OUT and in the river is windingThe links of its long, red chain,Through belts of dusky pine-landAnd gusty leagues of plain.Only, at times, a smoke-wreathWith the drifting cloud-rack joins,—The smoke of the hunting-lodgesOf the wild Assiniboins.Drearily blows the north-windFrom the land of ice and snow;The eyes that look are weary,And heavy the hands that row.And with one foot on the water,And one upon the shore,The Angel of Shadow gives warningThat day shall be no more.Is it the clang of wild-geese?Is it the Indian's yell,That lends to the voice of the north-windThe tones of a far-off bell?The voyageur smiles as he listensTo the sound that grows apace;Well he knows the vesper ringingOf the bells of St. Boniface.The bells of the Roman Mission,That call from their turrets twain,To the boatman on the river,To the hunter on the plain!Even so in our mortal journeyThe bitter north-winds blow,And thus upon life's Red RiverOur hearts, as oarsmen, row.And when the Angel of ShadowRests his feet on wave and shore,And our eyes grow dim with watchingAnd our hearts faint at the oar,Happy is he who hearethThe signal of his releaseIn the bells of the Holy City,The chimes of eternal peace!1859
George Whitefield, the celebrated preacher, died at Newburyport in 1770, and was buried under the church which has since borne his name.
ITS windows flashing to the sky,Beneath a thousand roofs of brown,Far down the vale, my friend and IBeheld the old and quiet town;The ghostly sails that out at seaFlapped their white wings of mystery;The beaches glimmering in the sun,And the low wooded capes that runInto the sea-mist north and south;The sand-bluffs at the river's mouth;The swinging chain-bridge, and, afar,The foam-line of the harbor-bar.Over the woods and meadow-landsA crimson-tinted shadow lay,Of clouds through which the setting dayFlung a slant glory far away.It glittered on the wet sea-sands,It flamed upon the city's panes,Smote the white sails of ships that woreOutward or in, and glided o'erThe steeples with their veering vanes!Awhile my friend with rapid searchO'erran the landscape. "Yonder spireOver gray roofs, a shaft of fire;What is it, pray?"—"The Whitefield Church!Walled about by its basement stones,There rest the marvellous prophet's bones."Then as our homeward way we walked,Of the great preacher's life we talked;And through the mystery of our themeThe outward glory seemed to stream,And Nature's self interpretedThe doubtful record of the dead;And every level beam that smoteThe sails upon the dark afloatA symbol of the light became,Which touched the shadows of our blame,With tongues of Pentecostal flame.Over the roofs of the pioneersGathers the moss of a hundred years;On man and his works has passed the changeWhich needs must be in a century's range.The land lies open and warm in the sun,Anvils clamor and mill-wheels run,—Flocks on the hillsides, herds on the plain,The wilderness gladdened with fruit and grain!But the living faith of the settlers oldA dead profession their children hold;To the lust of office and greed of tradeA stepping-stone is the altar made.The church, to place and power the door,Rebukes the sin of the world no more,Nor sees its Lord in the homeless poor.Everywhere is the grasping hand,And eager adding of land to land;And earth, which seemed to the fathers meantBut as a pilgrim's wayside tent,—A nightly shelter to fold awayWhen the Lord should call at the break of day,—Solid and steadfast seems to be,And Time has forgotten Eternity!But fresh and green from the rotting rootsOf primal forests the young growth shoots;From the death of the old the new proceeds,And the life of truth from the rot of creedsOn the ladder of God, which upward leads,The steps of progress are human needs.For His judgments still are a mighty deep,And the eyes of His providence never sleepWhen the night is darkest He gives the morn;When the famine is sorest, the wine and corn!In the church of the wilderness Edwards wrought,Shaping his creed at the forge of thought;And with Thor's own hammer welded and bentThe iron links of his argument,Which strove to grasp in its mighty spanThe purpose of God and the fate of manYet faithful still, in his daily roundTo the weak, and the poor, and sin-sick found,The schoolman's lore and the casuist's artDrew warmth and life from his fervent heart.Had he not seen in the solitudesOf his deep and dark Northampton