Hugh Tallant was the first Irish resident of Haverhill, Mass. He planted the button-wood trees on the bank of the river below the village in the early part of the seventeenth century. Unfortunately this noble avenue is now nearly destroyed.
In the outskirts of the village,On the river's winding shores,Stand the Occidental plane-trees,Stand the ancient sycamores.One long century hath been numbered,And another half-way told,Since the rustic Irish gleemanBroke for them the virgin mould.Deftly set to Celtic music,At his violin's sound they grew,Through the moonlit eves of summer,Making Amphion's fable true.Rise again, then poor Hugh TallantPass in jerkin green along,With thy eyes brimful of laughter,And thy mouth as full of song.Pioneer of Erin's outcasts,With his fiddle and his pack;Little dreamed the village SaxonsOf the myriads at his back.How he wrought with spade and fiddle,Delved by day and sang by night,With a hand that never wearied,And a heart forever light,—Still the gay tradition minglesWith a record grave and drear,Like the rollic air of Cluny,With the solemn march of Mear.When the box-tree, white with blossoms,Made the sweet May woodlands glad,And the Aronia by the riverLighted up the swarming shad,And the bulging nets swept shoreward,With their silver-sided haul,Midst the shouts of dripping fishers,He was merriest of them all.When, among the jovial huskers,Love stole in at Labor's side,With the lusty airs of England,Soft his Celtic measures vied.Songs of love and wailing lyke—wake,And the merry fair's carouse;Of the wild Red Fox of ErinAnd the Woman of Three Cows,By the blazing hearths of winter,Pleasant seemed his simple tales,Midst the grimmer Yorkshire legendsAnd the mountain myths of Wales.How the souls in PurgatoryScrambled up from fate forlorn,On St. Eleven's sackcloth ladder,Slyly hitched to Satan's horn.Of the fiddler who at TaraPlayed all night to ghosts of kings;Of the brown dwarfs, and the fairiesDancing in their moorland rings.Jolliest of our birds of singing,Best he loved the Bob-o-link."Hush!" he 'd say, "the tipsy fairiesHear the little folks in drink!"Merry-faced, with spade and fiddle,Singing through the ancient town,Only this, of poor Hugh Tallant,Hath Tradition handed down.Not a stone his grave discloses;But if yet his spirit walks,'T is beneath the trees he planted,And when Bob-o-Lincoln talks;Green memorials of the gleeman!Linking still the river-shores,With their shadows cast by sunset,Stand Hugh Tallant's sycamores!When the Father of his CountryThrough the north-land riding came,And the roofs were starred with banners,And the steeples rang acclaim,—When each war-scarred Continental,Leaving smithy, mill, and farm,Waved his rusted sword in welcome,And shot off his old king's arm,—Slowly passed that August PresenceDown the thronged and shouting street;Village girls as white as angels,Scattering flowers around his feet.Midway, where the plane-tree's shadowDeepest fell, his rein he drewOn his stately head, uncovered,Cool and soft the west-wind blew.And he stood up in his stirrups,Looking up and looking downOn the hills of Gold and SilverRimming round the little town,—On the river, full of sunshine,To the lap of greenest valesWinding down from wooded headlands,Willow-skirted, white with sails.And he said, the landscape sweepingSlowly with his ungloved hand,"I have seen no prospect fairerIn this goodly Eastern land."Then the bugles of his escortStirred to life the cavalcadeAnd that head, so bare and stately,Vanished down the depths of shade.Ever since, in town and farm-house,Life has had its ebb and flow;Thrice hath passed the human harvestTo its garner green and low.But the trees the gleeman planted,Through the changes, changeless stand;As the marble calm of TadmorMocks the desert's shifting sand.Still the level moon at risingSilvers o'er each stately shaft;Still beneath them, half in shadow,Singing, glides the pleasure craft;Still beneath them, arm-enfolded,Love and Youth together stray;While, as heart to heart beats faster,More and more their feet delay.Where the ancient cobbler, Keezar,On the open hillside wrought,Singing, as he drew his stitches,Songs his German masters taught,Singing, with his gray hair floatingRound his rosy ample face,—Now a thousand Saxon craftsmenStitch and hammer in his place.All the pastoral lanes so grassyNow are Traffic's dusty streets;From the village, grown a city,Fast the rural grace retreats.But, still green, and tall, and stately,On the river's winding shores,Stand the Occidental plane-trees,Stand, Hugh Taliant's sycamores.1857.
