Thine are all the gifts, O God!Thine the broken bread;Let the naked feet be shod,And the starving fed.Let Thy children, by Thy grace,Give as they abound,Till the poor have breathing-space,And the lost are found.Wiser than the miser's hoardsIs the giver's choice;Sweeter than the song of birdsIs the thankful voice.Welcome smiles on faces sadAs the flowers of spring;Let the tender hearts be gladWith the joy they bring.Happier for their pity's sakeMake their sports and plays,And from lips of childhood takeThy perfected praise!
This poem was read at a meeting of citizens of Boston having for its object the preservation of the Old South Church famous in Colonial and Revolutionary history.
I.THROUGH the streets of MarbleheadFast the red-winged terror sped;Blasting, withering, on it came,With its hundred tongues of flame,Where St. Michael's on its wayStood like chained Andromeda,Waiting on the rock, like her,Swift doom or deliverer!Church that, after sea-moss grewOver walls no longer new,Counted generations five,Four entombed and one alive;Heard the martial thousand treadBattleward from Marblehead;Saw within the rock-walled bayTreville's liked pennons play,And the fisher's dory metBy the barge of Lafayette,Telling good news in advanceOf the coming fleet of France!Church to reverend memories, dear,Quaint in desk and chandelier;Bell, whose century-rusted tongueBurials tolled and bridals rung;Loft, whose tiny organ keptKeys that Snetzler's hand had swept;Altar, o'er whose tablet oldSinai's law its thunders rolled!Suddenly the sharp cry came"Look! St. Michael's is aflame!"Round the low tower wall the fireSnake-like wound its coil of ire.Sacred in its gray respectFrom the jealousies of sect,"Save it," seemed the thought of all,"Save it, though our roof-trees fall!"Up the tower the young men sprung;One, the bravest, outward swungBy the rope, whose kindling strandsSmoked beneath the holder's hands,Smiting down with strokes of powerBurning fragments from the tower.Then the gazing crowd beneathBroke the painful pause of breath;Brave men cheered from street to street,With home's ashes at their feet;Houseless women kerchiefs waved:"Thank the Lord! St. Michael's saved!"II.In the heart of Boston townStands the church of old renown,From whose walls the impulse wentWhich set free a continent;From whose pulpit's oracleProphecies of freedom fell;And whose steeple-rocking dinRang the nation's birth-day in!Standing at this very hourPerilled like St. Michael's tower,Held not in the clasp of flame,But by mammon's grasping claim.Shall it be of Boston saidShe is shamed by Marblehead?City of our pride! as there,Hast thou none to do and dare?Life was risked for Michael's shrine;Shall not wealth be staked for thine?Woe to thee, when men shall searchVainly for the Old South Church;When from Neck to Boston Stone,All thy pride of place is gone;When from Bay and railroad car,Stretched before them wide and far,Men shall only see a greatWilderness of brick and slate,Every holy spot o'erlaidBy the commonplace of trade!City of our love': to theeDuty is but destiny.True to all thy record saith,Keep with thy traditions faith;Ere occasion's overpast,Hold its flowing forelock fast;Honor still the precedentsOf a grand munificence;In thy old historic wayGive, as thou didst yesterdayAt the South-land's call, or onNeed's demand from fired St. John.Set thy Church's muffled bellFree the generous deed to tell.Let thy loyal hearts rejoiceIn the glad, sonorous voice,Ringing from the brazen mouthOf the bell of the Old South,—Ringing clearly, with a will,"What she was is Boston still!"1879
O painter of the fruits and flowers,We own wise design,Where these human hands of oursMay share work of Thine!Apart from Thee we plant in vainThe root and sow the seed;Thy early and Thy later rain,Thy sun and dew we need.Our toil is sweet with thankfulness,Our burden is our boon;The curse of Earth's gray morning isThe blessing of its noon.Why search the wide world everywhereFor Eden's unknown ground?That garden of the primal pairMay nevermore be found.But, blest by Thee, our patient toilMay right the ancient wrong,And give to every clime and soilThe beauty lost so long.Our homestead flowers and fruited treesMay Eden's orchard shame;We taste the tempting sweets of theseLike Eve, without her blame.And, North and South and East and West,The pride of every zone,The fairest, rarest, and the bestMay all be made our own.Its earliest shrines the young world soughtIn hill-groves and in bowers,The fittest offerings thither broughtWere Thy own fruits and flowers.And still with reverent hands we cullThy gifts each year renewed;The good is always beautiful,The beautiful is good.
Read at Harriet Beecher Stowe's seventieth anniversary, June 14, 1882, at a garden party at ex-Governor Claflin's in Newtonville, Mass.
