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+Project Gutenberg EBook, Barclay of Ury, and Others, by Whittier
+From Volume I., The Works of Whittier: Narrative and Legendary Poems
+#7 in our series by John Greenleaf Whittier
+
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+Title: Narrative and Legendary Poems: Barclay of Ury, and Others
+       From Volume I., The Works of Whittier
+
+Author: John Greenleaf Whittier
+
+Release Date: Dec, 2005  [EBook #9562]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 2, 2003]
+
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, BARCLAY OF URI, ETC. ***
+
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+                        NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY
+
+                                 POEMS
+
+                                   BY
+                        JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS:
+
+BARCLAY OF URY
+THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA
+THE LEGEND OF ST MARK
+KATHLEEN
+THE WELL OF LOCH MAREE
+THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS
+TAULER
+THE HERMIT OF THE THEBAID
+THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN
+THE GIFT OF TRITEMIUS
+SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE
+THE SYCAMORES
+THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW
+TELLING THE BEES
+THE SWAN SONG OF PARSON AVERY
+THE DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE OF NEWBURY
+
+
+
+
+
+BARCLAY OF URY.
+
+Among the earliest converts to the doctrines of Friends in Scotland was
+Barclay of Ury, an old and distinguished soldier, who had fought under
+Gustavus Adolphus, in Germany. As a Quaker, he became the object of
+persecution and abuse at the hands of the magistrates and the populace.
+None bore the indignities of the mob with greater patience and nobleness
+of soul than this once proud gentleman and soldier. One of his friends,
+on an occasion of uncommon rudeness, lamented that he should be treated
+so harshly in his old age who had been so honored before. "I find more
+satisfaction," said Barclay, "as well as honor, in being thus insulted
+for my religious principles, than when, a few years ago, it was usual
+for the magistrates, as I passed the city of Aberdeen, to meet me on the
+road and conduct me to public entertainment in their hall, and then
+escort me out again, to gain my favor."
+
+Up the streets of Aberdeen,
+By the kirk and college green,
+Rode the Laird of Ury;
+Close behind him, close beside,
+Foul of mouth and evil-eyed,
+Pressed the mob in fury.
+
+Flouted him the drunken churl,
+Jeered at him the serving-girl,
+Prompt to please her master;
+And the begging carlin, late
+Fed and clothed at Ury's gate,
+Cursed him as he passed her.
+
+Yet, with calm and stately mien,
+Up the streets of Aberdeen
+Came he slowly riding;
+And, to all he saw and heard,
+Answering not with bitter word,
+Turning not for chiding.
+
+Came a troop with broadswords swinging,
+Bits and bridles sharply ringing,
+Loose and free and froward;
+Quoth the foremost, "Ride him down!
+Push him! prick him! through the town
+Drive the Quaker coward!"
+
+But from out the thickening crowd
+Cried a sudden voice and loud
+"Barclay! Ho! a Barclay!"
+And the old man at his side
+Saw a comrade, battle tried,
+Scarred and sunburned darkly;
+
+Who with ready weapon bare,
+Fronting to the troopers there,
+Cried aloud: "God save us,
+Call ye coward him who stood
+Ankle deep in Lutzen's blood,
+With the brave Gustavus?"
+
+"Nay, I do not need thy sword,
+Comrade mine," said Ury's lord;
+"Put it up, I pray thee
+Passive to His holy will,
+Trust I in my Master still,
+Even though He slay me.
+
+"Pledges of thy love and faith,
+Proved on many a field of death,
+Not by me are needed."
+Marvelled much that henchman bold,
+That his laird, so stout of old,
+Now so meekly pleaded.
+
+"Woe's the day!" he sadly said,
+With a slowly shaking head,
+And a look of pity;
+"Ury's honest lord reviled,
+Mock of knave and sport of child,
+In his own good city.
+
+"Speak the word, and, master mine,
+As we charged on Tilly's[8] line,
+And his Walloon lancers,
+Smiting through their midst we'll teach
+Civil look and decent speech
+To these boyish prancers!"
+
+"Marvel not, mine ancient friend,
+Like beginning, like the end:"
+Quoth the Laird of Ury;
+"Is the sinful servant more
+Than his gracious Lord who bore
+Bonds and stripes in Jewry?
+
+"Give me joy that in His name
+I can bear, with patient frame,
+All these vain ones offer;
+While for them He suffereth long,
+Shall I answer wrong with wrong,
+Scoffing with the scoffer?
+
+"Happier I, with loss of all,
+Hunted, outlawed, held in thrall,
+With few friends to greet me,
+Than when reeve and squire were seen,
+Riding out from Aberdeen,
+With bared heads to meet me.
+
+"When each goodwife, o'er and o'er,
+Blessed me as I passed her door;
+And the snooded daughter,
+Through her casement glancing down,
+Smiled on him who bore renown
+From red fields of slaughter.
+
+"Hard to feel the stranger's scoff,
+Hard the old friend's falling off,
+Hard to learn forgiving;
+But the Lord His own rewards,
+And His love with theirs accords,
+Warm and fresh and living.
+
+"Through this dark and stormy night
+Faith beholds a feeble light
+Up the blackness streaking;
+Knowing God's own time is best,
+In a patient hope I rest
+For the full day-breaking!"
+
+So the Laird of Ury said,
+Turning slow his horse's head
+Towards the Tolbooth prison,
+Where, through iron gates, he heard
+Poor disciples of the Word
+Preach of Christ arisen!
+
+Not in vain, Confessor old,
+Unto us the tale is told
+Of thy day of trial;
+Every age on him who strays
+From its broad and beaten ways
+Pours its seven-fold vial.
+
+Happy he whose inward ear
+Angel comfortings can hear,
+O'er the rabble's laughter;
+And while Hatred's fagots burn,
+Glimpses through the smoke discern
+Of the good hereafter.
+
+Knowing this, that never yet
+Share of Truth was vainly set
+In the world's wide fallow;
+After hands shall sow the seed,
+After hands from hill and mead
+Reap the harvests yellow.
+
+Thus, with somewhat of the Seer,
+Must the moral pioneer
+From the Future borrow;
+Clothe the waste with dreams of grain,
+And, on midnight's sky of rain,
+Paint the golden morrow!
+
+
+
+
+THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA.
+
+A letter-writer from Mexico during the Mexican war, when detailing some
+of the incidents at the terrible fight of Buena Vista, mentioned that
+Mexican women were seen hovering near the field of death, for the
+purpose of giving aid and succor to the wounded. One poor woman was
+found surrounded by the maimed and suffering of both armies, ministering
+to the wants of Americans as well as Mexicans, with impartial
+tenderness.
+
+SPEAK and tell us, our Ximena, looking northward
+far away,
+O'er the camp of the invaders, o'er the Mexican
+array,
+Who is losing? who is winning? are they far or
+come they near?
+Look abroad, and tell us, sister, whither rolls the
+storm we hear.
+Down the hills of Angostura still the storm of
+battle rolls;
+Blood is flowing, men are dying; God have mercy
+on their souls!
+"Who is losing? who is winning?" Over hill
+and over plain,
+I see but smoke of cannon clouding through the
+mountain rain."
+
+Holy Mother! keep our brothers! Look, Ximena,
+look once more.
+"Still I see the fearful whirlwind rolling darkly
+as before,
+Bearing on, in strange confusion, friend and foeman,
+foot and horse,
+Like some wild and troubled torrent sweeping
+down its mountain course."
+
+Look forth once more, Ximena! "Ah! the smoke
+has rolled away;
+And I see the Northern rifles gleaming down the
+ranks of gray.
+Hark! that sudden blast of bugles! there the troop
+of Minon wheels;
+There the Northern horses thunder, with the cannon
+at their heels.
+
+"Jesu, pity I how it thickens I now retreat and
+now advance!
+Bight against the blazing cannon shivers Puebla's
+charging lance!
+Down they go, the brave young riders; horse and
+foot together fall;
+Like a ploughshare in the fallow, through them
+ploughs the Northern ball."
+
+Nearer came the storm and nearer, rolling fast and
+frightful on!
+Speak, Ximena, speak and tell us, who has lost,
+and who has won?
+Alas! alas! I know not; friend and foe together
+fall,
+O'er the dying rush the living: pray, my sisters,
+for them all!
+
+"Lo! the wind the smoke is lifting. Blessed
+Mother, save my brain!
+I can see the wounded crawling slowly out from
+heaps of slain.
+Now they stagger, blind and bleeding; now they
+fall, and strive to rise;
+Hasten, sisters, haste and save them, lest they die
+before our eyes!
+
+"O my hearts love! O my dear one! lay thy
+poor head on my knee;
+Dost thou know the lips that kiss thee? Canst
+thou hear me? canst thou see?
+O my husband, brave and gentle! O my Bernal,
+look once more
+On the blessed cross before thee! Mercy!
+all is o'er!"
+
+Dry thy tears, my poor Ximena; lay thy dear one
+down to rest;
+Let his hands be meekly folded, lay the cross upon
+his breast;
+Let his dirge be sung hereafter, and his funeral
+masses said;
+To-day, thou poor bereaved one, the living ask thy
+aid.
+
+Close beside her, faintly moaning, fair and young,
+a soldier lay,
+Torn with shot and pierced with lances, bleeding
+slow his life away;
+But, as tenderly before him the lorn Ximena knelt,
+She saw the Northern eagle shining on his pistol-
+belt.
+
+With a stifled cry of horror straight she turned
+away her head;
+With a sad and bitter feeling looked she back upon
+her dead;
+But she heard the youth's low moaning, and his
+struggling breath of pain,
+And she raised the cooling water to his parching
+lips again.
+
+Whispered low the dying soldier, pressed her hand
+and faintly smiled;
+Was that pitying face his mother's? did she watch
+beside her child?
+All his stranger words with meaning her woman's
+heart supplied;
+With her kiss upon his forehead, "Mother!"
+murmured he, and died!
+
+"A bitter curse upon them, poor boy, who led thee
+forth,
+From some gentle, sad-eyed mother, weeping, lonely,
+in the North!"
+Spake the mournful Mexic woman, as she laid him
+with her dead,
+And turned to soothe the living, and bind the
+wounds which bled.
+
+"Look forth once more, Ximena!" Like a cloud
+before the wind
+Rolls the battle down the mountains, leaving blood
+and death behind;
+Ah! they plead in vain for mercy; in the dust the
+wounded strive;
+"Hide your faces, holy angels! O thou Christ of
+God, forgive!"
+
+Sink, O Night, among thy mountains! let the cool,
+gray shadows fall;
+Dying brothers, fighting demons, drop thy curtain
+over all!