PIPES of the misty moorlands,Voice of the glens and hills;The droning of the torrents,The treble of the rills!Not the braes of broom and heather,Nor the mountains dark with rain,Nor maiden bower, nor border tower,Have heard your sweetest strain!Dear to the Lowland reaper,And plaided mountaineer,—To the cottage and the castleThe Scottish pipes are dear;—Sweet sounds the ancient pibrochO'er mountain, loch, and glade;But the sweetest of all musicThe pipes at Lucknow played.Day by day the Indian tigerLouder yelled, and nearer crept;Round and round the jungle-serpentNear and nearer circles swept."Pray for rescue, wives and mothers,—Pray to-day!" the soldier said;"To-morrow, death's between usAnd the wrong and shame we dread."Oh, they listened, looked, and waited,Till their hope became despair;And the sobs of low bewailingFilled the pauses of their prayer.Then up spake a Scottish maiden,With her ear unto the ground"Dinna ye hear it?—dinna ye hear it?The pipes o' Havelock sound!"Hushed the wounded man his groaning;Hushed the wife her little ones;Alone they heard the drum-rollAnd the roar of Sepoy guns.But to sounds of home and childhoodThe Highland ear was true;—As her mother's cradle-crooningThe mountain pipes she knew.Like the march of soundless musicThrough the vision of the seer,More of feeling than of hearing,Of the heart than of the ear,She knew the droning pibroch,She knew the Campbell's call"Hark! hear ye no' MacGregor's,The grandest o' them all!"Oh, they listened, dumb and breathless,And they caught the sound at last;Faint and far beyond the GoomteeRose and fell the piper's blastThen a burst of wild thanksgivingMingled woman's voice and man's;"God be praised!—the march of Havelock!The piping of the clans!"Louder, nearer, fierce as vengeance,Sharp and shrill as swords at strife,Came the wild MacGregor's clan-call,Stinging all the air to life.But when the far-off dust-cloudTo plaided legions grew,Full tenderly and blithesomelyThe pipes of rescue blew!Round the silver domes of Lucknow,Moslem mosque and Pagan shrine,Breathed the air to Britons dearest,The air of Auld Lang Syne.O'er the cruel roll of war-drumsRose that sweet and homelike strain;And the tartan clove the turban,As the Goomtee cleaves the plain.Dear to the corn-land reaperAnd plaided mountaineer,—To the cottage and the castleThe piper's song is dear.Sweet sounds the Gaelic pibrochO'er mountain, glen, and glade;But the sweetest of all musicThe Pipes at Lucknow played!1858.
A remarkable custom, brought from the Old Country, formerly prevailed in the rural districts of New England. On the death of a member of the family, the bees were at once informed of the event, and their hives dressed in mourning. This ceremonial was supposed to be necessary to prevent the swarms from leaving their hives and seeking a new home.
HERE is the place; right over the hillRuns the path I took;You can see the gap in the old wall still,And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook.There is the house, with the gate red-barred,And the poplars tall;And the barn's brown length, and the cattle-yard,And the white horns tossing above the wall.There are the beehives ranged in the sun;And down by the brinkOf the brook are her poor flowers, weed-o'errun,Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink.A year has gone, as the tortoise goes,Heavy and slow;And the same rose blooms, and the same sun glows,And the same brook sings of a year ago.There's the same sweet clover-smell in the breeze;And the June sun warmTangles his wings of fire in the trees,Setting, as then, over Fernside farm.I mind me how with a lover's careFrom my Sunday coatI brushed off the burrs, and smoothed my hair,And cooled at the brookside my brow andthroat.Since we parted, a month had passed,—To love, a year;Down through the beeches I looked at lastOn the little red gate and the well-sweep near.I can see it all now,—the slantwise rainOf light through the leaves,The sundown's blaze on her window-pane,The bloom of her roses under the eaves.Just the same as a month before,—The house and the trees,The barn's brown gable, the vine by the door,—Nothing changed but the hives of bees.Before them, under the garden wall,Forward and back,Went drearily singing the chore-girl small,Draping each hive with a shred of black.Trembling, I listened: the summer sunHad the chill of snow;For I knew she was telling the bees of oneGone on the journey we all must go.Then I said to myself, "My Mary weepsFor the dead to-day;Haply her blind old grandsire sleepsThe fret and the pain of his age away."But her dog whined low; on the doorway sill,With his cane to his chin,The old man sat; and the chore-girl stillSung to the bees stealing out and in.And the song she was singing ever sinceIn my ear sounds on:—"Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence!Mistress Mary is dead and gone!"1858.