Thrice welcome from the Land of FlowersAnd golden-fruited orange bowersTo this sweet, green-turfed June of ours!To her who, in our evil time,Dragged into light the nation's crimeWith strength beyond the strength of men,And, mightier than their swords, her pen!To her who world-wide entrance gaveTo the log-cabin of the slave;Made all his wrongs and sorrows known,And all earth's languages his own,—North, South, and East and West, made allThe common air electrical,Until the o'ercharged bolts of heavenBlazed down, and every chain was riven!Welcome from each and all to herWhose Wooing of the MinisterRevealed the warm heart of the manBeneath the creed-bound Puritan,And taught the kinship of the loveOf man below and God above;To her whose vigorous pencil-strokesSketched into life her Oldtown Folks;Whose fireside stories, grave or gay,In quaint Sam Lawson's vagrant way,With old New England's flavor rife,Waifs from her rude idyllic life,Are racy as the legends oldBy Chaucer or Boccaccio told;To her who keeps, through change of placeAnd time, her native strength and grace,Alike where warm Sorrento smiles,Or where, by birchen-shaded isles,Whose summer winds have shivered o'erThe icy drift of Labrador,She lifts to light the priceless PearlOf Harpswell's angel-beckoned girl!To her at threescore years and tenBe tributes of the tongue and pen;Be honor, praise, and heart-thanks given,The loves of earth, the hopes of heaven!Ah, dearer than the praise that stirsThe air to-day, our love is hers!She needs no guaranty of fameWhose own is linked with Freedom's name.Long ages after ours shall keepHer memory living while we sleep;The waves that wash our gray coast lines,The winds that rock the Southern pines,Shall sing of her; the unending yearsShall tell her tale in unborn ears.And when, with sins and follies past,Are numbered color-hate and caste,White, black, and red shall own as oneThe noblest work by woman done.
Written on the occasion of a voyage made by my friends Annie Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett.
Outbound, your bark awaits you. Were I oneWhose prayer availeth much, my wish should beYour favoring trade-wind and consenting sea.By sail or steed was never love outrun,And, here or there, love follows her in whomAll graces and sweet charities unite,The old Greek beauty set in holier light;And her for whom New England's byways bloom,Who walks among us welcome as the Spring,Calling up blossoms where her light feet stray.God keep you both, make beautiful your way,Comfort, console, and bless; and safely bring,Ere yet I make upon a vaster seaThe unreturning voyage, my friends to me.1882.
My garden roses long agoHave perished from the leaf-strewn walks;Their pale, fair sisters smile no moreUpon the sweet-brier stalks.Gone with the flower-time of my life,Spring's violets, summer's blooming pride,And Nature's winter and my ownStand, flowerless, side by side.So might I yesterday have sung;To-day, in bleak December's noon,Come sweetest fragrance, shapes, and hues,The rosy wealth of June!Bless the young bands that culled the gift,And bless the hearts that prompted it;If undeserved it comes, at leastIt seems not all unfit.Of old my Quaker ancestorsHad gifts of forty stripes save one;To-day as many roses crownThe gray head of their son.And with them, to my fancy's eye,The fresh-faced givers smiling come,And nine and thirty happy girlsMake glad a lonely room.They bring the atmosphere of youth;The light and warmth of long agoAre in my heart, and on my cheekThe airs of morning blow.O buds of girlhood, yet unblown,And fairer than the gift ye chose,For you may years like leaves unfoldThe heart of Sharon's rose.1883.
Read September 10, 1885, to the surviving students of Haverhill Academy in 1827-1830.
The gulf of seven and fifty yearsWe stretch our welcoming hands across;The distance but a pebble's tossBetween us and our youth appears.For in life's school we linger onThe remnant of a once full list;Conning our lessons, undismissed,With faces to the setting sun.And some have gone the unknown way,And some await the call to rest;Who knoweth whether it is bestFor those who went or those who stay?And yet despite of loss and ill,If faith and love and hope remain,Our length of days is not in vain,And life is well worth living still.Still to a gracious ProvidenceThe thanks of grateful hearts are due,For blessings when our lives were new,For all the good vouchsafed us since.The pain that spared us sorer hurt,The wish denied, the purpose crossed,And pleasure's fond occasions lost,Were mercies to our small desert.'T is something that we wander back,Gray pilgrims, to our ancient ways,And tender memories of old daysWalk with us by the Merrimac;That even in life's afternoonA sense of youth comes back again,As through this cool September rainThe still green woodlands dream of June.The eyes grown dim to present thingsHave keener sight for bygone years,And sweet and clear, in deafening ears,The bird that sang at morning sings.Dear comrades, scattered wide and far,Send from their homes their kindly word,And dearer ones, unseen, unheard,Smile on us from some heavenly star.For life and death with God are one,Unchanged by seeming change His careAnd love are round us here and there;He breaks no thread His hand has spun.Soul touches soul, the muster rollOf life eternal has no gaps;And after half a century's lapseOur school-day ranks are closed and whole.Hail and farewell! We go our way;Where shadows end, we trust in light;The star that ushers in the nightIs herald also of the day!
