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+Project Gutenberg EBook, At Sundown, by Whittier
+Part 5, From Volume IV., The Works of Whittier: Personal Poems
+#30 in our series by John Greenleaf Whittier
+
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+Title: At Sundown
+       Part 5, From Volume IV., The Works of Whittier: Personal Poems
+
+
+Author: John Greenleaf Whittier
+
+Release Date: December 2005  [EBook #9585]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 18, 2003]
+
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, AT SUNDOWN, PART 5 ***
+
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+                               AT SUNDOWN
+
+                                   BY
+
+                         JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
+
+
+
+
+AT SUNDOWN.
+     TO E. C. S.
+     THE CHRISTMAS OF 1888.
+     THE VOW OF WASHINGTON
+     THE CAPTAIN'S WELL
+     AN OUTDOOR RECEPTION
+     R. S. S., AT DEER ISLAND ON THE MERRIMAC
+     BURNING DRIFT-WOOD.
+     O. W. HOLMES ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY
+     JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
+     HAVERHILL. 1640-1890
+     TO G. G.
+     PRESTON POWERS, INSCRIPTION FOR BASS-RELIEF
+     LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY, INSCRIPTION ON TABLET
+     MILTON, ON MEMORIAL WINDOW
+     THE BIRTHDAY WREATH
+     THE WIND OF MARCH
+     BETWEEN THE GATES
+     THE LAST EVE OF SUMMER
+     TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 8TH Mo. 29TH, 1892
+
+
+
+                                AT SUNDOWN
+
+TO  E. C. S.
+
+Poet and friend of poets, if thy glass
+Detects no flower in winter's tuft of grass,
+Let this slight token of the debt I owe
+Outlive for thee December's frozen day,
+And, like the arbutus budding under snow,
+Take bloom and fragrance from some morn of May
+When he who gives it shall have gone the way
+Where faith shall see and reverent trust shall know.
+
+
+THE CHRISTMAS OF 1888.
+
+Low in the east, against a white, cold dawn,
+The black-lined silhouette of the woods was drawn,
+And on a wintry waste
+Of frosted streams and hillsides bare and brown,
+Through thin cloud-films, a pallid ghost looked down,
+The waning moon half-faced!
+
+In that pale sky and sere, snow-waiting earth,
+What sign was there of the immortal birth?
+What herald of the One?
+Lo! swift as thought the heavenly radiance came,
+A rose-red splendor swept the sky like flame,
+Up rolled the round, bright sun!
+
+And all was changed. From a transfigured world
+The moon's ghost fled, the smoke of home-hearths curled
+Up the still air unblown.
+In Orient warmth and brightness, did that morn
+O'er Nain and Nazareth, when the Christ was born,
+Break fairer than our own?
+
+The morning's promise noon and eve fulfilled
+In warm, soft sky and landscape hazy-hilled
+And sunset fair as they;
+A sweet reminder of His holiest time,
+A summer-miracle in our winter clime,
+God gave a perfect day.
+
+The near was blended with the old and far,
+And Bethlehem's hillside and the Magi's star
+Seemed here, as there and then,--
+Our homestead pine-tree was the Syrian palm,
+Our heart's desire the angels' midnight psalm,
+Peace, and good-will to men!
+
+
+
+THE VOW OF WASHINGTON.
+
+     Read in New York, April 30, 1889, at the Centennial Celebration of
+     the Inauguration of George Washington as the first President of the
+     United States.
+
+The sword was sheathed: in April's sun
+Lay green the fields by Freedom won;
+And severed sections, weary of debates,
+Joined hands at last and were United States.
+
+O City sitting by the Sea
+How proud the day that dawned on thee,
+When the new era, long desired, began,
+And, in its need, the hour had found the man!
+
+One thought the cannon salvos spoke,
+The resonant bell-tower's vibrant stroke,
+The voiceful streets, the plaudit-echoing halls,
+And prayer and hymn borne heavenward from St. Paul's!
+
+How felt the land in every part
+The strong throb of a nation's heart,
+As its great leader gave, with reverent awe,
+His pledge to Union, Liberty, and Law.
+
+That pledge the heavens above him heard,
+That vow the sleep of centuries stirred;
+In world-wide wonder listening peoples bent
+Their gaze on Freedom's great experiment.
+
+Could it succeed? Of honor sold
+And hopes deceived all history told.
+Above the wrecks that strewed the mournful past,
+Was the long dream of ages true at last?