woodsA vision of love about him fall?Not the blinding splendor which fell on Saul,But the tenderer glory that rests on themWho walk in the New Jerusalem,Where never the sun nor moon are known,But the Lord and His love are the light aloneAnd watching the sweet, still countenanceOf the wife of his bosom rapt in trance,Had he not treasured each broken wordOf the mystical wonder seen and heard;And loved the beautiful dreamer moreThat thus to the desert of earth she boreClusters of Eshcol from Canaan's shore?As the barley-winnower, holding with painAloft in waiting his chaff and grain,Joyfully welcomes the far-off breezeSounding the pine-tree's slender keys,So he who had waited long to hearThe sound of the Spirit drawing near,Like that which the son of Iddo heardWhen the feet of angels the myrtles stirred,Felt the answer of prayer, at last,As over his church the afflatus passed,Breaking its sleep as breezes breakTo sun-bright ripples a stagnant lake.At first a tremor of silent fear,The creep of the flesh at danger near,A vague foreboding and discontent,Over the hearts of the people went.All nature warned in sounds and signsThe wind in the tops of the forest pinesIn the name of the Highest called to prayer,As the muezzin calls from the minaret stair.Through ceiled chambers of secret sinSudden and strong the light shone in;A guilty sense of his neighbor's needsStartled the man of title-deeds;The trembling hand of the worldling shookThe dust of years from the Holy Book;And the psalms of David, forgotten long,Took the place of the scoffer's song.The impulse spread like the outward courseOf waters moved by a central force;The tide of spiritual life rolled downFrom inland mountains to seaboard town.Prepared and ready the altar standsWaiting the prophet's outstretched handsAnd prayer availing, to downward callThe fiery answer in view of all.Hearts are like wax in the furnace; whoShall mould, and shape, and cast them anew?Lo! by the Merrimac Whitefield standsIn the temple that never was made by hands,—Curtains of azure, and crystal wall,And dome of the sunshine over all—A homeless pilgrim, with dubious nameBlown about on the winds of fame;Now as an angel of blessing classed,And now as a mad enthusiast.Called in his youth to sound and gaugeThe moral lapse of his race and age,And, sharp as truth, the contrast drawOf human frailty and perfect law;Possessed by the one dread thought that lentIts goad to his fiery temperament,Up and down the world he went,A John the Baptist crying, Repent!No perfect whole can our nature make;Here or there the circle will break;The orb of life as it takes the lightOn one side leaves the other in night.Never was saint so good and greatAs to give no chance at St. Peter's gateFor the plea of the Devil's advocate.So, incomplete by his being's law,The marvellous preacher had his flaw;With step unequal, and lame with faults,His shade on the path of History halts.Wisely and well said the Eastern bardFear is easy, but love is hard,—Easy to glow with the Santon's rage,And walk on the Meccan pilgrimage;But he is greatest and best who canWorship Allah by loving man.Thus he,—to whom, in the painful stressOf zeal on fire from its own excess,Heaven seemed so vast and earth so smallThat man was nothing, since God was all,—Forgot, as the best at times have done,That the love of the Lord and of man are one.Little to him whose feet unshodThe thorny path of the desert trod,Careless of pain, so it led to God,Seemed the hunger-pang and the poor man's wrong,The weak ones trodden beneath the strong.Should the worm be chooser?—the clay withstandThe shaping will of the potter's hand?In the Indian fable Arjoon hearsThe scorn of a god rebuke his fears"Spare thy pity!" Krishna saith;"Not in thy sword is the power of death!All is illusion,—loss but seems;Pleasure and pain are only dreams;Who deems he slayeth doth not kill;Who counts as slain is living still.Strike, nor fear thy blow is crime;Nothing dies but the cheats of time;Slain or slayer, small the oddsTo each, immortal as Indra's gods!"So by Savannah's banks of shade,The stones of his mission the preacher laidOn the heart of the negro crushed and rent,And made of his blood the wall's cement;Bade the slave-ship speed from coast to coast,Fanned by the wings of the Holy Ghost;And begged, for the love of Christ, the goldCoined from the hearts in its groaning hold.What could