Norumbega Hall at Wellesley College, named in honor of Eben Norton Horsford, who has been one of the most munificent patrons of that noble institution, and who had just published an essay claiming the discovery of the site of the somewhat mythical city of Norumbega, was opened with appropriate ceremonies, in April, 1886. The following sonnet was written for the occasion, and was read by President Alice E. Freeman, to whom it was addressed.
Not on Penobscot's wooded bank the spiresOf the sought City rose, nor yet besideThe winding Charles, nor where the daily tideOf Naumkeag's haven rises and retires,The vision tarried; but somewhere we knewThe beautiful gates must open to our quest,Somewhere that marvellous City of the WestWould lift its towers and palace domes in view,And, to! at last its mystery is made known—Its only dwellers maidens fair and young,Its Princess such as England's Laureate sung;And safe from capture, save by love alone,It lends its beauty to the lake's green shore,And Norumbega is a myth no more.
The land, that, from the rule of kings,In freeing us, itself made free,Our Old World Sister, to us bringsHer sculptured Dream of Liberty,Unlike the shapes on Egypt's sandsUplifted by the toil-worn slave,On Freedom's soil with freemen's handsWe rear the symbol free hands gave.O France, the beautiful! to theeOnce more a debt of love we oweIn peace beneath thy Colors Three,We hail a later Rochambeau!Rise, stately Symbol! holding forthThy light and hope to all who sitIn chains and darkness! Belt the earthWith watch-fires from thy torch uplit!Reveal the primal mandate stillWhich Chaos heard and ceased to be,Trace on mid-air th' Eternal WillIn signs of fire: "Let man be free!"Shine far, shine free, a guiding lightTo Reason's ways and Virtue's aim,A lightning-flash the wretch to smiteWho shields his license with thy name!
Written for the unveiling of the statue of Josiah Bartlett at Amesbury, Mass., July 4, 1888. Governor Bartlett, who was a native of the town, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Amesbury or Ambresbury, so called from the "anointed stones" of the great Druidical temple near it, was the seat of one of the earliest religious houses in Britain. The tradition that the guilty wife of King Arthur fled thither for protection forms one of the finest passages in Tennyson's Idyls of the King.
O storied vale of MerrimacRejoice through all thy shade and shine,And from his century's sleep call backA brave and honored son of thine.Unveil his effigy betweenThe living and the dead to-day;The fathers of the Old ThirteenShall witness bear as spirits may.Unseen, unheard, his gray compeersThe shades of Lee and Jefferson,Wise Franklin reverend with his yearsAnd Carroll, lord of Carrollton!Be thine henceforth a pride of placeBeyond thy namesake's over-sea,Where scarce a stone is left to traceThe Holy House of Amesbury.A prouder memory lingers roundThe birthplace of thy true man hereThan that which haunts the refuge foundBy Arthur's mythic Guinevere.The plain deal table where he satAnd signed a nation's title-deedIs dearer now to fame than thatWhich bore the scroll of Runnymede.Long as, on Freedom's natal morn,Shall ring the Independence bells,Give to thy dwellers yet unbornThe lesson which his image tells.For in that hour of Destiny,Which tried the men of bravest stock,He knew the end alone must beA free land or a traitor's block.Among those picked and chosen menThan his, who here first drew his breath,No firmer fingers held the penWhich wrote for liberty or death.Not for their hearths and homes alone,But for the world their work was done;On all the winds their thought has flownThrough all the circuit of the sun.We trace its flight by broken chains,By songs of grateful Labor still;To-day, in all her holy fanes,It rings the bells of freed Brazil.O hills that watched his boyhood's home,O earth and air that nursed him, give,In this memorial semblance, roomTo him who shall its bronze outlive!And thou, O Land he loved, rejoiceThat in the countless years to come,Whenever Freedom needs a voice,These sculptured lips shall not be dumb!
It can scarcely be necessary to name as the two companions whom I reckoned with myself in this poetical picnic, Fields the lettered magnate, and Taylor the free cosmopolite. The long line of sandy beach which defines almost the whole of the New Hampshire sea-coast is especially marked near its southern extremity, by the salt-meadows of Hampton. The Hampton River winds through these meadows, and the reader may, if he choose, imagine my tent pitched near its mouth, where also was the scene of theWreck of Rivermouth. The green bluff to the northward is Great Boar's Head; southward is the Merrimac, with Newburyport lifting its steeples above brown roofs and green trees on banks.