+Through the thickening winter twilight, wide apart
+the battle rolled,
+In its sheath the sabre rested, and the cannon's
+lips grew cold.
+
+But the noble Mexic women still their holy task
+pursued,
+Through that long, dark night of sorrow, worn and
+faint and lacking food.
+Over weak and suffering brothers, with a tender
+care they hung,
+And the dying foeman blessed them in a strange
+and Northern tongue.
+
+Not wholly lost, O Father! is this evil world of
+ours;
+Upward, through its blood and ashes, spring afresh
+the Eden flowers;
+From its smoking hell of battle, Love and Pity
+send their prayer,
+And still thy white-winged angels hover dimly in
+our air!
+1847.
+
+
+
+
+THE LEGEND OF ST. MARK.
+
+"This legend [to which my attention was called by my friend Charles
+Sumner], is the subject of a celebrated picture by Tintoretto, of which
+Mr. Rogers possesses the original sketch. The slave lies on the ground,
+amid a crowd of spectators, who look on, animated by all the various
+emotions of sympathy, rage, terror; a woman, in front, with a child in
+her arms, has always been admired for the lifelike vivacity of her
+attitude and expression. The executioner holds up the broken implements;
+St. Mark, with a headlong movement, seems to rush down from heaven in
+haste to save his worshipper. The dramatic grouping in this picture is
+wonderful; the coloring, in its gorgeous depth and harmony, is, in Mr.
+Rogers's sketch, finer than in the picture."--MRS. JAMESON'S Sacred and
+Legendary Art, I. 154.
+
+THE day is closing dark and cold,
+With roaring blast and sleety showers;
+And through the dusk the lilacs wear
+The bloom of snow, instead of flowers.
+
+I turn me from the gloom without,
+To ponder o'er a tale of old;
+A legend of the age of Faith,
+By dreaming monk or abbess told.
+
+On Tintoretto's canvas lives
+That fancy of a loving heart,
+In graceful lines and shapes of power,
+And hues immortal as his art.
+
+In Provence (so the story runs)
+There lived a lord, to whom, as slave,
+A peasant-boy of tender years
+The chance of trade or conquest gave.
+
+Forth-looking from the castle tower,
+Beyond the hills with almonds dark,
+The straining eye could scarce discern
+The chapel of the good St. Mark.
+
+And there, when bitter word or fare
+The service of the youth repaid,
+By stealth, before that holy shrine,
+For grace to bear his wrong, he prayed.
+
+The steed stamped at the castle gate,
+The boar-hunt sounded on the hill;
+Why stayed the Baron from the chase,
+With looks so stern, and words so ill?
+
+"Go, bind yon slave! and let him learn,
+By scath of fire and strain of cord,
+How ill they speed who give dead saints
+The homage due their living lord!"
+
+They bound him on the fearful rack,
+When, through the dungeon's vaulted dark,
+He saw the light of shining robes,
+And knew the face of good St. Mark.
+
+Then sank the iron rack apart,
+The cords released their cruel clasp,
+The pincers, with their teeth of fire,
+Fell broken from the torturer's grasp.
+
+And lo! before the Youth and Saint,
+Barred door and wall of stone gave way;
+And up from bondage and the night
+They passed to freedom and the day!
+
+O dreaming monk! thy tale is true;
+O painter! true thy pencil's art;
+in tones of hope and prophecy,
+Ye whisper to my listening heart!
+
+Unheard no burdened heart's appeal
+Moans up to God's inclining ear;
+Unheeded by his tender eye,
+Falls to the earth no sufferer's tear.
+
+For still the Lord alone is God
+The pomp and power of tyrant man
+Are scattered at his lightest breath,
+Like chaff before the winnower's fan.
+
+Not always shall the slave uplift
+His heavy hands to Heaven in vain.
+God's angel, like the good St. Mark,
+Comes shining down to break his chain!
+
+O weary ones! ye may not see
+Your helpers in their downward flight;
+Nor hear the sound of silver wings
+Slow beating through the hush of night!
+
+But not the less gray Dothan shone,
+With sunbright watchers bending low,
+That Fear's dim eye beheld alone
+The spear-heads of the Syrian foe.
+
+There are, who, like the Seer of old,
+Can see the helpers God has sent,
+And how life's rugged mountain-side
+Is white with many an angel tent!
+
+They hear the heralds whom our Lord
+Sends down his pathway to prepare;
+And light, from others hidden, shines
+On their high place of faith and prayer.
+
+Let such, for earth's despairing ones,
+Hopeless, yet longing to be free,
+Breathe once again the Prophet's prayer
+"Lord, ope their eyes, that they may see!"
+1849.
+
+
+
+
+KATHLEEN.
+
+This ballad was originally published in my prose work, Leaves from
+Margaret Smith's Journal, as the song of a wandering Milesian
+schoolmaster. In the seventeenth century, slavery in the New World was
+by no means confined to the natives of Africa. Political offenders and
+criminals were transported by the British government to the plantations
+of Barbadoes and Virginia, where they were sold like cattle in the
+market. Kidnapping of free and innocent white persons was practised to a
+considerable extent in the seaports of the United Kingdom.
+
+O NORAH, lay your basket down,
+And rest your weary hand,
+And come and hear me sing a song
+Of our old Ireland.
+
+There was a lord of Galaway,
+A mighty lord was he;
+And he did wed a second wife,
+A maid of low degree.
+
+But he was old, and she was young,
+And so, in evil spite,
+She baked the black bread for his kin,
+And fed her own with white.
+
+She whipped the maids and starved the kern,
+And drove away the poor;
+"Ah, woe is me!" the old lord said,
+"I rue my bargain sore!"
+
+This lord he had a daughter fair,
+Beloved of old and young,
+And nightly round the shealing-fires
+Of her the gleeman sung.
+
+"As sweet and good is young Kathleen
+As Eve before her fall;"
+So sang the harper at the fair,
+So harped he in the hall.
+
+"Oh, come to me, my daughter dear!
+Come sit upon my knee,
+For looking in your face, Kathleen,
+Your mother's own I see!"
+
+He smoothed and smoothed her hair away,
+He kissed her forehead fair;
+"It is my darling Mary's brow,
+It is my darling's hair!"
+
+Oh, then spake up the angry dame,
+"Get up, get up," quoth she,
+"I'll sell ye over Ireland,
+I'll sell ye o'er the sea!"
+
+She clipped her glossy hair away,
+That none her rank might know;
+She took away her gown of silk,
+And gave her one of tow,
+
+And sent her down to Limerick town
+And to a seaman sold
+This daughter of an Irish lord
+For ten good pounds in gold.
+
+The lord he smote upon his breast,
+And tore his beard so gray;
+But he was old, and she was young,
+And so she had her way.
+
+Sure that same night the Banshee howled
+To fright the evil dame,
+And fairy folks, who loved Kathleen,
+With funeral torches came.
+
+She watched them glancing through the trees,
+And glimmering down the hill;
+They crept before the dead-vault door,
+And there they all stood still!
+
+"Get up, old man! the wake-lights shine!"
+"Ye murthering witch," quoth he,
+"So I'm rid of your tongue, I little care
+If they shine for you or me."
+
+"Oh, whoso brings my daughter back,
+My gold and land shall have!"
+Oh, then spake up his handsome page,
+"No gold nor land I crave!
+
+"But give to me your daughter dear,
+Give sweet Kathleen to me,
+Be she on sea or be she on land,
+I'll bring her back to thee."
+
+"My daughter is a lady born,
+And you of low degree,
+But she shall be your bride the day
+You bring her back to me."
+
+He sailed east, he sailed west,
+And far and long sailed he,
+Until he came to Boston town,
+Across the great salt sea.
+
+"Oh, have ye seen the young Kathleen,
+The flower of Ireland?
+Ye'll know her by her eyes so blue,
+And by her snow-white hand!"
+
+Out spake an ancient man, "I know
+The maiden whom ye mean;
+I bought her of a Limerick man,
+And she is called Kathleen.
+
+"No skill hath she in household work,
+Her hands are soft and white,
+Yet well by loving looks and ways
+She doth her cost requite."
+
+So up they walked through Boston town,
+And met a maiden fair,
+A little basket on her arm
+So snowy-white and bare.
+
+"Come hither, child, and say hast thou
+This young man ever seen?"
+They wept within each other's arms,
+The page and young Kathleen.
+
+"Oh give to me this darling child,
+And take my purse of gold."
+"Nay, not by me," her master said,
+"Shall sweet Kathleen be sold.
+
+"We loved her in the place of one
+The Lord hath early ta'en;
+But, since her heart's in Ireland,
+We give her back again!"
+
+Oh, for that same the saints in heaven
+For his poor soul shall pray,
+And Mary Mother wash with tears
+His heresies away.
+
+Sure now they dwell in Ireland;
+As you go up Claremore
+Ye'll see their castle looking down
+The pleasant Galway shore.
+
+And the old lord's wife is dead and gone,
+And a happy man is he,
+For he sits beside his own Kathleen,
+With her darling on his knee.
+1849.
+
+
+
+
+THE WELL OF LOCH MAREE
+
+Pennant, in his Voyage to the Hebrides, describes the holy well of Loch
+Maree, the waters of which were supposed to effect a miraculous cure of
+melancholy, trouble, and insanity.
+
+CALM on the breast of Loch Maree
+A little isle reposes;
+A shadow woven of the oak
+And willow o'er it closes.
+
+Within, a Druid's mound is seen,
+Set round with stony warders;
+A fountain, gushing through the turf,
+Flows o'er its grassy borders.
+
+And whoso bathes therein his brow,
+With care or madness burning,
+Feels once again his healthful thought
+And sense of peace returning.
+
+O restless heart and fevered brain,
+Unquiet and unstable,
+That holy well of Loch Maree
+Is more than idle fable!
+
+Life's changes vex, its discords stun,
+Its glaring sunshine blindeth,
+And blest is he who on his way
+That fount of healing findeth!
+
+The shadows of a humbled will
+And contrite heart are o'er it;
+Go read its legend, "TRUST IN GOD,"
+On Faith's white stones before it.
+1850.
+
+
+
+
+THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS.
+
+The incident upon which this poem is based is related in a note to
+Bernardin Henri Saint Pierre's Etudes de la Nature. "We arrived at the
+habitation of the Hermits a little before they sat down to their table,
+and while they were still at church. J. J. Rousseau proposed to me to
+offer up our devotions. The hermits were reciting the Litanies of
+Providence, which are remarkably beautiful. After we had addressed our
+prayers to God, and the hermits were proceeding to the refectory,
+Rousseau said to me, with his heart overflowing, 'At this moment I
+experience what is said in the gospel: Where two or three are gathered
+together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. There is here a
+feeling of peace and happiness which penetrates the soul.' I said, 'If
+Finelon had lived, you would have been a Catholic.' He exclaimed, with
+tears in his eyes, 'Oh, if Finelon were alive, I would struggle to get
+into his service, even as a lackey!'" In my sketch of Saint Pierre, it
+will be seen that I have somewhat antedated the period of his old age.