+
+Thank God! the people's choice was just,
+The one man equal to his trust,
+Wise beyond lore, and without weakness good,
+Calm in the strength of flawless rectitude.
+
+His rule of justice, order, peace,
+Made possible the world's release;
+Taught prince and serf that power is but a trust,
+And rule, alone, which serves the ruled, is just;
+
+That Freedom generous is, but strong
+In hate of fraud and selfish wrong,
+Pretence that turns her holy truths to lies,
+And lawless license masking in her guise.
+
+Land of his love! with one glad voice
+Let thy great sisterhood rejoice;
+A century's suns o'er thee have risen and set,
+And, God be praised, we are one nation yet.
+
+And still we trust the years to be
+Shall prove his hope was destiny,
+Leaving our flag, with all its added stars,
+Unrent by faction and unstained by wars.
+
+Lo! where with patient toil he nursed
+And trained the new-set plant at first,
+The widening branches of a stately tree
+Stretch from the sunrise to the sunset sea.
+
+And in its broad and sheltering shade,
+Sitting with none to make afraid,
+Were we now silent, through each mighty limb,
+The winds of heaven would sing the praise of him.
+
+Our first and best!--his ashes lie
+Beneath his own Virginian sky.
+Forgive, forget, O true and just and brave,
+The storm that swept above thy sacred grave.
+
+For, ever in the awful strife
+And dark hours of the nation's life,
+Through the fierce tumult pierced his warning word,
+Their father's voice his erring children heard.
+
+The change for which he prayed and sought
+In that sharp agony was wrought;
+No partial interest draws its alien line
+'Twixt North and South, the cypress and the pine!
+
+One people now, all doubt beyond,
+His name shall be our Union-bond;
+We lift our hands to Heaven, and here and now.
+Take on our lips the old Centennial vow.
+
+For rule and trust must needs be ours;
+Chooser and chosen both are powers
+Equal in service as in rights; the claim
+Of Duty rests on each and all the same.
+
+Then let the sovereign millions, where
+Our banner floats in sun and air,
+From the warm palm-lands to Alaska's cold,
+Repeat with us the pledge a century old?
+
+
+
+THE CAPTAIN'S WELL.
+
+     The story of the shipwreck of Captain Valentine Bagley, on the
+     coast of Arabia, and his sufferings in the desert, has been
+     familiar from my childhood. It has been partially told in the
+     singularly beautiful lines of my friend, Harriet Prescott Spofford,
+     an the occasion of a public celebration at the Newburyport Library.
+     To the charm and felicity of her verse, as far as it goes, nothing
+     can be added; but in the following ballad I have endeavored to give
+     a fuller detail of the touching incident upon which it is founded.
+
+From pain and peril, by land and main,
+The shipwrecked sailor came back again;
+
+And like one from the dead, the threshold cross'd
+Of his wondering home, that had mourned him lost.
+
+Where he sat once more with his kith and kin,
+And welcomed his neighbors thronging in.
+
+But when morning came he called for his spade.
+"I must pay my debt to the Lord," he said.
+
+"Why dig you here?" asked the passer-by;
+"Is there gold or silver the road so nigh?"
+
+"No, friend," he answered: "but under this sod
+Is the blessed water, the wine of God."
+
+"Water! the Powow is at your back,
+And right before you the Merrimac,
+
+"And look you up, or look you down,
+There 's a well-sweep at every door in town."
+
+"True," he said, "we have wells of our own;
+But this I dig for the Lord alone."
+
+Said the other: "This soil is dry, you know.
+I doubt if a spring can be found below;
+
+"You had better consult, before you dig,
+Some water-witch, with a hazel twig."
+
+"No, wet or dry, I will dig it here,
+Shallow or deep, if it takes a year.
+
+"In the Arab desert, where shade is none,
+The waterless land of sand and sun,
+
+"Under the pitiless, brazen sky
+My burning throat as the sand was dry;
+
+"My crazed brain listened in fever dreams
+For plash of buckets and ripple of streams;
+
+"And opening my eyes to the blinding glare,
+And my lips to the breath of the blistering air,
+
+"Tortured alike by the heavens and earth,
+I cursed, like Job, the day of my birth.