I would not sin, in this half-playful strain,—Too light perhaps for serious years, though bornOf the enforced leisure of slow pain,—Against the pure ideal which has drawnMy feet to follow its far-shining gleam.A simple plot is mine: legends and runesOf credulous days, old fancies that have lainSilent, from boyhood taking voice again,Warmed into life once more, even as the tunesThat, frozen in the fabled hunting-horn,Thawed into sound:—a winter fireside dreamOf dawns and-sunsets by the summer sea,Whose sands are traversed by a silent throngOf voyagers from that vaster mysteryOf which it is an emblem;—and the dearMemory of one who might have tuned my songTo sweeter music by her delicate ear.
When heats as of a tropic climeBurned all our inland valleys through,Three friends, the guests of summer time,Pitched their white tent where sea-winds blew.Behind them, marshes, seamed and crossedWith narrow creeks, and flower-embossed,Stretched to the dark oak wood, whose leafy armsScreened from the stormy East the pleasant inland farms.At full of tide their bolder shoreOf sun-bleached sand the waters beat;At ebb, a smooth and glistening floorThey touched with light, receding feet.Northward a 'green bluff broke the chainOf sand-hills; southward stretched a plainOf salt grass, with a river winding down,Sail-whitened, and beyond the steeples of the town,Whence sometimes, when the wind was lightAnd dull the thunder of the beach,They heard the bells of morn and nightSwing, miles away, their silver speech.Above low scarp and turf-grown wallThey saw the fort-flag rise and fall;And, the first star to signal twilight's hour,The lamp-fire glimmer down from the tall light-house tower.They rested there, escaped awhileFrom cares that wear the life away,To eat the lotus of the NileAnd drink the poppies of Cathay,—To fling their loads of custom down,Like drift-weed, on the sand-slopes brown,And in the sea waves drown the restless packOf duties, claims, and needs that barked upon their track.One, with his beard scarce silvered, boreA ready credence in his looks,A lettered magnate, lording o'erAn ever-widening realm of books.In him brain-currents, near and far,Converged as in a Leyden jar;The old, dead authors thronged him round about,And Elzevir's gray ghosts from leathern graves looked out.He knew each living pundit well,Could weigh the gifts of him or her,And well the market value tellOf poet and philosopher.But if he lost, the scenes behind,Somewhat of reverence vague and blind,Finding the actors human at the best,No readier lips than his the good he saw confessed.His boyhood fancies not outgrown,He loved himself the singer's art;Tenderly, gently, by his ownHe knew and judged an author's heart.No Rhadamanthine brow of doomBowed the dazed pedant from his room;And bards, whose name is legion, if denied,Bore off alike intact their verses and their pride.Pleasant it was to roam aboutThe lettered world as he had, done,And see the lords of song withoutTheir singing robes and garlands on.With Wordsworth paddle Rydal mere,Taste rugged Elliott's home-brewed beer,And with the ears of Rogers, at fourscore,Hear Garrick's buskined tread and Walpole's wit once more.And one there was, a dreamer born,Who, with a mission to fulfil,Had left the Muses' haunts to turnThe crank of an opinion-mill,Making his rustic reed of songA weapon in the war with wrong,Yoking his fancy to the breaking-ploughThat beam-deep turned the soil for truth to spring and grow.Too quiet seemed the man to rideThe winged Hippogriff Reform;Was his a voice from side to sideTo pierce the tumult of the storm?A silent, shy, peace-loving man,He seemed no fiery partisanTo hold his way against the public frown,The ban of Church and State, the fierce mob's hounding down.For while he wrought with strenuous willThe work his hands had found to do,He heard the fitful music stillOf winds that out of dream-land blew.The din about him could not drownWhat the strange voices whispered down;Along his task-field weird processions swept,The visionary pomp of stately phantoms stepped:The common air was thick with dreams,—He told them to the toiling crowd;Such music as the woods and streamsSang in his ear he sang aloud;In still, shut bays, on windy capes,He heard the call of beckoning shapes,And, as the gray old shadows prompted him,To homely moulds of rhyme he shaped their legends grim.He rested now his weary hands,And lightly moralized and laughed,As, tracing on the shifting sandsA burlesque of his paper-craft,He saw the careless waves o'errunHis words, as time before had done,Each day's tide-water washing clean away,Like letters from the sand, the work of yesterday.And one, whose Arab face was tannedBy tropic sun and boreal