+At that time he was not probably more than fifty. In describing him, I
+have by no means exaggerated his own history of his mental condition at
+the period of the story. In the fragmentary Sequel to his Studies of
+Nature, he thus speaks of himself: "The ingratitude of those of whom I
+had deserved kindness, unexpected family misfortunes, the total loss of
+my small patrimony through enterprises solely undertaken for the benefit
+of my country, the debts under which I lay oppressed, the blasting of
+all my hopes,--these combined calamities made dreadful inroads upon my
+health and reason. . . . I found it impossible to continue in a room
+where there was company, especially if the doors were shut. I could not
+even cross an alley in a public garden, if several persons had got
+together in it. When alone, my malady subsided. I felt myself likewise
+at ease in places where I saw children only. At the sight of any one
+walking up to the place where I was, I felt my whole frame agitated, and
+retired. I often said to myself, 'My sole study has been to merit well
+of mankind; why do I fear them?'"
+
+He attributes his improved health of mind and body to the counsels of
+his friend, J. J. Rousseau. "I renounced," says he, "my books. I threw
+my eyes upon the works of nature, which spake to all my senses a
+language which neither time nor nations have it in their power to alter.
+Thenceforth my histories and my journals were the herbage of the fields
+and meadows. My thoughts did not go forth painfully after them, as in
+the case of human systems; but their thoughts, under a thousand engaging
+forms, quietly sought me. In these I studied, without effort, the laws
+of that Universal Wisdom which had surrounded me from the cradle, but on
+which heretofore I had bestowed little attention."
+
+Speaking of Rousseau, he says: "I derived inexpressible satisfaction
+from his society. What I prized still more than his genius was his
+probity. He was one of the few literary characters, tried in the furnace
+of affliction, to whom you could, with perfect security, confide your
+most secret thoughts. . . . Even when he deviated, and became the victim
+of himself or of others, he could forget his own misery in devotion to
+the welfare of mankind. He was uniformly the advocate of the miserable.
+There might be inscribed on his tomb these affecting words from that
+Book of which he carried always about him some select passages, during
+the last years of his life: 'His sins, which are many, are forgiven, for
+he loved much.'"
+
+"I DO believe, and yet, in grief,
+I pray for help to unbelief;
+For needful strength aside to lay
+The daily cumberings of my way.
+
+"I 'm sick at heart of craft and cant,
+Sick of the crazed enthusiast's rant,
+Profession's smooth hypocrisies,
+And creeds of iron, and lives of ease.
+
+"I ponder o'er the sacred word,
+I read the record of our Lord;
+And, weak and troubled, envy them
+Who touched His seamless garment's hem;
+
+"Who saw the tears of love He wept
+Above the grave where Lazarus slept;
+And heard, amidst the shadows dim
+Of Olivet, His evening hymn.
+
+"How blessed the swineherd's low estate,
+The beggar crouching at the gate,
+The leper loathly and abhorred,
+Whose eyes of flesh beheld the Lord!
+
+"O sacred soil His sandals pressed!
+Sweet fountains of His noonday rest!
+O light and air of Palestine,
+Impregnate with His life divine!
+
+"Oh, bear me thither! Let me look
+On Siloa's pool, and Kedron's brook;
+Kneel at Gethsemane, and by
+Gennesaret walk, before I die!
+
+"Methinks this cold and northern night
+Would melt before that Orient light;
+And, wet by Hermon's dew and rain,
+My childhood's faith revive again!"
+
+So spake my friend, one autumn day,
+Where the still river slid away
+Beneath us, and above the brown
+Red curtains of the woods shut down.
+
+Then said I,--for I could not brook
+The mute appealing of his look,--
+"I, too, am weak, and faith is small,
+And blindness happeneth unto all.
+
+"Yet, sometimes glimpses on my sight,
+Through present wrong, the eternal right;
+And, step by step, since time began,
+I see the steady gain of man;
+
+"That all of good the past hath had
+Remains to make our own time glad,
+Our common daily life divine,
+And every land a Palestine.
+
+"Thou weariest of thy present state;
+What gain to thee time's holiest date?
+The doubter now perchance had been
+As High Priest or as Pilate then!
+
+"What thought Chorazin's scribes? What faith
+In Him had Nain and Nazareth?
+Of the few followers whom He led
+One sold Him,--all forsook and fled.
+
+"O friend! we need nor rock nor sand,
+Nor storied stream of Morning-Land;
+The heavens are glassed in Merrimac,--
+What more could Jordan render back?
+
+"We lack but open eye and ear
+To find the Orient's marvels here;
+The still small voice in autumn's hush,
+Yon maple wood the burning bush.
+
+"For still the new transcends the old,
+In signs and tokens manifold;
+Slaves rise up men; the olive waves,
+With roots deep set in battle graves!
+
+"Through the harsh noises of our day
+A low, sweet prelude finds its way;
+Through clouds of doubt, and creeds of fear,
+A light is breaking, calm and clear.
+
+"That song of Love, now low and far,
+Erelong shall swell from star to star!
+That light, the breaking day, which tips
+The golden-spired Apocalypse!"
+
+Then, when my good friend shook his head,
+And, sighing, sadly smiled, I said:
+"Thou mind'st me of a story told
+In rare Bernardin's leaves of gold."
+
+And while the slanted sunbeams wove
+The shadows of the frost-stained grove,
+And, picturing all, the river ran
+O'er cloud and wood, I thus began:--
+
+ . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+
+In Mount Valerien's chestnut wood
+The Chapel of the Hermits stood;
+And thither, at the close of day,
+Came two old pilgrims, worn and gray.
+
+One, whose impetuous youth defied
+The storms of Baikal's wintry side,
+And mused and dreamed where tropic day
+Flamed o'er his lost Virginia's bay.
+
+His simple tale of love and woe
+All hearts had melted, high or low;--
+A blissful pain, a sweet distress,
+Immortal in its tenderness.
+
+Yet, while above his charmed page
+Beat quick the young heart of his age,
+He walked amidst the crowd unknown,
+A sorrowing old man, strange and lone.
+
+A homeless, troubled age,--the gray
+Pale setting of a weary day;
+Too dull his ear for voice of praise,
+Too sadly worn his brow for bays.
+
+Pride, lust of power and glory, slept;
+Yet still his heart its young dream kept,
+And, wandering like the deluge-dove,
+Still sought the resting-place of love.
+
+And, mateless, childless, envied more
+The peasant's welcome from his door
+By smiling eyes at eventide,
+Than kingly gifts or lettered pride.
+
+Until, in place of wife and child,
+All-pitying Nature on him smiled,
+And gave to him the golden keys
+To all her inmost sanctities.
+
+Mild Druid of her wood-paths dim!
+She laid her great heart bare to him,
+Its loves and sweet accords;--he saw
+The beauty of her perfect law.
+
+The language of her signs lie knew,
+What notes her cloudy clarion blew;
+The rhythm of autumn's forest dyes,
+The hymn of sunset's painted skies.
+
+And thus he seemed to hear the song
+Which swept, of old, the stars along;
+And to his eyes the earth once more
+Its fresh and primal beauty wore.
+
+Who sought with him, from summer air,
+And field and wood, a balm for care;
+And bathed in light of sunset skies
+His tortured nerves and weary eyes?
+
+His fame on all the winds had flown;
+His words had shaken crypt and throne;
+Like fire, on camp and court and cell
+They dropped, and kindled as they fell.
+
+Beneath the pomps of state, below
+The mitred juggler's masque and show,
+A prophecy, a vague hope, ran
+His burning thought from man to man.
+
+For peace or rest too well he saw
+The fraud of priests, the wrong of law,
+And felt how hard, between the two,
+Their breath of pain the millions drew.
+
+A prophet-utterance, strong and wild,
+The weakness of an unweaned child,
+A sun-bright hope for human-kind,
+And self-despair, in him combined.
+
+He loathed the false, yet lived not true
+To half the glorious truths he knew;
+The doubt, the discord, and the sin,
+He mourned without, he felt within.
+
+Untrod by him the path he showed,
+Sweet pictures on his easel glowed
+Of simple faith, and loves of home,
+And virtue's golden days to come.
+
+But weakness, shame, and folly made
+The foil to all his pen portrayed;
+Still, where his dreamy splendors shone,
+The shadow of himself was thrown.
+
+Lord, what is man, whose thought, at times,
+Up to Thy sevenfold brightness climbs,
+While still his grosser instinct clings
+To earth, like other creeping things!
+
+So rich in words, in acts so mean;
+So high, so low; chance-swung between
+The foulness of the penal pit
+And Truth's clear sky, millennium-lit!
+
+Vain, pride of star-lent genius!--vain,
+Quick fancy and creative brain,
+Unblest by prayerful sacrifice,
+Absurdly great, or weakly wise!
+
+Midst yearnings for a truer life,
+Without were fears, within was strife;
+And still his wayward act denied
+The perfect good for which he sighed.
+
+The love he sent forth void returned;
+The fame that crowned him scorched and burned,
+Burning, yet cold and drear and lone,--
+A fire-mount in a frozen zone!
+
+Like that the gray-haired sea-king passed,[9]
+Seen southward from his sleety mast,
+About whose brows of changeless frost
+A wreath of flame the wild winds tossed.
+
+Far round the mournful beauty played
+Of lambent light and purple shade,
+Lost on the fixed and dumb despair
+Of frozen earth and sea and air!
+
+A man apart, unknown, unloved
+By those whose wrongs his soul had moved,
+He bore the ban of Church and State,
+The good man's fear, the bigot's hate!
+
+Forth from the city's noise and throng,
+Its pomp and shame, its sin and wrong,
+The twain that summer day had strayed
+To Mount Valerien's chestnut shade.
+
+To them the green fields and the wood
+Lent something of their quietude,
+And golden-tinted sunset seemed
+Prophetical of all they dreamed.
+
+The hermits from their simple cares
+The bell was calling home to prayers,
+And, listening to its sound, the twain
+Seemed lapped in childhood's trust again.
+
+Wide open stood the chapel door;
+A sweet old music, swelling o'er
+Low prayerful murmurs, issued thence,--
+The Litanies of Providence!
+
+Then Rousseau spake: "Where two or three
+In His name meet, He there will be!"
+And then, in silence, on their knees
+They sank beneath the chestnut-trees.