In Young's Chronicles of Massachusetts Bay front 1623 to 1636 may be found Anthony Thacher's Narrative of his Shipwreck. Thacher was Avery's companion and survived to tell the tale. Mather's Magnalia, III. 2, gives further Particulars of Parson Avery's End, and suggests the title of the poem.
When the reaper's task was ended, and thesummer wearing late,Parson Avery sailed from Newbury, with his wifeand children eight,Dropping down the river-harbor in the shallop"Watch and Wait."Pleasantly lay the clearings in the mellow summer-morn,With the newly planted orchards dropping theirfruits first-born,And the home-roofs like brown islands amid a seaof corn.Broad meadows reached out seaward the tidedcreeks between,And hills rolled wave-like inland, with oaks andwalnuts green;—A fairer home, a goodlier land, his eyes had never seen.Yet away sailed Parson Avery, away where duty led,And the voice of God seemed calling, to break theliving breadTo the souls of fishers starving on the rocks ofMarblehead.All day they sailed: at nightfall the pleasant land-breeze died,The blackening sky, at midnight, its starry lightsdenied,And far and low the thunder of tempest prophesied.Blotted out were all the coast-lines, gone were rock,and wood, and sand;Grimly anxious stood the skipper with the rudderin his hand,And questioned of the darkness what was sea andwhat was land.And the preacher heard his dear ones, nestledround him, weeping sore,"Never heed, my little children! Christ is walkingon before;To the pleasant land of heaven, where the sea shallbe no more."All at once the great cloud parted, like a curtaindrawn aside,To let down the torch of lightning on the terrorfar and wide;And the thunder and the whirlwind together smotethe tide.There was wailing in the shallop, woman's wailand man's despair,A crash of breaking timbers on the rocks so sharpand bare,And, through it all, the murmur of Father Avery'sprayer.From his struggle in the darkness with the wildwaves and the blast,On a rock, where every billow broke above him asit passed,Alone, of all his household, the man of God wascast.There a comrade heard him praying, in the pauseof wave and wind"All my own have gone before me, and I lingerjust behind;Not for life I ask, but only for the rest Thyransomed find!"In this night of death I challenge the promise ofThy word!—Let me see the great salvation of which mine earshave heard!—Let me pass from hence forgiven, through thegrace of Christ, our Lord!"In the baptism of these waters wash white myevery sin,And let me follow up to Thee my household andmy kin!Open the sea-gate of Thy heaven, and let me enterin!"When the Christian sings his death-song, all thelistening heavens draw near,And the angels, leaning over the walls of crystal,hearHow the notes so faint and broken swell to musicin God's ear.The ear of God was open to His servant's lastrequest;As the strong wave swept him downward the sweethymn upward pressed,And the soul of Father Avery went, singing, to itsrest.There was wailing on the mainland, from the rocksof Marblehead;In the stricken church of Newbury the notes ofprayer were read;And long, by board and hearthstone, the livingmourned the dead.And still the fishers outbound, or scudding fromthe squall,With grave and reverent faces, the ancient talerecall,When they see the white waves breaking on theRock of Avery's Fall!1808.
"Concerning ye Amphisbaena, as soon as I received your commands, I made diligent inquiry: . . . he assures me yt it had really two heads, one at each end; two mouths, two stings or tongues."—REV. CHRISTOPHER TOPPAN to COTTON MATHER.