frost,So travelled there was scarce a landOr people left him to exhaust,In idling mood had from him hurledThe poor squeezed orange of the world,And in the tent-shade, as beneath a palm,Smoked, cross-legged like a Turk, in Oriental calm.The very waves that washed the sandBelow him, he had seen beforeWhitening the Scandinavian strandAnd sultry Mauritanian shore.From ice-rimmed isles, from summer seasPalm-fringed, they bore him messages;He heard the plaintive Nubian songs again,And mule-bells tinkling down the mountain-paths of Spain.His memory round the ransacked earthOn Puck's long girdle slid at ease;And, instant, to the valley's girthOf mountains, spice isles of the seas,Faith flowered in minster stones, Art's guessAt truth and beauty, found access;Yet loved the while, that free cosmopolite,Old friends, old ways, and kept his boyhood's dreams in sight.Untouched as yet by wealth and pride,That virgin innocence of beachNo shingly monster, hundred-eyed,Stared its gray sand-birds out of reach;Unhoused, save where, at intervals,The white tents showed their canvas walls,Where brief sojourners, in the cool, soft air,Forgot their inland heats, hard toil, and year-long care.Sometimes along the wheel-deep sandA one-horse wagon slowly crawled,Deep laden with a youthful band,Whose look some homestead old recalled;Brother perchance, and sisters twain,And one whose blue eyes told, more plainThan the free language of her rosy lip,Of the still dearer claim of love's relationship.With cheeks of russet-orchard tint,The light laugh of their native rills,The perfume of their garden's mint,The breezy freedom of the hills,They bore, in unrestrained delight,The motto of the Garter's knight,Careless as if from every gazing thingHid by their innocence, as Gyges by his ring.The clanging sea-fowl came and went,The hunter's gun in the marshes rang;At nightfall from a neighboring tentA flute-voiced woman sweetly sang.Loose-haired, barefooted, hand-in-hand,Young girls went tripping down the sand;And youths and maidens, sitting in the moon,Dreamed o'er the old fond dream from which we wake too soon.At times their fishing-lines they plied,With an old Triton at the oar,Salt as the sea-wind, tough and driedAs a lean cusk from Labrador.Strange tales he told of wreck and storm,—Had seen the sea-snake's awful form,And heard the ghosts on Haley's Isle complain,Speak him off shore, and beg a passage to old Spain!And there, on breezy morns, they sawThe fishing-schooners outward run,Their low-bent sails in tack and flawTurned white or dark to shade and sun.Sometimes, in calms of closing day,They watched the spectral mirage play,Saw low, far islands looming tall and nigh,And ships, with upturned keels, sail like a sea the sky.Sometimes a cloud, with thunder black,Stooped low upon the darkening main,Piercing the waves along its trackWith the slant javelins of rain.And when west-wind and sunshine warmChased out to sea its wrecks of storm,They saw the prismy hues in thin spray showersWhere the green buds of waves burst into white froth flowers.And when along the line of shoreThe mists crept upward chill and damp,Stretched, careless, on their sandy floorBeneath the flaring lantern lamp,They talked of all things old and new,Read, slept, and dreamed as idlers do;And in the unquestioned freedom of the tent,Body and o'er-taxed mind to healthful ease unbent.Once, when the sunset splendors died,And, trampling up the sloping sand,In lines outreaching far and wide,The white-waned billows swept to land,Dim seen across the gathering shade,A vast and ghostly cavalcade,They sat around their lighted kerosene,Hearing the deep bass roar their every pause between.Then, urged thereto, the EditorWithin his full portfolio dipped,Feigning excuse while seaching for(With secret pride) his manuscript.His pale face flushed from eye to beard,With nervous cough his throat he cleared,And, in a voice so tremulous it betrayedThe anxious fondness of an author's heart, he read:. . . . .
The Goody Cole who figures in this poem and The Changeling as Eunice Cole, who for a quarter of a century or more was feared, persecuted, and hated as the witch of Hampton. She lived alone in a hovel a little distant from the spot where the Hampton Academy now stands, and there she died, unattended. When her death was discovered, she was hastily covered up in the earth near by, and a stake driven through her body, to exorcise the evil spirit. Rev. Stephen Bachiler or Batchelder was one of the ablest of the early New England preachers. His marriage late in life to a woman regarded by his church as disreputable induced him to return to England, where he enjoyed the esteem and favor of Oliver Cromwell during the Protectorate.