+
+"Then something tender, and sad, and mild
+As a mother's voice to her wandering child,
+
+"Rebuked my frenzy; and bowing my head,
+I prayed as I never before had prayed:
+
+"Pity me, God! for I die of thirst;
+Take me out of this land accurst;
+
+"And if ever I reach my home again,
+Where earth has springs, and the sky has rain,
+
+"I will dig a well for the passers-by,
+And none shall suffer from thirst as I.
+
+"I saw, as I prayed, my home once more,
+The house, the barn, the elms by the door,
+
+"The grass-lined road, that riverward wound,
+The tall slate stones of the burying-ground,
+
+"The belfry and steeple on meeting-house hill,
+The brook with its dam, and gray grist mill,
+
+"And I knew in that vision beyond the sea,
+The very place where my well must be.
+
+"God heard my prayer in that evil day;
+He led my feet in their homeward way,
+
+"From false mirage and dried-up well,
+And the hot sand storms of a land of hell,
+
+"Till I saw at last through the coast-hill's gap,
+A city held in its stony lap,
+
+"The mosques and the domes of scorched Muscat,
+And my heart leaped up with joy thereat;
+
+"For there was a ship at anchor lying,
+A Christian flag at its mast-head flying,
+
+"And sweetest of sounds to my homesick ear
+Was my native tongue in the sailor's cheer.
+
+"Now the Lord be thanked, I am back again,
+Where earth has springs, and the skies have rain,
+
+"And the well I promised by Oman's Sea,
+I am digging for him in Amesbury."
+
+His kindred wept, and his neighbors said
+"The poor old captain is out of his head."
+
+But from morn to noon, and from noon to night,
+He toiled at his task with main and might;
+
+And when at last, from the loosened earth,
+Under his spade the stream gushed forth,
+
+And fast as he climbed to his deep well's brim,
+The water he dug for followed him,
+
+He shouted for joy: "I have kept my word,
+And here is the well I promised the Lord!"
+
+The long years came and the long years went,
+And he sat by his roadside well content;
+
+He watched the travellers, heat-oppressed,
+Pause by the way to drink and rest,
+
+And the sweltering horses dip, as they drank,
+Their nostrils deep in the cool, sweet tank,
+
+And grateful at heart, his memory went
+Back to that waterless Orient,
+
+And the blessed answer of prayer, which came
+To the earth of iron and sky of flame.
+
+And when a wayfarer weary and hot,
+Kept to the mid road, pausing not
+
+For the well's refreshing, he shook his head;
+"He don't know the value of water," he said;
+
+"Had he prayed for a drop, as I have done,
+In the desert circle of sand and sun,
+
+"He would drink and rest, and go home to tell
+That God's best gift is the wayside well!"
+
+
+
+AN OUTDOOR RECEPTION.
+
+     The substance of these lines, hastily pencilled several years ago,
+     I find among such of my unprinted scraps as have escaped the
+     waste-basket and the fire. In transcribing it I have made some
+     changes, additions, and omissions.
+
+On these green banks, where falls too soon
+The shade of Autumn's afternoon,
+The south wind blowing soft and sweet,
+The water gliding at nay feet,
+The distant northern range uplit
+By the slant sunshine over it,
+With changes of the mountain mist
+From tender blush to amethyst,
+The valley's stretch of shade and gleam
+Fair as in Mirza's Bagdad dream,
+With glad young faces smiling near
+And merry voices in my ear,
+I sit, methinks, as Hafiz might
+In Iran's Garden of Delight.
+For Persian roses blushing red,
+Aster and gentian bloom instead;
+For Shiraz wine, this mountain air;
+For feast, the blueberries which I share
+With one who proffers with stained hands
+Her gleanings from yon pasture lands,
+Wild fruit that art and culture spoil,
+The harvest of an untilled soil;
+And with her one whose tender eyes
+Reflect the change of April skies,
+Midway 'twixt child and maiden yet,
+Fresh as Spring's earliest violet;
+And one whose look and voice and ways
+Make where she goes idyllic days;
+And one whose sweet, still countenance
+Seems dreamful of a child's romance;
+And others, welcome as are these,
+Like and unlike, varieties
+Of pearls on nature's chaplet strung,
+And all are fair, for all are young.
+Gathered from seaside cities old,
+From midland prairie, lake, and wold,
+From the great wheat-fields, which might feed
+The hunger of a world at need,
+In healthful change of rest and play
+Their school-vacations glide away.
+
+No critics these: they only see
+An old and kindly friend in me,
+In whose amused, indulgent look
+Their innocent mirth has no rebuke.
