winter pork with the least possible outlay

Of salt and sanctity; in daily life

Showing as little actual comprehension

Of Christian charity and love and duty,

As if the Sermon on the Mount had been

Outdated like a last year's almanac

Rich in broad woodlands and in half-tilled fields,

And yet so pinched and bare and comfortless,

The veriest straggler limping on his rounds,

The sun and air his sole inheritance,

Laughed at a poverty that paid its taxes,

And hugged his rags in self-complacency!

Not such should be the homesteads of a land

Where whoso wisely wills and acts may dwell

As king and lawgiver, in broad-acred state,

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

His hour of leisure richer than a life

Of fourscore to the barons of old time,

Our yeoman should be equal to his home

Set in the fair, green valleys, purple walled,

A man to match his mountains, not to creep

Dwarfed and abased below them. I would fain

In this light way (of which I needs must own

With the knife-grinder of whom Canning sings,

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

Invite the eye to see and heart to feel

The beauty and the joy within their reach,—

Home, and home loves, and the beatitudes

Of nature free to all. Haply in years

That wait to take the places of our own,

Heard where some breezy balcony looks down

On happy homes, or where the lake in the moon

Sleeps dreaming of the mountains, fair as Ruth,

In the old Hebrew pastoral, at the feet

Of Boaz, even this simple lay of mine

May seem the burden of a prophecy,

Finding its late fulfilment in a change

Slow as the oak's growth, lifting manhood up

Through broader culture, finer manners, love,

And reverence, to the level of the hills.

O Golden Age, whose light is of the dawn,

And not of sunset, forward, not behind,

Flood the new heavens and earth, and with thee bring

All the old virtues, whatsoever things

Are pure and honest and of good repute,

But add thereto whatever bard has sung

Or seer has told of when in trance and dream

They saw the Happy Isles of prophecy

Let Justice hold her scale, and Truth divide

Between the right and wrong; but give the heart

The freedom of its fair inheritance;

Let the poor prisoner, cramped and starved so long,

At Nature's table feast his ear and eye

With joy and wonder; let all harmonies

Of sound, form, color, motion, wait upon

The princely guest, whether in soft attire

Of leisure clad, or the coarse frock of toil,

And, lending life to the dead form of faith,

Give human nature reverence for the sake

Of One who bore it, making it divine

With the ineffable tenderness of God;

Let common need, the brotherhood of prayer,

The heirship of an unknown destiny,

The unsolved mystery round about us, make

A man more precious than the gold of Ophir.

Sacred, inviolate, unto whom all things

Should minister, as outward types and signs

Of the eternal beauty which fulfils

The one great purpose of creation, Love,

The sole necessity of Earth and Heaven!

. . . . . . . . . . .

For weeks the clouds had raked the hills

And vexed the vales with raining,

And all the woods were sad with mist,

And all the brooks complaining.

At last, a sudden night-storm tore

The mountain veils asunder,

And swept the valleys clean before

The besom of the thunder.

Through Sandwich notch the west-wind sang

Good morrow to the cotter;

And once again Chocorua's horn

Of shadow pierced the water.

Above his broad lake Ossipee,

Once more the sunshine wearing,

Stooped, tracing on that silver shield

His grim armorial bearing.

Clear drawn against the hard blue sky,

The peaks had winter's keenness;

And, close on autumn's frost, the vales

Had more than June's fresh greenness.

Again the sodden forest floors

With golden lights were checkered,

Once more rejoicing leaves in wind

And sunshine danced and flickered.

It was as if the summer's late

Atoning for it's sadness

Had borrowed every season's charm

To end its days in gladness.

Rivers of gold-mist flowing down

From far celestial fountains,—

The great sun flaming through the rifts

Beyond the wall of mountains.

We paused at last where home-bound cows

Brought down the pasture's treasure,

And in the barn the rhythmic flails

Beat out a harvest measure.

We heard the night-hawk's sullen plunge,

The crow his tree-mates calling

The shadows lengthening down the slopes

About our feet were falling.

And through them smote the level sun

In broken lines of splendor,

Touched the gray rocks and made the green

Of the shorn grass more tender.

The maples bending o'er the gate,

Their arch of leaves just tinted

With yellow warmth, the golden glow

Of coming autumn hinted.

Keen white between the farm-house showed,

And smiled on porch and trellis,

The fair democracy of flowers

That equals cot and palace.

And weaving garlands for her dog,

'Twixt chidings and caresses,

A human flower of childhood shook

The sunshine from her tresses.

Clear drawn against the hard blue sky,

The peaks had winter's keenness;

And, close on autumn's frost, the vales

Had more than June's fresh greenness.

Again the sodden forest floors

With golden lights were checkered,

Once more rejoicing leaves in wind

And sunshine danced and flickered.

It was as if the summer's late

Atoning for it's sadness

Had borrowed every season's charm

To end its days in gladness.

I call to mind those banded vales

Of shadow and of shining,

Through which, my hostess at my side,

I drove in day's declining.