Rivermouth Rocks are fair to see,By dawn or sunset shone across,When the ebb of the sea has left them free,To dry their fringes of gold-green mossFor there the river comes winding down,From salt sea-meadows and uplands brown,And waves on the outer rocks afoamShout to its waters, "Welcome home!"And fair are the sunny isles in viewEast of the grisly Head of the Boar,And Agamenticus lifts its blueDisk of a cloud the woodlands o'er;And southerly, when the tide is down,'Twixt white sea-waves and sand-hills brown,The beach-birds dance and the gray gulls wheelOver a floor of burnished steel.Once, in the old Colonial days,Two hundred years ago and more,A boat sailed down through the winding waysOf Hampton River to that low shore,Full of a goodly companySailing out on the summer sea,Veering to catch the land-breeze light,With the Boar to left and the Rocks to right.In Hampton meadows, where mowers laidTheir scythes to the swaths of salted grass,"Ah, well-a-day! our hay must be made!"A young man sighed, who saw them pass.Loud laughed his fellows to see him standWhetting his scythe with a listless hand,Hearing a voice in a far-off song,Watching a white hand beckoning long."Fie on the witch!" cried a merry girl,As they rounded the point where Goody ColeSat by her door with her wheel atwirl,A bent and blear-eyed poor old soul."Oho!" she muttered, "ye 're brave to-day!But I hear the little waves laugh and say,'The broth will be cold that waits at home;For it 's one to go, but another to come!'""She's cursed," said the skipper; "speak her fair:I'm scary always to see her shakeHer wicked head, with its wild gray hair,And nose like a hawk, and eyes like a snake."But merrily still, with laugh and shout,From Hampton River the boat sailed out,Till the huts and the flakes on Star seemed nigh,And they lost the scent of the pines of Rye.They dropped their lines in the lazy tide,Drawing up haddock and mottled cod;They saw not the Shadow that walked beside,They heard not the feet with silence shod.But thicker and thicker a hot mist grew,Shot by the lightnings through and through;And muffled growls, like the growl of a beast,Ran along the sky from west to east.Then the skipper looked from the darkening seaUp to the dimmed and wading sun;But he spake like a brave man cheerily,"Yet there is time for our homeward run."Veering and tacking, they backward wore;And just as a breath-from the woods ashoreBlew out to whisper of danger past,The wrath of the storm came down at last!The skipper hauled at the heavy sail"God be our help!" he only cried,As the roaring gale, like the stroke of a flail,Smote the boat on its starboard side.The Shoalsmen looked, but saw aloneDark films of rain-cloud slantwise blown,Wild rocks lit up by the lightning's glare,The strife and torment of sea and air.Goody Cole looked out from her doorThe Isles of Shoals were drowned and gone,Scarcely she saw the Head of the BoarToss the foam from tusks of stone.She clasped her hands with a grip of pain,The tear on her cheek was not of rain"They are lost," she muttered, "boat and crew!Lord, forgive me! my words were true!"Suddenly seaward swept the squall;The low sun smote through cloudy rack;The Shoals stood clear in the light, and allThe trend of the coast lay hard and black.But far and wide as eye could reach,No life was seen upon wave or beach;The boat that went out at morning neverSailed back again into Hampton River.O mower, lean on thy bended snath,Look from the meadows green and lowThe wind of the sea is a waft of death,The waves are singing a song of woe!By silent river, by moaning sea,Long and vain shall thy watching beNever again shall the sweet voice call,Never the white hand rise and fall!O Rivermouth Rocks, how sad a sightYe saw in the light of breaking dayDead faces looking up cold and whiteFrom sand and seaweed where they lay.The mad old witch-wife wailed and wept,And cursed the tide as it backward crept"Crawl back, crawl back, blue water-snakeLeave your dead for the hearts that break!"Solemn it was in that old dayIn Hampton town and its log-built church,Where side by side the coffins layAnd the mourners stood in aisle and porch.In the singing-seats young eyes were dim,The voices faltered that raised the hymn,And Father Dalton, grave and stern,Sobbed through his prayer and wept in turn.But his ancient colleague did not pray;Under the weight of his fourscore yearsHe stood apart with the iron-grayOf his strong brows knitted to hide his tears;And a fair-faced woman of doubtful fame,Linking her own with his honored name,Subtle as sin, at his side withstoodThe felt reproach of her neighborhood.Apart with them, like them forbid,Old Goody Cole looked drearily round,As, two by two, with their faces hid,The mourners walked to the burying-ground.She let the staff from her clasped hands fall"Lord, forgive us! we're sinners all!"And the voice of the old man answered her"Amen!" said Father Bachiler.So, as I sat upon AppledoreIn the calm of a closing summer day,And the broken lines of Hampton shoreIn purple mist of cloudland lay,The Rivermouth Rocks their story told;And waves aglow with sunset gold,Rising and breaking in steady chime,Beat the rhythm and kept the time.And the sunset paled, and warmed once moreWith a softer, tenderer after-glow;In the east was moon-rise, with boats off-shoreAnd sails in the distance drifting slow.The beacon glimmered from Portsmouth bar,The White Isle kindled its great red star;And life and death in my old-time layMingled in peace like the night and day!. . . . ."Well!" said the Man of Books, "your storyIs really not ill told in verse.As the Celt said of purgatory,One might go farther and fare worse."The Reader smiled; and once againWith steadier voice took up his strain,While the fair singer from the neighboring tentDrew near, and at his side a graceful listener bent.1864.
At the mouth of the Melvin River, which empties into Moulton-Bay inLake Winnipesaukee, is a great mound. The Ossipee Indians had theirhome in the neighborhood of the bay, which is plentifully stockedwith fish, and many relics of their occupation have been found.