+They scarce can know my rugged rhymes,
+The harsher songs of evil times,
+Nor graver themes in minor keys
+Of life's and death's solemnities;
+But haply, as they bear in mind
+Some verse of lighter, happier kind,--
+Hints of the boyhood of the man,
+Youth viewed from life's meridian,
+Half seriously and half in play
+My pleasant interviewers pay
+Their visit, with no fell intent
+Of taking notes and punishment.
+
+As yonder solitary pine
+Is ringed below with flower and vine,
+More favored than that lonely tree,
+The bloom of girlhood circles me.
+In such an atmosphere of youth
+I half forget my age's truth;
+The shadow of my life's long date
+Runs backward on the dial-plate,
+Until it seems a step might span
+The gulf between the boy and man.
+
+My young friends smile, as if some jay
+On bleak December's leafless spray
+Essayed to sing the songs of May.
+Well, let them smile, and live to know,
+When their brown locks are flecked with snow,
+'T is tedious to be always sage
+And pose the dignity of age,
+While so much of our early lives
+On memory's playground still survives,
+And owns, as at the present hour,
+The spell of youth's magnetic power.
+
+But though I feel, with Solomon,
+'T is pleasant to behold the sun,
+I would not if I could repeat
+A life which still is good and sweet;
+I keep in age, as in my prime,
+A not uncheerful step with time,
+And, grateful for all blessings sent,
+I go the common way, content
+To make no new experiment.
+On easy terms with law and fate,
+For what must be I calmly wait,
+And trust the path I cannot see,--
+That God is good sufficeth me.
+And when at last on life's strange play
+The curtain falls, I only pray
+That hope may lose itself in truth,
+And age in Heaven's immortal youth,
+And all our loves and longing prove
+The foretaste of diviner love.
+
+The day is done. Its afterglow
+Along the west is burning low.
+My visitors, like birds, have flown;
+I hear their voices, fainter grown,
+And dimly through the dusk I see
+Their 'kerchiefs wave good-night to me,--
+Light hearts of girlhood, knowing nought
+Of all the cheer their coming brought;
+And, in their going, unaware
+Of silent-following feet of prayer
+Heaven make their budding promise good
+With flowers of gracious womanhood!
+
+
+
+R. S. S., AT DEER ISLAND ON THE MERRIMAC.
+
+Make, for he loved thee well, our Merrimac,
+From wave and shore a low and long lament
+For him, whose last look sought thee, as he went
+The unknown way from which no step comes back.
+And ye, O ancient pine-trees, at whose feet
+He watched in life the sunset's reddening glow,
+Let the soft south wind through your needles blow
+A fitting requiem tenderly and sweet!
+No fonder lover of all lovely things
+Shall walk where once he walked, no smile more glad
+Greet friends than his who friends in all men had,
+Whose pleasant memory, to that Island clings,
+Where a dear mourner in the home he left
+Of love's sweet solace cannot be bereft.
+
+
+
+BURNING DRIFT-WOOD
+
+Before my drift-wood fire I sit,
+And see, with every waif I burn,
+Old dreams and fancies coloring it,
+And folly's unlaid ghosts return.
+
+O ships of mine, whose swift keels cleft
+The enchanted sea on which they sailed,
+Are these poor fragments only left
+Of vain desires and hopes that failed?
+
+Did I not watch from them the light
+Of sunset on my towers in Spain,
+And see, far off, uploom in sight
+The Fortunate Isles I might not gain?
+
+Did sudden lift of fog reveal
+Arcadia's vales of song and spring,
+And did I pass, with grazing keel,
+The rocks whereon the sirens sing?
+
+Have I not drifted hard upon
+The unmapped regions lost to man,
+The cloud-pitched tents of Prester John,
+The palace domes of Kubla Khan?
+
+Did land winds blow from jasmine flowers,
+Where Youth the ageless Fountain fills?
+Did Love make sign from rose blown bowers,
+And gold from Eldorado's hills?
+
+Alas! the gallant ships, that sailed
+On blind Adventure's errand sent,
+Howe'er they laid their courses, failed
+To reach the haven of Content.
+
+And of my ventures, those alone
+Which Love had freighted, safely sped,
+Seeking a good beyond my own,
+By clear-eyed Duty piloted.
+
+O mariners, hoping still to meet
+The luck Arabian voyagers met,
+And find in Bagdad's moonlit street,
+Haroun al Raschid walking yet,
+
+Take with you, on your Sea of Dreams,
+The fair, fond fancies dear to youth.