We held our sideling way above

The river's whitening shallows,

By homesteads old, with wide-flung barns

Swept through and through by swallows;

By maple orchards, belts of pine

And larches climbing darkly

The mountain slopes, and, over all,

The great peaks rising starkly.

You should have seen that long hill-range

With gaps of brightness riven,—

How through each pass and hollow streamed

The purpling lights of heaven,—

On either hand we saw the signs

Of fancy and of shrewdness,

Where taste had wound its arms of vines

Round thrift's uncomely rudeness.

The sun-brown farmer in his frock

Shook hands, and called to Mary

Bare-armed, as Juno might, she came,

White-aproned from her dairy.

Her air, her smile, her motions, told

Of womanly completeness;

A music as of household songs

Was in her voice of sweetness.

Not fair alone in curve and line,

But something more and better,

The secret charm eluding art,

Its spirit, not its letter;—

An inborn grace that nothing lacked

Of culture or appliance,

The warmth of genial courtesy,

The calm of self-reliance.

Before her queenly womanhood

How dared our hostess utter

The paltry errand of her need

To buy her fresh-churned butter?

She led the way with housewife pride,

Her goodly store disclosing,

Full tenderly the golden balls

With practised hands disposing.

Then, while along the western hills

We watched the changeful glory

Of sunset, on our homeward way,

I heard her simple story.

The early crickets sang; the stream

Plashed through my friend's narration

Her rustic patois of the hills

Lost in my free-translation.

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

Our hills in middle summer,

She came, when June's first roses blow,

To greet the early comer.

"From school and ball and rout she came,

The city's fair, pale daughter,

To drink the wine of mountain air

Beside the Bearcamp Water.

"Her step grew firmer on the hills

That watch our homesteads over;

On cheek and lip, from summer fields,

She caught the bloom of clover.

"For health comes sparkling in the streams

From cool Chocorua stealing

There's iron in our Northern winds;

Our pines are trees of healing.

"She sat beneath the broad-armed elms

That skirt the mowing-meadow,

And watched the gentle west-wind weave

The grass with shine and shadow.

"Beside her, from the summer heat

To share her grateful screening,

With forehead bared, the farmer stood,

Upon his pitchfork leaning.

"Framed in its damp, dark locks, his face

Had nothing mean or common,—

Strong, manly, true, the tenderness

And pride beloved of woman.

"She looked up, glowing with the health

The country air had brought her,

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

Your mother lacks a daughter.

"'To mend your frock and bake your bread

You do not need a lady

Be sure among these brown old homes

Is some one waiting ready,—

"'Some fair, sweet girl with skilful hand

And cheerful heart for treasure,

Who never played with ivory keys,

Or danced the polka's measure.'

"He bent his black brows to a frown,

He set his white teeth tightly.

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

To choose for me so lightly.

"You think, because my life is rude

I take no note of sweetness

I tell you love has naught to do

With meetness or unmeetness.

"'Itself its best excuse, it asks

No leave of pride or fashion

When silken zone or homespun frock

It stirs with throbs of passion.

"'You think me deaf and blind: you bring

Your winning graces hither

As free as if from cradle-time

We two had played together.

"'You tempt me with your laughing eyes,

Your cheek of sundown's blushes,

A motion as of waving grain,

A music as of thrushes.

"'The plaything of your summer sport,

The spells you weave around me

You cannot at your will undo,

Nor leave me as you found me.

"'You go as lightly as you came,

Your life is well without me;

What care you that these hills will close

Like prison-walls about me?

"'No mood is mine to seek a wife,

Or daughter for my mother

Who loves you loses in that love

All power to love another!

"'I dare your pity or your scorn,

With pride your own exceeding;

I fling my heart into your lap

Without a word of pleading.'

"She looked up in his face of pain

So archly, yet so tender

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

'Will you forgive the lender?

"'Nor frock nor tan can hide the man;

And see you not, my farmer,

How weak and fond a woman waits

Behind this silken armor?

"'I love you: on that love alone,

And not my worth, presuming,

Will you not trust for summer fruit

The tree in May-day blooming?'

"Alone the hangbird overhead,

His hair-swung cradle straining,

Looked down to see love's miracle,—

The giving that is gaining.

"And so the farmer found a wife,

His mother found a daughter

There looks no happier home than hers

On pleasant Bearcamp Water.

"Flowers spring to blossom where she walks

The careful ways of duty;

Our hard, stiff lines of life with her

Are flowing curves of beauty.

"Our homes are cheerier for her sake,

Our door-yards brighter blooming,

And all about the social air

Is sweeter for her coming.

"Unspoken homilies of peace

Her daily life is preaching;

The still refreshment of the dew

Is her unconscious teaching.

"And never tenderer hand than hers

Unknits the brow of ailing;

Her garments to the sick man's ear

Have music in their trailing.