Where the Great Lake's sunny smilesDimple round its hundred isles,And the mountain's granite ledgeCleaves the water like a wedge,Ringed about with smooth, gray stones,Rest the giant's mighty bones.Close beside, in shade and gleam,Laughs and ripples Melvin stream;Melvin water, mountain-born,All fair flowers its banks adorn;All the woodland's voices meet,Mingling with its murmurs sweet.Over lowlands forest-grown,Over waters island-strown,Over silver-sanded beach,Leaf-locked bay and misty reach,Melvin stream and burial-heap,Watch and ward the mountains keep.Who that Titan cromlech fills?Forest-kaiser, lord o' the hills?Knight who on the birchen treeCarved his savage heraldry?Priest o' the pine-wood temples dim,Prophet, sage, or wizard grim?Rugged type of primal man,Grim utilitarian,Loving woods for hunt and prowl,Lake and hill for fish and fowl,As the brown bear blind and dullTo the grand and beautiful:Not for him the lesson drawnFrom the mountains smit with dawn,Star-rise, moon-rise, flowers of May,Sunset's purple bloom of day,—Took his life no hue from thence,Poor amid such affluence?Haply unto hill and treeAll too near akin was heUnto him who stands afarNature's marvels greatest are;Who the mountain purple seeksMust not climb the higher peaks.Yet who knows in winter tramp,Or the midnight of the camp,What revealings faint and far,Stealing down from moon and star,Kindled in that human clodThought of destiny and God?Stateliest forest patriarch,Grand in robes of skin and bark,What sepulchral mysteries,What weird funeral-rites, were his?What sharp wail, what drear lament,Back scared wolf and eagle sent?Now, whate'er he may have been,Low he lies as other men;On his mound the partridge drums,There the noisy blue-jay comes;Rank nor name nor pomp has heIn the grave's democracy.Part thy blue lips, Northern lake!Moss-grown rocks, your silence break!Tell the tale, thou ancient tree!Thou, too, slide-worn Ossipee!Speak, and tell us how and whenLived and died this king of men!Wordless moans the ancient pine;Lake and mountain give no sign;Vain to trace this ring of stones;Vain the search of crumbling bonesDeepest of all mysteries,And the saddest, silence is.Nameless, noteless, clay with clayMingles slowly day by day;But somewhere, for good or ill,That dark soul is living still;Somewhere yet that atom's forceMoves the light-poised universe.Strange that on his burial-sodHarebells bloom, and golden-rod,While the soul's dark horoscopeHolds no starry sign of hope!Is the Unseen with sight at odds?Nature's pity more than God's?Thus I mused by Melvin's side,While the summer eventideMade the woods and inland seaAnd the mountains mystery;And the hush of earth and airSeemed the pause before a prayer,—Prayer for him, for all who rest,Mother Earth, upon thy breast,—Lapped on Christian turf, or hidIn rock-cave or pyramidAll who sleep, as all who live,Well may need the prayer, "Forgive!"Desert-smothered caravan,Knee-deep dust that once was man,Battle-trenches ghastly piled,Ocean-floors with white bones tiled,Crowded tomb and mounded sod,Dumbly crave that prayer to God.Oh, the generations oldOver whom no church-bells tolled,Christless, lifting up blind eyesTo the silence of the skies!For the innumerable deadIs my soul disquieted.Where be now these silent hosts?Where the camping-ground of ghosts?Where the spectral conscripts ledTo the white tents of the dead?What strange shore or chartless seaHolds the awful mystery?Then the warm sky stooped to makeDouble sunset in the lake;While above I saw with it,Range on range, the mountains lit;And the calm and splendor stoleLike an answer to my soul.Hear'st thou, O of little faith,What to thee the mountain saith,What is whispered by the trees?Cast on God thy care for these;Trust Him, if thy sight be dimDoubt for them is doubt of Him."Blind must be their close-shut eyesWhere like night the sunshine lies,Fiery-linked the self-forged chainBinding ever sin to pain,Strong their prison-house of will,But without He waiteth still."Not with hatred's undertowDoth the Love Eternal flow;Every chain that spirits wearCrumbles in the breath of prayer;And the penitent's desireOpens every gate of fire."Still Thy love, O Christ arisen,Yearns to reach these souls in prison!Through all depths of sin and lossDrops the plummet of Thy cross!Never yet abyss was foundDeeper than that cross could sound!"Therefore well may Nature keepEqual faith with all who sleep,Set her watch of hills aroundChristian grave and heathen mound,And to cairn and kirkyard sendSummer's flowery dividend.Keep, O pleasant Melvin stream,Thy sweet laugh in shade and gleamOn the Indian's grassy tombSwing, O flowers, your bells of bloom!Deep below, as high above,Sweeps the circle of God's love.1865. . . . .He paused and questioned with his eyeThe hearers' verdict on his song.A low voice asked: Is 't well to pryInto the secrets which belongOnly to God?