it matter, more or lessOf stripes, and hunger, and weariness?Living or dying, bond or free,What was time to eternity?Alas for the preacher's cherished schemes!Mission and church are now but dreams;Nor prayer nor fasting availed the planTo honor God through the wrong of man.Of all his labors no trace remainsSave the bondman lifting his hands in chains.The woof he wove in the righteous warpOf freedom-loving Oglethorpe,Clothes with curses the goodly land,Changes its greenness and bloom to sand;And a century's lapse reveals once moreThe slave-ship stealing to Georgia's shore.Father of Light! how blind is heWho sprinkles the altar he rears to TheeWith the blood and tears of humanity!He erred: shall we count His gifts as naught?Was the work of God in him unwrought?The servant may through his deafness err,And blind may be God's messenger;But the Errand is sure they go upon,—The word is spoken, the deed is done.Was the Hebrew temple less fair and goodThat Solomon bowed to gods of wood?For his tempted heart and wandering feet,Were the songs of David less pure and sweet?So in light and shadow the preacher went,God's erring and human instrument;And the hearts of the people where he passedSwayed as the reeds sway in the blast,Under the spell of a voice which tookIn its compass the flow of Siloa's brook,And the mystical chime of the bells of goldOn the ephod's hem of the priest of old,—Now the roll of thunder, and now the aweOf the trumpet heard in the Mount of Law.A solemn fear on the listening crowdFell like the shadow of a cloud.The sailor reeling from out the shipsWhose masts stood thick in the river-slipsFelt the jest and the curse die on his lips.Listened the fisherman rude and hard,The calker rough from the builder's yard;The man of the market left his load,The teamster leaned on his bending goad,The maiden, and youth beside her, feltTheir hearts in a closer union melt,And saw the flowers of their love in bloomDown the endless vistas of life to come.Old age sat feebly brushing awayFrom his ears the scanty locks of gray;And careless boyhood, living the freeUnconscious life of bird and tree,Suddenly wakened to a senseOf sin and its guilty consequence.It was as if an angel's voiceCalled the listeners up for their final choice;As if a strong hand rent apartThe veils of sense from soul and heart,Showing in light ineffableThe joys of heaven and woes of hellAll about in the misty airThe hills seemed kneeling in silent prayer;The rustle of leaves, the moaning sedge,The water's lap on its gravelled edge,The wailing pines, and, far and faint,The wood-dove's note of sad complaint,—To the solemn voice of the preacher lentAn undertone as of low lament;And the note of the sea from its sand coast,On the easterly wind, now heard, now lost,Seemed the murmurous sound of the judgment host.Yet wise men doubted, and good men wept,As that storm of passion above them swept,And, comet-like, adding flame to flame,The priests of the new Evangel came,—Davenport, flashing upon the crowd,Charged like summer's electric cloud,Now holding the listener still as deathWith terrible warnings under breath,Now shouting for joy, as if he viewedThe vision of Heaven's beatitude!And Celtic Tennant, his long coat boundLike a monk's with leathern girdle round,Wild with the toss of unshorn hair,And wringing of hands, and, eyes aglare,Groaning under the world's despair!Grave pastors, grieving their flocks to lose,Prophesied to the empty pewsThat gourds would wither, and mushrooms die,And noisiest fountains run soonest dry,Like the spring that gushed in Newbury Street,Under the tramp of the earthquake's feet,A silver shaft in the air and light,For a single day, then lost in night,Leaving only, its place to tell,Sandy fissure and sulphurous smell.With zeal wing-clipped and white-heat cool,Moved by the spirit in grooves of rule,No longer harried, and cropped, and fleeced,Flogged by sheriff and cursed by priest,But by wiser counsels left at easeTo settle quietly on his lees,And, self-concentred, to count as doneThe work which his fathers well begun,In silent protest of letting alone,The Quaker kept the way of his own,—A non-conductor among the wires,With coat of asbestos proof to fires.And quite unable to mend his paceTo catch the falling manna of grace,He hugged the closer his little storeOf faith, and silently prayed for more.And vague of creed and barren of rite,But holding, as in his Master's sight,Act and thought to the inner light,The round of his simple duties walked,And strove to live what the others talked.And who shall marvel if evil wentStep by step with the good intent,And with love and meekness, side by side,Lust of the flesh and spiritual pride?