"And when, in pleasant harvest moons,

The youthful huskers gather,

Or sleigh-drives on the mountain ways

Defy the winter weather,—

"In sugar-camps, when south and warm

The winds of March are blowing,

And sweetly from its thawing veins

The maple's blood is flowing,—

"In summer, where some lilied pond

Its virgin zone is baring,

Or where the ruddy autumn fire

Lights up the apple-paring,—

"The coarseness of a ruder time

Her finer mirth displaces,

A subtler sense of pleasure fills

Each rustic sport she graces.

"Her presence lends its warmth and health

To all who come before it.

If woman lost us Eden, such

As she alone restore it.

"For larger life and wiser aims

The farmer is her debtor;

Who holds to his another's heart

Must needs be worse or better.

"Through her his civic service shows

A purer-toned ambition;

No double consciousness divides

The man and politician.

"In party's doubtful ways he trusts

Her instincts to determine;

At the loud polls, the thought of her

Recalls Christ's Mountain Sermon.

"He owns her logic of the heart,

And wisdom of unreason,

Supplying, while he doubts and weighs,

The needed word in season.

"He sees with pride her richer thought,

Her fancy's freer ranges;

And love thus deepened to respect

Is proof against all changes.

"And if she walks at ease in ways

His feet are slow to travel,

And if she reads with cultured eyes

What his may scarce unravel,

"Still clearer, for her keener sight

Of beauty and of wonder,

He learns the meaning of the hills

He dwelt from childhood under.

"And higher, warmed with summer lights,

Or winter-crowned and hoary,

The ridged horizon lifts for him

Its inner veils of glory.

"He has his own free, bookless lore,

The lessons nature taught him,

The wisdom which the woods and hills

And toiling men have brought him:

"The steady force of will whereby

Her flexile grace seems sweeter;

The sturdy counterpoise which makes

Her woman's life completer.

"A latent fire of soul which lacks

No breath of love to fan it;

And wit, that, like his native brooks,

Plays over solid granite.

"How dwarfed against his manliness

She sees the poor pretension,

The wants, the aims, the follies, born

Of fashion and convention.

"How life behind its accidents

Stands strong and self-sustaining,

The human fact transcending all

The losing and the gaining.

"And so in grateful interchange

Of teacher and of hearer,

Their lives their true distinctness keep

While daily drawing nearer.

"And if the husband or the wife

In home's strong light discovers

Such slight defaults as failed to meet

The blinded eyes of lovers,

"Why need we care to ask?—who dreams

Without their thorns of roses,

Or wonders that the truest steel

The readiest spark discloses?

"For still in mutual sufferance lies

The secret of true living;

Love scarce is love that never knows

The sweetness of forgiving.

"We send the Squire to General Court,

He takes his young wife thither;

No prouder man election day

Rides through the sweet June weather.

"He sees with eyes of manly trust

All hearts to her inclining;

Not less for him his household light

That others share its shining."

Thus, while my hostess spake, there grew

Before me, warmer tinted

And outlined with a tenderer grace,

The picture that she hinted.

The sunset smouldered as we drove

Beneath the deep hill-shadows.

Below us wreaths of white fog walked

Like ghosts the haunted meadows.

Sounding the summer night, the stars

Dropped down their golden plummets;

The pale arc of the Northern lights

Rose o'er the mountain summits,

Until, at last, beneath its bridge,

We heard the Bearcamp flowing,

And saw across the mapled lawn

The welcome home lights glowing.

And, musing on the tale I heard,

'T were well, thought I, if often

To rugged farm-life came the gift

To harmonize and soften;

If more and more we found the troth

Of fact and fancy plighted,

And culture's charm and labor's strength

In rural homes united,—

The simple life, the homely hearth,

With beauty's sphere surrounding,

And blessing toil where toil abounds

With graces more abounding.

1868.

THE DOLE OF JARL THORKELL.

THE land was pale with famine

And racked with fever-pain;

The frozen fiords were fishless,

The earth withheld her grain.

Men saw the boding Fylgja

Before them come and go,

And, through their dreams, the Urdarmoon

From west to east sailed slow.

Jarl Thorkell of Thevera

At Yule-time made his vow;

On Rykdal's holy Doom-stone

He slew to Frey his cow.

To bounteous Frey he slew her;

To Skuld, the younger Norn,

Who watches over birth and death,

He gave her calf unborn.

And his little gold-haired daughter

Took up the sprinkling-rod,

And smeared with blood the temple

And the wide lips of the god.

Hoarse below, the winter water

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

Jets of foam, like ghosts of dead waves,

Rose and fell along the shore.

The red torch of the Jokul,

Aloft in icy space,

Shone down on the bloody Horg-stones

And the statue's carven face.

And closer round and grimmer

Beneath its baleful light

The Jotun shapes of mountains

Came crowding through the night.

The gray-haired Hersir trembled

As a flame by wind is blown;

A weird power moved his white lips,

And their voice was not his own.

"The AEsir thirst!" he muttered;

"The gods must have more blood

Before the tun shall blossom

Or fish shall fill the flood.

"The AEsir thirst and hunger,

And hence our blight and ban;

The mouths of the strong gods water

For the flesh and blood of man!

"Whom shall we give the strong ones?