+I turn from all that only seems,
+And seek the sober grounds of truth.
+
+What matter that it is not May,
+That birds have flown, and trees are bare,
+That darker grows the shortening day,
+And colder blows the wintry air!
+
+The wrecks of passion and desire,
+The castles I no more rebuild,
+May fitly feed my drift-wood fire,
+And warm the hands that age has chilled.
+
+Whatever perished with my ships,
+I only know the best remains;
+A song of praise is on my lips
+For losses which are now my gains.
+
+Heap high my hearth! No worth is lost;
+No wisdom with the folly dies.
+Burn on, poor shreds, your holocaust
+Shall be my evening sacrifice.
+
+Far more than all I dared to dream,
+Unsought before my door I see;
+On wings of fire and steeds of steam
+The world's great wonders come to me,
+
+And holier signs, unmarked before,
+Of Love to seek and Power to save,--
+The righting of the wronged and poor,
+The man evolving from the slave;
+
+And life, no longer chance or fate,
+Safe in the gracious Fatherhood.
+I fold o'er-wearied hands and wait,
+In full assurance of the good.
+
+And well the waiting time must be,
+Though brief or long its granted days,
+If Faith and Hope and Charity
+Sit by my evening hearth-fire's blaze.
+
+And with them, friends whom Heaven has spared,
+Whose love my heart has comforted,
+And, sharing all my joys, has shared
+My tender memories of the dead,--
+
+Dear souls who left us lonely here,
+Bound on their last, long voyage, to whom
+We, day by day, are drawing near,
+Where every bark has sailing room!
+
+I know the solemn monotone
+Of waters calling unto me
+I know from whence the airs have blown
+That whisper of the Eternal Sea.
+
+As low my fires of drift-wood burn,
+I hear that sea's deep sounds increase,
+And, fair in sunset light, discern
+Its mirage-lifted Isles of Peace.
+
+
+
+O. W. HOLMES ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTH-DAY.
+
+Climbing a path which leads back never more
+We heard behind his footsteps and his cheer;
+Now, face to face, we greet him standing here
+Upon the lonely summit of Fourscore
+Welcome to us, o'er whom the lengthened day
+Is closing and the shadows colder grow,
+His genial presence, like an afterglow,
+Following the one just vanishing away.
+Long be it ere the table shall be set
+For the last breakfast of the Autocrat,
+And love repeat with smiles and tears thereat
+His own sweet songs that time shall not forget.
+Waiting with us the call to come up higher,
+Life is not less, the heavens are only higher!
+
+
+
+JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
+
+From purest wells of English undefiled
+None deeper drank than he, the New World's child,
+Who in the language of their farm-fields spoke
+The wit and wisdom of New England folk,
+Shaming a monstrous wrong. The world-wide laugh
+Provoked thereby might well have shaken half
+The walls of Slavery down, ere yet the ball
+And mine of battle overthrew them all.
+
+
+
+HAVERHILL.
+
+1640-1890.
+
+     Read at the Celebration of the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary
+     of the City, July 2, 1890.
+
+O river winding to the sea!
+We call the old time back to thee;
+From forest paths and water-ways
+The century-woven veil we raise.
+
+The voices of to-day are dumb,
+Unheard its sounds that go and come;
+We listen, through long-lapsing years,
+To footsteps of the pioneers.
+
+Gone steepled town and cultured plain,
+The wilderness returns again,
+The drear, untrodden solitude,
+The gloom and mystery of the wood!
+
+Once more the bear and panther prowl,
+The wolf repeats his hungry howl,
+And, peering through his leafy screen,
+The Indian's copper face is seen.
+
+We see, their rude-built huts beside,
+Grave men and women anxious-eyed,
+And wistful youth remembering still
+Dear homes in England's Haverhill.
+
+We summon forth to mortal view
+Dark Passaquo and Saggahew,--
+Wild chiefs, who owned the mighty sway
+Of wizard Passaconaway.
+
+Weird memories of the border town,
+By old tradition handed down,
+In chance and change before us pass
+Like pictures in a magic glass,--
+
+The terrors of the midnight raid,
+The-death-concealing ambuscade,
+The winter march, through deserts wild,
+Of captive mother, wife, and child.
+
+Ah! bleeding hands alone subdued
+And tamed the savage habitude
+Of forests hiding beasts of prey,
+And human shapes as fierce as they.