—That passionate longings and fancies vainSet the heart on fire and crazed the brain?That over the holy oraclesFolly sported with cap and bells?That goodly women and learned menMarvelling told with tongue and penHow unweaned children chirped like birdsTexts of Scripture and solemn words,Like the infant seers of the rocky glensIn the Puy de Dome of wild CevennesOr baby Lamas who pray and preachFrom Tartir cradles in Buddha's speech?In the war which Truth or Freedom wagesWith impious fraud and the wrong of ages,Hate and malice and self-love marThe notes of triumph with painful jar,And the helping angels turn asideTheir sorrowing faces the shame to bide.Never on custom's oiled groovesThe world to a higher level moves,But grates and grinds with friction hardOn granite boulder and flinty shard.The heart must bleed before it feels,The pool be troubled before it heals;Ever by losses the right must gain,Every good have its birth of pain;The active Virtues blush to findThe Vices wearing their badge behind,And Graces and Charities feel the fireWherein the sins of the age expire;The fiend still rends as of old he rentThe tortured body from which he went.But Time tests all. In the over-driftAnd flow of the Nile, with its annual gift,Who cares for the Hadji's relics sunk?Who thinks of the drowned-out Coptic monk?The tide that loosens the temple's stones,And scatters the sacred ibis-bones,Drives away from the valley-landThat Arab robber, the wandering sand,Moistens the fields that know no rain,Fringes the desert with belts of grain,And bread to the sower brings again.So the flood of emotion deep and strongTroubled the land as it swept along,But left a result of holier lives,Tenderer-mothers and worthier wives.The husband and father whose children fledAnd sad wife wept when his drunken treadFrightened peace from his roof-tree's shade,And a rock of offence his hearthstone made,In a strength that was not his own beganTo rise from the brute's to the plane of man.Old friends embraced, long held apartBy evil counsel and pride of heart;And penitence saw through misty tears,In the bow of hope on its cloud of fears,The promise of Heaven's eternal years,—The peace of God for the world's annoy,—Beauty for ashes, and oil of joyUnder the church of Federal Street,Under the tread of its Sabbath feet,Walled about by its basement stones,Lie the marvellous preacher's bones.No saintly honors to them are shown,No sign nor miracle have they known;But he who passes the ancient churchStops in the shade of its belfry-porch,And ponders the wonderful life of himWho lies at rest in that charnel dim.Long shall the traveller strain his eyeFrom the railroad car, as it plunges by,And the vanishing town behind him searchFor the slender spire of the Whitefield Church;And feel for one moment the ghosts of trade,And fashion, and folly, and pleasure laid,By the thought of that life of pure intent,That voice of warning yet eloquent,Of one on the errands of angels sent.And if where he labored the flood of sinLike a tide from the harbor-bar sets in,And over a life of tune and senseThe church-spires lift their vain defence,As if to scatter the bolts of GodWith the points of Calvin's thunder-rod,—Still, as the gem of its civic crown,Precious beyond the world's renown,His memory hallows the ancient town!1859.
In the winter of 1675-76, the Eastern Indians, who had been making war upon the New Hampshire settlements, were so reduced in numbers by fighting and famine that they agreed to a peace with Major Waldron at Dover, but the peace was broken in the fall of 1676. The famous chief, Squando, was the principal negotiator on the part of the savages. He had taken up the hatchet to revenge the brutal treatment of his child by drunken white sailors, which caused its death.
It not unfrequently happened during the Border wars that young white children were adopted by their Indian captors, and so kindly treated that they were unwilling to leave the free, wild life of the woods; and in some instances they utterly refused to go back with their parents to their old homes and civilization.