FAR away in the twilight timeOf every people, in every clime,Dragons and griffins and monsters dire,Born of water, and air, and fire,Or nursed, like the Python, in the mudAnd ooze of the old Deucalion flood,Crawl and wriggle and foam with rage,Through dusk tradition and ballad age.So from the childhood of Newbury townAnd its time of fable the tale comes downOf a terror which haunted bush and brake,The Amphisbaena, the Double Snake!Thou who makest the tale thy mirth,Consider that strip of Christian earthOn the desolate shore of a sailless sea,Full of terror and mystery,Half redeemed from the evil holdOf the wood so dreary, and dark, and old,Which drank with its lips of leaves the dewWhen Time was young, and the world was new,And wove its shadows with sun and moon,Ere the stones of Cheops were squared and hewn.Think of the sea's dread monotone,Of the mournful wail from the pine-wood blown,Of the strange, vast splendors that lit the North,Of the troubled throes of the quaking earth,And the dismal tales the Indian told,Till the settler's heart at his hearth grew cold,And he shrank from the tawny wizard boasts,And the hovering shadows seemed full of ghosts,And above, below, and on every side,The fear of his creed seemed verified;—And think, if his lot were now thine own,To grope with terrors nor named nor known,How laxer muscle and weaker nerveAnd a feebler faith thy need might serve;And own to thyself the wonder moreThat the snake had two heads, and not a score!Whether he lurked in the Oldtown fenOr the gray earth-flax of the Devil's Den,Or swam in the wooded Artichoke,Or coiled by the Northman's Written Rock,Nothing on record is left to show;Only the fact that he lived, we know,And left the cast of a double headIn the scaly mask which he yearly shed.For he carried a head where his tail should be,And the two, of course, could never agree,But wriggled about with main and might,Now to the left and now to the right;Pulling and twisting this way and that,Neither knew what the other was at.A snake with two beads, lurking so near!Judge of the wonder, guess at the fear!Think what ancient gossips might say,Shaking their heads in their dreary way,Between the meetings on Sabbath-day!How urchins, searching at day's declineThe Common Pasture for sheep or kine,The terrible double-ganger heardIn leafy rustle or whir of bird!Think what a zest it gave to the sport,In berry-time, of the younger sort,As over pastures blackberry-twined,Reuben and Dorothy lagged behind,And closer and closer, for fear of harm,The maiden clung to her lover's arm;And how the spark, who was forced to stay,By his sweetheart's fears, till the break of day,Thanked the snake for the fond delay.Far and wide the tale was told,Like a snowball growing while it rolled.The nurse hushed with it the baby's cry;And it served, in the worthy minister's eye,To paint the primitive serpent by.Cotton Mather came galloping downAll the way to Newbury town,With his eyes agog and his ears set wide,And his marvellous inkhorn at his side;Stirring the while in the shallow poolOf his brains for the lore he learned at school,To garnish the story, with here a streakOf Latin, and there another of GreekAnd the tales he heard and the notes he took,Behold! are they not in his Wonder-Book?Stories, like dragons, are hard to kill.If the snake does not, the tale runs stillIn Byfield Meadows, on Pipestave Hill.And still, whenever husband and wifePublish the shame of their daily strife,And, with mad cross-purpose, tug and strainAt either end of the marriage-chain,The gossips say, with a knowing shakeOf their gray heads, "Look at the Double SnakeOne in body and two in will,The Amphisbaena is living still!"1859.
Susanna Martin, an aged woman of Amesbury, Mass., was tried and executed for the alleged crime of witchcraft. Her home was in what is now known as Pleasant Valley on the Merrimac, a little above the old Ferry way, where, tradition says, an attempt was made to assassinate Sir Edmund Andros on his way to Falmouth (afterward Portland) and Pemaquid, which was frustrated by a warning timely given. Goody Martin was the only woman hanged on the north side of the Merrimac during the dreadful delusion. The aged wife of Judge Bradbury who lived on the other side of the Powow River was imprisoned and would have been put to death but for the collapse of the hideous persecution.
The substance of the poem which follows was published under the name of The Witch's Daughter, in The National Era in 1857. In 1875 my publishers desired to issue it with illustrations, and I then enlarged it and otherwise altered it to its present form. The principal addition was in the verses which constitute Part I.