Not warriors, sword on thigh;

But let the nursling infant

And bedrid old man die."

"So be it!" cried the young men,

"There needs nor doubt nor parle."

But, knitting hard his red brows,

In silence stood the Jarl.

A sound of woman's weeping

At the temple door was heard,

But the old men bowed their white heads,

And answered not a word.

Then the Dream-wife of Thingvalla,

A Vala young and fair,

Sang softly, stirring with her breath

The veil of her loose hair.

She sang: "The winds from Alfheim

Bring never sound of strife;

The gifts for Frey the meetest

Are not of death, but life.

"He loves the grass-green meadows,

The grazing kine's sweet breath;

He loathes your bloody Horg-stones,

Your gifts that smell of death.

"No wrong by wrong is righted,

No pain is cured by pain;

The blood that smokes from Doom-rings

Falls back in redder rain.

"The gods are what you make them,

As earth shall Asgard prove;

And hate will come of hating,

And love will come of love.

"Make dole of skyr and black bread

That old and young may live;

And look to Frey for favor

When first like Frey you give.

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

The summer dawn begins

The tun shall have its harvest,

The fiord its glancing fins."

Then up and swore Jarl Thorkell

"By Gimli and by Hel,

O Vala of Thingvalla,

Thou singest wise and well!

"Too dear the AEsir's favors

Bought with our children's lives;

Better die than shame in living

Our mothers and our wives.

"The full shall give his portion

To him who hath most need;

Of curdled skyr and black bread,

Be daily dole decreed."

He broke from off his neck-chain

Three links of beaten gold;

And each man, at his bidding,

Brought gifts for young and old.

Then mothers nursed their children,

And daughters fed their sires,

And Health sat down with Plenty

Before the next Yule fires.

The Horg-stones stand in Rykdal;

The Doom-ring still remains;

But the snows of a thousand winters

Have washed away the stains.

Christ ruleth now; the Asir

Have found their twilight dim;

And, wiser than she dreamed, of old

The Vala sang of Him

1868.

THE TWO RABBINS.

THE Rabbi Nathan two-score years and ten

Walked blameless through the evil world, and then,

Just as the almond blossomed in his hair,

Met a temptation all too strong to bear,

And miserably sinned. So, adding not

Falsehood to guilt, he left his seat, and taught

No more among the elders, but went out

From the great congregation girt about

With sackcloth, and with ashes on his head,

Making his gray locks grayer. Long he prayed,

Smiting his breast; then, as the Book he laid

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

Pausing to hear that Daughter of a Voice,

Behold the royal preacher's words: "A friend

Loveth at all times, yea, unto the end;

And for the evil day thy brother lives."

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

Counsel in need. At Ecbatana dwells

Rabbi Ben Isaac, who all men excels

In righteousness and wisdom, as the trees

Of Lebanon the small weeds that the bees

Bow with their weight. I will arise, and lay

My sins before him."

And he went his way

Barefooted, fasting long, with many prayers;

But even as one who, followed unawares,

Suddenly in the darkness feels a hand

Thrill with its touch his own, and his cheek fanned

By odors subtly sweet, and whispers near

Of words he loathes, yet cannot choose but hear,

So, while the Rabbi journeyed, chanting low

The wail of David's penitential woe,

Before him still the old temptation came,

And mocked him with the motion and the shame

Of such desires that, shuddering, he abhorred

Himself; and, crying mightily to the Lord

To free his soul and cast the demon out,

Smote with his staff the blankness round about.

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

The towers of Ecbatana far away

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

And footsore, pausing where for some dead saint

The faith of Islam reared a domed tomb,

Saw some one kneeling in the shadow, whom

He greeted kindly: "May the Holy One

Answer thy prayers, O stranger!" Whereupon

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

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

Wept, praising Him whose gracious providence

Made their paths one. But straightway, as the sense

Of his transgression smote him, Nathan tore

Himself away: "O friend beloved, no more

Worthy am I to touch thee, for I came,

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

Haply thy prayers, since naught availeth mine,

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

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

Awestruck Ben Isaac stood. The desert wind

Blew his long mantle backward, laying bare

The mournful secret of his shirt of hair.

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

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

'Better the eye should see than that desire

Should wander?' Burning with a hidden fire

That tears and prayers quench not, I come to thee

For pity and for help, as thou to me.

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

"Pray thou for me, Ben Isaac!"

Side by side

In the low sunshine by the turban stone

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

Forgetting, in the agony and stress

Of pitying love, his claim of selfishness;

Peace, for his friend besought, his own became;

His prayers were answered in another's name;

And, when at last they rose up to embrace,

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

Long after, when his headstone gathered moss,

Traced on the targum-marge of Onkelos

In Rabbi Nathan's hand these words were read:

"/Hope not the cure of sin till Self is dead;

Forget it in love's service, and the debt

Thou, canst not pay the angels shall forget;

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

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

1868.

NOREMBEGA.