RAZE these long blocks of brick and stone,These huge mill-monsters overgrown;Blot out the humbler piles as well,Where, moved like living shuttles, dwellThe weaving genii of the bell;Tear from the wild Cocheco's trackThe dams that hold its torrents back;And let the loud-rejoicing fallPlunge, roaring, down its rocky wall;And let the Indian's paddle playOn the unbridged Piscataqua!Wide over hill and valley spreadOnce more the forest, dusk and dread,With here and there a clearing cutFrom the walled shadows round it shut;Each with its farm-house builded rude,By English yeoman squared and hewed,And the grim, flankered block-house boundWith bristling palisades around.So, haply shall before thine eyesThe dusty veil of centuries rise,The old, strange scenery overlayThe tamer pictures of to-day,While, like the actors in a play,Pass in their ancient guise alongThe figures of my border songWhat time beside Cocheco's floodThe white man and the red man stood,With words of peace and brotherhood;When passed the sacred calumetFrom lip to lip with fire-draught wet,And, puffed in scorn, the peace-pipe's smokeThrough the gray beard of Waldron broke,And Squando's voice, in suppliant pleaFor mercy, struck the haughty keyOf one who held, in any fate,His native pride inviolate!"Let your ears be opened wide!He who speaks has never lied.Waldron of Piscataqua,Hear what Squando has to say!"Squando shuts his eyes and sees,Far off, Saco's hemlock-trees.In his wigwam, still as stone,Sits a woman all alone,"Wampum beads and birchen strandsDropping from her careless hands,Listening ever for the fleetPatter of a dead child's feet!"When the moon a year agoTold the flowers the time to blow,In that lonely wigwam smiledMenewee, our little child."Ere that moon grew thin and old,He was lying still and cold;Sent before us, weak and small,When the Master did not call!"On his little grave I lay;Three times went and came the day,Thrice above me blazed the noon,Thrice upon me wept the moon."In the third night-watch I heard,Far and low, a spirit-bird;Very mournful, very wild,Sang the totem of my child."'Menewee, poor Menewee,Walks a path he cannot seeLet the white man's wigwam lightWith its blaze his steps aright."'All-uncalled, he dares not showEmpty hands to ManitoBetter gifts he cannot bearThan the scalps his slayers wear.'"All the while the totem sang,Lightning blazed and thunder rang;And a black cloud, reaching high,Pulled the white moon from the sky."I, the medicine-man, whose earAll that spirits bear can hear,—I, whose eyes are wide to seeAll the things that are to be,—"Well I knew the dreadful signsIn the whispers of the pines,In the river roaring loud,In the mutter of the cloud."At the breaking of the day,From the grave I passed away;Flowers bloomed round me, birds sang glad,But my heart was hot and mad."There is rust on Squando's knife,From the warm, red springs of life;On the funeral hemlock-treesMany a scalp the totem sees."Blood for blood! But evermoreSquando's heart is sad and sore;And his poor squaw waits at homeFor the feet that never come!"Waldron of Cocheco, hear!Squando speaks, who laughs at fear;Take the captives he has ta'en;Let the land have peace again!"As the words died on his tongue,Wide apart his warriors swung;Parted, at the sign he gave,Right and left, like Egypt's wave.And, like Israel passing freeThrough the prophet-charmed sea,Captive mother, wife, and childThrough the dusky terror filed.One alone, a little maid,Middleway her steps delayed,Glancing, with quick, troubled sight,Round about from red to white.Then his hand the Indian laidOn the little maiden's head,Lightly from her forehead fairSmoothing back her yellow hair."Gift or favor ask I none;What I have is all my ownNever yet the birds have sung,Squando hath a beggar's tongue.'"Yet for her who waits at home,For the dead who cannot come,Let the little Gold-hair beIn the place of Menewee!"Mishanock, my little star!Come to Saco's pines afar;Where the sad one waits at home,Wequashim, my moonlight, come!""What!" quoth Waldron, "leave a childChristian-born to heathens wild?As God lives, from Satan's handI will pluck her as a brand!""Hear me, white man!" Squando cried;"Let the little one decide.Wequashim, my moonlight, say,Wilt thou go with me, or stay?"Slowly, sadly, half afraid,Half regretfully, the maidOwned the ties of blood and race,—Turned from Squando's pleading face.Not a word the Indian