I CALL the old time back: I bring my layin tender memory of the summer dayWhen, where our native river lapsed away,We dreamed it over, while the thrushes madeSongs of their own, and the great pine-trees laidOn warm noonlights the masses of their shade.And she was with us, living o'er againHer life in ours, despite of years and pain,—The Autumn's brightness after latter rain.Beautiful in her holy peace as oneWho stands, at evening, when the work is done,Glorified in the setting of the sun!Her memory makes our common landscape seemFairer than any of which painters dream;Lights the brown hills and sings in every stream;For she whose speech was always truth's pure goldHeard, not unpleased, its simple legends told,And loved with us the beautiful and old.
Across the level tableland,A grassy, rarely trodden way,With thinnest skirt of birchen sprayAnd stunted growth of cedar, leadsTo where you see the dull plain fallSheer off, steep-slanted, ploughed by allThe seasons' rainfalls. On its brinkThe over-leaning harebells swing,With roots half bare the pine-trees cling;And, through the shadow looking west,You see the wavering river flowAlong a vale, that far belowHolds to the sun, the sheltering hillsAnd glimmering water-line between,Broad fields of corn and meadows green,And fruit-bent orchards grouped aroundThe low brown roofs and painted eaves,And chimney-tops half hid in leaves.No warmer valley hides behindYon wind-scourged sand-dunes, cold and bleak;No fairer river comes to seekThe wave-sung welcome of the sea,Or mark the northmost border lineOf sun-loved growths of nut and vine.Here, ground-fast in their native fields,Untempted by the city's gain,The quiet farmer folk remainWho bear the pleasant name of Friends,And keep their fathers' gentle waysAnd simple speech of Bible days;In whose neat homesteads woman holdsWith modest ease her equal place,And wears upon her tranquil faceThe look of one who, merging notHer self-hood in another's will,Is love's and duty's handmaid still.Pass with me down the path that windsThrough birches to the open land,Where, close upon the river strandYou mark a cellar, vine o'errun,Above whose wall of loosened stonesThe sumach lifts its reddening cones,And the black nightshade's berries shine,And broad, unsightly burdocks foldThe household ruin, century-old.Here, in the dim colonial timeOf sterner lives and gloomier faith,A woman lived, tradition saith,Who wrought her neighbors foul annoy,And witched and plagued the country-side,Till at the hangman's hand she died.Sit with me while the westering dayFalls slantwise down the quiet vale,And, haply ere yon loitering sail,That rounds the upper headland, fallsBelow Deer Island's pines, or seesBehind it Hawkswood's belt of treesRise black against the sinking sun,My idyl of its days of old,The valley's legend, shall be told.
It was the pleasant harvest-time,When cellar-bins are closely stowed,And garrets bend beneath their load,And the old swallow-haunted barns,—Brown-gabled, long, and full of seamsThrough which the rooted sunlight streams,And winds blow freshly in, to shakeThe red plumes of the roosted cocks,And the loose hay-mow's scented locks,Are filled with summer's ripened stores,Its odorous grass and barley sheaves,From their low scaffolds to their eaves.On Esek Harden's oaken floor,With many an autumn threshing worn,Lay the heaped ears of unhusked corn.And thither came young men and maids,Beneath a moon that, large and low,Lit that sweet eve of long ago.They took their places; some by chance,And others by a merry voiceOr sweet smile guided to their choice.How pleasantly the rising moon,Between the shadow of the mows,Looked on them through the great elm-boughs!On sturdy boyhood, sun-embrowned,On girlhood with its solid curvesOf healthful strength and painless nerves!And jests went round, and laughs that madeThe house-dog answer with his howl,And kept astir the barn-yard fowl;And quaint old songs their fathers sungIn Derby dales and Yorkshire moors,Ere Norman William trod their shores;And tales, whose merry license shookThe fat sides of the Saxon thane,Forgetful of the hovering Dane,—Rude plays to Celt and Cimbri known,The charms and riddles that beguiledOn Oxus' banks the young world's child,—That primal picture-speech whereinHave youth and maid the story told,So new in each, so dateless old,Recalling pastoral Ruth in herWho waited, blushing and demure,The red-ear's kiss of forfeiture.But still the sweetest voice was muteThat river-valley ever heardFrom lips of maid or throat of bird;For Mabel Martin sat apart,And let the hay-mow's shadow fallUpon the loveliest face of all.She sat apart, as one forbid,Who knew that none would condescendTo own the Witch-wife's child a friend.The seasons scarce had gone their round,Since curious thousands thronged to seeHer mother at the gallows-tree;And mocked the prison-palsied limbsThat faltered on the fatal stairs,And wan lip trembling with its prayers!Few questioned of the sorrowing