+
+As to the blind returning light,
+As daybreak to the Arctic night,
+Old faith revived; the doubts of years
+Dissolved in reverential tears.
+
+That gush of feeling overpast,
+"Ah me!" Bernardin sighed at last,
+I would thy bitterest foes could see
+Thy heart as it is seen of me!
+
+"No church of God hast thou denied;
+Thou hast but spurned in scorn aside
+A bare and hollow counterfeit,
+Profaning the pure name of it!
+
+"With dry dead moss and marish weeds
+His fire the western herdsman feeds,
+And greener from the ashen plain
+The sweet spring grasses rise again.
+
+"Nor thunder-peal nor mighty wind
+Disturb the solid sky behind;
+And through the cloud the red bolt rends
+The calm, still smile of Heaven descends.
+
+"Thus through the world, like bolt and blast,
+And scourging fire, thy words have passed.
+Clouds break,--the steadfast heavens remain;
+Weeds burn,--the ashes feed the grain!
+
+"But whoso strives with wrong may find
+Its touch pollute, its darkness blind;
+And learn, as latent fraud is shown
+In others' faith, to doubt his own.
+
+"With dream and falsehood, simple trust
+And pious hope we tread in dust;
+Lost the calm faith in goodness,--lost
+The baptism of the Pentecost!
+
+"Alas!--the blows for error meant
+Too oft on truth itself are spent,
+As through the false and vile and base
+Looks forth her sad, rebuking face.
+
+"Not ours the Theban's charmed life;
+We come not scathless from the strife!
+The Python's coil about us clings,
+The trampled Hydra bites and stings!
+
+"Meanwhile, the sport of seeming chance,
+The plastic shapes of circumstance,
+What might have been we fondly guess,
+If earlier born, or tempted less.
+
+"And thou, in these wild, troubled days,
+Misjudged alike in blame and praise,
+Unsought and undeserved the same
+The skeptic's praise, the bigot's blame;--
+
+"I cannot doubt, if thou hadst been
+Among the highly favored men
+Who walked on earth with Fenelon,
+He would have owned thee as his son;
+
+"And, bright with wings of cherubim
+Visibly waving over him,
+Seen through his life, the Church had seemed
+All that its old confessors dreamed."
+
+"I would have been," Jean Jaques replied,
+"The humblest servant at his side,
+Obscure, unknown, content to see
+How beautiful man's life may be!
+
+"Oh, more than thrice-blest relic, more
+Than solemn rite or sacred lore,
+The holy life of one who trod
+The foot-marks of the Christ of God!
+
+"Amidst a blinded world he saw
+The oneness of the Dual law;
+That Heaven's sweet peace on Earth began,
+And God was loved through love of man.
+
+"He lived the Truth which reconciled
+The strong man Reason, Faith the child;
+In him belief and act were one,
+The homilies of duty done!"
+
+So speaking, through the twilight gray
+The two old pilgrims went their way.
+What seeds of life that day were sown,
+The heavenly watchers knew alone.
+
+Time passed, and Autumn came to fold
+Green Summer in her brown and gold;
+Time passed, and Winter's tears of snow
+Dropped on the grave-mound of Rousseau.
+
+"The tree remaineth where it fell,
+The pained on earth is pained in hell!"
+So priestcraft from its altars cursed
+The mournful doubts its falsehood nursed.
+
+Ah! well of old the Psalmist prayed,
+"Thy hand, not man's, on me be laid!"
+Earth frowns below, Heaven weeps above,
+And man is hate, but God is love!
+
+No Hermits now the wanderer sees,
+Nor chapel with its chestnut-trees;
+A morning dream, a tale that's told,
+The wave of change o'er all has rolled.
+
+Yet lives the lesson of that day;
+And from its twilight cool and gray
+Comes up a low, sad whisper, "Make
+The truth thine own, for truth's own sake.
+
+"Why wait to see in thy brief span
+Its perfect flower and fruit in man?
+No saintly touch can save; no balm
+Of healing hath the martyr's palm.
+
+"Midst soulless forms, and false pretence
+Of spiritual pride and pampered sense,
+A voice saith, 'What is that to thee?
+Be true thyself, and follow Me!
+
+"In days when throne and altar heard
+The wanton's wish, the bigot's word,
+And pomp of state and ritual show
+Scarce hid the loathsome death below,--
+
+"Midst fawning priests and courtiers foul,
+The losel swarm of crown and cowl,
+White-robed walked Francois Fenelon,
+Stainless as Uriel in the sun!
+
+"Yet in his time the stake blazed red,
+The poor were eaten up like bread
+Men knew him not; his garment's hem
+No healing virtue had for them.
+
+"Alas! no present saint we find;
+The white cymar gleams far behind,
+Revealed in outline vague, sublime,
+Through telescopic mists of time!
+
+"Trust not in man with passing breath,
+But in the Lord, old Scripture saith;
+The truth which saves thou mayst not blend
+With false professor, faithless friend.
+
+"Search thine own heart. What paineth thee
+In others in thyself may be;
+All dust is frail, all flesh is weak;
+Be thou the true man thou dost seek!
+
+"Where now with pain thou treadest, trod
+The whitest of the saints of God!
+To show thee where their feet were set,
+the light which led them shineth yet.
+
+"The footprints of the life divine,
+Which marked their path, remain in thine;
+And that great Life, transfused in theirs,
+Awaits thy faith, thy love, thy prayers!"
+
+A lesson which I well may heed,
+A word of fitness to my need;
+So from that twilight cool and gray
+Still saith a voice, or seems to say.
+
+We rose, and slowly homeward turned,
+While down the west the sunset burned;
+And, in its light, hill, wood, and tide,
+And human forms seemed glorified.
+
+The village homes transfigured stood,
+And purple bluffs, whose belting wood
+Across the waters leaned to hold
+The yellow leaves like lamps of hold.
+
+Then spake my friend: "Thy words are true;
+Forever old, forever new,
+These home-seen splendors are the same
+Which over Eden's sunsets came.
+
+"To these bowed heavens let wood and hill
+Lift voiceless praise and anthem still;
+Fall, warm with blessing, over them,
+Light of the New Jerusalem!
+
+"Flow on, sweet river, like the stream
+Of John's Apocalyptic dream
+This mapled ridge shall Horeb be,
+Yon green-banked lake our Galilee!
+
+"Henceforth my heart shall sigh no more
+For olden time and holier shore;
+God's love and blessing, then and there,
+Are now and here and everywhere."
+1851.
+
+
+
+
+TAULER.
+
+TAULER, the preacher, walked, one autumn day,
+Without the walls of Strasburg, by the Rhine,
+Pondering the solemn Miracle of Life;
+As one who, wandering in a starless night,
+Feels momently the jar of unseen waves,
+And hears the thunder of an unknown sea,
+Breaking along an unimagined shore.
+
+And as he walked he prayed. Even the same
+Old prayer with which, for half a score of years,
+Morning, and noon, and evening, lip and heart
+Had groaned: "Have pity upon me, Lord!
+Thou seest, while teaching others, I am blind.
+Send me a man who can direct my steps!"
+
+Then, as he mused, he heard along his path
+A sound as of an old man's staff among
+The dry, dead linden-leaves; and, looking up,
+He saw a stranger, weak, and poor, and old.
+
+"Peace be unto thee, father!" Tauler said,
+"God give thee a good day!" The old man raised
+Slowly his calm blue eyes. "I thank thee, son;
+But all my days are good, and none are ill."
+
+Wondering thereat, the preacher spake again,
+"God give thee happy life." The old man smiled,
+"I never am unhappy."
+
+                          Tauler laid
+His hand upon the stranger's coarse gray sleeve
+"Tell me, O father, what thy strange words mean.
+Surely man's days are evil, and his life
+Sad as the grave it leads to."  "Nay, my son,
+Our times are in God's hands, and all our days
+Are as our needs; for shadow as for sun,
+For cold as heat, for want as wealth, alike
+Our thanks are due, since that is best which is;
+And that which is not, sharing not His life,
+Is evil only as devoid of good.
+And for the happiness of which I spake,
+I find it in submission to his will,
+And calm trust in the holy Trinity
+Of Knowledge, Goodness, and Almighty Power."
+
+Silently wondering, for a little space,
+Stood the great preacher; then he spake as one
+Who, suddenly grappling with a haunting thought
+Which long has followed, whispering through the dark
+Strange terrors, drags it, shrieking, into light
+"What if God's will consign thee hence to Hell?"
+
+"Then," said the stranger, cheerily, "be it so.
+What Hell may be I know not; this I know,--
+I cannot lose the presence of the Lord.
+One arm, Humility, takes hold upon
+His dear Humanity; the other, Love,
+Clasps his Divinity. So where I go
+He goes; and better fire-walled Hell with Him
+Than golden-gated Paradise without."
+
+Tears sprang in Tauler's eyes. A sudden light,
+Like the first ray which fell on chaos, clove
+Apart the shadow wherein he had walked
+Darkly at noon. And, as the strange old man
+Went his slow way, until his silver hair
+Set like the white moon where the hills of vine
+Slope to the Rhine, he bowed his head and said
+"My prayer is answered. God hath sent the man
+Long sought, to teach me, by his simple trust,
+Wisdom the weary schoolmen never knew."
+
+So, entering with a changed and cheerful step
+The city gates, he saw, far down the street,
+A mighty shadow break the light of noon,
+Which tracing backward till its airy lines
+Hardened to stony plinths, he raised his eyes
+O'er broad facade and lofty pediment,
+O'er architrave and frieze and sainted niche,
+Up the stone lace-work chiselled by the wise
+Erwin of Steinbach, dizzily up to where
+In the noon-brightness the great Minster's tower,
+Jewelled with sunbeams on its mural crown,
+Rose like a visible prayer. "Behold!" he said,
+"The stranger's faith made plain before mine eyes.
+As yonder tower outstretches to the earth
+The dark triangle of its shade alone
+When the clear day is shining on its top,
+So, darkness in the pathway of Man's life
+Is but the shadow of God's providence,
+By the great Sun of Wisdom cast thereon;
+And what is dark below is light in Heaven."
+1853.
+
+
+
+
+THE HERMIT OF THE THEBAID.
+
+O STRONG, upwelling prayers of faith,
+From inmost founts of life ye start,--
+The spirit's pulse, the vital breath
+Of soul and heart!
+
+From pastoral toil, from traffic's din,
+Alone, in crowds, at home, abroad,
+Unheard of man, ye enter in
+The ear of God.
+
+Ye brook no forced and measured tasks,
+Nor weary rote, nor formal chains;
+The simple heart, that freely asks
+In love, obtains.
+
+For man the living temple is
+The mercy-seat and cherubim,
+And all the holy mysteries,
+He bears with him.