+
+Slow from the plough the woods withdrew,
+Slowly each year the corn-lands grew;
+Nor fire, nor frost, nor foe could kill
+The Saxon energy of will.
+
+And never in the hamlet's bound
+Was lack of sturdy manhood found,
+And never failed the kindred good
+Of brave and helpful womanhood.
+
+That hamlet now a city is,
+Its log-built huts are palaces;
+The wood-path of the settler's cow
+Is Traffic's crowded highway now.
+
+And far and wide it stretches still,
+Along its southward sloping hill,
+And overlooks on either hand
+A rich and many-watered land.
+
+And, gladdening all the landscape, fair
+As Pison was to Eden's pair,
+Our river to its valley brings
+The blessing of its mountain springs.
+
+And Nature holds with narrowing space,
+From mart and crowd, her old-time grace,
+And guards with fondly jealous arms
+The wild growths of outlying farms.
+
+Her sunsets on Kenoza fall,
+Her autumn leaves by Saltonstall;
+No lavished gold can richer make
+Her opulence of hill and lake.
+
+Wise was the choice which led out sires
+To kindle here their household fires,
+And share the large content of all
+Whose lines in pleasant places fall.
+
+More dear, as years on years advance,
+We prize the old inheritance,
+And feel, as far and wide we roam,
+That all we seek we leave at home.
+
+Our palms are pines, our oranges
+Are apples on our orchard trees;
+Our thrushes are our nightingales,
+Our larks the blackbirds of our vales.
+
+No incense which the Orient burns
+Is sweeter than our hillside ferns;
+What tropic splendor can outvie
+Our autumn woods, our sunset sky?
+
+If, where the slow years came and went,
+And left not affluence, but content,
+Now flashes in our dazzled eyes
+The electric light of enterprise;
+
+And if the old idyllic ease
+Seems lost in keen activities,
+And crowded workshops now replace
+The hearth's and farm-field's rustic grace;
+
+
+No dull, mechanic round of toil
+Life's morning charm can quite despoil;
+And youth and beauty, hand in hand,
+Will always find enchanted land.
+
+No task is ill where hand and brain
+And skill and strength have equal gain,
+And each shall each in honor hold,
+And simple manhood outweigh gold.
+
+Earth shall be near to Heaven when all
+That severs man from man shall fall,
+For, here or there, salvation's plan
+Alone is love of God and man.
+
+O dwellers by the Merrimac,
+The heirs of centuries at your back,
+Still reaping where you have not sown,
+A broader field is now your own.
+
+Hold fast your Puritan heritage,
+But let the free thought of the age
+Its light and hope and sweetness add
+To the stern faith the fathers had.
+
+Adrift on Time's returnless tide,
+As waves that follow waves, we glide.
+God grant we leave upon the shore
+Some waif of good it lacked before;
+
+Some seed, or flower, or plant of worth,
+Some added beauty to the earth;
+Some larger hope, some thought to make
+The sad world happier for its sake.
+
+As tenants of uncertain stay,
+So may we live our little day
+That only grateful hearts shall fill
+The homes we leave in Haverhill.
+
+The singer of a farewell rhyme,
+Upon whose outmost verge of time
+The shades of night are falling down,
+I pray, God bless the good old town!
+
+
+
+TO G. G.
+
+AN AUTOGRAPH.
+
+     The daughter of Daniel Gurteen, Esq., delegate from Haverhill,
+     England, to the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary celebration of
+     Haverhill, Massachusetts. The Rev. John Ward of the former place
+     and many of his old parishioners were the pioneer settlers of the
+     new town on the Merrimac.
+
+Graceful in name and in thyself, our river
+None fairer saw in John Ward's pilgrim flock,
+Proof that upon their century-rooted stock
+The English roses bloom as fresh as ever.
+
+Take the warm welcome of new friends with thee,
+And listening to thy home's familiar chime
+Dream that thou hearest, with it keeping time,
+The bells on Merrimac sound across the sea.
+
+Think of our thrushes, when the lark sings clear,
+Of our sweet Mayflowers when the daisies bloom;
+And bear to our and thy ancestral home
+The kindly greeting of its children here.
+
+Say that our love survives the severing strain;
+That the New England, with the Old, holds fast
+The proud, fond memories of a common past;
+Unbroken still the ties of blood remain!