spoke,But his wampum chain he broke,And the beaded wonder hungOn that neck so fair and young.Silence-shod, as phantoms seemIn the marches of a dream,Single-filed, the grim arrayThrough the pine-trees wound away.Doubting, trembling, sore amazed,Through her tears the young child gazed."God preserve her!" Waldron said;"Satan hath bewitched the maid!"Years went and came. At close of daySinging came a child from play,Tossing from her loose-locked headGold in sunshine, brown in shade.Pride was in the mother's look,But her head she gravely shook,And with lips that fondly smiledFeigned to chide her truant child.Unabashed, the maid began"Up and down the brook I ran,Where, beneath the bank so steep,Lie the spotted trout asleep."'Chip!' went squirrel on the wall,After me I heard him call,And the cat-bird on the treeTried his best to mimic me."Where the hemlocks grew so darkThat I stopped to look and hark,On a log, with feather-hat,By the path, an Indian sat."Then I cried, and ran away;But he called, and bade me stay;And his voice was good and mildAs my mother's to her child."And he took my wampum chain,Looked and looked it o'er again;Gave me berries, and, beside,On my neck a plaything tied."Straight the mother stooped to seeWhat the Indian's gift might be.On the braid of wampum hung,Lo! a cross of silver swung.Well she knew its graven sign,Squando's bird and totem pine;And, a mirage of the brain,Flowed her childhood back again.Flashed the roof the sunshine through,Into space the walls outgrew;On the Indian's wigwam-mat,Blossom-crowned, again she sat.Cool she felt the west-wind blow,In her ear the pines sang low,And, like links from out a chain,Dropped the years of care and pain.From the outward toil and din,From the griefs that gnaw within,To the freedom of the woodsCalled the birds, and winds, and floods.Well, O painful minister!Watch thy flock, but blame not her,If her ear grew sharp to hearAll their voices whispering near.Blame her not, as to her soulAll the desert's glamour stole,That a tear for childhood's lossDropped upon the Indian's cross.When, that night, the Book was read,And she bowed her widowed head,And a prayer for each loved nameRose like incense from a flame,With a hope the creeds forbidIn her pitying bosom hid,To the listening ear of HeavenLo! the Indian's name was given.1860.
THE pines were dark on Ramoth hill,Their song was soft and low;The blossoms in the sweet May windWere falling like the snow.The blossoms drifted at our feet,The orchard birds sang clear;The sweetest and the saddest dayIt seemed of all the year.For, more to me than birds or flowers,My playmate left her home,And took with her the laughing spring,The music and the bloom.She kissed the lips of kith and kin,She laid her hand in mineWhat more could ask the bashful boyWho fed her father's kine?She left us in the bloom of MayThe constant years told o'erTheir seasons with as sweet May morns,But she came back no more.I walk, with noiseless feet, the roundOf uneventful years;Still o'er and o'er I sow the springAnd reap the autumn ears.She lives where all the golden yearHer summer roses blow;The dusky children of the sunBefore her come and go.There haply with her jewelled handsShe smooths her silken gown,—No more the homespun lap whereinI shook the walnuts down.The wild grapes wait us by the brook,The brown nuts on the hill,And still the May-day flowers make sweetThe woods of Follymill.The lilies blossom in the pond,The bird builds in the tree,The dark pines sing on Ramoth hillThe slow song of the sea.I wonder if she thinks of them,And how the old time seems,—If ever the pines of Ramoth woodAre sounding in her dreams.I see her face, I hear her voice;Does she remember mine?And what to her is now the boyWho fed her father's kine?What cares she that the orioles buildFor other eyes than ours,—That other hands with nuts are filled,And other laps with flowers?O playmate in the golden time!Our mossy seat is green,Its fringing violets blossom yet,The old trees o'er it lean.The winds so sweet with birch and fernA sweeter memory blow;And there in spring the veeries singThe song of long ago.And still the pines of Ramoth woodAre moaning like the sea,—The moaning of the sea of changeBetween myself and thee!1860.
This ballad was written on the occasion of a Horticultural Festival. Cobbler Keezar was a noted character among the first settlers in the valley of the Merrimac.