child,Or, when they saw the mother die;Dreamed of the daughter's agony.They went up to their homes that day,As men and Christians justifiedGod willed it, and the wretch had died!Dear God and Father of us all,Forgive our faith in cruel lies,—Forgive the blindness that denies!Forgive thy creature when he takes,For the all-perfect love Thou art,Some grim creation of his heart.Cast down our idols, overturnOur bloody altars; let us seeThyself in Thy humanity!Young Mabel from her mother's graveCrept to her desolate hearth-stone,And wrestled with her fate alone;With love, and anger, and despair,The phantoms of disordered sense,The awful doubts of Providence!Oh, dreary broke the winter days,And dreary fell the winter nightsWhen, one by one, the neighboring lightsWent out, and human sounds grew still,And all the phantom-peopled darkClosed round her hearth-fire's dying spark.And summer days were sad and long,And sad the uncompanioned eyes,And sadder sunset-tinted leaves,And Indian Summer's airs of balm;She scarcely felt the soft caress,The beauty died of loneliness!The school-boys jeered her as they passed,And, when she sought the house of prayer,Her mother's curse pursued her there.And still o'er many a neighboring doorShe saw the horseshoe's curved charm,To guard against her mother's harm!That mother, poor and sick and lame,Who daily, by the old arm-chair,Folded her withered hands in prayer;—Who turned, in Salem's dreary jail,Her worn old Bible o'er and o'er,When her dim eyes could read no more!Sore tried and pained, the poor girl keptHer faith, and trusted that her way,So dark, would somewhere meet the day.And still her weary wheel went roundDay after day, with no reliefSmall leisure have the poor for grief.
So in the shadow Mabel sits;Untouched by mirth she sees and hears,Her smile is sadder than her tears.But cruel eyes have found her out,And cruel lips repeat her name,And taunt her with her mother's shame.She answered not with railing words,But drew her apron o'er her face,And, sobbing, glided from the place.And only pausing at the door,Her sad eyes met the troubled gazeOf one who, in her better days,Had been her warm and steady friend,Ere yet her mother's doom had madeEven Esek Harden half afraid.He felt that mute appeal of tears,And, starting, with an angry frown,Hushed all the wicked murmurs down."Good neighbors mine," he sternly said,"This passes harmless mirth or jest;I brook no insult to my guest."She is indeed her mother's child;But God's sweet pity ministersUnto no whiter soul than hers."Let Goody Martin rest in peace;I never knew her harm a fly,And witch or not, God knows—not I."I know who swore her life away;And as God lives, I'd not condemnAn Indian dog on word of them."The broadest lands in all the town,The skill to guide, the power to awe,Were Harden's; and his word was law.None dared withstand him to his face,But one sly maiden spake aside"The little witch is evil-eyed!"Her mother only killed a cow,Or witched a churn or dairy-pan;But she, forsooth, must charm a man!"
Poor Mabel, homeward turning, passedThe nameless terrors of the wood,And saw, as if a ghost pursued,Her shadow gliding in the moon;The soft breath of the west-wind gaveA chill as from her mother's grave.How dreary seemed the silent house!Wide in the moonbeams' ghastly glareIts windows had a dead man's stare!And, like a gaunt and spectral hand,The tremulous shadow of a birchReached out and touched the door's low porch,As if to lift its latch; hard by,A sudden warning call she beard,The night-cry of a boding bird.She leaned against the door; her face,So fair, so young, so full of pain,White in the moonlight's silver rain.The river, on its pebbled rim,Made music such as childhood knew;The door-yard tree was whispered throughBy voices such as childhood's earHad heard in moonlights long ago;And through the willow-boughs below.She saw the rippled waters shine;Beyond, in waves of shade and light,The hills rolled off into the night.She saw and heard, but over allA sense of some transforming spell,The shadow of her sick heart fell.And still across the wooded spaceThe harvest lights of Harden shone,And song and jest and laugh went on.And he, so gentle, true, and strong,Of men the bravest and the best,Had he, too, scorned her with the rest?She strove to drown her sense of wrong,And, in her old and simple way,To teach her bitter heart to pray.Poor child! the prayer, begun in faith,Grew to a low, despairing cryOf utter misery: "Let me die!"Oh! take me from the scornful eyes,And hide me where the cruel speechAnd mocking finger may not reach!"I dare not breathe my mother's nameA daughter's right I dare not craveTo weep above her unblest grave!"Let me not live until my heart,With few to pity, and with noneTo love me, hardens into stone."O God! have mercy on Thy child,Whose faith in Thee grows weak and small,And take me ere I lose it all!"A shadow on the moonlight fell,And murmuring wind and wave becameA voice whose burden was her name.