Norembega, or Norimbegue, is the name given by early French fishermen and explorers to a fabulous country south of Cape Breton, first discovered by Verrazzani in 1524. It was supposed to have a magnificent city of the same name on a great river, probably the Penobscot. The site of this barbaric city is laid down on a map published at Antwerp in 1570. In 1604 Champlain sailed in search of the Northern Eldorado, twenty-two leagues up the Penobscot from the Isle Haute. He supposed the river to be that of Norembega, but wisely came to the conclusion that those travellers who told of the great city had never seen it. He saw no evidences of anything like civilization, but mentions the finding of a cross, very old and mossy, in the woods.

THE winding way the serpent takes

The mystic water took,

From where, to count its beaded lakes,

The forest sped its brook.

A narrow space 'twixt shore and shore,

For sun or stars to fall,

While evermore, behind, before,

Closed in the forest wall.

The dim wood hiding underneath

Wan flowers without a name;

Life tangled with decay and death,

League after league the same.

Unbroken over swamp and hill

The rounding shadow lay,

Save where the river cut at will

A pathway to the day.

Beside that track of air and light,

Weak as a child unweaned,

At shut of day a Christian knight

Upon his henchman leaned.

The embers of the sunset's fires

Along the clouds burned down;

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

Of Norembega town."

"Alack! the domes, O master mine,

Are golden clouds on high;

Yon spire is but the branchless pine

That cuts the evening sky."

"Oh, hush and hark! What sounds are these

But chants and holy hymns?"

"Thou hear'st the breeze that stirs the trees

Though all their leafy limbs."

"Is it a chapel bell that fills

The air with its low tone?"

"Thou hear'st the tinkle of the rills,

The insect's vesper drone."

"The Christ be praised!—He sets for me

A blessed cross in sight!"

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

With two gaunt arms outright!"

"Be it wind so sad or tree so stark,

It mattereth not, my knave;

Methinks to funeral hymns I hark,

The cross is for my grave!

"My life is sped; I shall not see

My home-set sails again;

The sweetest eyes of Normandie

Shall watch for me in vain.

"Yet onward still to ear and eye

The baffling marvel calls;

I fain would look before I die

On Norembega's walls.

"So, haply, it shall be thy part

At Christian feet to lay

The mystery of the desert's heart

My dead hand plucked away.

"Leave me an hour of rest; go thou

And look from yonder heights;

Perchance the valley even now

Is starred with city lights."

The henchman climbed the nearest hill,

He saw nor tower nor town,

But, through the drear woods, lone and still,

The river rolling down.

He heard the stealthy feet of things

Whose shapes he could not see,

A flutter as of evil wings,

The fall of a dead tree.

The pines stood black against the moon,

A sword of fire beyond;

He heard the wolf howl, and the loon

Laugh from his reedy pond.

He turned him back: "O master dear,

We are but men misled;

And thou hast sought a city here

To find a grave instead."

"As God shall will! what matters where

A true man's cross may stand,

So Heaven be o'er it here as there

In pleasant Norman land?

"These woods, perchance, no secret hide

Of lordly tower and hall;

Yon river in its wanderings wide

Has washed no city wall;

"Yet mirrored in the sullen stream

The holy stars are given

Is Norembega, then, a dream

Whose waking is in Heaven?

"No builded wonder of these lands

My weary eyes shall see;

A city never made with hands

Alone awaiteth me—

"'Urbs Syon mystica;' I see

Its mansions passing fair,

'/Condita caelo/;' let me be,

Dear Lord, a dweller there!"

Above the dying exile hung

The vision of the bard,

As faltered on his failing tongue

The song of good Bernard.

The henchman dug at dawn a grave

Beneath the hemlocks brown,

And to the desert's keeping gave

The lord of fief and town.

Years after, when the Sieur Champlain

Sailed up the unknown stream,

And Norembega proved again

A shadow and a dream,

He found the Norman's nameless grave

Within the hemlock's shade,

And, stretching wide its arms to save,

The sign that God had made,

The cross-boughed tree that marked the spot

And made it holy ground

He needs the earthly city not

Who hath the heavenly found.

1869.

MIRIAM.

TO FREDERICK A. P. BARNARD.

THE years are many since, in youth and hope,

Under the Charter Oak, our horoscope

We drew thick-studded with all favoring stars.

Now, with gray beards, and faces seamed with scars

From life's hard battle, meeting once again,

We smile, half sadly, over dreams so vain;

Knowing, at last, that it is not in man

Who walketh to direct his steps, or plan

His permanent house of life. Alike we loved

The muses' haunts, and all our fancies moved

To measures of old song. How since that day

Our feet have parted from the path that lay

So fair before us! Rich, from lifelong search

Of truth, within thy Academic porch

Thou 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 harmonies

And 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 hair

Of boyhood rested silver-sown and spare

On manhood's temples, now at sunset-chime

Tread with fond feet the path of morning time.

And if perchance too late I linger where

The flowers have ceased to blow, and trees are bare,

Thou, wiser in thy choice, wilt scarcely blame

The friend who shields his folly with thy name.

AMESBURY, 10th mo., 1870.