The beaver cut his timberWith patient teeth that day,The minks were fish-wards, and the crowsSurveyors of highway,—When Keezar sat on the hillsideUpon his cobbler's form,With a pan of coals on either handTo keep his waxed-ends warm.And there, in the golden weather,He stitched and hammered and sung;In the brook he moistened his leather,In the pewter mug his tongue.Well knew the tough old TeutonWho brewed the stoutest ale,And he paid the goodwife's reckoningIn the coin of song and tale.The songs they still are singingWho dress the hills of vine,The tales that haunt the BrockenAnd whisper down the Rhine.Woodsy and wild and lonesome,The swift stream wound away,Through birches and scarlet maplesFlashing in foam and spray,—Down on the sharp-horned ledgesPlunging in steep cascade,Tossing its white-maned watersAgainst the hemlock's shade.Woodsy and wild and lonesome,East and west and north and south;Only the village of fishersDown at the river's mouth;Only here and there a clearing,With its farm-house rude and new,And tree-stumps, swart as Indians,Where the scanty harvest grew.No shout of home-bound reapers,No vintage-song he heard,And on the green no dancing feetThe merry violin stirred."Why should folk be glum," said Keezar,"When Nature herself is glad,And the painted woods are laughingAt the faces so sour and sad?"Small heed had the careless cobblerWhat sorrow of heart was theirsWho travailed in pain with the births of God,And planted a state with prayers,—Hunting of witches and warlocks,Smiting the heathen horde,—One hand on the mason's trowel,And one on the soldier's sword.But give him his ale and cider,Give him his pipe and song,Little he cared for Church or State,Or the balance of right and wrong."T is work, work, work," he muttered,—"And for rest a snuffle of psalms!"He smote on his leathern apronWith his brown and waxen palms."Oh for the purple harvestsOf the days when I was youngFor the merry grape-stained maidens,And the pleasant songs they sung!"Oh for the breath of vineyards,Of apples and nuts and wineFor an oar to row and a breeze to blowDown the grand old river Rhine!"A tear in his blue eye glistened,And dropped on his beard so gray."Old, old am I," said Keezar,"And the Rhine flows far away!"But a cunning man was the cobbler;He could call the birds from the trees,Charm the black snake out of the ledges,And bring back the swarming bees.All the virtues of herbs and metals,All the lore of the woods, he knew,And the arts of the Old World mingleWith the marvels of the New.Well he knew the tricks of magic,And the lapstone on his kneeHad the gift of the Mormon's gogglesOr the stone of Doctor Dee.For the mighty master AgrippaWrought it with spell and rhymeFrom a fragment of mystic moonstoneIn the tower of Nettesheim.To a cobbler MinnesingerThe marvellous stone gave he,—And he gave it, in turn, to Keezar,Who brought it over the sea.He held up that mystic lapstone,He held it up like a lens,And he counted the long years comingEy twenties and by tens."One hundred years," quoth Keezar,"And fifty have I toldNow open the new before me,And shut me out the old!"Like a cloud of mist, the blacknessRolled from the magic stone,And a marvellous picture mingledThe unknown and the known.Still ran the stream to the river,And river and ocean joined;And there were the bluffs and the blue sea-line,And cold north hills behind.But—the mighty forest was brokenBy many a steepled town,By many a white-walled farm-house,And many a garner brown.Turning a score of mill-wheels,The stream no more ran free;White sails on the winding river,White sails on the far-off sea.Below in the noisy villageThe flags were floating gay,And shone on a thousand facesThe light of a holiday.Swiftly the rival ploughmenTurned the brown earth from their shares;Here were the farmer's treasures,There were the craftsman's wares.Golden the goodwife's butter,Ruby her currant-wine;Grand were the strutting turkeys,Fat were the beeves and swine.Yellow and red were the apples,And the ripe pears russet-brown,And the peaches had stolen blushesFrom the girls who shook them down.And with blooms of hill and wildwood,That shame the toil of art,Mingled the gorgeous blossomsOf the garden's tropic heart."What is it I see?" said Keezar"Am I here, or am I there?Is it a fete at Bingen?Do I look on Frankfort fair?"But where are the clowns and puppets,And imps with horns and tail?And where are the Rhenish flagons?And where is the foaming ale?"Strange things, I know, will happen,—Strange things the Lord permits;But that droughty folk should be jollyPuzzles my poor old wits."Here are smiling manly faces,And the maiden's step is gay;Nor sad by thinking, nor mad by drinking,Nor mopes, nor fools, are they."Here's pleasure without regretting,And good without abuse,The holiday and the bridalOf beauty and of use."Here's a priest and there is a Quaker,Do the cat and dog agree?Have they burned the stocks for ovenwood?Have they cut down the gallows-tree?"Would the old folk know their children?Would they own the graceless town,With never a ranter to worryAnd never a witch to drown?"