+
+And most avails the prayer of love,
+Which, wordless, shapes itself in needs,
+And wearies Heaven for naught above
+Our common needs.
+
+Which brings to God's all-perfect will
+That trust of His undoubting child
+Whereby all seeming good and ill
+Are reconciled.
+
+And, seeking not for special signs
+Of favor, is content to fall
+Within the providence which shines
+And rains on all.
+
+Alone, the Thebaid hermit leaned
+At noontime o'er the sacred word.
+Was it an angel or a fiend
+Whose voice be heard?
+
+It broke the desert's hush of awe,
+A human utterance, sweet and mild;
+And, looking up, the hermit saw
+A little child.
+
+A child, with wonder-widened eyes,
+O'erawed and troubled by the sight
+Of hot, red sands, and brazen skies,
+And anchorite.
+
+"'What dost thou here, poor man? No shade
+Of cool, green palms, nor grass, nor well,
+Nor corn, nor vines." The hermit said
+"With God I dwell.
+
+"Alone with Him in this great calm,
+I live not by the outward sense;
+My Nile his love, my sheltering palm
+His providence."
+
+The child gazed round him. "Does God live
+Here only?--where the desert's rim
+Is green with corn, at morn and eve,
+We pray to Him.
+
+"My brother tills beside the Nile
+His little field; beneath the leaves
+My sisters sit and spin, the while
+My mother weaves.
+
+"And when the millet's ripe heads fall,
+And all the bean-field hangs in pod,
+My mother smiles, and, says that all
+Are gifts from God."
+
+Adown the hermit's wasted cheeks
+Glistened the flow of human tears;
+"Dear Lord!" he said, "Thy angel speaks,
+Thy servant hears."
+
+Within his arms the child he took,
+And thought of home and life with men;
+And all his pilgrim feet forsook
+Returned again.
+
+The palmy shadows cool and long,
+The eyes that smiled through lavish locks,
+Home's cradle-hymn and harvest-song,
+And bleat of flocks.
+
+"O child!" he said, "thou teachest me
+There is no place where God is not;
+That love will make, where'er it be,
+A holy spot."
+
+He rose from off the desert sand,
+And, leaning on his staff of thorn,
+Went with the young child hand in hand,
+Like night with morn.
+
+They crossed the desert's burning line,
+And heard the palm-tree's rustling fan,
+The Nile-bird's cry, the low of kine,
+And voice of man.
+
+Unquestioning, his childish guide
+He followed, as the small hand led
+To where a woman, gentle-eyed,
+Her distaff fed.
+
+She rose, she clasped her truant boy,
+She thanked the stranger with her eyes;
+The hermit gazed in doubt and joy
+And dumb surprise.
+
+And to!--with sudden warmth and light
+A tender memory thrilled his frame;
+New-born, the world-lost anchorite
+A man became.
+
+"O sister of El Zara's race,
+Behold me!--had we not one mother?"
+She gazed into the stranger's face
+"Thou art my brother!"
+
+"And when to share our evening meal,
+She calls the stranger at the door,
+She says God fills the hands that deal
+Food to the poor."
+
+"O kin of blood! Thy life of use
+And patient trust is more than mine;
+And wiser than the gray recluse
+This child of thine.
+
+"For, taught of him whom God hath sent,
+That toil is praise, and love is prayer,
+I come, life's cares and pains content
+With thee to share."
+
+Even as his foot the threshold crossed,
+The hermit's better life began;
+Its holiest saint the Thebaid lost,
+And found a man!
+1854.
+
+
+
+
+MAUD MULLER.
+
+The recollection of some descendants of a Hessian deserter in the
+Revolutionary war bearing the name of Muller doubtless suggested the
+somewhat infelicitous title of a New England idyl. The poem had no real
+foundation in fact, though a hint of it may have been found in recalling
+an incident, trivial in itself, of a journey on the picturesque Maine
+seaboard with my sister some years before it was written. We had stopped
+to rest our tired horse under the shade of an apple-tree, and refresh
+him with water from a little brook which rippled through the stone wall
+across the road. A very beautiful young girl in scantest summer attire
+was at work in the hay-field, and as we talked with her we noticed that
+she strove to hide her bare feet by raking hay over them, blushing as
+she did so, through the tan of her cheek and neck.
+
+MAUD MULLER on a summer's day,
+Raked the meadow sweet with hay.
+
+Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth
+Of simple beauty and rustic-health.
+
+Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee
+The mock-bird echoed from his tree.
+
+But when she glanced to the far-off town,
+White from its hill-slope looking down,
+
+The sweet song died, and a vague unrest
+And a nameless longing filled her breast,--
+
+A wish, that she hardly dared to own,
+For something better than she had known.
+
+The Judge rode slowly down the lane,
+Smoothing his horse's chestnut mane.
+
+He drew his bridle in the shade
+Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid,
+
+And asked a draught from the spring that flowed
+Through the meadow across the road.
+
+She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up,
+And filled for him her small tin cup,
+
+And blushed as she gave it, looking down
+On her feet so bare, and her tattered gown.
+
+"Thanks!" said the Judge; "a sweeter draught
+From a fairer hand was never quaffed."
+
+He spoke of the grass and flowers and trees,
+Of the singing birds and the humming bees;
+
+Then talked of the haying, and wondered whether
+The cloud in the west would bring foul weather.
+
+And Maud forgot her brier-torn gown,
+And her graceful ankles bare and brown;
+
+And listened, while a pleased surprise
+Looked from her long-lashed hazel eyes.
+
+At last, like one who for delay
+Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away.
+
+Maud Muller looked and sighed: "Ah me!
+That I the Judge's bride might be!
+
+"He would dress me up in silks so fine,
+And praise and toast me at his wine.
+
+"My father should wear a broadcloth coat;
+My brother should sail a painted boat.
+
+"I'd dress my mother so grand and gay,
+And the baby should have a new toy each day.
+
+"And I 'd feed the hungry and clothe the poor,
+And all should bless me who left our door."
+
+The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill,
+And saw Maud Muller standing still.
+
+A form more fair, a face more sweet,
+Ne'er hath it been my lot to meet.
+
+"And her modest answer and graceful air
+Show her wise and good as she is fair.
+
+"Would she were mine, and I to-day,
+Like her, a harvester of hay;
+
+"No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs,
+Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues,
+
+"But low of cattle and song of birds,
+And health and quiet and loving words."
+
+But he thought of his sisters, proud and cold,
+And his mother, vain of her rank and gold.
+
+So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on,
+And Maud was left in the field alone.
+
+But the lawyers smiled that afternoon,
+When he hummed in court an old love-tune;
+
+And the young girl mused beside the well
+Till the rain on the unraked clover fell.
+
+He wedded a wife of richest dower,
+Who lived for fashion, as he for power.
+
+Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright glow,
+He watched a picture come and go;
+
+And sweet Maud Muller's hazel eyes
+Looked out in their innocent surprise.
+
+Oft, when the wine in his glass was red,
+He longed for the wayside well instead;
+
+And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms
+To dream of meadows and clover-blooms.
+
+And the proud man sighed, with a secret pain,
+"Ah, that I were free again!
+
+"Free as when I rode that day,
+Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay."
+
+She wedded a man unlearned and poor,
+And many children played round her door.
+
+But care and sorrow, and childbirth pain,
+Left their traces on heart and brain.
+
+And oft, when the summer sun shone hot
+On the new-mown hay in the meadow lot,
+
+And she heard the little spring brook fall
+Over the roadside, through the wall,
+
+In the shade of the apple-tree again
+She saw a rider draw his rein.
+
+And, gazing down with timid grace,
+She felt his pleased eyes read her face.
+
+Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls
+Stretched away into stately halls;
+
+The weary wheel to a spinnet turned,
+The tallow candle an astral burned,
+
+And for him who sat by the chimney lug,
+Dozing and grumbling o'er pipe and mug,
+
+A manly form at her side she saw,
+And joy was duty and love was law.
+
+Then she took up her burden of life again,
+Saying only, "It might have been."
+
+Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,
+For rich repiner and household drudge!
+
+God pity them both! and pity us all,
+Who vainly the dreams of youth recall.
+
+For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
+The saddest are these: "It might have been!"
+
+Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies
+Deeply buried from human eyes;
+
+And, in the hereafter, angels may
+Roll the stone from its grave away!
+1854.
+
+
+
+
+MARY GARVIN.
+FROM the heart of Waumbek Methna, from the
+lake that never fails,
+Falls the Saco in the green lap of Conway's
+intervales;
+There, in wild and virgin freshness, its waters
+foam and flow,
+As when Darby Field first saw them, two hundred
+years ago.
+
+But, vexed in all its seaward course with bridges,
+dams, and mills,
+How changed is Saco's stream, how lost its freedom
+of the hills,
+Since travelled Jocelyn, factor Vines, and stately
+Champernoon
+Heard on its banks the gray wolf's howl, the trumpet
+of the loon!
+
+With smoking axle hot with speed, with steeds of
+fire and steam,
+Wide-waked To-day leaves Yesterday behind him
+like a dream.
+Still, from the hurrying train of Life, fly backward
+far and fast
+The milestones of the fathers, the landmarks of
+the past.
+
+But human hearts remain unchanged: the sorrow
+and the sin,
+The loves and hopes and fears of old, are to our
+own akin;
+
+And if, in tales our fathers told, the songs our
+mothers sung,
+Tradition wears a snowy beard, Romance is always
+young.
+
+O sharp-lined man of traffic, on Saco's banks today!
+O mill-girl watching late and long the shuttle's
+restless play!
+Let, for the once, a listening ear the working hand
+beguile,
+And lend my old Provincial tale, as suits, a tear or
+smile!
+
+         . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+
+The evening gun had sounded from gray Fort
+Mary's walls;
+Through the forest, like a wild beast, roared and
+plunged the Saco's' falls.
+
+And westward on the sea-wind, that damp and
+gusty grew,
+Over cedars darkening inland the smokes of Spurwink
+blew.
+
+On the hearth of Farmer Garvin, blazed the crackling
+walnut log;
+Right and left sat dame and goodman, and between
+them lay the dog,
+
+Head on paws, and tail slow wagging, and beside
+him on her mat,
+Sitting drowsy in the firelight, winked and purred
+the mottled cat.
+
+"Twenty years!" said Goodman Garvin, speaking
+sadly, under breath,
+And his gray head slowly shaking, as one who
+speaks of death.
+
+The goodwife dropped her needles: "It is twenty
+years to-day,
+Since the Indians fell on Saco, and stole our child
+away."
+
+Then they sank into the silence, for each knew
+the other's thought,
+Of a great and common sorrow, and words were,
+needed not.