+
+
+
+INSCRIPTION
+
+     For the bass-relief by Preston Powers, carved upon the huge boulder
+     in Denver Park, Col., and representing the Last Indian and the Last
+     Bison.
+
+The eagle, stooping from yon snow-blown peaks,
+For the wild hunter and the bison seeks,
+In the changed world below; and finds alone
+Their graven semblance in the eternal stone.
+
+
+
+LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY.
+
+Inscription on her Memorial Tablet in Christ Church at Hartford, Conn.
+
+She sang alone, ere womanhood had known
+The gift of song which fills the air to-day
+Tender and sweet, a music all her own
+May fitly linger where she knelt to pray.
+
+
+
+MILTON
+
+Inscription on the Memorial Window in St. Margaret's Church,
+Westminster, the gift of George W. Childs, of America.
+
+The new world honors him whose lofty plea
+For England's freedom made her own more sure,
+Whose song, immortal as its theme, shall be
+Their common freehold while both worlds endure.
+
+
+
+THE BIRTHDAY WREATH
+
+December 17, 1891.
+
+Blossom and greenness, making all
+The winter birthday tropical,
+And the plain Quaker parlors gay,
+Have gone from bracket, stand, and wall;
+We saw them fade, and droop, and fall,
+And laid them tenderly away.
+
+White virgin lilies, mignonette,
+Blown rose, and pink, and violet,
+A breath of fragrance passing by;
+Visions of beauty and decay,
+Colors and shapes that could not stay,
+The fairest, sweetest, first to die.
+
+But still this rustic wreath of mine,
+Of acorned oak and needled pine,
+And lighter growths of forest lands,
+Woven and wound with careful pains,
+And tender thoughts, and prayers, remains,
+As when it dropped from love's dear hands.
+
+And not unfitly garlanded,
+Is he, who, country-born and bred,
+Welcomes the sylvan ring which gives
+A feeling of old summer days,
+The wild delight of woodland ways,
+The glory of the autumn leaves.
+
+And, if the flowery meed of song
+To other bards may well belong,
+Be his, who from the farm-field spoke
+A word for Freedom when her need
+Was not of dulcimer and reed.
+This Isthmian wreath of pine and oak.
+
+
+
+THE WIND OF MARCH.
+
+Up from the sea, the wild north wind is blowing
+Under the sky's gray arch;
+Smiling, I watch the shaken elm-boughs, knowing
+It is the wind of March.
+
+Between the passing and the coming season,
+This stormy interlude
+Gives to our winter-wearied hearts a reason
+For trustful gratitude.
+
+Welcome to waiting ears its harsh forewarning
+Of light and warmth to come,
+The longed-for joy of Nature's Easter morning,
+The earth arisen in bloom.
+
+In the loud tumult winter's strength is breaking;
+I listen to the sound,
+As to a voice of resurrection, waking
+To life the dead, cold ground.
+
+Between these gusts, to the soft lapse I hearken
+Of rivulets on their way;
+I see these tossed and naked tree-tops darken
+With the fresh leaves of May.
+
+This roar of storm, this sky so gray and lowering
+Invite the airs of Spring,
+A warmer sunshine over fields of flowering,
+The bluebird's song and wing.
+
+Closely behind, the Gulf's warm breezes follow
+This northern hurricane,
+And, borne thereon, the bobolink and swallow
+Shall visit us again.
+
+And, in green wood-paths, in the kine-fed pasture
+And by the whispering rills,
+Shall flowers repeat the lesson of the Master,
+Taught on his Syrian hills.
+
+Blow, then, wild wind! thy roar shall end in singing,
+Thy chill in blossoming;
+Come, like Bethesda's troubling angel, bringing
+The healing of the Spring.
+
+
+
+BETWEEN THE GATES.
+
+Between the gates of birth and death
+An old and saintly pilgrim passed,
+With look of one who witnesseth
+The long-sought goal at last.
+
+O thou whose reverent feet have found
+The Master's footprints in thy way,
+And walked thereon as holy ground,
+A boon of thee I pray.
+
+"My lack would borrow thy excess,
+My feeble faith the strength of thine;
+I need thy soul's white saintliness
+To hide the stains of mine.
+
+"The grace and favor else denied
+May well be granted for thy sake."
+So, tempted, doubting, sorely tried,
+A younger pilgrim spake.
+
+"Thy prayer, my son, transcends my gift;
+No power is mine," the sage replied,
+"The burden of a soul to lift
+Or stain of sin to hide.