Had then God heard her? Had He sentHis angel down? In flesh and blood,Before her Esek Harden stood!He laid his hand upon her arm"Dear Mabel, this no more shall be;Who scoffs at you must scoff at me."You know rough Esek Harden well;And if he seems no suitor gay,And if his hair is touched with gray,"The maiden grown shall never findHis heart less warm than when she smiled,Upon his knees, a little child!"Her tears of grief were tears of joy,As, folded in his strong embrace,She looked in Esek Harden's face."O truest friend of all'" she said,"God bless you for your kindly thought,And make me worthy of my lot!"He led her forth, and, blent in one,Beside their happy pathway ranThe shadows of the maid and man.He led her through his dewy fields,To where the swinging lanterns glowed,And through the doors the huskers showed."Good friends and neighbors!" Esek said,"I'm weary of this lonely life;In Mabel see my chosen wife!"She greets you kindly, one and all;The past is past, and all offenceFalls harmless from her innocence."Henceforth she stands no more alone;You know what Esek Harden is;—He brooks no wrong to him or his."Now let the merriest tales be told,And let the sweetest songs be sungThat ever made the old heart young!"For now the lost has found a home;And a lone hearth shall brighter burn,As all the household joys return!"Oh, pleasantly the harvest-moon,Between the shadow of the mows,Looked on them through the great elm—boughs!On Mabel's curls of golden hair,On Esek's shaggy strength it fell;And the wind whispered, "It is well!"
The prose version of this prophecy is to be found in Sewall's The New Heaven upon the New Earth, 1697, quoted in Joshua Coffin's History of Newbury. Judge Sewall's father, Henry Sewall, was one of the pioneers of Newbury.
Up and down the village streetsStrange are the forms my fancy meets,For the thoughts and things of to-day are hid,And through the veil of a closed lidThe ancient worthies I see againI hear the tap of the elder's cane,And his awful periwig I see,And the silver buckles of shoe and knee.Stately and slow, with thoughtful air,His black cap hiding his whitened hair,Walks the Judge of the great Assize,Samuel Sewall the good and wise.His face with lines of firmness wrought,He wears the look of a man unbought,Who swears to his hurt and changes not;Yet, touched and softened neverthelessWith the grace of Christian gentleness,The face that a child would climb to kiss!True and tender and brave and just,That man might honor and woman trust.Touching and sad, a tale is told,Like a penitent hymn of the Psalmist old,Of the fast which the good man lifelong kept toWith a haunting sorrow that never slept,As the circling year brought round the timeOf an error that left the sting of crime,When he sat on the bench of the witchcraft courts,With the laws of Moses and Hale's Reports,And spake, in the name of both, the wordThat gave the witch's neck to the cord,And piled the oaken planks that pressedThe feeble life from the warlock's breast!All the day long, from dawn to dawn,His door was bolted, his curtain drawn;No foot on his silent threshold trod,No eye looked on him save that of God,As he baffled the ghosts of the dead with charmsOf penitent tears, and prayers, and psalms,And, with precious proofs from the sacred wordOf the boundless pity and love of the Lord,His faith confirmed and his trust renewedThat the sin of his ignorance, sorely rued,Might be washed away in the mingled floodOf his human sorrow and Christ's dear blood!Green forever the memory beOf the Judge of the old Theocracy,Whom even his errors glorified,Like a far-seen, sunlit mountain-sideBy the cloudy shadows which o'er it glide!Honor and praise to the PuritanWho the halting step of his age outran,And, seeing the infinite worth of manIn the priceless gift the Father gave,In the infinite love that stooped to save,Dared not brand his brother a slave"Who doth such wrong," he was wont to say,In his own quaint, picture-loving way,"Flings up to Heaven a hand-grenadeWhich God shall cast down upon his head!"Widely as heaven and hell, contrastThat brave old jurist of the pastAnd the cunning