+
+"Who knocks?" cried Goodman Garvin. The
+door was open thrown;
+On two strangers, man and maiden, cloaked and
+furred, the fire-light shone.
+
+One with courteous gesture lifted the bear-skin
+from his head;
+"Lives here Elkanah Garvin?"  "I am he," the
+goodman said.
+
+"Sit ye down, and dry and warm ye, for the night
+is chill with rain."
+And the goodwife drew the settle, and stirred the
+fire amain.
+
+The maid unclasped her cloak-hood, the firelight
+glistened fair
+In her large, moist eyes, and over soft folds of
+dark brown hair.
+
+Dame Garvin looked upon her: "It is Mary's self
+I see!"
+"Dear heart!" she cried, "now tell me, has my
+child come back to me?"
+
+"My name indeed is Mary," said the stranger sobbing
+wild;
+"Will you be to me a mother? I am Mary Garvin's child!"
+
+"She sleeps by wooded Simcoe, but on her dying
+day
+She bade my father take me to her kinsfolk far
+away.
+
+"And when the priest besought her to do me no
+such wrong,
+She said, 'May God forgive me! I have closed
+my heart too long.'
+
+"'When I hid me from my father, and shut out
+my mother's call,
+I sinned against those dear ones, and the Father
+of us all.
+
+"'Christ's love rebukes no home-love, breaks no
+tie of kin apart;
+Better heresy in doctrine, than heresy of heart.
+
+"'Tell me not the Church must censure: she who
+wept the Cross beside
+Never made her own flesh strangers, nor the claims
+of blood denied;
+
+"'And if she who wronged her parents, with her
+child atones to them,
+Earthly daughter, Heavenly Mother! thou at least
+wilt not condemn!'
+
+"So, upon her death-bed lying, my blessed mother
+spake;
+As we come to do her bidding, So receive us for her
+sake."
+
+"God be praised!" said Goodwife Garvin, "He taketh,
+and He gives;
+He woundeth, but He healeth; in her child our
+daughter lives!"
+
+"Amen!" the old man answered, as he brushed a
+tear away,
+And, kneeling by his hearthstone, said, with reverence,
+"Let us pray."
+
+All its Oriental symbols, and its Hebrew pararphrase,
+Warm with earnest life and feeling, rose his prayer
+of love and praise.
+
+But he started at beholding, as he rose from off
+his knee,
+The stranger cross his forehead with the sign of
+Papistrie.
+
+"What is this?" cried Farmer Garvin. "Is an English
+Christian's home
+A chapel or a mass-house, that you make the sign
+of Rome?"
+
+Then the young girl knelt beside him, kissed his
+trembling hand, and cried:
+Oh, forbear to chide my father; in that faith my
+mother died!
+
+"On her wooden cross at Simcoe the dews and
+sunshine fall,
+As they fall on Spurwink's graveyard; and the
+dear God watches all!"
+
+The old man stroked the fair head that rested on
+his knee;
+"Your words, dear child," he answered, "are God's
+rebuke to me.
+
+"Creed and rite perchance may differ, yet our
+faith and hope be one.
+Let me be your father's father, let him be to me
+a son."
+
+When the horn, on Sabbath morning, through the
+still and frosty air,
+From Spurwink, Pool, and Black Point, called to
+sermon and to prayer,
+
+To the goodly house of worship, where, in order
+due and fit,
+As by public vote directed, classed and ranked the
+people sit;
+
+Mistress first and goodwife after, clerkly squire
+before the clown,
+"From the brave coat, lace-embroidered, to the gray
+frock, shading down;"
+
+From the pulpit read the preacher, "Goodman
+Garvin and his wife
+Fain would thank the Lord, whose kindness has
+followed them through life,
+
+"For the great and crowning mercy, that their
+daughter, from the wild,
+Where she rests (they hope in God's peace), has
+sent to them her child;
+
+"And the prayers of all God's people they ask,
+that they may prove
+Not unworthy, through their weakness, of such
+special proof of love."
+
+As the preacher prayed, uprising, the aged couple
+stood,
+And the fair Canadian also, in her modest maiden-
+hood.
+
+Thought the elders, grave and doubting, "She is
+Papist born and bred;"
+Thought the young men, "'T is an angel in Mary
+Garvin's stead!"
+
+
+
+
+THE RANGER.
+
+Originally published as Martha Mason; a Song of the Old
+French War.
+
+ROBERT RAWLIN!--Frosts were falling
+When the ranger's horn was calling
+Through the woods to Canada.
+
+Gone the winter's sleet and snowing,
+Gone the spring-time's bud and blowing,
+Gone the summer's harvest mowing,
+And again the fields are gray.
+Yet away, he's away!
+Faint and fainter hope is growing
+In the hearts that mourn his stay.
+
+Where the lion, crouching high on
+Abraham's rock with teeth of iron,
+Glares o'er wood and wave away,
+Faintly thence, as pines far sighing,
+Or as thunder spent and dying,
+Come the challenge and replying,
+Come the sounds of flight and fray.
+Well-a-day! Hope and pray!
+Some are living, some are lying
+In their red graves far away.
+
+Straggling rangers, worn with dangers,
+Homeward faring, weary strangers
+Pass the farm-gate on their way;
+Tidings of the dead and living,
+Forest march and ambush, giving,
+Till the maidens leave their weaving,
+And the lads forget their play.
+"Still away, still away!"
+Sighs a sad one, sick with grieving,
+"Why does Robert still delay!"
+
+Nowhere fairer, sweeter, rarer,
+Does the golden-locked fruit bearer
+Through his painted woodlands stray,
+Than where hillside oaks and beeches
+Overlook the long, blue reaches,
+Silver coves and pebbled beaches,
+And green isles of Casco Bay;
+Nowhere day, for delay,
+With a tenderer look beseeches,
+"Let me with my charmed earth stay."
+
+On the grain-lands of the mainlands
+Stands the serried corn like train-bands,
+Plume and pennon rustling gay;
+Out at sea, the islands wooded,
+Silver birches, golden-hooded,
+Set with maples, crimson-blooded,
+White sea-foam and sand-hills gray,
+Stretch away, far away.
+Dim and dreamy, over-brooded
+By the hazy autumn day.
+
+Gayly chattering to the clattering
+Of the brown nuts downward pattering,
+Leap the squirrels, red and gray.
+On the grass-land, on the fallow,
+Drop the apples, red and yellow;
+Drop the russet pears and mellow,
+Drop the red leaves all the day.
+And away, swift away,
+Sun and cloud, o'er hill and hollow
+Chasing, weave their web of play.
+
+"Martha Mason, Martha Mason,
+Prithee tell us of the reason
+Why you mope at home to-day
+Surely smiling is not sinning;
+Leave, your quilling, leave your spinning;
+What is all your store of linen,
+If your heart is never gay?
+Come away, come away!
+Never yet did sad beginning
+Make the task of life a play."
+
+Overbending, till she's blending
+With the flaxen skein she's tending
+Pale brown tresses smoothed away
+From her face of patient sorrow,
+Sits she, seeking but to borrow,
+From the trembling hope of morrow,
+Solace for the weary day.
+"Go your way, laugh and play;
+Unto Him who heeds the sparrow
+And the lily, let me pray."
+
+"With our rally, rings the valley,--
+Join us!" cried the blue-eyed Nelly;
+"Join us!" cried the laughing May,
+"To the beach we all are going,
+And, to save the task of rowing,
+West by north the wind is blowing,
+Blowing briskly down the bay
+Come away, come away!
+Time and tide are swiftly flowing,
+Let us take them while we may!
+
+"Never tell us that you'll fail us,
+Where the purple beach-plum mellows
+On the bluffs so wild and gray.
+Hasten, for the oars are falling;
+Hark, our merry mates are calling;
+Time it is that we were all in,
+Singing tideward down the bay!"
+"Nay, nay, let me stay;
+Sore and sad for Robert Rawlin
+Is my heart," she said, "to-day."
+
+"Vain your calling for Rob Rawlin
+Some red squaw his moose-meat's broiling,
+Or some French lass, singing gay;
+Just forget as he's forgetting;
+What avails a life of fretting?
+If some stars must needs be setting,
+Others rise as good as they."
+"Cease, I pray; go your way!"
+Martha cries, her eyelids wetting;
+"Foul and false the words you say!"
+
+"Martha Mason, hear to reason!--
+Prithee, put a kinder face on!"
+"Cease to vex me," did she say;
+"Better at his side be lying,
+With the mournful pine-trees sighing,
+And the wild birds o'er us crying,
+Than to doubt like mine a prey;
+While away, far away,
+Turns my heart, forever trying
+Some new hope for each new day.
+
+"When the shadows veil the meadows,
+And the sunset's golden ladders
+Sink from twilight's walls of gray,--
+From the window of my dreaming,
+I can see his sickle gleaming,
+Cheery-voiced, can hear him teaming
+Down the locust-shaded way;
+But away, swift away,
+Fades the fond, delusive seeming,
+And I kneel again to pray.
+
+"When the growing dawn is showing,
+And the barn-yard cock is crowing,
+And the horned moon pales away
+From a dream of him awaking,
+Every sound my heart is making
+Seems a footstep of his taking;
+Then I hush the thought, and say,
+'Nay, nay, he's away!'
+Ah! my heart, my heart is breaking
+For the dear one far away."
+
+Look up, Martha! worn and swarthy,
+Glows a face of manhood worthy
+"Robert!"  "Martha!" all they say.
+O'er went wheel and reel together,
+Little cared the owner whither;
+Heart of lead is heart of feather,
+Noon of night is noon of day!
+Come away, come away!
+When such lovers meet each other,
+Why should prying idlers stay?
+
+Quench the timber's fallen embers,
+Quench the recd leaves in December's
+Hoary rime and chilly spray.
+
+But the hearth shall kindle clearer,
+Household welcomes sound sincerer,
+Heart to loving heart draw nearer,
+When the bridal bells shall say:
+"Hope and pray, trust alway;
+Life is sweeter, love is dearer,
+For the trial and delay!"
+1856.
+
+
+
+
+THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN.
+
+FROM the hills of home forth looking, far beneath
+the tent-like span
+Of the sky, I see the white gleam of the headland
+of Cape Ann.
+Well I know its coves and beaches to the ebb-tide
+glimmering down,
+And the white-walled hamlet children of its ancient
+fishing town.
+
+Long has passed the summer morning, and its
+memory waxes old,
+When along yon breezy headlands with a pleasant
+friend I strolled.
+Ah! the autumn sun is shining, and the ocean
+wind blows cool,
+And the golden-rod and aster bloom around thy
+grave, Rantoul!