—The life to beIs still the unguessed mysteryUnsealed, unpierced the cloudy walls remain,We beat with dream and wish the soundless doors in vain."But faith beyond our sight may go."He said: "The gracious FatherhoodCan only know above, below,Eternal purposes of good.From our free heritage of will,The bitter springs of pain and illFlow only in all worlds. The perfect dayOf God is shadowless, and love is love alway.""I know," she said, "the letter kills;That on our arid fields of strifeAnd heat of clashing texts distilsThe clew of spirit and of life.But, searching still the written Word,I fain would find, Thus saith the Lord,A voucher for the hope I also feelThat sin can give no wound beyond love's power to heal.""Pray," said the Man of Books, "give o'erA theme too vast for time and place.Go on, Sir Poet, ride once moreYour hobby at his old free pace.But let him keep, with step discreet,The solid earth beneath his feet.In the great mystery which around us lies,The wisest is a fool, the fool Heaven-helped is wise."The Traveller said: "If songs have creeds,Their choice of them let singers make;But Art no other sanction needsThan beauty for its own fair sake.It grinds not in the mill of use,Nor asks for leave, nor begs excuse;It makes the flexile laws it deigns to own,And gives its atmosphere its color and its tone."Confess, old friend, your austere schoolHas left your fancy little chance;You square to reason's rigid ruleThe flowing outlines of romance.With conscience keen from exercise,And chronic fear of compromise,You check the free play of your rhymes, to clapA moral underneath, and spring it like a trap."The sweet voice answered: "Better soThan bolder flights that know no check;Better to use the bit, than throwThe reins all loose on fancy's neck.The liberal range of Art should beThe breadth of Christian liberty,Restrained alone by challenge and alarmWhere its charmed footsteps tread the border land of harm."Beyond the poet's sweet dream livesThe eternal epic of the man.He wisest is who only gives,True to himself, the best he can;Who, drifting in the winds of praise,The inward monitor obeys;And, with the boldness that confesses fear,Takes in the crowded sail, and lets his conscience steer."Thanks for the fitting word he speaks,Nor less for doubtful word unspoken;For the false model that he breaks,As for the moulded grace unbroken;For what is missed and what remains,For losses which are truest gains,For reverence conscious of the Eternal eye,And truth too fair to need the garnish of a lie."Laughing, the Critic bowed. "I yieldThe point without another word;Who ever yet a case appealedWhere beauty's judgment had been heard?And you, my good friend, owe to meYour warmest thanks for such a plea,As true withal as sweet. For my offenceOf cavil, let her words be ample recompense."Across the sea one lighthouse star,With crimson ray that came and went,Revolving on its tower afar,Looked through the doorway of the tent.While outward, over sand-slopes wet,The lamp flashed down its yellow jetOn the long wash of waves, with red and greenTangles of weltering weed through the white foam-wreaths seen."Sing while we may,—another dayMay bring enough of sorrow;'—thusOur Traveller in his own sweet lay,His Crimean camp-song, hints to us,"The lady said. "So let it be;Sing us a song," exclaimed all three.She smiled: "I can but marvel at your choiceTo hear our poet's words through my poor borrowed voice.". . . . .Her window opens to the bay,On glistening light or misty gray,And there at dawn and set of dayIn prayer she kneels."Dear Lord!" she saith, "to many a borneFrom wind and wave the wanderers come;I only see the tossing foamOf stranger keels."Blown out and in by summer gales,The stately ships, with crowded sails,And sailors leaning o'er their rails,Before me glide;They come, they go, but nevermore,Spice-laden from the Indian shore,I see his swift-winged IsidoreThe waves divide."O Thou! with whom the night is dayAnd one the near and far away,Look out on yon gray waste, and sayWhere lingers he.Alive, perchance, on some lone beachOr thirsty isle beyond the reachOf man, he hears the mocking speechOf wind and sea."O dread and cruel deep, revealThe secret which thy waves conceal,And, ye wild sea-birds, hither wheelAnd tell your tale.Let winds that tossed his raven hairA message from my lost one bear,—Some thought of me, a last fond prayerOr dying wail!"Come, with your dreariest truth shut outThe fears that haunt me round about;O God! I cannot bear this doubtThat stifles breath.The worst is better than the dread;Give me but leave to mourn my deadAsleep in trust and hope, insteadOf life in death!"It might have been the evening breezeThat whispered in the garden trees,It might have been the sound of seasThat rose and fell;But, with her heart, if not her ear,The old loved voice she seemed to hear"I wait to meet thee: be of cheer,For all is well!"1865. . . . .The sweet voice into silence went,A silence which was almost painAs through it rolled the long lament,The cadence of the mournful main.Glancing his written pages o'er,The Reader tried his part once more;Leaving the land of hackmatack and pineFor Tuscan valleys glad with olive and with vine.