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

One Sabbath day my friend and I

After the meeting, quietly

Passed from the crowded village lanes,

White with dry dust for lack of rains,

And climbed the neighboring slope, with feet

Slackened and heavy from the heat,

Although the day was wellnigh done,

And the low angle of the sun

Along the naked hillside cast

Our shadows as of giants vast.

We reached, at length, the topmost swell,

Whence, either way, the green turf fell

In terraces of nature down

To fruit-hung orchards, and the town

With white, pretenceless houses, tall

Church-steeples, and, o'ershadowing all,

Huge mills whose windows had the look

Of eager eyes that ill could brook

The Sabbath rest. We traced the track

Of 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 blue

Of ocean, from its curved coast-line;

Sombred and still, the warm sunshine

Filled with pale gold-dust all the reach

Of slumberous woods from hill to beach,—

Slanted on walls of thronged retreats

From city toil and dusty streets,

On grassy bluff, and dune of sand,

And rocky islands miles from land;

Touched the far-glancing sails, and showed

White lines of foam where long waves flowed

Dumb in the distance. In the north,

Dim through their misty hair, looked forth

The 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 what

It might have been, and yet was not.

And, when at last the evening air

Grew sweeter for the bells of prayer

Ringing in steeples far below,

We watched the people churchward go,

Each to his place, as if thereon

The true shekinah only shone;

And my friend queried how it came

To pass that they who owned the same

Great Master still could not agree

To worship Him in company.

Then, broadening in his thought, he ran

Over the whole vast field of man,—

The varying forms of faith and creed

That 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 lent

To home its sweetness and content,

And rendered possible to bear

The life of peoples everywhere

And asked if we, who boast of light,

Claim not a too exclusive right

To 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 scheme

Narrower than Peter's house-top dream,

His wisdom and his love with plans

Poor and inadequate as man's.

It must be that He witnesses

Somehow to all men that He is

That something of His saving grace

Reaches the lowest of the race,

Who, through strange creed and rite, may draw

The hints of a diviner law.

We walk in clearer light;—but then,

Is He not God?—are they not men?

Are His responsibilities

For 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 see

The 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 is

Of latitudes and boundaries.

In Vedic verse, in dull Koran,

Are messages of good to man;

The angels to our Aryan sires

Talked by the earliest household fires;

The prophets of the elder day,

The slant-eyed sages of Cathay,

Read not the riddle all amiss

Of higher life evolved from this.

"Nor doth it lessen what He taught,

Or make the gospel Jesus brought

Less precious, that His lips retold

Some portion of that truth of old;

Denying not the proven seers,

The tested wisdom of the years;

Confirming with his own impress

The common law of righteousness.

We search the world for truth; we cull

The 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 said

Is in the Book our mothers read,

And all our treasure of old thought

In His harmonious fulness wrought

Who gathers in one sheaf complete

The scattered blades of God's sown wheat,

The common growth that maketh good

His all-embracing Fatherhood.

"Wherever through the ages rise

The altars of self-sacrifice,

Where love its arms has opened wide,

Or man for man has calmly died,

I see the same white wings outspread

That hovered o'er the Master's head!

Up from undated time they come,

The martyr souls of heathendom,

And to His cross and passion bring

Their fellowship of suffering.

I trace His presence in the blind

Pathetic gropings of my kind,—

In prayers from sin and sorrow wrung,

In cradle-hymns of life they sung,

Each, in its measure, but a part

Of the unmeasured Over-Heart;

And with a stronger faith confess

The greater that it owns the less.

Good cause it is for thankfulness

That the world-blessing of His life

With the long past is not at strife;

That the great marvel of His death

To the one order witnesseth,

No doubt of changeless goodness wakes,

No link of cause and sequence breaks,

But, one with nature, rooted is

In the eternal verities;

Whereby, while differing in degree

As finite from infinity,

The pain and loss for others borne,

Love's crown of suffering meekly worn,

The life man giveth for his friend

Become vicarious in the end;

Their healing place in nature take,

And make life sweeter for their sake.

"So welcome I from every source

The tokens of that primal Force,

Older than heaven itself, yet new

As the young heart it reaches to,

Beneath whose steady impulse rolls

The tidal wave of human souls;

Guide, comforter, and inward word,

The eternal spirit of the Lord

Nor fear I aught that science brings

From searching through material things;

Content to let its glasses prove,

Not by the letter's oldness move,

The myriad worlds on worlds that course

The spaces of the universe;

Since everywhere the Spirit walks

The garden of the heart, and talks

With man, as under Eden's trees,

In all his varied languages.

Why mourn above some hopeless flaw

In the stone tables of the law,

When scripture every day afresh

Is 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 share

The child-like instinct of a prayer."

And then, as is my wont, I told

A story of the days of old,

Not found in printed books,—in sooth,

A fancy, with slight hint of truth,

Showing how differing faiths agree

In 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'er

To tread the Mogul's marble floor,

And see a fairer sunset fall

On Jumna's wave and Agra's wall.