+
+With the memory of that morning by the summer
+sea I blend
+A wild and wondrous story, by the younger Mather
+penned,
+In that quaint Magnalia Christi, with all strange
+and marvellous things,
+Heaped up huge and undigested, like the chaos
+Ovid sings.
+
+Dear to me these far, faint glimpses of the dual
+life of old,
+Inward, grand with awe and reverence; outward,
+mean and coarse and cold;
+Gleams of mystic beauty playing over dull and
+vulgar clay,
+Golden-threaded fancies weaving in a web of
+hodden gray.
+
+The great eventful Present hides the Past; but
+through the din
+Of its loud life hints and echoes from the life
+behind steal in;
+And the lore of homeland fireside, and the legendary
+rhyme,
+Make the task of duty lighter which the true man
+owes his time.
+
+So, with something of the feeling which the Covenanter
+knew,
+When with pious chisel wandering Scotland's
+moorland graveyards through,
+From the graves of old traditions I part the black-
+berry-vines,
+Wipe the moss from off the headstones, and retouch
+the faded lines.
+
+Where the sea-waves back and forward, hoarse
+with rolling pebbles, ran,
+The garrison-house stood watching on the gray
+rocks of Cape Ann;
+On its windy site uplifting gabled roof and palisade,
+And rough walls of unhewn timber with the moonlight
+overlaid.
+
+On his slow round walked the sentry, south and
+eastward looking forth
+O'er a rude and broken coast-line, white with
+breakers stretching north,--
+Wood and rock and gleaming sand-drift, jagged
+capes, with bush and tree,
+Leaning inland from the smiting of the wild and
+gusty sea.
+
+Before the deep-mouthed chimney, dimly lit by
+dying brands,
+Twenty soldiers sat and waited, with their muskets
+in their hands;
+On the rough-hewn oaken table the venison haunch
+was shared,
+And the pewter tankard circled slowly round from
+beard to beard.
+
+Long they sat and talked together,--talked of
+wizards Satan-sold;
+Of all ghostly sights and noises,--signs and wonders
+manifold;
+Of the spectre-ship of Salem, with the dead men
+in her shrouds,
+Sailing sheer above the water, in the loom of morning
+clouds;
+
+Of the marvellous valley hidden in the depths of
+Gloucester woods,
+Full of plants that love the summer,--blooms of
+warmer latitudes;
+Where the Arctic birch is braided by the tropic's
+flowery vines,
+And the white magnolia-blossoms star the twilight
+of the pines!
+
+But their voices sank yet lower, sank to husky
+tones of fear,
+As they spake of present tokens of the powers of
+evil near;
+Of a spectral host, defying stroke of steel and aim
+of gun;
+Never yet was ball to slay them in the mould of
+mortals run.
+
+Thrice, with plumes and flowing scalp-locks, from
+the midnight wood they came,--
+Thrice around the block-house marching, met, unharmed,
+its volleyed flame;
+Then, with mocking laugh and gesture, sunk in
+earth or lost in air,
+All the ghostly wonder vanished, and the moonlit
+sands lay bare.
+
+Midnight came; from out the forest moved a
+dusky mass that soon
+Grew to warriors, plumed and painted, grimly
+marching in the moon.
+"Ghosts or witches," said the captain, "thus I foil
+the Evil One!"
+And he rammed a silver button, from his doublet,
+down his gun.
+
+Once again the spectral horror moved the guarded
+wall about;
+Once again the levelled muskets through the palisades
+flashed out,
+With that deadly aim the squirrel on his tree-top
+might not shun,
+Nor the beach-bird seaward flying with his slant
+wing to the sun.
+
+Like the idle rain of summer sped the harmless
+shower of lead.
+With a laugh of fierce derision, once again the
+phantoms fled;
+Once again, without a shadow on the sands the
+moonlight lay,
+And the white smoke curling through it drifted
+slowly down the bay!
+
+"God preserve us!" said the captain; "never
+mortal foes were there;
+They have vanished with their leader, Prince and
+Power of the air!
+Lay aside your useless weapons; skill and prowess
+naught avail;
+They who do the Devil's service wear their master's
+coat of mail!"
+
+So the night grew near to cock-crow, when again
+a warning call
+Roused the score of weary soldiers watching round
+the dusky hall
+And they looked to flint and priming, and they
+longed for break of day;
+But the captain closed his Bible: "Let us cease
+from man, and pray!"
+
+To the men who went before us, all the unseen
+powers seemed near,
+And their steadfast strength of courage struck its
+roots in holy fear.
+Every hand forsook the musket, every head was
+bowed and bare,
+Every stout knee pressed the flag-stones, as the
+captain led in prayer.
+
+Ceased thereat the mystic marching of the spectres
+round the wall,
+But a sound abhorred, unearthly, smote the ears
+and hearts of all,--
+Howls of rage and shrieks of anguish! Never
+after mortal man
+Saw the ghostly leaguers marching round the
+block-house of Cape Ann.
+
+So to us who walk in summer through the cool and
+sea-blown town,
+From the childhood of its people comes the solemn
+legend down.
+Not in vain the ancient fiction, in whose moral
+lives the youth
+And the fitness and the freshness of an undecaying
+truth.
+
+Soon or late to all our dwellings come the spectres
+of the mind,
+Doubts and fears and dread forebodings, in the
+darkness undefined;
+Round us throng the grim projections of the heart
+and of the brain,
+And our pride of strength is weakness, and the
+cunning hand is vain.
+
+In the dark we cry like children; and no answer
+from on high
+Breaks the crystal spheres of silence, and no white
+wings downward fly;
+But the heavenly help we pray for comes to faith,
+and not to sight,
+And our prayers themselves drive backward all the
+spirits of the night!
+1857.
+
+
+
+
+THE GIFT OF TRITEMIUS.
+
+TRITEMIUS of Herbipolis, one day,
+While kneeling at the altar's foot to pray,
+Alone with God, as was his pious choice,
+Heard from without a miserable voice,
+A sound which seemed of all sad things to tell,
+As of a lost soul crying out of hell.
+
+Thereat the Abbot paused; the chain whereby
+His thoughts went upward broken by that cry;
+And, looking from the casement, saw below
+A wretched woman, with gray hair a-flow,
+And withered hands held up to him, who cried
+For alms as one who might not be denied.
+
+She cried, "For the dear love of Him who gave
+His life for ours, my child from bondage save,--
+My beautiful, brave first-born, chained with slaves
+In the Moor's galley, where the sun-smit waves
+Lap the white walls of Tunis!"--"What I can
+I give," Tritemius said, "my prayers."--"O man
+Of God!" she cried, for grief had made her bold,
+"Mock me not thus; I ask not prayers, but gold.
+Words will not serve me, alms alone suffice;
+Even while I speak perchance my first-born dies."
+
+"Woman!" Tritemius answered, "from our door
+None go unfed, hence are we always poor;
+A single soldo is our only store.
+Thou hast our prayers;--what can we give thee
+more?"
+
+"Give me," she said, "the silver candlesticks
+On either side of the great crucifix.
+God well may spare them on His errands sped,
+Or He can give you golden ones instead."
+
+Then spake Tritemius, "Even as thy word,
+Woman, so be it! (Our most gracious Lord,
+Who loveth mercy more than sacrifice,
+Pardon me if a human soul I prize
+Above the gifts upon his altar piled!
+Take what thou askest, and redeem thy child."
+
+But his hand trembled as the holy alms
+He placed within the beggar's eager palms;
+And as she vanished down the linden shade,
+He bowed his head and for forgiveness prayed.
+So the day passed, and when the twilight came
+He woke to find the chapel all aflame,
+And, dumb with grateful wonder, to behold
+Upon the altar candlesticks of gold!
+1857.
+
+
+
+
+SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE.
+
+In the valuable and carefully prepared History of Marblehead, published
+in 1879 by Samuel Roads, Jr., it is stated that the crew of Captain
+Ireson, rather than himself, were responsible for the abandonment of the
+disabled vessel. To screen themselves they charged their captain with
+the crime. In view of this the writer of the ballad addressed the
+following letter to the historian:--
+
+OAK KNOLL, DANVERS, 5 mo. 18, 1880.
+MY DEAR FRIEND: I heartily thank thee for a copy of thy History of
+Marblehead. I have read it with great interest and think good use has
+been made of the abundant material. No town in Essex County has a record
+more honorable than Marblehead; no one has done more to develop the
+industrial interests of our New England seaboard, and certainly none
+have given such evidence of self-sacrificing patriotism. I am glad the
+story of it has been at last told, and told so well. I have now no doubt
+that thy version of Skipper Ireson's ride is the correct one. My verse
+was founded solely on a fragment of rhyme which I heard from one of my
+early schoolmates, a native of Marblehead. I supposed the story to which
+it referred dated back at least a century. I knew nothing of the
+participators, and the narrative of the ballad was pure fancy. I am glad
+for the sake of truth and justice that the real facts are given in thy
+book. I certainly would not knowingly do injustice to any one, dead or
+living.
+
+I am very truly thy friend,
+JOHN G. WHITTIER.
+
+
+OF all the rides since, the birth of time,
+Told in story or sung in rhyme,--
+On Apuleius's Golden Ass,
+Or one-eyed Calendar's horse of brass;
+Witch astride of a human back,
+Islam's prophet on Al-Borak,--
+The strangest ride that ever was sped
+Was Ireson's, out from Marblehead!
+Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
+Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
+By the women of Marblehead!
+Body of turkey, head of owl,
+Wings a-droop like a rained-on fowl,
+Feathered and ruffled in every part,
+Skipper Ireson stood in the cart.
+Scores of women, old and young,
+Strong of muscle, and glib of tongue,
+Pushed and pulled up the rocky lane,
+Shouting and singing the shrill refrain
+"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,
+Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt
+By the women o' Morble'ead!"
+
+Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips,
+Girls in bloom of cheek and lips,
+Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase
+Bacchus round some antique vase,
+Brief of skirt, with ankles bare,
+Loose of kerchief and loose of hair,
+With conch-shells blowing and fish-horns' twang,
+Over and over the Manads sang
+"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,
+Torr'd an' futherr'd an dorr'd in a corrt
+By the women o' Morble'ead!"
+
+Small pity for him!--He sailed away
+From a leaking ship, in Chaleur Bay,--
+Sailed away from a sinking wreck,
+With his own town's-people on her deck!
+"Lay by! lay by!" they called to him.
+Back he answered, "Sink or swim!
+Brag of your catch of fish again!"
+And off he sailed through the fog and rain!
+Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
+Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
+By the women of Marblehead!
+
+Fathoms deep in dark Chaleur
+That wreck shall lie forevermore.