trickster and knave of courtsWho the holy features of Truth distorts,Ruling as right the will of the strong,Poverty, crime, and weakness wrong;Wide-eared to power, to the wronged and weakDeaf as Egypt's gods of leek;Scoffing aside at party's nodOrder of nature and law of God;For whose dabbled ermine respect were waste,Reverence folly, and awe misplaced;Justice of whom 't were vain to seekAs from Koordish robber or Syrian Sheik!Oh, leave the wretch to his bribes and sins;Let him rot in the web of lies he spins!To the saintly soul of the early day,To the Christian judge, let us turn and say"Praise and thanks for an honest man!—Glory to God for the Puritan!"I see, far southward, this quiet day,The hills of Newbury rolling away,With the many tints of the season gay,Dreamily blending in autumn mistCrimson, and gold, and amethyst.Long and low, with dwarf trees crowned,Plum Island lies, like a whale aground,A stone's toss over the narrow sound.Inland, as far as the eye can go,The hills curve round like a bended bow;A silver arrow from out them sprung,I see the shine of the Quasycung;And, round and round, over valley and hill,Old roads winding, as old roads will,Here to a ferry, and there to a mill;And glimpses of chimneys and gabled eaves,Through green elm arches and maple leaves,—Old homesteads sacred to all that canGladden or sadden the heart of man,Over whose thresholds of oak and stoneLife and Death have come and goneThere pictured tiles in the fireplace show,Great beams sag from the ceiling low,The dresser glitters with polished wares,The long clock ticks on the foot-worn stairs,And the low, broad chimney shows the crackBy the earthquake made a century back.Up from their midst springs the village spireWith the crest of its cock in the sun afire;Beyond are orchards and planting lands,And great salt marshes and glimmering sands,And, where north and south the coast-lines run,The blink of the sea in breeze and sun!I see it all like a chart unrolled,But my thoughts are full of the past and old,I hear the tales of my boyhood told;And the shadows and shapes of early daysFlit dimly by in the veiling haze,With measured movement and rhythmic chimeWeaving like shuttles my web of rhyme.I think of the old man wise and goodWho once on yon misty hillsides stood,(A poet who never measured rhyme,A seer unknown to his dull-eared time,)And, propped on his staff of age, looked down,With his boyhood's love, on his native town,Where, written, as if on its hills and plains,His burden of prophecy yet remains,For the voices of wood, and wave, and windTo read in the ear of the musing mind:—"As long as Plum Island, to guard the coastAs God appointed, shall keep its post;As long as a salmon shall haunt the deepOf Merrimac River, or sturgeon leap;As long as pickerel swift and slim,Or red-backed perch, in Crane Pond swim;As long as the annual sea-fowl knowTheir time to come and their time to go;As long as cattle shall roam at willThe green, grass meadows by Turkey Hill;As long as sheep shall look from the sideOf Oldtown Hill on marishes wide,And Parker River, and salt-sea tide;As long as a wandering pigeon shall searchThe fields below from his white-oak perch,When the barley-harvest is ripe and shorn,And the dry husks fall from the standing corn;As long as Nature shall not grow old,Nor drop her work from her doting hold,And her care for the Indian corn forget,And the yellow rows in pairs to set;—So long shall Christians here be born,Grow up and ripen as God's sweet corn!—By the beak of bird, by the breath of frost,Shall never a holy ear be lost,But, husked by Death in the Planter's sight,Be sown again in the fields of light!"The Island still is purple with plums,Up the river the salmon comes,The sturgeon leaps, and the wild-fowl feedsOn hillside berries and marish seeds,—All the beautiful signs remain,From spring-time sowing to autumn rainThe good man's vision returns again!And let us hope, as well we can,That the Silent Angel who garners manMay find some grain as of old lie foundIn the human cornfield ripe and sound,And the Lord of the Harvest deign to ownThe precious seed by the fathers sown!1859.