+
+"Howe'er the outward life may seem,
+For pardoning grace we all must pray;
+No man his brother can redeem
+Or a soul's ransom pay.
+
+"Not always age is growth of good;
+Its years have losses with their gain;
+Against some evil youth withstood
+Weak hands may strive in vain.
+
+"With deeper voice than any speech
+Of mortal lips from man to man,
+What earth's unwisdom may not teach
+The Spirit only can.
+
+"Make thou that holy guide thine own,
+And following where it leads the way,
+The known shall lapse in the unknown
+As twilight into day.
+
+"The best of earth shall still remain,
+And heaven's eternal years shall prove
+That life and death, and joy and pain,
+Are ministers of Love."
+
+
+
+THE LAST EVE OF SUMMER.
+
+Summer's last sun nigh unto setting shines
+Through yon columnar pines,
+And on the deepening shadows of the lawn
+Its golden lines are drawn.
+
+Dreaming of long gone summer days like this,
+Feeling the wind's soft kiss,
+Grateful and glad that failing ear and sight
+Have still their old delight,
+
+I sit alone, and watch the warm, sweet day
+Lapse tenderly away;
+And, wistful, with a feeling of forecast,
+I ask, "Is this the last?
+
+"Will nevermore for me the seasons run
+Their round, and will the sun
+Of ardent summers yet to come forget
+For me to rise and set?"
+
+Thou shouldst be here, or I should be with thee
+Wherever thou mayst be,
+Lips mute, hands clasped, in silences of speech
+Each answering unto each.
+
+For this still hour, this sense of mystery far
+Beyond the evening star,
+No words outworn suffice on lip or scroll:
+The soul would fain with soul
+
+Wait, while these few swift-passing days fulfil
+The wise-disposing Will,
+And, in the evening as at morning, trust
+The All-Merciful and Just.
+
+The solemn joy that soul-communion feels
+Immortal life reveals;
+And human love, its prophecy and sign,
+Interprets love divine.
+
+Come then, in thought, if that alone may be,
+O friend! and bring with thee
+Thy calm assurance of transcendent Spheres
+And the Eternal Years!
+August 31, 1890.
+
+
+
+TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
+8TH Mo. 29TH, 1892.
+
+This, the last of Mr. Whittier's poems, was written but a few weeks
+before his death.
+
+Among the thousands who with hail and cheer
+Will welcome thy new year,
+How few of all have passed, as thou and I,
+So many milestones by!
+
+We have grown old together; we have seen,
+Our youth and age between,
+Two generations leave us, and to-day
+We with the third hold way,
+
+Loving and loved. If thought must backward run
+To those who, one by one,
+In the great silence and the dark beyond
+Vanished with farewells fond,
+
+Unseen, not lost; our grateful memories still
+Their vacant places fill,
+And with the full-voiced greeting of new friends
+A tenderer whisper blends.
+
+Linked close in a pathetic brotherhood
+Of mingled ill and good,
+Of joy and grief, of grandeur and of shame,
+For pity more than blame,--
+
+The gift is thine the weary world to make
+More cheerful for thy sake,
+Soothing the ears its Miserere pains,
+With the old Hellenic strains,
+
+Lighting the sullen face of discontent
+With smiles for blessings sent.
+Enough of selfish wailing has been had,
+Thank God! for notes more glad.
+
+Life is indeed no holiday; therein
+Are want, and woe, and sin,
+Death and its nameless fears, and over all
+Our pitying tears must fall.
+
+Sorrow is real; but the counterfeit
+Which folly brings to it,
+We need thy wit and wisdom to resist,
+O rarest Optimist!
+
+Thy hand, old friend! the service of our days,
+In differing moods and ways,
+May prove to those who follow in our train
+Not valueless nor vain.
+
+Far off, and faint as echoes of a dream,
+The songs of boyhood seem,
+Yet on our autumn boughs, unflown with spring,
+The evening thrushes sing.
+
+The hour draws near, howe'er delayed and late,
+When at the Eternal Gate
+We leave the words and works we call our own,
+And lift void hands alone
+
+For love to fill. Our nakedness of soul
+Brings to that Gate no toll;
+Giftless we come to Him, who all things gives,
+And live because He lives.
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, AT SUNDOWN, PART 5 ***
+By John Greenleaf Whittier
+
+****** This file should be named 9585.txt or 9585.zip ******
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