+Mother and sister, wife and maid,
+Looked from the rocks of Marblehead
+Over the moaning and rainy sea,--
+Looked for the coming that might not be!
+What did the winds and the sea-birds say
+Of the cruel captain who sailed away?--
+Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
+Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
+By the women of Marblehead!
+
+Through the street, on either side,
+Up flew windows, doors swung wide;
+Sharp-tongued spinsters, old wives gray,
+Treble lent the fish-horn's bray.
+Sea-worn grandsires, cripple-bound,
+Hulks of old sailors run aground,
+Shook head, and fist, and hat, and cane,
+And cracked with curses the hoarse refrain
+"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,
+Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt
+By the women o''Morble'ead!"
+
+Sweetly along the Salem road
+Bloom of orchard and lilac showed.
+Little the wicked skipper knew
+Of the fields so green and the sky so blue.
+Riding there in his sorry trim,
+Like to Indian idol glum and grim,
+Scarcely he seemed the sound to hear
+Of voices shouting, far and near
+"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,
+Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt
+By the women o' Morble'ead!"
+
+"Hear me, neighbors!" at last he cried,--
+"What to me is this noisy ride?
+What is the shame that clothes the skin
+To the nameless horror that lives within?
+Waking or sleeping, I see a wreck,
+And hear a cry from a reeling deck!
+Hate me and curse me,--I only dread
+The hand of God and the face of the dead!"
+Said old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
+Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
+By the women of Marblehead!
+
+Then the wife of the skipper lost at sea
+Said, "God has touched him! why should we?"
+Said an old wife mourning her only son,
+"Cut the rogue's tether and let him run!"
+So with soft relentings and rude excuse,
+Half scorn, half pity, they cut him loose,
+And gave him a cloak to hide him in,
+And left him alone with his shame and sin.
+Poor Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
+Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
+By the women of Marblehead!
+1857.
+
+
+
+
+THE SYCAMORES.
+
+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 gleeman
+Broke 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 Tallant
+Pass 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 Saxons
+Of 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 mingles
+With 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 river
+Lighted 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 Erin
+And the Woman of Three Cows,
+
+By the blazing hearths of winter,
+Pleasant seemed his simple tales,
+Midst the grimmer Yorkshire legends
+And the mountain myths of Wales.
+
+How the souls in Purgatory
+Scrambled up from fate forlorn,
+On St. Eleven's sackcloth ladder,
+Slyly hitched to Satan's horn.
+
+Of the fiddler who at Tara
+Played all night to ghosts of kings;
+Of the brown dwarfs, and the fairies
+Dancing in their moorland rings.
+
+Jolliest of our birds of singing,
+Best he loved the Bob-o-link.
+"Hush!" he 'd say, "the tipsy fairies
+Hear 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 I
+Linking still the river-shores,
+With their shadows cast by sunset,
+Stand Hugh Tallant's sycamores!
+
+When the Father of his Country
+Through 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 Presence
+Down the thronged and shouting street;
+Village girls as white as angels,
+Scattering flowers around his feet.
+
+Midway, where the plane-tree's shadow
+Deepest fell, his rein he drew
+On his stately head, uncovered,
+Cool and soft the west-wind blew.
+
+And he stood up in his stirrups,
+Looking up and looking down
+On the hills of Gold and Silver
+Rimming round the little town,--
+
+On the river, full of sunshine,
+To the lap of greenest vales
+Winding down from wooded headlands,
+Willow-skirted, white with sails.
+
+And he said, the landscape sweeping
+Slowly with his ungloved hand,
+"I have seen no prospect fairer
+In this goodly Eastern land."
+
+Then the bugles of his escort
+Stirred to life the cavalcade
+And 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 harvest
+To its garner green and low.
+
+But the trees the gleeman planted,
+Through the changes, changeless stand;
+As the marble calm of Tadmor
+Mocks the desert's shifting sand.
+
+Still the level moon at rising
+Silvers 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 floating
+Round his rosy ample face,--
+Now a thousand Saxon craftsmen
+Stitch and hammer in his place.
+
+All the pastoral lanes so grassy
+Now 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.
+
+
+
+
+THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW.
+
+An incident of the Sepoy mutiny.
+
+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 castle
+The Scottish pipes are dear;--
+Sweet sounds the ancient pibroch
+O'er mountain, loch, and glade;
+But the sweetest of all music
+The pipes at Lucknow played.
+
+Day by day the Indian tiger
+Louder yelled, and nearer crept;
+Round and round the jungle-serpent
+Near and nearer circles swept.
+"Pray for rescue, wives and mothers,--
+Pray to-day!" the soldier said;
+"To-morrow, death's between us
+And the wrong and shame we dread."
+
+Oh, they listened, looked, and waited,
+Till their hope became despair;
+And the sobs of low bewailing
+Filled 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-roll
+And the roar of Sepoy guns.
+But to sounds of home and childhood
+The Highland ear was true;--
+As her mother's cradle-crooning
+The mountain pipes she knew.
+
+Like the march of soundless music
+Through 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 Goomtee
+Rose and fell the piper's blast
+Then a burst of wild thanksgiving
+Mingled 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-cloud
+To plaided legions grew,
+Full tenderly and blithesomely
+The 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-drums
+Rose that sweet and homelike strain;
+And the tartan clove the turban,
+As the Goomtee cleaves the plain.
+
+Dear to the corn-land reaper
+And plaided mountaineer,--
+To the cottage and the castle
+The piper's song is dear.
+Sweet sounds the Gaelic pibroch
+O'er mountain, glen, and glade;
+But the sweetest of all music
+The Pipes at Lucknow played!
+1858.
+
+
+
+
+TELLING THE BEES.
+
+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 hill
+Runs 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 brink
+Of 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 warm
+Tangles his wings of fire in the trees,
+Setting, as then, over Fernside farm.
+
+I mind me how with a lover's care
+From my Sunday coat
+I brushed off the burrs, and smoothed my hair,
+And cooled at the brookside my brow and
+throat.
+
+Since we parted, a month had passed,--
+To love, a year;
+Down through the beeches I looked at last
+On the little red gate and the well-sweep near.
+
+I can see it all now,--the slantwise rain
+Of 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 sun
+Had the chill of snow;
+For I knew she was telling the bees of one
+Gone on the journey we all must go.
+
+Then I said to myself, "My Mary weeps
+For the dead to-day;
+Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps
+The 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 still
+Sung to the bees stealing out and in.
+
+And the song she was singing ever since
+In my ear sounds on:--
+"Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence!
+Mistress Mary is dead and gone!"
+1858.
+
+
+
+
+THE SWAN SONG OF PARSON AVERY.
+
+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 the
+summer wearing late,
+Parson Avery sailed from Newbury, with his wife
+and 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 their
+fruits first-born,
+And the home-roofs like brown islands amid a sea
+of corn.
+
+Broad meadows reached out 'seaward the tided
+creeks between,
+And hills rolled wave-like inland, with oaks and
+walnuts 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 the
+living bread
+To the souls of fishers starving on the rocks of
+Marblehead.
+
+All day they sailed: at nightfall the pleasant land-
+breeze died,
+The blackening sky, at midnight, its starry lights
+denied,
+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 rudder
+in his hand,
+And questioned of the darkness what was sea and
+what was land.
+
+And the preacher heard his dear ones, nestled
+round him, weeping sore,
+"Never heed, my little children! Christ is walking
+on before;
+To the pleasant land of heaven, where the sea shall
+be no more."
+
+All at once the great cloud parted, like a curtain
+drawn aside,
+To let down the torch of lightning on the terror
+far and wide;
+And the thunder and the whirlwind together smote
+the tide.
+
+There was wailing in the shallop, woman's wail
+and man's despair,
+A crash of breaking timbers on the rocks so sharp
+and bare,
+And, through it all, the murmur of Father Avery's
+prayer.
+
+From his struggle in the darkness with the wild
+waves and the blast,
+On a rock, where every billow broke above him as
+it passed,
+Alone, of all his household, the man of God was
+cast.
+
+There a comrade heard him praying, in the pause
+of wave and wind
+"All my own have gone before me, and I linger
+just behind;
+Not for life I ask, but only for the rest Thy
+ransomed find!
+
+"In this night of death I challenge the promise of
+Thy word!--
+Let me see the great salvation of which mine ears
+have heard!--
+Let me pass from hence forgiven, through the
+grace of Christ, our Lord!
+
+"In the baptism of these waters wash white my
+every sin,
+And let me follow up to Thee my household and
+my kin!
+Open the sea-gate of Thy heaven, and let me enter
+in!"
+
+When the Christian sings his death-song, all the
+listening heavens draw near,
+And the angels, leaning over the walls of crystal,
+hear
+How the notes so faint and broken swell to music
+in God's ear.
+
+The ear of God was open to His servant's last
+request;
+As the strong wave swept him downward the sweet
+hymn upward pressed,
+And the soul of Father Avery went, singing, to its
+rest.
+
+There was wailing on the mainland, from the rocks
+of Marblehead;
+In the stricken church of Newbury the notes of
+prayer were read;
+And long, by board and hearthstone, the living
+mourned the dead.
+
+And still the fishers outbound, or scudding from
+the squall,
+With grave and reverent faces, the ancient tale
+recall,
+When they see the white waves breaking on the
+Rock of Avery's Fall!
+1808.
+
+
+
+
+THE DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE OF NEWBURY.
+
+"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 time
+Of 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 mud
+And 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 town
+And its time of fable the tale comes down
+Of a terror which haunted bush and brake,
+The Amphisbaena, the Double Snake!
+
+Thou who makest the tale thy mirth,
+Consider that strip of Christian earth
+On the desolate shore of a sailless sea,
+Full of terror and mystery,
+Half redeemed from the evil hold
+Of the wood so dreary, and dark, and old,
+Which drank with its lips of leaves the dew
+When 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 nerve
+And a feebler faith thy need might serve;
+And own to thyself the wonder more
+That the snake had two heads, and not a score!
+
+Whether he lurked in the Oldtown fen
+Or 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 be lived, we know,
+And left the cast of a double head
+In 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 decline
+The Common Pasture for sheep or kine,
+The terrible double-ganger heard
+In 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 down
+All 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 pool
+Of his brains for the lore he learned at school,
+To garnish the story, with here a streak
+Of Latin, and there another of Greek
+And 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 still
+In Byfield Meadows, on Pipestave Hill.
+And still, whenever husband and wife
+Publish the shame of their daily strife,
+And, with mad cross-purpose, tug and strain
+At either end of the marriage-chain,
+The gossips say, with a knowing shake
+Of their gray heads, "Look at the Double Snake
+One in body and two in will,
+The Amphisbaena is living still!"
+1859.
+
+
+
+
+
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