The good Shah Akbar (peace be his alway!)

Came forth from the Divan at close of day

Bowed with the burden of his many cares,

Worn with the hearing of unnumbered prayers,—

Wild cries for justice, the importunate

Appeals 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 be

Allah'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 stream

Lapse soft and low along his palace wall,

And all about the cool sound of the fall

Of fountains, and of water circling free

Through 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 land

Where Tagus shatters on the salt sea-sand

The mirror of its cork-grown hills of drouth

And vales of vine, at Lisbon's harbor-mouth.

The date-palms rustled not; the peepul laid

Its topmost boughs against the balustrade,

Motionless as the mimic leaves and vines

That, light and graceful as the shawl-designs

Of Delhi or Umritsir, twined in stone;

And the tired monarch, who aside had thrown

The day's hard burden, sat from care apart,

And let the quiet steal into his heart

From 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 trees

Relieved against the mournful cypresses;

And, air-poised lightly as the blown sea-foam,

The marble wonder of some holy dome

Hung a white moonrise over the still wood,

Glassing its beauty in a stiller flood.

Silent the monarch gazed, until the night

Swift-falling hid the city from his sight;

Then to the woman at his feet he said

"Tell me, O Miriam, something thou hast read

In 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 know

By 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 sort

She cherished in the Moslem's liberal court

The sweet traditions of a Christian child;

And, through her life of sense, the undefiled

And chaste ideal of the sinless One

Gazed on her with an eye she might not shun,—

The sad, reproachful look of pity, born

Of love that hath no part in wrath or scorn,)

Began, with low voice and moist eyes, to tell

Of the all-loving Christ, and what befell

When the fierce zealots, thirsting for her blood,

Dragged to his feet a shame of womanhood.

How, when his searching answer pierced within

Each 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 forgets

What hidden evil his own heart besets!

Something of this large charity I find

In all the sects that sever human kind;

I would to Allah that their lives agreed

More nearly with the lesson of their creed!

Those yellow Lamas who at Meerut pray

By wind and water power, and love to say

'He who forgiveth not shall, unforgiven,

Fail of the rest of Buddha,' and who even

Spare the black gnat that stings them, vex my ears

With the poor hates and jealousies and fears

Nursed in their human hives. That lean, fierce priest

Of thy own people, (be his heart increased

By Allah's love!) his black robes smelling yet

Of Goa's roasted Jews, have I not met

Meek-faced, barefooted, crying in the street

The saying of his prophet true and sweet,—

'He who is merciful shall mercy meet!'"

But, next day, so it chanced, as night began

To fall, a murmur through the hareem ran

That one, recalling in her dusky face

The full-lipped, mild-eyed beauty of a race

Known 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 smile

A world was bartered, daughter of the Nile

Herself, and veiling in her large, soft eyes

The passion and the languor of her skies,

The Abyssinian knelt low at the feet

Of 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 outlive

All that life gave me,—him whose wrong of thee

Was but the outcome of his love for me,

Cherished from childhood, when, beneath the shade

Of templed Axum, side by side we played.

Stolen from his arms, my lover followed me

Through weary seasons over land and sea;

And two days since, sitting disconsolate

Within the shadow of the hareem gate,

Suddenly, as if dropping from the sky,

Down from the lattice of the balcony

Fell the sweet song by Tigre's cowherds sung

In the old music of his native tongue.

He knew my voice, for love is quick of ear,

Answering in song.

This night he waited near

To 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 heart

Grateful to tears for favor undeserved,

Turned ever homeward, nor one moment swerved

From her young love. He looked into my eyes,

He heard my voice, and could not otherwise

Than he hath done; yet, save one wild embrace

When first we stood together face to face,

And all that fate had done since last we met

Seemed 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 waves

Hide both my shame and these accursed slaves!"

His loathly length the unsexed bondman bowed

"On my head be it!"

Straightway from a cloud

Of dainty shawls and veils of woven mist

The Christian Miriam rose, and, stooping, kissed

The monarch's hand. Loose down her shoulders bare

Swept all the rippled darkness of her hair,

Veiling the bosom that, with high, quick swell

Of fear and pity, through it rose and fell.

"Alas!" she cried, "hast thou forgotten quite

The 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 alone

Felt 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 shook

With the great storm of passion. Then his look

Softened to her uplifted face, that still

Pleaded more strongly than all words, until

Its pride and anger seemed like overblown,

Spent clouds of thunder left to tell alone

Of strife and overcoming. With bowed head,

And smiting on his bosom: "God," he said,

"Alone is great, and let His holy name

Be honored, even to His servant's shame!

Well spake thy prophet, Miriam,—he alone

Who hath not sinned is meet to cast a stone

At 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 forgive;

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 him

Under 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 book

Into the thoughts of other men could look,)

Began, half chant, half howling, to rehearse

The fragment of a holy Vedic verse;

And thus it ran: "He who all things forgives

Conquers himself and all things else, and lives

Above 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 sees

The tomb of Akbar through its cypress-trees;

And, near at hand, the marble walls that hide

The Christian Begum sleeping at his side.