Loud laughed the cobbler Keezar,Laughed like a school-boy gay;Tossing his arms above him,The lapstone rolled away.It rolled down the rugged hillside,It spun like a wheel bewitched,It plunged through the leaning willows,And into the river pitched.There, in the deep, dark water,The magic stone lies still,Under the leaning willowsIn the shadow of the hill.But oft the idle fisherSits on the shadowy bank,And his dreams make marvellous picturesWhere the wizard's lapstone sank.And still, in the summer twilights,When the river seems to runOut from the inner glory,Warm with the melted sun,The weary mill-girl lingersBeside the charmed stream,And the sky and the golden waterShape and color her dream.Air wave the sunset gardens,The rosy signals fly;Her homestead beckons from the cloud,And love goes sailing by.1861.
As they who watch by sick-beds find reliefUnwittingly from the great stress of griefAnd anxious care, in fantasies outwroughtFrom the hearth's embers flickering low, or caughtFrom whispering wind, or tread of passing feet,Or vagrant memory calling up some sweetSnatch of old song or romance, whence or whyThey scarcely know or ask,—so, thou and I,Nursed in the faith that Truth alone is strongIn the endurance which outwearies Wrong,With meek persistence baffling brutal force,And trusting God against the universe,—We, doomed to watch a strife we may not shareWith other weapons than the patriot's prayer,Yet owning, with full hearts and moistened eyes,The awful beauty of self-sacrifice,And wrung by keenest sympathy for allWho give their loved ones for the living wall'Twixt law and treason,—in this evil dayMay haply find, through automatic playOf pen and pencil, solace to our pain,And hearten others with the strength we gain.I know it has been said our times requireNo play of art, nor dalliance with the lyre,No weak essay with Fancy's chloroformTo calm the hot, mad pulses of the storm,But the stern war-blast rather, such as setsThe battle's teeth of serried bayonets,And pictures grim as Vernet's. Yet with theseSome softer tints may blend, and milder keysRelieve the storm-stunned ear. Let us keep sweet,If so we may, our hearts, even while we eatThe bitter harvest of our own deviceAnd half a century's moral cowardice.As Nurnberg sang while Wittenberg defied,And Kranach painted by his Luther's side,And through the war-march of the PuritanThe silver stream of Marvell's music ran,So let the household melodies be sung,The pleasant pictures on the wall be hung—So let us hold against the hosts of nightAnd slavery all our vantage-ground of light.Let Treason boast its savagery, and shakeFrom its flag-folds its symbol rattlesnake,Nurse its fine arts, lay human skins in tan,And carve its pipe-bowls from the bones of man,And make the tale of Fijian banquets dullBy drinking whiskey from a loyal skull,—But let us guard, till this sad war shall cease,(God grant it soon!) the graceful arts of peaceNo foes are conquered who the victors teachTheir vandal manners and barbaric speech.And while, with hearts of thankfulness, we bearOf the great common burden our full share,Let none upbraid us that the waves enticeThy sea-dipped pencil, or some quaint device,Rhythmic, and sweet, beguiles my pen awayFrom the sharp strifes and sorrows of to-day.Thus, while the east-wind keen from LabradorSings it the leafless elms, and from the shoreOf the great sea comes the monotonous roarOf the long-breaking surf, and all the skyIs gray with cloud, home-bound and dull, I tryTo time a simple legend to the soundsOf winds in the woods, and waves on pebbled bounds,—A song for oars to chime with, such as mightBe sung by tired sea-painters, who at nightLook from their hemlock camps, by quiet coveOr beach, moon-lighted, on the waves they love.(So hast thou looked, when level sunset layOn the calm bosom of some Eastern bay,And all the spray-moist rocks and waves that rolledUp the white sand-slopes flashed with ruddy gold.)Something it has—a flavor of the sea,And the sea's freedom—which reminds of thee.Its faded picture, dimly smiling downFrom the blurred fresco of the ancient town,I have not touched with warmer tints in vain,If, in this dark, sad year, it steals one thoughtfrom pain.. . . . . . . . . . . .