And o'er her vault of burial (who shall tell

If it be chance alone or miracle?)

The Mission press with tireless hand unrolls

The 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 still

The night lay on the lonely hill,

Down which our homeward steps we bent,

And, silent, through great silence went,

Save that the tireless crickets played

Their 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 shot

One instant and again was not.

And then my friend spake quietly

The thought of both: "Yon crescent see!

Like Islam's symbol-moon it gives

Hints of the light whereby it lives

Somewhat of goodness, something true

From sun and spirit shining through

All faiths, all worlds, as through the dark

Of ocean shines the lighthouse spark,

Attests the presence everywhere

Of love and providential care.

The faith the old Norse heart confessed

In one dear name,—the hopefulest

And tenderest heard from mortal lips

In pangs of birth or death, from ships

Ice-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 old

Dwelt, poor but blameless, where his narrowing Cape

Stretches its shrunk arm out to all the winds

And the relentless smiting of the waves,

Awoke one morning from a pleasant dream

Of a good angel dropping in his hand

A fair, broad gold-piece, in the name of God.

He rose and went forth with the early day

Far 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 bird

He found; though meanwhile in the reedy pools

The otter plashed, and underneath the pines

The partridge drummed: and as his thoughts went back

To the sick wife and little child at home,

What marvel that the poor man felt his faith

Too weak to bear its burden,—like a rope

That, strand by strand uncoiling, breaks above

The 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 feet

A low, metallic clink, and, looking down,

He saw a dainty purse with disks of gold

Crowding its silken net. Awhile he held

The treasure up before his eyes, alone

With his great need, feeling the wondrous coins

Slide through his eager fingers, one by one.

So then the dream was true. The angel brought

One broad piece only; should he take all these?

Who would be wiser, in the blind, dumb woods?

The loser, doubtless rich, would scarcely miss

This dropped crumb from a table always full.

Still, while he mused, he seemed to hear the cry

Of a starved child; the sick face of his wife

Tempted him. Heart and flesh in fierce revolt

Urged the wild license of his savage youth

Against his later scruples. Bitter toil,

Prayer, fasting, dread of blame, and pitiless eyes

To watch his halting,—had he lost for these

The freedom of the woods;—the hunting-grounds

Of happy spirits for a walled-in heaven

Of everlasting psalms? One healed the sick

Very far off thousands of moons ago

Had he not prayed him night and day to come

And 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 kept

This gold, so needed, would the dreadful God

Torment him like a Mohawk's captive stuck

With slow-consuming splinters? Would the saints

And the white angels dance and laugh to see him

Burn like a pitch-pine torch? His Christian garb

Seemed falling from him; with the fear and shame

Of Adam naked at the cool of day,

He gazed around. A black snake lay in coil

On the hot sand, a crow with sidelong eye

Watched from a dead bough. All his Indian lore

Of evil blending with a convert's faith

In the supernal terrors of the Book,

He saw the Tempter in the coiling snake

And ominous, black-winged bird; and all the while

The low rebuking of the distant waves

Stole in upon him like the voice of God

Among the trees of Eden. Girding up

His soul's loins with a resolute hand, he thrust

The base thought from him: "Nauhaught, be a man

Starve, if need be; but, while you live, look out

From honest eyes on all men, unashamed.

God help me! I am deacon of the church,

A baptized, praying Indian! Should I do

This secret meanness, even the barken knots

Of the old trees would turn to eyes to see it,

The birds would tell of it, and all the leaves

Whisper above me: 'Nauhaught is a thief!'

The sun would know it, and the stars that hide

Behind his light would watch me, and at night

Follow me with their sharp, accusing eyes.

Yea, thou, God, seest me!" Then Nauhaught drew

Closer his belt of leather, dulling thus

The pain of hunger, and walked bravely back

To 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 to

One stood before him in a coat of frieze,

And the glazed bat of a seafaring man,

Shrewd-faced, broad-shouldered, with no trace of wings.

Marvelling, he dropped within the stranger's hand

The 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 closed

Over the golden gift, "Yea, in God's name

I 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 way

Spoke of the owner of the silken purse—

A Wellfleet skipper, known in every port

That 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 roar

Of 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 miss

The 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 swam

He rides at anchor in Anisquam.

"And, if in peril from swamping sea

Or 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 sister Rhoda, 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 sea

To 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 release

To 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 away

Shall 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 reek 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 bands, 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'erflow

With gold the Basin of Minas, and set over

Gaspereau;

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 knows

I 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 way

Crept 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 hopped

From 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 bird

Carries 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 still

Of 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 Lord

Is 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 wherewith

To 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 all

Who suffer like Him in the good they do! "

1871.

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Table of Contents

NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY

CONTENTS:

AMONG THE HILLS

PRELUDE.

THE DOLE OF JARL THORKELL.

THE TWO RABBINS.

NOREMBEGA.

MIRIAM.

NAUHAUGHT, THE DEACON.

THE SISTERS.

MARGUERITE.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE