The poetical works of John Greenleaf Whittier :: :: University of Virginia Library

Fond scenes, which delighted my youthful existence,
With feelings of sorrow I bid ye adieu—
A lasting adieu! for now, dim in the distance,
The shores of Hibernia recede from my view.

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Farewell to the cliffs, tempest-beaten and gray,
Which guard the lov'd shores of my own native land;
Farewell to the village and sail-shadow'd bay,
The forest-crown'd hill and the water-wash'd strand.

I've fought for my country—I've brav'd all the dangers
That throng round the path of the warrior in strife;
I now must depart to a nation of strangers,
And pass in seclusion the remnant of life;
Far, far from the friends to my bosom most dear,
With none to support me in peril and pain,
And none but the stranger to drop the sad tear
On the grave where the heart-broken Exile is lain.

Friends of my youth! I must leave you forever,
And hasten to dwell in a region unknown:—
Yet time cannot change, nor the broad ocean sever,
Hearts firmly united and tried as our own.
Ah, no! though I wander, all sad and forlorn,
In a far distant land, yet shall memory trace,
When far o'er the ocean's white surges I'm borne,
The scene of past pleasures,—my own native place.

Farewell shores of Erin, green land of my fathers:—
Once more, and forever, a mournful adieu!
For round thy dim headlands the ocean-mist gathers,
And shrouds the fair isle I no longer can view.
I go—but wherever my footsteps I bend,
For freedom and peace to my own native isle,
And contentment and joy to each warm-hearted friend
Shall be the heart's prayer of the lonely Exile!

Haverhill, 1825.

THE DEITY.

The Prophet stood
On the high mount, and saw the tempest cloud
Pour the fierce whirlwind from its reservoir
Of congregated gloom. The mountain oak,
Torn from the earth, heaved high its roots where once
Its branches waved. The fir-tree's shapely form,
Smote by the tempest, lashed the mountain's side.
Yet, calm in conscious purity, the Seer
Beheld the awful desolation, for
The Eternal Spirit moved not in the storm.

The tempest ceased. The caverned earthquake burst
Forth from its prison, and the mountain rocked
Even to its base. The topmost crags were thrown,
With fearful crashing, down its shuddering sides.
Unawed, the Prophet saw and heard; he felt

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Not in the earthquake moved the God of Heaven.
The murmur died away; and from the height,
Torn by the storm and shattered by the shock,
Rose far and clear, a pyramid of flame
Mighty and vast; the startled mountain deer
Shrank from its glare, and cowered within the shade;
The wild fowl shrieked—but even then the Seer
Untrembling stood and marked the fearful glow,
For Israel's God came not within the flame!

The fiery beacon sank. A still, small voice,
Unlike to human sound, at once conveyed
Deep awe and reverence to his pious heart.
Then bowed the holy man; his face he veiled
Within his mantle—and in meekness owned
The presence of his God, discerned not in
The storm, the earthquake, or the mighty flame.

1825.

THE VALE OF THE MERRIMAC.

There are streams which are famous in history's story,
Whose names are familiar to pen and to tongue,
Renowned in the records of love and of glory,
Where knighthood has ridden and minstrels have sung:
Fair streams thro' more populous regions are gliding,
Tower, temple, and palace their borders adorning,
With tall-masted ships on their broad bosoms riding,
Their banners stretch'd out in the breezes of morning;
And their vales may be lovely and pleasant—but never
Was skiff ever wafted, or wav'd a white sail
O'er a lovelier wave than my dear native river,
Or brighter tides roll'd than in Merrimac's vale!

And fair streams may glide where the climate is milder,
Where winter ne'er gathers and spring ever blooms,
And others may roll where the region is wilder,
Their dark waters hid in some forest's deep gloom,
Where the thunder-scath'd peaks of Helvetia are frowning,
And the Rhine's rapid waters encircle their bases,
Where the snows of long years are the hoary Alps crowning,
And the tempest-charg'd vapor their tall tops embraces:
There sure might be fix'd, amid scenery so frightful,
The region of romance and wild fairy-tale,—
But such scenes could not be to my heart so delightful
As the home of my fathers,—fair Merrimac's vale!

There are streams where the bounty of Providence musters
The fairest of fruits by their warm sunny sides,
The vine bending low with the grape's heavy clusters,
And the orange-tree waving its fruit o'er their tides:—

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But I envy not him whose lot has been cast there,
For oppression is there—and the hand of the spoiler,
Regardless of justice or mercy, has past there,
And made him a wretched and indigent toiler.
No—dearer to me are the scenes of my childhood,
The moss-cover'd bank and the breeze-wafted sail,
The age-stinted oak and the green groves of wild-wood
That wave round the borders of Merrimac's vale!

Oh, lovely the scene, when the gray misty vapor
Of morning is lifted from Merrimac's shore;
When the fire-fly, lighting his wild gleaming taper,
Thy dimly seen lowlands comes glimmering o'er;
When on thy calm surface the moonbeam falls brightly,
And the dull bird of night is his covert forsaking,
When the whippoorwill's notes from thy margin sound lightly,
And break on the sound which thy small waves are making,
O brightest of visions! my heart shall forever,
Till memory shall perish and reason shall fail,
Still preference give to my own native river,
The home of my fathers, and Merrimac's vale!

1825.

BENEVOLENCE.

Hail, heavenly gift! within the human breast,
Germ of unnumber'd virtues—by thy aid
The fainting heart, with riving grief opprest,
Survives the ruin adverse scenes have made:
Woes that have wrung the bosom, cares that preyed
Long on the spirit, are dissolv'd by thee—
Misfortune's frown, despair's disastrous shade,
Ghastly disease, and pining poverty,
Thy influence dread, and at thy approach they flee.

Thy spirit led th' immortal Howard on;
Nurtur'd by thee, on many a foreign shore
Imperishable fame, by virtue won,
Adorns his memory, tho' his course is o'er;
Thy animating smile his aspect wore,
To cheer the sorrow-desolated soul,
Compassion's balm in grief-worn hearts to pour,
And snatch the prisoner from despair's control,
Steal half his woes away and lighter make the whole.

Green be the sod on Cherson's honor'd field,
Where wraps the turf around his mouldering clay;
There let the earth her choicest beauties yield,
And there the breeze in gentlest murmurs play;
There let the widow and the orphan stray,
To wet with tears their benefactor's tomb;

337

There let the rescued prisoner bend his way,
And mourn o'er him, who in the dungeon's gloom
Had sought him and averted misery's fearful doom.

His grave perfum'd with heartfelt sighs of grief,
And moistened by the tear of gratitude,—
Oh, how unlike the spot where war's grim chief
Sinks on the field, in sanguine waves imbrued!
Who mourns for him, whose footsteps can be viewed
With reverential awe imprinted near
The monument rear'd o'er the man of blood?
Or who waste on it sorrow's balmy tear?
None! shame and misery rest alone upon his bier.

Offspring of heaven! Benevolence, thy pow'r
Bade Wilberforce its mighty champion be,
And taught a Clarkson's ardent mind to soar
O'er every obstacle, when serving thee:—
Theirs was the task to set the sufferer free,
To break the bonds which bound th' unwilling slave,
To shed abroad the light of liberty,
And leave to all the rights their Maker gave,
To bid the world rejoice o'er hated slavery's grave.

Diffuse thy charms, Benevolence! let thy light
Pierce the dark clouds which ages past have thrown
Before the beams of truth—and nature's right,
Inborn, let every hardened tyrant own;
On our fair shore, be thy mild presence known;
And every portion of Columbia's land
Be as God's garden with thy blessings sown;
Yea, o'er Earth's regions let thy love expand
Till all united are in friendship's sacred band!

Then in that hour of joy will be fulfilled
The prophet's heart-consoling prophecy;
Then war's commotion shall on earth be stilled,
And men their swords to other use apply;
Then Afric's injured sons no more shall try
The bitterness of slavery's toil and pain,
Nor pride nor love of gain direct the eye
Of stern oppression to their homes again;
But peace, a lasting peace, throughout the world shall reign.

9th mo., 1825.

OCEAN.

Unfathomed deep, unfetter'd waste
Of never-silent waves,
Each by its rushing follower chas'd,
Through unillumin'd caves,

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And o'er the rocks whose turrets rude,
E'en since the birth of time,
Have heard amid thy solitude
The billow's ceaseless chime.

O'er what recesses, depths unknown,
Dost thou thy waves impel,
Where never yet a sunbeam shone,
Or gleam of moonlight fell?
For never yet did mortal eyes
Thy gloom-wrapt deeps behold,
And naught of thy dread mysteries
The tongue of man hath told.

What, though proud man presume to hold
His course upon thy tide,
O'er thy dark billows uncontroll'd
His fragile bark to guide—
Yet who, upon thy mountain waves,
Can feel himself secure
While sweeping o'er thy yawning caves,
Deep, awful and obscure?

But thou art mild and tranquil now—
Thy wrathful spirits sleep,
And gentle billows, calm and slow,
Across thy bosom sweep.
Yet where the dim horizon's bound
Rests on thy sparkling bed,
The tempest-cloud, in gloom profound,
Prepares its wrath to shed.

Thus, mild and calm in youth's bright hour
The tide of life appears,
When fancy paints, with magic spell,
The bliss of coming years;
But clouds will rise, and darkness bring
O'er life's deceitful way,
And cruel disappointment fling
Its shade on hope's dim ray.

1st mo., 1827.

THE SICILIAN VESPERS.

Silence o'er sea and earth
With the veil of evening fell,
Till the convent-tower sent deeply forth
The chime of its vesper bell.
One moment—and that solemn sound
Fell heavy on the ear;

339

But a sterner echo passed around,
And the boldest shook to hear.

The startled monks thronged up,
In the torchlight cold and dim;
And the priest let fall his incense-cup,
And the virgin hushed her hymn,
For a boding clash, and a clanging tramp,
And a summoning voice were heard,
And fretted wall, and dungeon damp,
To the fearful echo stirred.

The peasant heard the sound,
As he sat beside his hearth;
And the song and the dance were hushed around,
With the fire-side tale of mirth.
The chieftain shook in his banner'd hall,
As the sound of fear drew nigh,
And the warder shrank from the castle wall,
As the gleam of spears went by.

Woe! woe! to the stranger, then,
At the feast and flow of wine,
In the red array of mailëd men,
Or bowed at the holy shrine;
For the wakened pride of an injured land
Had burst its iron thrall,
From the plumëd chief to the pilgrim band;
Woe! woe! to the sons of Gaul!

Proud beings fell that hour,
With the young and passing fair,
And the flame went up from dome and tower,
The avenger's arm was there!
The stranger priest at the altar stood,
And clasped his beads in prayer,
But the holy shrine grew dim with blood,
The avenger found him there!

Woe! woe! to the sons of Gaul,
To the serf and mailed lord;
They were gathered darkly, one and all,
To the harvest of the sword:
And the morning sun, with a quiet smile,
Shone out o'er hill and glen,
On ruined temple and smouldering pile,
And the ghastly forms of men.

Ay, the sunshine sweetly smiled,
As its early glance came forth,
It had no sympathy with the wild
And terrible things of earth.

340

And the man of blood that day might read,
In a language freely given,
How ill his dark and midnight deed
Became the calm of Heaven.

20th of 11th mo., 1828.

THE SPIRIT OF THE NORTH.

Spirit of the frozen North,
Where the wave is chained and still,
And the savage bear looks forth
Nightly from his caverned hill!
Down from thy eternal throne,
From thy land of cloud and storm,
Where the meeting icebergs groan,
Sweepeth on thy wrathful form.

Spirit of the frozen wing!
Dweller of a voiceless clime,
Where no coming on of spring,
Gilds the weary course of time!
Monarch of a realm untrod,
By the restless feet of men,
Where alone the hand of God,
'Mid his mighty works hath been!

Throned amid the ancient hills,
Piled with undecaying snow,
Flashing with the path of rills,
Frozen in their first glad flow;
Thou hast seen the gloomy north,
Gleaming with unearthly light,
Spreading its pale banners forth,
Checkered with the stars of night.

Thou hast gazed untrembling, where
Giant forms of flame were driven,
Like the spirits of the air,
Striding up the vault of heaven!
Thou hast seen that midnight glow,
Hiding moon and star and sky,
And the icy hills below,
Reddening to the fearful dye.

Dark and desolate and lone,
Curtained with the tempest-cloud,
Drawn around thy ancient throne
Like oblivion's moveless shroud,
Dim and distantly the sun
Glances on thy palace walls,
But a shadow cold and dun
Broods along its pillared halls.

341

Lord of sunless depths and cold!
Chainer of the northern sea!
At whose feet the storm is rolled,
Who hath power to humble thee?
Spirit of the stormy north!
Bow thee to thy Maker's nod;
Bend to him who sent thee forth,
Servant of the living God.

1st month, 1829.

THE EARTHQUAKE.

Calmly the night came down
O'er Scylla's shatter'd walls;
How desolate that silent town!
How tenantless the halls,
Where yesterday her thousands trod,
And princes graced their proud abode!

Low, on the wet sea sand,
Humbled in anguish now,
The despot, midst his menial band,
Bent down his kingly brow;
And prince and peasant knelt in prayer,
For grief had made them equal there.

Again as at the morn,
The earthquake roll'd its car:
Lowly the castle-towers were borne,
That mock'd the storms of war;
The mountain reeled, its shiver'd brow
Went down among the waves below.

Up rose the kneelers then,
As the wave's rush was heard:
The horror of those fated men
Was uttered by no word.
But closer still the mother prest
The infant to her faithful breast.

One long, wild shriek went up,
Full mighty in despair;
As bow'd to drink death's bitter cup,
The thousands gathered there;
And man's strong wail, and woman's cry
Blent as the waters hurried by.

On swept the whelming sea;
The mountains felt its shock,
As the long cry of agony
Thrills thro' their towers of rock:

342

An echo round that fatal shore,
The death wail of the sufferers bore.

The morning sun shed forth
Its light upon the scene,
Where tower and palace strew'd the earth
With wrecks of what had been.
But of the thousands who were gone,
No trace was left, no vestige shown.

1828.

JUDITH AT THE TENT OF HOLOFERNES.

Night was down among the mountains,
In her dim and quiet manner,
Where Bethulia's silver fountains
Gushed beneath the Assyrian banner.
Moonlight, o'er her meek dominion,
As a mighty flag unfurled,
Like an angel's snowy pinion
Resting on a darkened world!

Faintly rose the city's murmur,
But the crowded camp was calm;
Girded in their battle armor,
Each a falchion at his arm,
Lordly chief and weary vassal
In the arms of slumber fell;
It had been a day of wassail,
And the wine had circled well.

Underneath his proud pavilion
Lay Assyria's champion,
Where the ruby's rich vermilion
Shone beside the beryl-stone.
With imperial purple laden,
Breathing in the perfumed air,
Dreams he of the Jewish maiden,
With her dark and jewelled hair.

Who is she, the pale-browed stranger,
Bending o'er that son of slaughter?
God be with thee in thy danger,
Israel's lone and peerless daughter!
She hath bared her queenly beauty
To the dark Assyrian's glance;
Now, a high and sterner duty
Bids her to his couch advance.

Beautiful and pale she bendeth
In her earnest prayer to Heaven;

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Look again, that maiden standeth
In the strength her God has given!
Strangely is her dark eye kindled,
Hot blood through her cheek is poured;
Lo, her every fear hath dwindled,
And her hand is on the sword!

Upward to the flashing curtain,
See, that mighty blade is driven,
And its fall!—'t is swift and certain
As the cloud-fire's track in heaven!
Down, as with a power supernal,
Twice the lifted weapon fell;
Twice, his slumber is eternal—
Who shall wake the infidel?

Sunlight on the mountains streameth
Like an air-borne wave of gold;
And Bethulia's armor gleameth
Round Judea's banner-fold.
Down they go, the mailëd warriors,
As the upper torrents sally
Headlong from their mountain-barriers
Down upon the sleeping valley.

Rouse thee from thy couch, Assyrian!
Dream no more of woman's smile;
Fiercer than the leaguered Tyrian,
Or the dark-browed sons of Nile,
Foes are on thy slumber breaking,
Chieftain to thy battle rise!
Vain the call—he will not waken—
Headless on his couch he lies.

Who hath dimmed your boasted glory?
What hath woman's weakness done?
Whose dark brow is up before ye,
Blackening in the fierce-haired sun?
Lo! an eye that never slumbers
Looketh in its vengeance down;
And the thronged and mailëd numbers
Wither at Jehovah's frown!

1829.

METACOM.

[_]

Metacom, or Philip, the chief of the Wampanoags, was the most powerful and sagacious Sachem who ever made war upon the English.

Red as the banner which enshrouds
The warrior-dead, when strife is done,

344

A broken mass of crimson clouds
Hung over the departed sun.
The shadow of the western hill
Crept swiftly down, and darkly still,
As if a sullen wave of night
Were rushing on the pale twilight;
The forest-openings grew more dim,
As glimpses of the arching blue
And waking stars came softly through
The rifts of many a giant limb.
Above the wet and tangled swamp
White vapors gathered thick and damp,
And through their cloudy curtaining
Flapped many a brown and dusky wing—
Pinions that fan the moonless dun,
But fold them at the rising sun!

Beneath the closing veil of night,
And leafy bough and curling fog,
With his few warriors ranged in sight—
Scarred relics of his latest fight—
Rested the fiery Wampanoag.
He leaned upon his loaded gun,
Warm with its recent work of death,
And, save the struggling of his breath,
That, slow and hard and long-repressed,
Shook the damp folds around his breast,
An eye that was unused to scan
The sterner moods of that dark man
Had deemed his tall and silent form
With hidden passion fierce and warm,
With that fixed eye, as still and dark
As clouds which veil their lightning spark,
That of some forest-champion,
Whom sudden death had passed upon—
A giant frozen into stone!
Son of the thronëd Sachem!—Thou,
The sternest of the forest kings,—
Shall the scorned pale-one trample now,
Unambushed on thy mountain's brow,
Yea, drive his vile and hated plough
Among thy nation's holy things,
Crushing the warrior-skeleton
In scorn beneath his armëd heel,
And not a hand be left to deal
A kindred vengeance fiercely back,
And cross in blood the Spoiler's track?

He turned him to his trustiest one,
The old and war-tried Annawon—
“Brother!”—The favored warrior stood
In hushed and listening attitude—

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“This night the Vision-Spirit hath
Unrolled the scroll of fate before me;
And ere the sunrise cometh, Death
Will wave his dusky pinion o'er me!
Nay, start not—well I know thy faith—
Thy weapon now may keep its sheath;
But, when the bodeful morning breaks,
And the green forest widely wakes
Unto the roar of English thunder,
Then trusted brother, be it thine
To burst upon the foeman's line,
And rend his serried strength asunder.
Perchance thyself and yet a few
Of faithful ones may struggle through,
And, rallying on the wooded plain,
Strike deep for vengeance once again,
And offer up in pale-face blood
An offering to the Indian's God.”

A musket shot—a sharp, quick yell—
And then the stifled groan of pain,
Told that another red man fell,—
And blazed a sudden light again
Across that kingly brow and eye,
Like lightning on a clouded sky,—
And a low growl, like that which thrills
The hunter of the Eastern hills,
Burst through clenched teeth and rigid lip—
And, when the great chief spoke again
His deep voice shook beneath its rein,
As wrath and grief held fellowship.

“Brother! methought when as but now
I pondered on my nation's wrong,
With sadness on his shadowy brow
My father's spirit passed along!
He pointed to the far south-west,
Where sunset's gold was growing dim,
And seemed to beckon me to him,
And to the forests of the blest!—
My father loved the white men, when
They were but children, shelterless,
For his great spirit at distress
Melted to woman's tenderness—
Nor was it given him to know
That children whom he cherished then
Would rise at length, like armëd men,
To work his people's overthrow.
Yet thus it is;—the God before
Whose awful shrine the pale ones bow
Hath frowned upon, and given o'er
The red man to the stranger now!

346

A few more moons, and there will be
No gathering to the council tree;
The scorchëd earth—the blackened log—
The naked bones of warriors slain,
Be the sole relics which remain
Of the once mighty Wampanoag!
The forests of our hunting-land,
With all their old and solemn green,
Will bow before the Spoiler's axe—
The plough displace the hunter's tracks,
And the tall prayer-house steeple stand
Where the Great Spirit's shrine hath been!

“Yet, brother, from this awful hour
The dying curse of Metacom
Shall linger with abiding power
Upon the spoilers of my home.
The fearful veil of things to come,
By Kitchtan's hand is lifted from
The shadows of the embryo years;
And I can see more clearly through
Than ever visioned Powwah did,
For all the future comes unbid
Yet welcome to my trancëd view,
As battle-yell to warrior-ears!
From stream and lake and hunting-hill
Our tribes may vanish like a dream,
And even my dark curse may seem
Like idle winds when Heaven is still,
No bodeful harbinger of ill;
But, fiercer than the downright thunder,
When yawns the mountain-rock asunder,
And riven pine and knotted oak
Are reeling to the fearful stroke,
That curse shall work its master's will!
The bed of yon blue mountain stream
Shall pour a darker tide than rain—
The sea shall catch its blood-red stain,
And broadly on its banks shall gleam
The steel of those who should be brothers;
Yea, those whom one fond parent nursed
Shall meet in strife, like fiends accursed,
And trample down the once loved form,
While yet with breathing passion warm,
As fiercely as they would another's!”

The morning star sat dimly on
The lighted eastern horizon—
The deadly glare of levelled gun
Came streaking through the twilight haze
And naked to its reddest blaze,
A hundred warriors sprang in view;
One dark red arm was tossed on high,

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One giant shout came hoarsely through
The clangor and the charging cry,
Just as across the scattering gloom,
Red as the naked hand of Doom,
The English volley hurtled by—
The arm—the voice of Metacom!—
One piercing shriek—one vengeful yell,
Sent like an arrow to the sky,
Told when the hunter-monarch fell!

1829.

MOUNT AGIOCHOOK.

[_]

The Indians supposed the White Mountains were the residence of powerful spirits, and in consequence rarely ascended them.

Gray searcher of the upper air,
There's sunshine on thy ancient walls,
A crown upon thy forehead bare,
A flash upon thy waterfalls.
A rainbow glory in the cloud
Upon thine awful summit bowed,
The radiant ghost of a dead storm!
And music from the leafy shroud
Which swathes in green thy giant form,
Mellowed and softened from above
Steals downward to the lowland ear,
Sweet as the first, fond dream of love
That melts upon the maiden's ear.

The time has been, white giant, when
Thy shadows veiled the red man's home,
And over crag and serpent den,
And wild gorge where the steps of men
In chase or battle might not come,
The mountain eagle bore on high
The emblem of the free of soul,
And, midway in the fearful sky,
Sent back the Indian battle cry,
And answered to the thunder's roll.

The wigwam fires have all burned out,
The moccasin has left no track;
Nor wolf nor panther roam about
The Saco and the Merrimac.
And thou, that liftest up on high
Thy mighty barriers to the sky,
Art not the haunted mount of old,
Where on each crag of blasted stone
Some dreadful spirit found his throne,
And hid within the thick cloud fold,

348

Heard only in the thunder's crash,
Seen only in the lightning's flash,
When crumbled rock and riven branch
Went down before the avalanche!

No more that spirit moveth there;
The dwellers of the vale are dead;
No hunter's arrow cleaves the air;
No dry leaf rustles to his tread.
The pale-face climbs thy tallest rock,
His hands thy crystal gates unlock;
From steep to steep his maidens call,
Light laughing, like the streams that fall
In music down thy rocky wall,
And only when their careless tread
Lays bare an Indian arrow-head,
Spent and forgetful of the deer,
Think of the race that perished here.

Oh, sacred to the Indian seer,
Gray altar of the men of old!
Not vainly to the listening ear
The legends of thy past are told,—
Tales of the downward sweeping flood,
When bowed like reeds thy ancient wood;
Of armëd hands, and spectral forms;
Of giants in their leafy shroud,
And voices calling long and loud
In the dread pauses of thy storms.
For still within their caverned home
Dwell the strange gods of heathendom!

1829.

THE DRUNKARD TO HIS BOTTLE.

[_]

I was thinking of the temperance lyrics the great poet of Scotland might have written had he put his name to a pledge of abstinence, a thing unhappily unknown in his day. The result of my cogitation was this poor imitation of his dialect.

Hoot!—daur ye shaw ye're face again,
Ye auld black thief o' purse an' brain?
For foul disgrace, for dool an' pain
An' shame I ban ye:
Wae 's me, that e'er my lips have ta'en
Your kiss uncanny!

Nae mair, auld knave, without a shillin'
To keep a starvin' wight frae stealin'

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Ye'll sen' me hameward, blin' and reelin',
Frae nightly swagger,
By wall an' post my pathway feelin',
Wi' mony a stagger.

Nae mair o' fights that bruise an' mangle,
Nae mair o' nets my feet to tangle,
Nae mair o' senseless brawl an' wrangle,
Wi' frien' an' wife too,
Nae mair o' deavin' din an' jangle
My feckless life through.

Ye thievin', cheatin', auld Cheap Jack,
Peddlin' your poison brose, I crack
Your banes against my ingle-back
Wi' meikle pleasure.
Deil mend ye i' his workshop black,
E'en at his leisure!

I'll brak ye're neck, ye foul auld sinner,
I'll spill ye're bluid, ye vile beginner
O' a' the ills an' aches that winna
Quat saul an' body!
Gie me hale breeks an' weel-spread dinner
Deil tak' ye're toddy!

Nae mair wi' witches' broo gane gyte,
Gie me ance mair the auld delight
O' sittin' wi' my bairns in sight,
The gude wife near,
The weel-spent day, the peacefu' night,
The mornin' cheer!

Cock a' ye're heids, my bairns fu' gleg,
My winsome Robin, Jean, an' Meg,
For food and claes ye shall na beg
A doited daddie.
Dance, auld wife, on your girl-day leg,
Ye 've foun' your laddie!

1829.

THE FAIR QUAKERESS.

She was a fair young girl, yet on her brow
No pale pearl shone, a blemish on the pure
And snowy lustre of its living light,
No radiant gem shone beautifully through
The shadowing of her tresses, as a star
Through the dark sky of midnight; and no wreath
Of coral circled on her queenly neck,
In mockery of the glowing cheek and lip,
Whose hue the fairy guardian of the flowers

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Might never rival when her delicate touch
Tinges the rose of springtime.

Unadorned,
Save by her youthful charms, and with a garb
Simple as Nature's self, why turn to her
The proud and gifted, and the versed in all
The pageantry of fashion?

She hath not
Moved down the dance to music, when the hall
Is lighted up like sunshine, and the thrill
Of the light viol and the mellow flute,
And the deep tones of manhood, softened down
To very music melt upon the ear.—
She has not mingled with the hollow world
Nor tampered with its mockeries, until all
The delicate perceptions of the heart,
The innate modesty, the watchful sense
Of maiden dignity, are lost within
The maze of fashion and the din of crowds.

Yet Beauty hath its homage. Kings have bowed
From the tall majesty of ancient thrones
With a prostrated knee, yea, cast aside
The awfulness of time-created power
For the regardful glances of a child.
Yea, the high ones and powerful of Earth,
The helmëd sons of victory, the grave
And schooled philosophers, the giant men
Of overmastering intellect, have turned
Each from the separate idol of his high
And vehement ambition for the low
Idolatry of human loveliness;
And bartered the sublimity of mind,
The godlike and commanding intellect
Which nations knelt to, for a woman's tear,
A soft-toned answer; or a wanton's smile.

And in the chastened beauty of that eye,
And in the beautiful play of that red lip,
And in the quiet smile, and in the voice
Sweet as the tuneful greeting of a bird
To the first flowers of springtime, there is more
Than the perfection of the painter's skill
Or statuary's moulding. Mind is there,
The pure and holy attributes of soul,
The seal of virtue, the exceeding grace
Of meekness blended with a maiden pride;
Nor deem ye that beneath the gentle smile,
And the calm temper of a chastened mind
No warmth of passion kindles, and no tide

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Of quick and earnest feeling courses on
From the warm heart's pulsations. There are springs
Of deep and pure affection, hidden now,
Within that quiet bosom, which but wait
The thrilling of some kindly touch, to flow
Like waters from the Desert-rock of old.

1830.

BOLIVAR.

A dirge is wailing from the Gulf of storm-vexed Mexico,
To where through Pampas' solitudes the mighty rivers flow;
The dark Sierras hear the sound, and from each mountain rift,
Where Andes and Cordilleras their awful summits lift,
Where Cotopaxi's fiery eye glares redly upon heaven,
And Chimborazo's shattered peak the upper sky has riven;
From mount to mount, from wave to wave, a wild and long lament,
A sob that shakes like her earthquakes the startled continent!

A light dies out, a life is sped—the hero's at whose word
The nations started as from sleep, and girded on the sword;
The victor of a hundred fields where blood was poured like rain,
And Freedom's loosened avalanche hurled down the hosts of Spain,
The eagle soul on Junin's slope who showed his shouting men
A grander sight than Balboa saw from wave-washed Darien,
As from the snows with battle red died out the sinking sun,
And broad and vast beneath him lay a world for freedom won.

How died that victor? In the field with banners o'er him thrown,
With trumpets in his failing ear, by charging squadrons blown,
With scattered foemen flying fast and fearfully before him,
With shouts of triumph swelling round and brave men bending o'er him?
Not on his fields of victory, nor in his council hall,
The worn and sorrowing leader heard the inevitable call.
Alone he perished in the land he saved from slavery's ban,
Maligned and doubted and denied, a broken-hearted man!

Now let the New World's banners droop above the fallen chief,
And let the mountaineer's dark eyes be wet with tears of grief!
For slander's sting, for envy's hiss, for friendship hatred grown,
Can funeral pomp, and tolling bell, and priestly mass atone?
Better to leave unmourned the dead than wrong men while they live;
What if the strong man failed or erred, could not his own forgive?
O people freed by him, repent above your hero's bier:
The sole resource of late remorse is now his tomb to rear!

1830.

ISABELLA OF AUSTRIA.

[_]

Isabella, Infanta of Parma, and consort of Joseph of Austria, predicted her own death, immediately after her marriage

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with the Emperor. Amidst the gayety and splendor of Vienna and Presburg, she was reserved and melancholy; she believed that Heaven had given her a view of the future, and that her child, the namesake of the great Maria Theresa, would perish with her. Her prediction was fulfilled.

'Midst the palace bowers of Hungary, imperial Presburg's pride,
With the noble born and beautiful assembled at her side,
She stood beneath the summer heavens, the soft wind sighing on,
Stirring the green and arching boughs like dancers in the sun.
The beautiful pomegranate flower, the snowy orange bloom,
The lotus and the trailing vine, the rose's meek perfume,
The willow crossing with its green some statue's marble hair,
All that might charm the fresh young sense, or light the soul, was there!

But she, a monarch's treasured one, leaned gloomily apart,
With her dark eyes tearfully cast down, and a shadow on her heart.
Young, beautiful, and dearly loved, what sorrow hath she known?
Are not the hearts and swords of all held sacred as her own?
Is not her lord the kingliest in battle-field or tower?
The wisest in the council-hall, the gayest in the bower?
Is not his love as full and deep as his own Danube's tide?
And wherefore in her princely home weeps Isabel his bride?

She raised her jewelled hand, and flung her veiling tresses back,
Bathing its snowy tapering within their glossy black.
A tear fell on the orange leaves, rich gem and mimic blossom,
And fringëd robe shook fearfully upon her sighing bosom.
“Smile on, smile on,” she murmured low, “for all is joy around,
Shadow and sunshine, stainless sky, soft airs, and blossomed ground.
'T is meet the light of heart should smile, when nature's smile is fair,
And melody and fragrance meet, twin sisters of the air.

“But ask me not to share with you the beauty of the scene,
The fountain-fall, mosaic walk, and breadths of tender green;
And point not to the mild blue sky, or glorious summer sun,
I know how very fair is all the hand of God has done.
The hills, the sky, the sunlit cloud, the waters leaping forth,
The swaying trees, the scented flowers, the dark green robes of earth,—
I love them well, but I have learned to turn aside from all,
And nevermore my heart must own their sweet but fatal thrall.

“And I could love the noble one whose mighty name I bear,
And closer to my breaking heart his princely image wear,
And I could love our sweet young flower, unfolding day by day,
And taste of that unearthly joy which mothers only may,—
But what am I to cling to these?—A voice is in my ear,
A shadow lingers at my side, the death-wail and the bier!
The cold and starless night of Death where day may never beam,
The silence and forgetfulness, the sleep that hath no dream!

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“O God, to leave this fair bright world, and more than all to know
The moment when the Spectral One shall strike his fearful blow;
To know the day, the very hour, to feel the tide roll on,
To shudder at the gloom before and weep the sunshine gone;
To count the days, the few short days, of light and love and breath
Between me and the noisome grave, the voiceless home of death!
Alas!—if feeling, knowing this, I murmur at my doom,
Let not thy frowning, O my God! lend darkness to the tomb.

“Oh, I have borne my spirit up, and smiled amidst the chill
Remembrance of my certain doom which lingers with me still;
I would not cloud my fair child's brow, nor let a tear-drop dim
The eye that met my wedded lord's, lest it should sadden him;
But there are moments when the strength of feeling must have way;
That hidden tide of unnamed woe nor fear nor love can stay.
Smile on, smile on, light-hearted ones! Your sun of joy is high:
Smile on, and leave the doomed of Heaven alone to weep and die!”

A funeral chant was wailing through Vienna's holy pile,
A coffin with its gorgeous pall was borne along the aisle;
The drooping flags of many lands waved slow above the dead,
A mighty band of mourners came, a king was at its head,—
A youthful king, with mournful tread, and dim and tearful eye;
He scarce had dreamed that one so pure as his fair bride could die.
And sad and long above the throng the funeral anthem rung:
“Mourn for the hope of Austria! Mourn for the loved and young!”

The wail went up from other lands, the valleys of the Hun,
Fair Parma with its orange bowers, and hills of vine and sun;
The lilies of imperial France drooped as the sound went by,
The long lament of cloistered Spain was mingled with the cry.
The dwellers in Colorno's halls, the Slowak at his cave,
The bowed at the Escurial, the Magyar stoutly brave,
All wept the early stricken flower; and still the anthem rung:
“Mourn for the pride of Austria! Mourn for the loved and young!”

1831.

THE FRATRICIDE.

He stood on the brow of the well-known hill,
Its few gray oaks moan'd over him still;
The last of that forest which cast the gloom
Of its shadow at eve o'er his childhood's home;
And the beautiful valley beneath him lay
With its quivering leaves, and its streams at play,
And the sunshine over it all the while
Like the golden shower of the Eastern isle.

He knew the rock with its fingering vine,
And its gray top touch'd by the slant sunshine,
And the delicate stream which crept beneath
Soft as the flow of an infant's breath;

354

And the flowers which lean'd to the West wind's sigh,
Kissing each ripple which glided by;
And he knew every valley and wooded swell,
For the visions of childhood are treasured well.

Why shook the old man as his eye glanced down
That narrow ravine where the rude cliffs frown,
With their shaggy brows and their teeth of stone,
And their grim shade back from the sunlight thrown?
What saw he there save the dreary glen,
Where the shy fox crept from the eye of men,
And the great owl sat on the leafy limb
That the hateful sun might not look on him?

Fix'd, glassy, and strange was that old man's eye,
As if a spectre were stealing by,
And glared it still on that narrow dell
Where thicker and browner the twilight fell;
Yet at every sigh of the fitful wind,
Or stirring of leaves in the wood behind,
His wild glance wander'd the landscape o'er,
Then fix'd on that desolate dell once more.

Oh, who shall tell of the thoughts which ran
Through the dizzied brain of that gray old man?
His childhood's home, and his father's toil,
And his sister's kiss, and his mother's smile,
And his brother's laughter and gamesome mirth,
At the village school and the winter hearth;
The beautiful thoughts of his early time,
Ere his heart grew dark with its later crime.

And darker and wilder his visions came
Of the deadly feud and the midnight flame,
Of the Indian's knife with its slaughter red,
Of the ghastly forms of the scalpless dead,
Of his own fierce deeds in that fearful hour
When the terrible Brandt was forth in power,
And he clasp'd his hands o'er his burning eye
To shadow the vision which glided by.

It came with the rush of the battle-storm—
With a brother's shaken and kneeling form,
And his prayer for life when a brother's arm
Was lifted above him for mortal harm,
And the fiendish curse, and the groan of death,
And the welling of blood, and the gurgling breath,
And the scalp torn off while each nerve could feel
The wrenching hand and the jagged steel!

And the old man groan'd—for he saw, again,
The mangled corse of his kinsman slain,

355

As it lay where his hand had hurl'd it then,
At the shadow'd foot of that fearful glen!
And it rose erect, with the death-pang grim,
And pointed its bloodied finger at him!
And his heart grew cold—and the curse of Cain
Burn'd like a fire in the old man's brain.

Oh, had he not seen that spectre rise
On the blue of the cold Canadian skies?
From the lakes which sleep in the ancient wood,
It had risen to whisper its tale of blood,
And follow'd his bark to the sombre shore,
And glared by night through the wigwam door;
And here, on his own familiar hill,
It rose on his haunted vision still!

Whose corse was that which the morrow's sun,
Through the opening boughs, look'd calmly on?
There were those who bent o'er that rigid face
Who well in its darken'd lines might trace
The features of him who, a traitor, fled
From a brother whose blood himself had shed,
And there, on the spot where he strangely died,
They made the grave of the Fratricide!

1831.

ISABEL.

I do not love thee, Isabel, and yet thou art most fair!
I know the tempting of thy lips, the witchcraft of thy hair,
The winsome smile that might beguile the shy bird from his tree;
But from their spell I know so well, I shake my manhood free.

I might have loved thee, Isabel; I know I should if aught
Of all thy words and ways had told of one unselfish thought;
If through the cloud of fashion, the pictured veil of art,
One casual flash had broken warm, earnest from the heart.

But words are idle, Isabel, and if I praise or blame,
Or cheer or warn, it matters not; thy life will be the same;
Still free to use, and still abuse, unmindful of the harm,
The fatal gift of beauty, the power to choose and charm.

Then go thy way, fair Isabel, nor heed that from thy train
A doubtful follower falls away, enough will still remain.
But what the long-rebuking years may bring to them or thee
No prophet and no prophet's son am I to guess or see.

I do not love thee, Isabel; I would as soon put on
A crown of slender frost-work beneath the heated sun,

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Or chase the winds of summer, or trust the sleeping sea,
Or lean upon a shadow as think of loving thee.

1832.

STANZAS.

Bind up thy tresses, thou beautiful one,
Of brown in the shadow and gold in the sun!
Free should their delicate lustre be thrown
O'er a forehead more pure than the Parian stone;
Shaming the light of those Orient pearls
Which bind o'er its whiteness thy soft wreathing curse.

Smile, for thy glance on the mirror is thrown,
And the face of an angel is meeting thine own!
Beautiful creature, I marvel not
That thy cheek a lovelier tint hath caught;
And the kindling light of thine eye hath told
Of a dearer wealth than the miser's gold.

Away, away, there is danger here!
A terrible phantom is bending near:
Ghastly and sunken, his rayless eye
Scowls on thy loveliness scornfully,
With no human look, with no human breath,
He stands beside thee, the haunter, Death!

Fly! but, alas! he will follow still,
Like a moonlight shadow, beyond thy will;
In thy noonday walk, in thy midnight sleep,
Close at thy hand will that phantom keep;
Still in thine ear shall his whispers be;
Woe, that such phantom should follow thee!

In the lighted hall where the dancers go,
Like beautiful spirits, to and fro;
When thy fair arms glance in their stainless white,
Like ivory bathed in still moonlight;
And not one star in the holy sky
Hath a clearer light than thine own blue eye!

Oh, then, even then, he will follow thee,
As the ripple follows the bark at sea;
In the soften'd light, in the turning dance,
He will fix on thine his dead, cold glance;
The chill of his breath on thy cheek shall linger,
And thy warm blood shrink from his icy finger?

And yet there is hope. Embrace it now,
While thy soul is open as thy brow;
While thy heart is fresh, while its feelings still
Gush clear as the unsoil'd mountain-rill;

357

And thy smiles are free as the airs of spring,
Greeting and blessing each breathing thing.

When the after cares of thy life shall come,
When the bud shall wither before its bloom;
When thy soul is sick of the emptiness
And changeful fashion of human bliss;
When the weary torpor of blighted feeling
Over thy heart as ice is stealing;

Then, when thy spirit is turn'd above,
By the mild rebuke of the Chastener's love;
When the hope of that joy in thy heart is stirr'd,
Which eye hath not seen, nor ear hath heard,
Then will that phantom of darkness be
Gladness, and promise, and bliss to thee.

1832.

MOGG MEGONE.

[_]

This poem was commenced in 1830, but did not assume its present shape until four years after. It deals with the border strife of the early settlers of eastern New England and their savage neighbors; but its personages and incidents are mainly fictitious. Looking at it, at the present time, it suggests the idea of a big Indian in his war-paint strutting about in Sir Walter Scott's plaid.

1. PART I.

Who stands on that cliff, like a figure of stone,
Unmoving and tall in the light of the sky,
Where the spray of the cataract sparkles on high,
Lonely and sternly, save Mogg Megone?

Mogg Megone, or Hegone, was a leader among the Saco Indians, in the bloody war of 1677. He attacked and captured the garrison at Black Point, October 12th of that year; and cut off, at the same time, a party of Englishmen near Saco River. From a deed signed by this Indian in 1664, and from other circumstances, it seems that, previous to the war, he had mingled much with the colonists. On this account, he was probably selected by the principal sachems as their agent in the treaty signed in November, 1676.

Close to the verge of the rock is he,
While beneath him the Saco its work is doing,
Hurrying down to its grave, the sea,
And slow through the rock its pathway hewing!
Far down, through the mist of the falling river,
Which rises up like an incense ever,
The splintered points of the crags are seen,
With water howling and vexed between,
While the scooping whirl of the pool beneath
Seems an open throat, with its granite teeth!

But Mogg Megone never trembled yet
Wherever his eye or his foot was set.
He is watchful: each form in the moonlight dim,
Of rock or of tree, is seen of him:

358

He listens; each sound from afar is caught,
The faintest shiver of leaf and limb:
But he sees not the waters, which foam and fret,
Whose moonlit spray has his moccasin wet,—
And the roar of their rushing, he hears it not.

The moonlight, through the open bough
Of the gnarl'd beech, whose naked root
Coils like a serpent at his foot,
Falls, checkered, on the Indian's brow.
His head is bare, save only where
Waves in the wind one lock of hair,
Reserved for him, whoe'er he be,
More mighty than Megone in strife,
When breast to breast and knee to knee,
Above the fallen warrior's life
Gleams, quick and keen, the scalping-knife.

Megone hath his knife and hatchet and gun,
And his gaudy and tasselled blanket on:
His knife hath a handle with gold inlaid,
And magic words on its polished blade,—
'T was the gift of Castine

Baron de St. Castine came to Canada in 1644. Leaving his civilized companions, he plunged into the great wilderness, and settled among the Penobscot Indians, near the mouth of their noble river. He here took for his wives the daughters of the great Modocawando,—the most powerful sachem of the East. His castle was plundered by Governor Andros, during his reckless administration; and the enraged Baron is supposed to have excited the Indians into open hostility to the English.

to Mogg Megone,
For a scalp or twain from the Yengees torn:
His gun was the gift of the Tarrantine,
And Modocawando's wives had strung
The brass and the beads, which tinkle and shine
On the polished breach, and broad bright line
Of beaded wampum around it hung.

What seeks Megone? His foes are near,—
Grey Jocelyn's

The owner and commander of the garrison at Black Point, which Mogg attacked and plundered. He was an old man at the period to which the tale relates.

eye is never sleeping,
And the garrison lights are burning clear,
Where Phillips'

Major Phillips, one of the principal men of the Colony. His garrison sustained a long and terrible siege by the savages. As a magistrate and a gentleman, he exacted of his plebeian neighbors a remarkable degree of deference. The Court Records of the settlement inform us that an individual was fined for the heinous offence of saying that “Major Phillips's mare was as lean as an Indian dog.”

men their watch are keeping.
Let him hie him away through the dank river fog,
Never rustling the boughs nor displacing the rocks,
For the eyes and the ears which are watching for Mogg
Are keener than those of the wolf or the fox.

He starts,—there 's a rustle among the leaves:
Another,—the click of his gun is heard!
A footstep,—is it the step of Cleaves,
With Indian blood on his English sword?
Steals Harmon

Captain Harman, of Georgeana, now of York, was for many years the terror of the Eastern Indians. In one of his expeditions up the Kennebec River, at the head of a party of rangers, he discovered twenty of the savages asleep by a large fire. Cautiously creeping towards them until he was certain of his aim, he ordered his men to single out their objects. The first discharge killed or mortally wounded the whole number of the unconscious sleepers.

down from the sands of York,
With hand of iron and foot of cork?
Has Scamman, versed in Indian wile,
For vengeance left his vine-hung isle?

Wood Island, near the mouth of the Saco. It was visited by the Sieur de Monts and Champlain, in 1603. The following extract, from the journal of the latter, relates to it: “Having left the Ke mebec, we ran along the coast to the westward, and cast anchor under a small island, near the mainland, where we saw twenty or more natives. I here visited an island, beautifully clothed with a fine growth of forest trees, particularly of the oak and walnut; and overspread with vines, that, in their season, produce excellent grapes. We named it the island of Bacchus”—

Les Voyages de Sieur Champlain, liv. 2, c. 8.

Hark! at that whistle, soft and low,
How lights the eye of Mogg Megone!
A smile gleams o'er his dusky brow,—
“Boon welcome, Johnny Boniton!”

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Out steps, with cautious foot and slow,
And quick, keen glances to and fro,
The hunted outlaw, Boniton!

John Boniton was the son of Richard Bonython, Gent., one of the most efficient and able magistrates of the Colony. John proved to be “a degenerate plant.” In 1635, we find by the Court Records that, for some offence, he was fined 40s. In 1640, he was fined for abuse toward R. Gibson, the minister, and Mary, his wife. Soon after he was fined for disorderly conduct in the house of his father. In 1645, the “Great and General Court adjudged John Boniton outlawed, and incapable of any of his Majesty's laws, and proclaimed him a rebel.” (Court Records of the Province, 1645.) In 1651, he bade defiance to the laws of Massachusetts, and was again outlawed. He acted independently of all law and authority; and hence, doubtless, his burlesque title of “the Sagamore of Saco,” which has come down to the present generation in the following epitaph:—

“Here lies Boniton, the Sagamore of Saco;
He lived a rogue, and died a knave, and went to Hobomoko.”

By some means or other, he obtained a large estate. In this poem, I have taken some liberties with him, not strictly warranted by historical facts, although the conduct imputed to him is in keeping with his general character. Over the last years of his life lingers a deep obscurity. Even the manner of his death is uncertain. He was supposed to have been killed by the Indians; but this is doubted by the able and indefatigable author of the History of Saco and Biddeford.—

Part I. p. 115.

A low, lean, swarthy man is he,
With blanket-garb and buskined knee,
And naught of English fashion on;
For he hates the race from whence he sprung,
And he couches his words in the Indian tongue.

“Hush,—let the Sachem's voice be weak;
The water-rat shall hear him speak,—
The owl shall whoop in the white man's ear,
That Mogg Megone, with his scalps, is here!”
He pauses,—dark, over cheek and brow,
A flush, as of shame, is stealing now:
“Sachem!” he says, “let me have the land,
Which stretches away upon either hand,
As far about as my feet can stray
In the half of a gentle summer's day,
From the leaping brook

Foxwell's Brook flows from a marsh or bog, called the “Heath,” in Saco, containing thirteen hundred acres. On this brook, and surrounded by wild and romantic scenery, is a beautiful waterfall, of more than sixty feet.

to the Saco river,—
And the fair-haired girl, thou hast sought of me,
Shall sit in the Sachem's wigwam, and be
The wife of Mogg Megone forever.”

There 's a sudden light in the Indian's glance,
A moment's trace of powerful feeling,
Of love or triumph, or both perchance,
Over his proud, calm features stealing.
“The words of my father are very good;
He shall have the land, and water, and wood;
And he who harms the Sagamore John,
Shall feel the knife of Mogg Megone;
But the fawn of the Yengees shall sleep on my breast,
And the bird of the clearing shall sing in my nest.”

“But, father!”—and the Indian's hand
Falls gently on the white man's arm,
And with a smile as shrewdly bland
As the deep voice is slow and calm,—
“Where is my father's singing-bird,—
The sunny eye, and sunset hair?
I know I have my father's word,
And that his word is good and fair;
But will my father tell me where
Megone shall go and look for his bride?—
For he sees her not by her father's side.”

The dark, stern eye of Boniton
Flashes over the features of Mogg Megone,
In one of those glances which search within;
But the stolid calm of the Indian alone
Remains where the trace of emotion has been.

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“Does the Sachem doubt? Let him go with me,
And the eyes of the Sachem his bride shall see.”

Cautious and slow, with pauses oft,
And watchful eyes and whispers soft,
The twain are stealing through the wood,
Leaving the downward-rushing flood,
Whose deep and solemn roar behind
Grows fainter on the evening wind.

Hark!—is that the angry howl
Of the wolf, the hills among?—
Or the hooting of the owl,
On his leafy cradle swung?—
Quickly glancing, to and fro,
Listening to each sound they go
Round the columns of the pine,
Indistinct, in shadow, seeming
Like some old and pillared shrine;
With the soft and white moonshine,
Round the foliage-tracery shed
Of each column's branching head,
For its lamps of worship gleaming!
And the sounds awakened there,
In the pine-leaves fine and small,
Soft and sweetly musical,
By the fingers of the air,
For the anthem's dying fall
Lingering round some temple's wall!
Niche and cornice round and round
Wailing like the ghost of sound!
Is not Nature's worship thus,
Ceaseless ever, going on?
Hath it not a voice for us
In the thunder, or the tone
Of the leaf-harp faint and small,
Speaking to the unsealed ear
Words of blended love and fear,
Of the mighty Soul of all?

Naught had the twain of thoughts like these
As they wound along through the crowded trees,
Where never had rung the axeman's stroke
On the gnarlëd trunk of the rough-barked oak;—
Climbing the dead tree's mossy log,
Breaking the mesh of the bramble fine,
Turning aside the wild grapevine,
And lightly crossing the quaking bog
Whose surface shakes at the leap of the frog,
And out of whose pools the ghostly fog
Creeps into the chill moonshine!

Yet, even that Indian's ear had heard
The preaching of the Holy Word:

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Sanchekantacket's isle of sand
Was once his father's hunting land,
Where zealous Hiacoomes

Hiacoomes, the first Christian preacher on Martha's Vineyard; for a biography of whom the reader is referred to Increase Mayhew's account of the Praying Indians, 1726. The following is related of him: “One Lord's day, after meeting, where Hiacoomes had been preaching, there came in a Powwaw very angry, and said, ‘I know all the meeting Indians are liars. You say you don't care for the Powwaws;’ then calling two or three of them by name, he railed at them, and told them they were deceived, for the Powwaws could kill all the meeting Indians, if they set about it. But Hiacoomes told him that he would be in the midst of all the Powwaws in the island, and they should do the utmost they could against him; and when they should do their worst by their witchcraft to kill him, he would without fear set himself against them, by remembering Jehovah. He told them also he did put all the Powwaws under his heel. Such was the faith of this good man. Nor were these Powwaws ever able to do these Christian Indians any hurt, though others were frequently hurt and killed by them.”—

Mayhew, pp. 6, 7, c. 1.

stood,—
The wild apostle of the wood,
Shook from his soul the fear of harm,
And trampled on the Powwaw's charm;
Until the wizard's curses hung
Suspended on his palsying tongue,
And the fierce warrior, grim and tall,
Trembled before the forest Paul!

A cottage hidden in the wood,—
Red through its seams a light is glowing,
On rock and bough and tree-trunk rude,
A narrow lustre throwing.
“Who 's there?” a clear, firm voice demands;
“Hold, Ruth,—'t is I, the Sagamore!”
Quick, at the summons, hasty hands
Unclose the bolted door;
And on the outlaw's daughter shine
The flashes of the kindled pine.

Tall and erect the maiden stands,
Like some young priestess of the wood,
The freeborn child of Solitude,
And bearing still the wild and rude,
Yet noble trace of Nature's hands.
Her dark brown cheek has caught its stain
More from the sunshine than the rain;
Yet, where her long fair hair is parting,
A pure white brow into light is starting;
And, where the folds of her blanket sever,
Are neck and a bosom as white as ever
The foam-wreaths rise on the leaping river.
But in the convulsive quiver and grip
Of the muscles around her bloodless lip,
There is something painful and sad to see;
And her eye has a glance more sternly wild
Than even that of a forest child
In its fearless and untamed freedom should be.
Yet, seldom in hall or court are seen
So queenly a form and so noble a mien,
As freely and smiling she welcomes them there,—
Her outlawed sire and Mogg Megone:
“Pray, father, how does thy hunting fare?
And, Sachem, say,—does Scamman wear,
In spite of thy promise, a scalp of his own?”
Hurried and light is the maiden's tone;
But a fearful meaning lurks within
Her glance, as it questions the eye of Megone,—
An awful meaning of guilt and sin!—
The Indian hath opened his blanket, and there
Hangs a human scalp by its long damp hair!

362

With hand upraised, with quick-drawn breath,
She meets that ghastly sign of death.
In one long, glassy, spectral stare
The enlarging eye is fastened there,
As if that mesh of pale brown hair
Had power to change at sight alone,
Even as the fearful locks which wound
Medusa's fatal forehead round,
The gazer into stone.
With such a look Herodias read
The features of the bleeding head,
So looked the mad Moor on his dead,
Or the young Cenci as she stood,
O'er-dabbled with a father's blood!

Look!—feeling melts that frozen glance,
It moves that marble countenance,
As if at once within her strove
Pity with shame, and hate with love.
The Past recalls its joy and pain,
Old memories rise before her brain,—
The lips which love's embraces met,
The hand her tears of parting wet,
The voice whose pleading tones beguiled
The pleased ear of the forest-child,—
And tears she may no more repress
Reveal her lingering tenderness.

Oh, woman wronged can cherish hate
More deep and dark than manhood may;
But when the mockery of Fate
Hath left Revenge its chosen way,
And the fell curse, which years have nursed.
Full on the spoiler's head hath burst,—
When all her wrong, and shame, and pain,
Burns fiercely on his heart and brain,—
Still lingers something of the spell
Which bound her to the traitor's bosom,—
Still, midst the vengeful fires of hell,
Some flowers of old affection blossom.

John Boniton's eyebrows together are drawn
With a fierce expression of wrath and scorn,—
He hoarsely whispers, “Ruth, beware!
Is this the time to be playing the fool,—
Crying over a paltry lock of hair,
Like a love-sick girl at school?—
Curse on it!—an Indian can see and hear:
Away,—and prepare our evening cheer!”

How keenly the Indian is watching now
Her tearful eye and her varying brow,—

363

With a serpent eye, which kindles and burns,
Like a fiery star in the upper air:
On sire and daughter his fierce glance turns:—
“Has my old white father a scalp to spare?
For his young one loves the pale brown hair
Of the scalp of an English dog far more
Than Mogg Megone, or his wigwam floor;
Go,—Mogg is wise: he will keep his land,—
And Sagamore John, when he feels with his hand,
Shall miss his scalp where it grew before.”

The moment's gust of grief is gone,—
The lip is clenched,—the tears are still,—
God pity thee, Ruth Boniton!
With what a strength of will
Are nature's feelings in thy breast,
As with an iron hand, repressed!
And how, upon that nameless woe,
Quick as the pulse can come and go,
While shakes the unsteadfast knee, and yet
The bosom heaves,—the eye is wet,—
Has thy dark spirit power to stay
The heart's wild current on its way?
And whence that baleful strength of guile,
Which over that still working brow
And tearful eye and cheek can throw
The mockery of a smile?
Warned by her father's blackening frown,
With one strong effort crushing down
Grief, hate, remorse, she meets again
The savage murderer's sullen gaze,
And scarcely look or tone betrays
How the heart strives beneath its chain.

“Is the Sachem angry,—angry with Ruth,
Because she cries with an ache in her tooth,

“The tooth-ache,” says Roger Williams in his observations upon the language and customs of the New England tribes, “is the only paine which will force their stoute hearts to cry.” He afterwards remarks that even the Indian women never cry as he has heard “some of their men in their paine.”

Which would make a Sagamore jump and cry,
And look about with a woman's eye?
No,—Ruth will sit in the Sachem's door
And braid the mats for his wigwam floor,
And broil his fish and tender fawn,
And weave his wampum, and grind his corn,—
For she loves the brave and the wise, and none
Are braver and wiser than Mogg Megone!”

The Indian's brow is clear once more:
With grave, calm face, and half-shut eye,
He sits upon the wigwam floor,
And watches Ruth go by,
Intent upon her household care;
And ever and anon, the while,
Or on the maiden, or her fare,

364

Which smokes in grateful promise there,
Bestows his quiet smile.

Ah, Mogg Megone!—what dreams are thine,
But those which love's own fancies dress,—
The sum of Indian happiness!—
A wigwam, where the warm sunshine
Looks in among the groves of pine,—
A stream, where, round thy light canoe,
The trout and salmon dart in view,
And the fair girl, before thee now,
Spreading thy mat with hand of snow,
Or plying, in the dews of morn,
Her hoe amidst thy patch of corn,
Or offering up, at eve, to thee,
Thy birchen dish of hominy!

From the rude board of Boniton,
Venison and succotash have gone,—
For long these dwellers of the wood
Have felt the gnawing want of food.
But untasted of Ruth is the frugal cheer,—
With head averted, yet ready ear,
She stands by the side of her austere sire,
Feeding, at times, the unequal fire
With the yellow knots of the pitch-pine tree,
Whose flaring light, as they kindle, falls
On the cottage-roof, and its black log walls,
And over its inmates three.

From Sagamore Boniton's hunting flask
The fire-water burns at the lip of Megone:
“Will the Sachem hear what his father shall ask?
Will he make his mark, that it may be known,
On the speaking-leaf, that he gives the land,
From the Sachem's own, to his father's hand?”
The fire-water shines in the Indian's eyes,
As he rises, the white man's bidding to do:
‘Wuttamuttata—weekan!

Wuttamuttata, “Let us drink.” Wee kan, “It is sweet.” Vide Roger Williams's Key to the Indian Language, “in that parte of America called New England.”—

London, 1643, p. 35.

Mogg is wise,—
For the water he drinks is strong and new,—
Mogg's heart is great!—will he shut his hand,
When his father asks for a little land?”—
With unsteady fingers, the Indian has drawn
On the parchment the shape of a hunter's bow,
‘Boon water,—boon water,—Sagamore John!
Wuttamuttata,—weekan! our hearts will grow!”
He drinks yet deeper,—he mutters low,—
He reels on his bear-skin to and fro,—
His head falls down on his naked breast,—
He struggles, and sinks to a drunken rest.

“Humph—drunk as a beast!”—and Boniton's brow
Is darker than ever with evil thought—

365

“The fool has signed his warrant; but how
And when shall the deed be wrought?
Speak, Ruth! why, what the devil is there,
To fix thy gaze in that empty air?—
Speak, Ruth! by my soul, if I thought that tear,
Which shames thyself and our purpose here,
Were shed for that cursed and pale-faced dog,
Whose green scalp hangs from the belt of Mogg,
And whose beastly soul is in Satan's keeping,—
This—this!”—he dashes his hand upon
The rattling stock of his loaded gun,—
“Should send thee with him to do thy weeping!”

“Father!”—the eye of Boniton
Sinks at that low, sepulchral tone,
Hollow and deep, as it were spoken
By the unmoving tongue of death,—
Or from some statue's lips had broken,—
A sound without a breath!
“Father!—my life I value less
Than yonder fool his gaudy dress;
And how it ends it matters not,
By heart-break or by rifle-shot;
But spare awhile the scoff and threat,—
Our business is not finished yet.”

“True, true, my girl,—I only meant
To draw up again the bow unbent.
Harm thee, my Ruth! I only sought
To frighten off thy gloomy thought;
Come,—let 's be friends!” He seeks to clasp
His daughter's cold, damp hand in his.
Ruth startles from her father's grasp,
As if each nerve and muscle felt,
Instinctively, the touch of guilt,
Through all their subtle sympathies.

He points her to the sleeping Mogg:
“What shall be done with yonder dog?
Scamman is dead, and revenge is thine,—
The deed is signed and the land is mine;
And this drunken fool is of use no more,
Save as thy hopeful bridegroom, and sooth,
'T were Christian mercy to finish him, Ruth,
Now, while he lies like a beast on our floor,—
If not for thine, at least for his sake,
Rather than let the poor dog awake
To drain my flask, and claim as his bride
Such a forest devil to run by his side,—
Such a Wetuomanit

Wetuomanit,—a house god, or demon. “They—the Indians—have given me the names of thirty-seven gods which I have, all which in their solemne Worships they invocate!”—R. Williams's Briefe Observations of the Customs, Manners, Worships, etc., of the Natives, in Peace and Warre, in Life and Death: on all which is added Spiritual Observations, General and Particular, of Chiefe and Special use—upon all occasions—to all the English inhabiting these parts; yet Pleasant and Profitable to the view of all Mene: p. 110, c. 21.

as thou wouldst make!”

He laughs at his jest. Hush—what is there?—
The sleeping Indian is striving to rise,

366

With his knife in his hand, and glaring eyes!—
“Wagh!—Mogg will have the pale-face's hair,
For his knife is sharp, and his fingers can help
The hair to pull and the skin to peel,—
Let him cry like a woman and twist like an eel,
The great Captain Scamman must lose his scalp!
And Ruth, when she sees it, shall dance with Mogg.”
His eyes are fixed,—but his lips draw in,—
With a low, hoarse chuckle, and fiendish grin,—
And he sinks again, like a senseless log.

Ruth does not speak,—she does not stir;
But she gazes down on the murderer,
Whose broken and dreamful slumbers tell
Too much for her ear of that deed of hell.
She sees the knife, with its slaughter red,
And the dark fingers clenching the bearskin bed!
What thoughts of horror and madness whirl
Through the burning brain of that fallen girl!

John Boniton lifts his gun to his eye,
Its muzzle is close to the Indian's ear,—
But he drops it again. “Some one may be nigh,
And I would not that even the wolves should hear.”
He draws his knife from its deer-skin belt,—
Its edge with his fingers is slowly felt;—
Kneeling down on one knee, by the Indian's side,
From his throat he opens the blanket wide;
And twice or thrice he feebly essays
A trembling hand with the knife to raise.

“I cannot,”—he mutters,—“did he not save
My life from a cold and wintry grave,
When the storm came down from Agioochook,
And the north-wind howled, and the tree-tops shook,—
And I strove, in the drifts of the rushing snow,
Till my knees grew weak and I could not go,
And I felt the cold to my vitals creep,
And my heart's blood stiffen, and pulses sleep!
I cannot strike him—Ruth Boniton!
In the Devil's name, tell me—what 's to be done?”

Oh, when the soul, once pure and high,
Is stricken down from Virtue's sky,
As, with the downcast star of morn,
Some gems of light are with it drawn,
And, through its night of darkness, play
Some tokens of its primal day,
Some lofty feelings linger still,—
The strength to dare, the nerve to meet
Whatever threatens with defeat
Its all-indomitable will!—

367

But lacks the mean of mind and heart,
Though eager for the gains of crime,
Or, at his chosen place and time,
The strength to bear his evil part;
And, shielded by his very Vice,
Escapes from Crime by Cowardice.

Ruth starts erect,—with bloodshot eye,
And lips drawn tight across her teeth,
Showing their locked embrace beneath,
In the red firelight: “Mogg must die!
Give me the knife!” The outlaw turns,
Shuddering in heart and limb away,—
But, fitfully there, the hearth-fire burns,
And he sees on the wall strange shadows play.
A lifted arm, a tremulous blade,
Are dimly pictured in light and shade,
Plunging down in the darkness. Hark, that cry
Again—and again—he sees it fall,
That shadowy arm down the lighted wall!
He hears quick footsteps—a shape flits by—
The door on its rusted hinges creaks:—
“Ruth—daughter Ruth!” the outlaw shrieks.
But no sound comes back,—he is standing alone
By the mangled corse of Mogg Megone!

2. PART II.

'T is morning over Norridgewock,—
On tree and wigwam, wave and rock.
Bathed in the autumnal sunshine, stirred
At intervals by breeze and bird,
And wearing all the hues which glow
In heaven's own pure and perfect bow,
That glorious picture of the air,
Which summer's light-robed angel forms
On the dark ground of fading storms,
With pencil dipped in sunbeams there,—
And, stretching out, on either hand,
O'er all that wide and unshorn land,
Till, weary of its gorgeousness,
The aching and the dazzled eye
Rests, gladdened, on the calm blue sky,—
Slumbers the mighty wilderness!
The oak, upon the windy hill,
Its dark green burthen upward heaves—
The hemlock broods above its rill,
Its cone-like foliage darker still,
Against the birch's graceful stem,
And the rough walnut-bough receives
The sun upon its crowded leaves,

368

Each colored like a topaz gem;
And the tall maple wears with them
The coronal, which autumn gives,
The brief, bright sign of ruin near,
The hectic of a dying year!

The hermit priest, who lingers now
On the Bald Mountain's shrubless brow,
The gray and thunder-smitten pile
Which marks afar the Desert Isle,

Mt. Desert Island, the Bald Mountain upon which overlooks Frenchman's and Penobscot Bay. It was upon this island that the Jesuits made their earliest settlement.

While gazing on the scene below,
May half forget the dreams of home,
That nightly with his slumbers come,—
The tranquil skies of sunny France,
The peasant's harvest song and dance,
The vines around the hillsides wreathing,
The soft airs midst their clusters breathing,
The wings which dipped, the stars which shone
Within thy bosom, blue Garonne!
And round the Abbey's shadowed wall,
At morning spring and even-fall,
Sweet voices in the still air singing,—
The chant of many a holy hymn,—
The solemn bell of vespers ringing,—
And hallowed torchlight falling dim
On pictured saint and seraphim!
For here beneath him lies unrolled,
Bathed deep in morning's flood of gold,
A vision gorgeous as the dream
Of the beatified may seem,
When, as his Church's legends say,
Borne upward in ecstatic bliss,
The rapt enthusiast soars away
Unto a brighter world than this:
A mortal's glimpse beyond the pale,—
A moment's lifting of the veil!

Far eastward o'er the lovely bay,
Penobscot's clustered wigwams lay;
And gently from that Indian town
The verdant hillside slopes adown,
To where the sparkling waters play
Upon the yellow sands below;
And shooting round the winding shores
Of narrow capes, and isles which lie
Slumbering to ocean's lullaby,—
With birchen boat and glancing oars,
The red men to their fishing go;
While from their planting ground is borne
The treasure of the golden corn,
By laughing girls, whose dark eyes glow
Wild through the locks which o'er them flow,

369

The wrinkled squaw, whose toil is done,
Sits on her bear-skin in the sun,
Watching the huskers, with a smile
For each full ear which swells the pile;
And the old chief, who nevermore
May bend the bow or pull the oar,
Smokes gravely in his wigwam door,
Or slowly shapes, with axe of stone,
The arrow-head from flint and bone.

Beneath the westward turning eye
A thousand wooded islands lie,
Gems of the waters! with each hue
Of brightness set in ocean's blue.
Each bears aloft its tuft of trees
Touched by the pencil of the frost,
And, with the motion of each breeze,
A moment seen, a moment lost,
Changing and blent, confused and tossed,
The brighter with the darker crossed,
Their thousand tints of beauty glow
Down in the restless waves below,
And tremble in the sunny skies,
As if, from waving bough to bough,
Flitted the birds of paradise.
There sleep Placentia's group, and there
Père Breteaux marks the hour of prayer;
And there, beneath the sea-worn cliff,
On which the Father's hut is seen,
The Indian stays his rocking skiff,
And peers the hemlock-boughs between,
Half trembling, as he seeks to look
Upon the Jesuit's Cross and Book.

Father Hennepin, a missionary among the Iroquois, mentions that the Indians believed him to be a conjurer, and that they were particularly afraid of a bright silver chalice which he had in his possession. “The Indians,” says Père Jerome Lallamant, “fear us as the greatest sorcerers on earth.”

There, gloomily against the sky
The Dark Isles rear their summits high;
And Desert Rock, abrupt and bare,
Lifts its gray turrets in the air,
Seen from afar, like some stronghold
Built by the ocean kings of old;
And, faint as smoke-wreath white and thin,
Swells in the north vast Katahdin:
And, wandering from its marshy feet,
The broad Penobscot comes to meet
And mingle with his own bright bay.
Slow sweep his dark and gathering floods,
Arched over by the ancient woods,
Which Time, in those dim solitudes,
Wielding the dull axe of Decay,
Alone hath ever shorn away.

Not thus, within the woods which hide
The beauty of thy azure tide,

370

And with their falling timbers block
Thy broken currents, Kennebec!
Gazes the white man on the wreck
Of the down-trodden Norridgewock;
In one lone village hemmed at length,
In battle shorn of half their strength,
Turned, like the panther in his lair,
With his fast-flowing life-blood wet,
For one last struggle of despair,
Wounded and faint, but tameless yet!
Unreaped, upon the planting lands,
The scant, neglected harvest stands:
No shout is there, no dance, no song:
The aspect of the very child
Scowls with a meaning sad and wild
Of bitterness and wrong.
The almost infant Norridgewock
Essays to lift the tomahawk;
And plucks his father's knife away,
To mimic, in his frightful play,
The scalping of an English foe:
Wreathes on his lip a horrid smile,
Burns, like a snake's, his small eye, while
Some bough or sapling meets his blow.
The fisher, as he drops his line,
Starts, when he sees the hazels quiver
Along the margin of the river,
Looks up and down the rippling tide,
And grasps the firelock at his side.
For Bomazeen

Bomazeen is spoken of by Penhallow as “the famous warrior and chieftain of Norridgewock.” He was killed in the attack of the English upon Norridgewock, in 1724.

from Tacconock
Has sent his runners to Norridgewock,
With tidings that Moulton and Harmon of York
Far up the river have come:
They have left their boats, they have entered the wood,
And filled the depths of the solitude
With the sound of the ranger's drum.

On the brow of a hill, which slopes to meet
The flowing river, and bathe its feet;
The bare-washed rock, and the drooping grass,
And the creeping vine, as the waters pass,
A rude and unshapely chapel stands,
Built up in that wild by unskilled hands,
Yet the traveller knows it a place of prayer,
For the holy sign of the cross is there:
And should he chance at that place to be,
Of a Sabbath morn, or some hallowed day,
When prayers are made and masses are said,
Some for the living and some for the dead,
Well might that traveller start to see
The tall dark forms, that take their way
From the birch canoe, on the river-shore,
And the forest paths, to that chapel door;

371

And marvel to mark the naked knees
And the dusky foreheads bending there,
While, in coarse white vesture, over these
In blessing or in prayer,
Stretching abroad his thin pale hands,
Like a shrouded ghost, the Jesuit

Père Ralle, or Rasles, was one of the most zealous and indefatigable of that band of Jesuit missionaries who at the beginning of the seventeenth century penetrated the forests of America, with the avowed object of converting the heathen. The first religious mission of the Jesuits to the savages in North America was in 1611. The zeal of the fathers for the conversion of the Indians to the Catholic faith knew no bounds. For this they plunged into the depths of the wilderness; habituated themselves to all the hardships and privations of the natives; suffered cold, hunger, and some of them death itself, by the extremest tortures. Père Brebeuf, after laboring in the cause of his mission for twenty years, together with his companion, Père Lallamant, was burned alive. To these might be added the names of those Jesuits who were put to death by the Iroquois, —Daniel, Garnier, Buteaux, La Riborerde, Goupil, Constantin, and Liegeouis. “For bed,” says Father Lallamant, in his Relation de ce qui s'est dans le pays des Hurons, 1640, c. 3, “we have nothing but a miserable piece of bark of a tree; for nourishment, a handful or two of corn, either roasted or soaked in water, which seldom satisfies our hunger; and after all, not venturing to perform even the ceremonies of our religion without being considered as sorcerers.” Their success among the natives, however, by no means equalled their exertions. Père Lallamant says: “With respect to adult persons, in good health, there is little apparent success; on the contrary, there have been nothing but storms and whirlwinds from that quarter.”

Sebastian Ralle established himself, some time about the year 1670, at Norridgewock, where he continued more than forty years. He was accused, and perhaps not without justice, of exciting his Praying Indians against the English, whom he looked upon as the enemies not only of his king, but also of the Catholic religion. He was killed by the English, in 1724, at the foot of the cross which his own hands had planted. His Indian church was broken up, and its members either killed outright or dispersed.

In a letter written by Ralle to his nephew he gives the following account of his church and his own labors: “All my converts repair to the church regularly twice every day: first, very early in the morning, to attend mass, and again in the evening, to assist in the prayers at sunset. As it is necessary to fix the imagination of savages, whose attention is easily distracted, I have composed prayers, calculated to inspire them with just sentiments of the august sacrifice of our altars: they chant, or at least recite them aloud, during mass. Besides preaching to them on Sundays and saints' days, I seldom let a working-day pass without making a concise exhortation, for the purpose of inspiring them with horror at those vices to which they are most addicted, or to confirm them in the practice of some particular virtue.”—

Vide Lettres Edifiantes et Cur., vol. vi. p. 127.

stands.

Two forms are now in that chapel dim,
The Jesuit, silent and sad and pale,
Anxiously heeding some fearful tale,
Which a stranger is telling him.
That stranger's garb is soiled and torn,
And wet with dew and loosely worn;
Her fair neglected hair falls down
O'er cheeks with wind and sunshine brown;
Yet still, in that disordered face,
The Jesuit's cautious eye can trace
Those elements of former grace
Which, half effaced, seem scarcely less,
Even now, than perfect loveliness.

With drooping head, and voice so low
That scarce it meets the Jesuit's ears,
While through her clasped fingers flow,
From the heart's fountain, hot and slow,
Her penitential tears,—
She tells the story of the woe
And evil of her years.

“O father, bear with me; my heart
Is sick and death-like, and my brain
Seems girdled with a fiery chain,
Whose scorching links will never part,
And never cool again.
Bear with me while I speak, but turn
Away that gentle eye, the while;
The fires of guilt more fiercely burn
Beneath its holy smile;
For half I fancy I can see
My mother's sainted look in thee.

“My dear lost mother! sad and pale,
Mournfully sinking day by day,
And with a hold on life as frail
As frosted leaves, that, thin and gray,
Hang feebly on their parent spray,
And tremble in the gale;
Yet watching o'er my childishness
With patient fondness, not the less
For all the agony which kept
Her blue eye wakeful, while I slept;
And checking every tear and groan

372

That haply might have waked my own,
And bearing still, without offence,
My idle words, and petulance;
Reproving with a tear, and, while
The tooth of pain was keenly preying
Upon her very heart, repaying
My brief repentance with a smile.

“Oh, in her meek, forgiving eye
There was a brightness not of mirth,
A light whose clear intensity
Was borrowed not of earth.
Along her cheek a deepening red
Told where the feverish hectic fed;
And yet, each fatal token gave
To the mild beauty of her face
A newer and a dearer grace,
Unwarning of the grave.
'T was like the hue which Autumn gives
To yonder changed and dying leaves,
Breathed over by his frosty breath;
Scarce can the gazer feel that this
Is but the spoiler's treacherous kiss,
The mocking-smile of Death!

“Sweet were the tales she used to tell
When summer's eve was dear to us,
And, fading from the darkening dell,
The glory of the sunset fell
On wooded Agamenticus,—
When, sitting by our cottage wall,
The murmur of the Saco's fall,
And the south-wind's expiring sighs,
Came, softly blending, on my ear,
With the low tones I loved to hear:
Tales of the pure, the good, the wise,
The holy men and maids of old,
In the all-sacred pages told;
Of Rachel, stooped at Haran's fountains,
Amid her father's thirsty flock,
Beautiful to her kinsman seeming
As the bright angels of his dreaming,
On Padan-aran's holy rock;
Of gentle Ruth, and her who kept
Her awful vigil on the mountains,
By Israel's virgin daughters wept;
Of Miriam, with her maidens, singing
The song for grateful Israel meet,
While every crimson wave was bringing
The spoils of Egypt at her feet;
Of her, Samaria's humble daughter,
Who paused to hear, beside her well,
Lessons of love and truth, which fell

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Softly as Shiloh's flowing water;
And saw, beneath his pilgrim guise,
The Promised One, so long foretold
By holy seer and bard of old,
Revealed before her wondering eyes!

“Slowly she faded. Day by day
Her step grew weaker in our hall,
And fainter, at each even-fall,
Her sad voice died away.
Yet on her thin, pale lip, the while,
Sat Resignation's holy smile:
And even my father checked his tread,
And hushed his voice, beside her bed:
Beneath the calm and sad rebuke
Of her meek eye's imploring look,
The scowl of hate his brow forsook,
And in his stern and gloomy eye,
At times, a few unwonted tears
Wet the dark lashes, which for years
Hatred and pride had kept so dry.

“Calm as a child to slumber soothed,
As if an angel's hand had smoothed
The still, white features into rest,
Silent and cold, without a breath
To stir the drapery on her breast,
Pain, with its keen and poisoned fang,
The horror of the mortal pang,
The suffering look her brow had worn,
The fear, the strife, the anguish gone,
She slept at last in death!

“Oh, tell me, father, can the dead
Walk on the earth, and look on us,
And lay upon the living's head
Their blessing or their curse?
For, oh, last night she stood by me,
As I lay beneath the woodland tree!”

The Jesuit crosses himself in awe,—
“Jesu! what was it my daughter saw?”

“She came to me last night.
The dried leaves did not feel her tread;
She stood by me in the wan moonlight,
In the white robes of the dead!
Pale, and very mournfully
She bent her light form over me.
I heard no sound, I felt no breath
Breathe o'er me from that face of death:
Its blue eyes rested on my own,
Rayless and cold as eyes of stone;

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Yet, in their fixed, unchanging gaze,
Something, which spoke of early days,—
A sadness in their quiet glare,
As if love's smile were frozen there,—
Came o'er me with an icy thrill;
O God! I feel its presence still!”

The Jesuit makes the holy sign,—
“How passed the vision, daughter mine?”

“All dimly in the wan moonshine,
As a wreath of mist will twist and twine,
And scatter, and melt into the light;
So scattering, melting on my sight,
The pale, cold vision passed;
But those sad eyes were fixed on mine
Mournfully to the last.”

“God help thee, daughter, tell me why
That spirit passed before thine eye!”

“Father, I know not, save it be
That deeds of mine have summoned her
From the unbreathing sepulchre,
To leave her last rebuke with me.
Ah, woe for me! my mother died
Just at the moment when I stood
Close on the verge of womanhood,
A child in everything beside;
And when my wild heart needed most
Her gentle counsels, they were lost.

“My father lived a stormy life,
Of frequent change and daily strife;
And—God forgive him! left his child
To feel, like him, a freedom wild;
To love the red man's dwelling-place,
The birch boat on his shaded floods,
The wild excitement of the chase
Sweeping the ancient woods,
The camp-fire, blazing on the shore
Of the still lakes, the clear stream where
The idle fisher sets his weir,
Or angles in the shade, far more
Than that restraining awe I felt
Beneath my gentle mother's care,
When nightly at her knee I knelt,
With childhood's simple prayer.

“There came a change. The wild, glad mood
Of unchecked freedom passed.
Amid the ancient solitude
Of unshorn grass and waving wood

375

And waters glancing bright and fast,
A softened voice was in my ear,
Sweet as those lulling sounds and fine
The hunter lifts his head to hear,
Now far and faint, now full and near—
The murmur of the wind-swept pine.
A manly form was ever nigh,
A bold, free hunter, with an eye
Whose dark, keen glance had power to wake
Both fear and love, to awe and charm;
'T was as the wizard rattlesnake,
Whose evil glances lure to harm—
Whose cold and small and glittering eye,
And brilliant coil, and changing dye,
Draw, step by step, the gazer near,
With drooping wing and cry of fear,
Yet powerless all to turn away,
A conscious, but a willing prey!

“Fear, doubt, thought, life itself, erelong
Merged in one feeling deep and strong.
Faded the world which I had known,
A poor vain shadow, cold and waste;
In the warm present bliss alone
Seemed I of actual life to taste.
Fond longings dimly understood,
The glow of passion's quickening blood,
And cherished fantasies which press
The young lip with a dream's caress;
The heart's forecast and prophecy
Took form and life before my eye,
Seen in the glance which met my own,
Heard in the soft and pleading tone,
Felt in the arms around me cast,
And warm heart-pulses beating fast.
Ah! scarcely yet to God above
With deeper trust, with stronger love,
Has prayerful saint his meek heart lent,
Or cloistered nun at twilight bent,
Than I, before a human shrine,
As mortal and as frail as mine,
With heart, and soul, and mind, and form,
Knelt madly to a fellow-worm.

“Full soon, upon that dream of sin,
An awful light came bursting in.
The shrine was cold at which I knelt,
The idol of that shrine was gone;
A humbled thing of shame and guilt,
Outcast, and spurned and lone,
Wrapt in the shadows of my crime,
With withering heart and burning brain,

376

And tears that fell like fiery rain,
I passed a fearful time.

“There came a voice—it checked the tear,
In heart and soul it wrought a change;
My father's voice was in my ear;
It whispered of revenge!
A new and fiercer feeling swept
All lingering tenderness away;
And tiger passions, which had slept
In childhood's better day,
Unknown, unfelt, arose at length
In all their own demoniac strength.

“A youthful warrior of the wild,
By words deceived, by smiles beguiled,
Of crime the cheated instrument,
Upon our fatal errands went.
Through camp and town and wilderness
He tracked his victim; and, at last,
Just when the tide of hate had passed,
And milder thoughts came warm and fast,
Exulting, at my feet he cast
The bloody token of success.

“O God! with what an awful power
I saw the buried past uprise,
And gather, in a single hour,
Its ghost-like memories!
And then I felt, alas! too late,
That underneath the mask of hate,
That shame and guilt and wrong had thrown
O'er feelings which they might not own,
The heart's wild love had known no change;
And still that deep and hidden love,
With its first fondness, wept above
The victim of its own revenge!
There lay the fearful scalp, and there
The blood was on its pale brown hair!
I thought not of the victim's scorn,
I thought not of his baleful guile,
My deadly wrong, my outcast name,
The characters of sin and shame
On heart and forehead drawn;
I only saw that victim's smile,
The still, green places where we met,—
The moonlit branches, dewy wet;
I only felt, I only heard
The greeting and the parting word,—
The smile, the embrace, the tone, which made
An Eden of the forest shade.

377

“And oh, with what a loathing eye,
With what a deadly hate, and deep,
I saw that Indian murderer lie
Before me, in his drunken sleep!
What though for me the deed was done,
And words of mine had sped him on!
Yet when he murmured, as he slept,
The horrors of that deed of blood,
The tide of utter madness swept
O'er brain and bosom, like a flood.
And, father, with this hand of mine”—
“Ha! what didst thou?” the Jesuit cries,
Shuddering, as smitten with sudden pain,
And shading, with one thin hand, his eyes,
With the other he makes the holy sign.
“—I smote him as I would a worm;
With heart as steeled, with nerves as firm:
He never woke again!”

“Woman of sin and blood and shame,
Speak, I would know that victim's name.”

“Father,” she gasped, “a chieftain, known
As Saco's Sachem,—Mogg Megone!”

Pale priest! What proud and lofty dreams,
What keen desires, what cherished schemes,
What hopes, that time may not recall,
Are darkened by that chieftain's fall!
Was he not pledged, by cross and vow,
To lift the hatchet of his sire,
And, round his own, the Church's foe,
To light the avenging fire?
Who now the Tarrantine shall wake,
For thine and for the Church's sake?
Who summon to the scene
Of conquest and unsparing strife,
And vengeance dearer than his life,
The fiery-souled Castine?

The character of Ralle has probably never been correctly delineated. By his brethren of the Romish Church, he has been nearly apotheosized. On the other hand, our Puritan historians have represented him as a demon in human form. He was undoubtedly sincere in his devotion to the interests of his church, and not overscrupulous as to the means of advancing those interests. “The French,” says the author of the History of Saco and Biddeford, “after the peace of 1713, secretly promised to supply the Indians with arms and ammunition, if they would renew hostilities. Their principal agent was the celebrated Ralle, the French Jesuit.”— p. 215.

Three backward steps the Jesuit takes,
His long, thin frame as ague shakes;
And loathing hate is in his eye,
As from his lips these words of fear
Fall hoarsely on the maiden's ear,—
“The soul that sinneth shall surely die!”

She stands, as stands the stricken deer,
Checked midway in the fearful chase,
When bursts, upon his eye and ear,
The gaunt, gray robber, baying near,
Between him and his hiding-place;
While still behind, with yell and blow,

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Sweeps, like a storm, the coming foe.
“Save me, O holy man!” her cry
Fills all the void, as if a tongue,
Unseen, from rib and rafter hung,
Thrilling with mortal agony;
Her hands are clasping the Jesuit's knee,
And her eye looks fearfully into his own;—
“Off, woman of sin! nay, touch not me
With those fingers of blood; begone!”
With a gesture of horror, he spurns the form
That writhes at his feet like a trodden worm.

Ever thus the spirit must,
Guilty in the sight of Heaven,
With a keener woe be riven,
For its weak and sinful trust
In the strength of human dust;
And its anguish thrill afresh,
For each vain reliance given
To the failing arm of flesh.

3. PART III.

Ah, weary Priest! with pale hands pressed
On thy throbbing brow of pain,
Baffled in thy life-long quest,
Overworn with toiling vain,
How ill thy troubled musings fit
The holy quiet of a breast
With the Dove of Peace at rest,
Sweetly brooding over it.
Thoughts are thine which have no part
With the meek and pure of heart,
Undisturbed by outward things,
Resting in the heavenly shade,
By the overspreading wings
Of the Blessed Spirit made.
Thoughts of strife and hate and wrong
Sweep thy heated brain along,
Fading hopes for whose success
It were sin to breathe a prayer;—
Schemes which Heaven may never bless,—
Fears which darken to despair.
Hoary priest! thy dream is done
Of a hundred red tribes won
To the pale of Holy Church;
And the heretic o'erthrown,
And his name no longer known,
And thy weary brethren turning,
Joyful from their years of mourning
'Twixt the altar and the porch.
Hark! what sudden sound is heard

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In the wood and in the sky,
Shriller than the scream of bird,
Than the trumpet's clang more high!
Every wolf-cave of the hills,
Forest arch and mountain gorge,
Rock and dell, and river verge,
With an answering echo thrills.
Well does the Jesuit know that cry,
Which summons the Norridgewock to die,
And tells that the foe of his flock is nigh.
He listens, and hears the rangers come,
With loud hurrah, and jar of drum,
And hurrying feet (for the chase is hot),
And the short, sharp sound of rifle shot,
And taunt and menace,—answered well
By the Indians' mocking cry and yell,—
The bark of dogs,—the squaw's mad scream,
The dash of paddles along the stream,
The whistle of shot as it cuts the leaves
Of the maples around the church's eaves,
And the gride of hatchets fiercely thrown,
On wigwam-log and tree and stone.
Black with the grime of paint and dust,
Spotted and streaked with human gore,
A grim and naked head is thrust
Within the chapel-door.
“Ha—Bomazeen! In God's name say,
What mean these sounds of bloody fray?”
Silent, the Indian points his hand
To where across the echoing glen
Sweep Harmon's dreaded ranger-band,
And Moulton with his men.
“Where are thy warriors, Bomazeen?
Where are De Rouville

Hertel de Rouville was an active and unsparing enemy of the English. He was the leader of the combined French and Indian forces which destroyed Deerfield and massacred its inhabitants, in 1703. He was afterwards killed in the attack upon Haverhill. Tradition says that, on examining his dead body, his head and face were found to be perfectly smooth, without the slightest appearance of hair or beard.

and Castine,
And where the braves of Sawga's queen?”
“Let my father find the winter snow
Which the sun drank up long moons ago!
Under the falls of Tacconock,
The wolves are eating the Norridgewock;
Castine with his wives lies closely hid
Like a fox in the woods of Pemaquid!
On Sawga's banks the man of war
Sits in his wigwam like a squaw;
Squando has fled, and Mogg Megone,
Struck by the knife of Sagamore John,
Lies stiff and stark and cold as a stone.”

Fearfully over the Jesuit's face,
Of a thousand thoughts, trace after trace,
Like swift cloud-shadows, each other chase.
One instant, his fingers grasp his knife,
For a last vain struggle for cherished life,—

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The next, he hurls the blade away,
And kneels at his altar's foot to pray;
Over his beads his fingers stray,
And he kisses the cross, and calls aloud
On the Virgin and her Son;
For terrible thoughts his memory crowd
Of evil seen and done,
Of scalps brought home by his savage flock
From Casco and Sawga and Sagadahock
In the Church's service won.

No shrift the gloomy savage brooks,
As scowling on the priest he looks:
“Cowesass—cowesass—tawhich wessa seen?

Cowesass?—tawhich wessasseen? Are you afraid?—why fear you?

Let my father look upon Bomazeen,—
My father's heart is the heart of a squaw,
But mine is so hard that it does not thaw;
Let my father ask his God to make
A dance and a feast for a great sagamore,
When he paddles across the western lake,
With his dogs and his squaws to the spirit's shore.
Cowesass—cowesass—tawhich wessa seen?
Let my father die like Bomazeen!”

Through the chapel's narrow doors,
And through each window in the walls,
Round the priest and warrior pours
The deadly shower of English balls.
Low on his cross the Jesuit falls;
While at his side the Norridgewock,
With failing breath, essays to mock
And menace yet the hated foe,
Shakes his scalp-trophies to and fro
Exultingly before their eyes,
Till, cleft and torn by shot and blow,
Defiant still, he dies.

“So fare all eaters of the frog!
Death to the Babylonish dog!
Down with the beast of Rome!”
With shouts like these, around the dead,
Unconscious on his bloody bed,
The rangers crowding come.
Brave men! the dead priest cannot hear
The unfeeling taunt,—the brutal jeer;
Spurn—for he sees ye not—in wrath,
The symbol of your Saviour's death;
Tear from his death-grasp, in your zeal,
And trample, as a thing accursed,
The cross he cherished in the dust:
The dead man cannot feel!

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Brutal alike in deed and word,
With callous heart and hand of strife,
How like a fiend may man be made,
Plying the foul and monstrous trade
Whose harvest-field is human life,
Whose sickle is the reeking sword!
Quenching, with reckless hand in blood,
Sparks kindled by the breath of God;
Urging the deathless soul, unshriven,
Of open guilt or secret sin,
Before the bar of that pure Heaven
The holy only enter in!
Oh, by the widow's sore distress,
The orphan's wailing wretchedness,
By Virtue struggling in the accursed
Embraces of polluting Lust,
By the fell discord of the Pit,
And the pained souls that people it,
And by the blessed peace which fills
The Paradise of God forever,
Resting on all its holy hills,
And flowing with its crystal river,—
Let Christian hands no longer bear
In triumph on his crimson car
The foul and idol god of war;
No more the purple wreaths prepare
To bind amid his snaky hair;
Nor Christian bards his glories tell,
Nor Christian tongues his praises swell.

Through the gun-smoke wreathing white
Glimpses on the soldiers' sight
A thing of human shape I ween,
For a moment only seen,
With its loose hair backward streaming,
And its eyeballs madly gleaming,
Shrieking, like a soul in pain,
From the world of light and breath,
Hurrying to its place again,
Spectre-like it vanisheth!

Wretched girl! one eye alone
Notes the way which thou hast gone.
That great Eye, which slumbers never,
Watching o'er a lost world ever,
Tracks thee over vale and mountain,
By the gushing forest-fountain,
Plucking from the vine its fruit,
Searching for the ground-nut's root,
Peering in the she-wolf's den,
Wading through the marshy fen,
Where the sluggish water-snake

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Basks beside the sunny brake,
Coiling in his slimy bed,
Smooth and cold against thy tread;
Purposeless, thy mazy way
Threading through the lingering day.
And at night securely sleeping
Where the dogwood's dews are weeping!
Still, though earth and man discard thee,
Doth thy Heavenly Father guard thee:
He who spared the guilty Cain,
Even when a brother's blood,
Crying in the ear of God,
Gave the earth its primal stain;
He whose mercy ever liveth,
Who repenting guilt forgiveth,
And the broken heart receiveth;
Wanderer of the wilderness,
Haunted, guilty, crazed, and wild,
He regardeth thy distress,
And careth for His sinful child!

'T is springtime on the eastern hills!
Like torrents gush the summer rills;
Through winter's moss and dry dead leaves
The bladed grass revives and lives,
Pushes the mouldering waste away,
For glimpses to the April day.
In kindly shower and sunshine bud
The branches of the dull gray wood;
Out from its sunned and sheltered nooks
The blue eye of the violet looks;
The southwest wind is warmly blowing,
And odors from the springing grass,
The pine-tree and the sassafras,
Are with it on its errands going.

A band is marching through the wood
Where rolls the Kennebec his flood;
The warriors of the wilderness,
Painted, and in their battle dress;
And with them one whose bearded cheek,
And white and wrinkled brow, bespeak
A wanderer from the shores of France.
A few long locks of scattering snow
Beneath a battered morion flow,
And from the rivets of the vest
Which girds in steel his ample breast,
The slanted sunbeams glance.
In the harsh outlines of his face
Passion and sin have left their trace;
Yet, save worn brow and thin gray hair,

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No signs of weary age are there.
His step is firm, his eye is keen,
Nor years in broil and battle spent,
Nor toil, nor wounds, nor pain have bent
The lordly frame of old Castine.

No purpose now of strife and blood
Urges the hoary veteran on:
The fire of conquest and the mood
Of chivalry have gone.
A mournful task is his,—to lay
Within the earth the bones of those
Who perished in that fearful day,
When Norridgewock became the prey
Of all unsparing foes.
Sadly and still, dark thoughts between,
Of coming vengeance mused Castine,
Of the fallen chieftain Bomazeen,
Who bade for him the Norridgewocks
Dig up their buried tomahawks
For firm defence or swift attack;
And him whose friendship formed the tie
Which held the stern self-exile back
From lapsing into savagery;
Whose garb and tone and kindly glance
Recalled a younger, happier day,
And prompted memory's fond essay,
To bridge the mighty waste which lay
Between his wild home and that gray,
Tall chateau of his native France,
Whose chapel bell, with far-heard din,
Ushered his birth-hour gayly in,
And counted with its solemn toll
The masses for his father's soul.

Hark! from the foremost of the band
Suddenly bursts the Indian yell;
For now on the very spot they stand
Where the Norridgewocks fighting fell.
No wigwam smoke is curling there;
The very earth is scorched and bare:
And they pause and listen to catch a sound
Of breathing life,—but there comes not one,
Save the fox's bark and the rabbit's bound;
But here and there, on the blackened ground,
White bones are glistening in the sun.
And where the house of prayer arose,
And the holy hymn, at daylight's close,
And the aged priest stood up to bless
The children of the wilderness,
There is naught save ashes sodden and dank;
And the birchen boats of the Norridgewock.

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Tethered to tree and stump and rock
Rotting along the river bank!

Blessed Mary! who is she
Leaning against that maple-tree?
The sun upon her face burns hot,
But the fixed eyelid moveth not;
The squirrel's chirp is shrill and clear
From the dry bough above her ear;
Dashing from rock and root its spray,
Close at her feet the river rushes;
The blackbird's wing against her brushes,
And sweetly through the hazel-bushes
The robin's mellow music gushes;
God save her! will she sleep alway?

Castine hath bent him over the sleeper:
“Wake, daughter,—wake!” but she stirs no limb:
The eye that looks on him is fixed and dim;
And the sleep she is sleeping shall be no deeper,
Until the angel's oath is said,
And the final blast of the trump goes forth
To the graves of the sea and the graves of earth.
Ruth Boniton is dead!

THE PAST AND COMING YEAR.

Wave of an awful torrent, thronging down,
With all the wealth of centuries, and the cold
Embraces of eternity, o'erstrown
With the great wrecks of empire, and the old
Magnificence of nations, who are gone;
Thy last, faint murmur—thy departing sigh,
Along the shore of being, like a tone
Thrilling on broken harp-strings, or the swell
Of the chained winds' last whisper, hath gone by,
And thou hast floated from the world of breath
To the still guidance of o'ermastering Death,
Thy pilot to eternity. Farewell!

Go, swell the throngful past. Go, blend with all
The garnered things of Death; and bear with thee
The treasures of thy pilgrimage, the tall
And beautiful dreams of Hope, the ministry
Of Love and high Ambition. Man remains
To dream again as idly; and the stains
Of passion will be visible once more.
The winged spirit will not be confined
By the experience of thy journey. Mind
Will struggle in its prison-house, and still,

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With Earth's strong fetters binding it to ill,
Unfurl the pinions fitted but to soar
In that pure atmosphere, where spirits range—
The home of high existences—where change
And blighting may not enter. Love again
Will bloom, a fickle flower, upon the grave
Of old affections; and Ambition wave
His eagle-plume most proudly, for the rein
Of Conscience will be loosened from the soul
To give his purpose freedom. The control
Of reason will be changeful, and the ties
Which gather hearts together, and make up
The romance of existence, will be rent:
Yea, poison will be poured in Friendship's cup;
And for Earth's low familiar element,
Even Love itself forsake its kindred skies.

But not alone dark visions! happier things
Will float above existence, like the wings
Of the starred bird of paradise; and Love
Will not be all a dream, or rather prove
A dream—a sweet forgetfulness—that hath
No wakeful changes, ending but in Death.
Yea, pure hearts shall be pledged beneath the eyes
Of the beholding heaven, and in the light
Of the love-hallowed moon. The quiet Night
Shall hear that language underneath the skies
Which whispereth above them, as the prayer
And the deep vow are spoken. Passing fair
And gifted creatures, with the light of truth
And undebarred affection, as a crown,
Resting upon the beautiful brow of youth,
Shall smile on stately manhood, kneeling down
Before them, as to Idols. Friendship's hand
Shall clasp its brothers; and Affection's tear
Be sanctified with sympathy. The bier
Of stricken love shall lose the fears, which Death
Giveth his awful work, and earnest Faith
Shall look beyond the shadow of the clay.
The pulseless sepulchre, the cold decay;
And to the quiet of the spirit-land
Follow the mourned and lovely. Gifted ones
Lighting the Heaven of Intellect, like suns,
Shall wrestle well with circumstance, and bear
The agony of scorn, the preying care,
Wedded to burning bosoms; and go down
In sorrow to the noteless sepulchre,
With one lone hope embracing like a crown
The cold and death-like forehead of Despair,
That after times shall treasure up their fame
Even as a proud inheritance and high;
And beautiful beings love to breathe their name
With the recorded things that never die.

386

And thou, gray voyager to the breezeless sea
Of infinite Oblivion—speed thou on:
Another gift of time succeedeth thee
Fresh from the hand of God; for thou hast done
The errand of thy destiny; and none
May dream of thy returning. Go, and bear
Mortality's frail records to thy cold,
Eternal prison-house; the midnight prayer
Of suffering bosoms, and the fevered care
Of worldly hearts; the miser's dream of gold;
Ambition's grasp at greatness; the quenched light
Of broken spirits; the forgiven wrong
And the abiding curse—ay, bear along
These wrecks of thy own making. Lo, thy knell
Gathers upon the windy breath of night,
Its last and faintest echo. Fare thee well!

1829.

THE MISSIONARY.

“It is an awful, an arduous thing to root out every affection for earthly things, so as to live only for another world. I am now far, very far, from you all; and as often as I look around and see the Indian scenery, I sigh to think of the distance which separates us.”—

Letters of Henry Martyn, from India.

“Say, whose is this fair picture, which the light
From the unshutter'd window rests upon
Even as a lingering halo? Beautiful!
The keen, fine eye of manhood, and a lip
Lovely as that of Hylas, and impressed
With the bright signet of some brilliant thought;
That broad expanse of forehead, clear and high,
Marked visibly with the characters of mind,
And the free locks around it, raven black,
Luxuriant and unsilver'd!—who was he?”

A friend, a more than brother. In the spring
And glory of his being he went forth
From the embraces of devoted friends,
From ease and quiet happiness, from more—
From the warm heart that loved him with a love
Holier than earthly passion, and to whom
The beauty of his spirit shone above
The charms of perishing nature. He went forth
Strengthened to suffer, gifted to subdue
The might of human passion, to pass on
Quietly to the sacrifice of all

387

The lofty hopes of boyhood, and to turn
The high ambition written on that brow,
From its first dream of power and human fame,
Unto a task of seeming lowliness,
Yet God-like in its purpose. He went forth
To bind the broken spirit, to pluck back
The heathen from the wheel of Juggernaut;
To place the spiritual image of a God
Holy and just and true, before the eye
Of the dark-minded Brahmin, and unseal
The holy pages of the Book of Life,
Fraught with sublimer mysteries than all
The sacred tomes of Vedas, to unbind
The widow from her sacrifice, and save
The perishing infant from the worshipped river!

And, lady, where is he?” He slumbers well
Beneath the shadow of an Indian palm.
There is no stone above his grave. The wind,
Hot from the desert, as it stirs the leaves
Heavy and long above him, sighs alone
Over his place of slumber.

“God forbid
That he should die alone!” Nay, not alone.
His God was with him in that last dread hour;
His great arm underneath him, and His smile
Melting into a spirit full of peace.
And one kind friend, a human friend, was near
One whom his teachings and his earnest prayers
Had snatch'd as from the burning. He alone
Felt the last pressure of his failing hand,
Caught the last glimpse of his closing eye,
And laid the green turf over him with tears,
And left him with his God.

“And was it well,
Dear lady, that this noble mind should cast
Its rich gifts on the waters? That a heart
Full of all gentleness and truth and love
Should wither on the suicidal shrine
Of a mistaken duty? If I read
Aright the fine intelligence which fills
That amplitude of brow, and gazes out
Like an indwelling spirit from that eye,
He might have borne him loftily among
The proudest of his land, and with a step
Unfaltering ever, steadfast and secure,
Gone up the paths of greatness,—bearing still
A sister spirit with him, as some star,
Preëminent in Heaven, leads steadily up
A kindred watcher, with its fainter beams
Baptized in its great glory. Was it well

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That all this promise of the heart and mind
Should perish from the earth, and leave no trace.
Unfolding like the Cereus of the clime
Which hath its sepulchre, but in the night
Of pagan desolation—was it well?”

Thy will be done, O Father!—it was well.
What are the honors of a perishing world
Grasp'd by a palsied finger? the applause
Of the unthoughtful multitude which greets
The dull ear of decay? the wealth that loads
The bier with costly drapery, and shines
In tinsel on the coffin, and builds up
The cold substantial monument? Can these
Bear up the sinking spirit in that hour
When heart and flesh are failing, and the grave
Is opening under us? Oh, dearer then
The memory of a kind deed done to him
Who was our enemy, one grateful tear
In the meek eye of virtuous suffering,
One smile call'd up by unseen charity
On the wan lips of hunger, or one prayer
Breathed from the bosom of the penitent—
The stain'd with crime and outcast, unto whom
Our mild rebuke and tenderness of love
A merciful God hath bless'd.

“But, lady, say,
Did he not sometimes almost sink beneath
The burden of his toil, and turn aside
To weep above his sacrifice, and cast
A sorrowing glance upon his childhood's home,
Still green in memory? Clung not to his heart
Something of earthly hope uncrucified,
Of earthly thought unchastened? Did he bring
Life's warm affections to the sacrifice—
Its loves, hopes, sorrows—and become as one
Knowing no kindred but a perishing world,
No love but of the sin-endangered soul,
No hope but of the winning back to life
Of the dead nations, and no passing thought
Save of the errand wherewith he was sent
As to a martyrdom?”

Nay, though the heart
Be consecrated to the holiest work
Vouchsafed to mortal effort, there will be
Ties of the earth around it, and, through all
Its perilous devotion, it must keep
Its own humanity. And it is well.
Else why wept He, who with our nature veiled
The spirit of a God, o'er lost Jerusalem,

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And the cold grave of Lazarus? And why
In the dim garden rose his earnest prayer,
That from his lips the cup of suffering
Might pass, if it were possible?

My friend
Was of a gentle nature, and his heart
Gushed like a river-fountain of the hills,
Ceaseless and lavish, at a kindly smile,
A word of welcome, or a tone of love.
Freely his letters to his friends disclosed
His yearnings for the quiet haunts of home
For love and its companionship, and all
The blessings left behind him; yet above
Its sorrows and its clouds his spirit rose,
Tearful and yet triumphant, taking hold
Of the eternal promises of God,
And steadfast in its faith.

Here are some lines
Penned in his lonely mission-house and sent
To a dear friend at home who even now
Lingers above them with a mournful joy,
Holding them well-nigh sacred as a leaf
Plucked from the record of a breaking heart.

EVENING IN BURMAH.

A night of wonder! piled afar
With ebon feet and crests of snow,
Like Himalaya's peaks, which bar
The sunset and the sunset's star
From half the shadowed vale below,
Volumed and vast the dense clouds lie,
And over them, and down the sky,
Paled in the moon, the lightnings go.

And what a strength of light and shade
Is chequering all the earth below!
And, through the jungle's verdant braid,
Of tangled vine and wild reed made,
What blossoms in the moonlight glow!
The Indian rose's loveliness,
The ceiba with its crimson dress,
The twining myrtle dropped with snow.

And flitting in the fragrant air,
Or nestling in the shadowy trees,
A thousand bright-hued birds are there—
Strange plumage, quivering wild and rare,
With every faintly breathing breeze;
And, wet with dew from roses shed,

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The bulbul droops her weary head,
Forgetful of her melodies.

Uprising from the orange-leaves,
The tall pagoda's turrets glow;
O'er graceful shaft and fretted eaves,
Its verdant web the myrtle weaves,
And hangs in flowering wreaths below;
And where the clustered palms eclipse
The moonbeams, from its marble lips
The fountain's silver waters flow.

Strange beauty fills the earth and air,
The fragrant grove and flowering tree,
And yet my thoughts are wandering where
My native rocks lie bleak and bare,
A weary way beyond the sea.
The yearning spirit is not here;
It lingers on a spot more dear
Than India's brightest bowers to me.

Methinks I tread the well-known street—
The tree my childhood loved is there,
Its bare-worn roots are at my feet,
And through its open boughs I meet
White glimpses of the place of prayer;
And unforgotten eyes again
Are glancing through the cottage pane,
Than Asia's lustrous eyes more fair.

Oh, holy haunts! oh, childhood's home!
Where, now, my wandering heart, is thine?
Here, where the dusky heathen come
To bow before the deaf and dumb,
Dead idols of their own design;
Where in their worshipped river's tide
The infant sinks, and on its side
The widow's funeral altars shine!

Here, where, mid light and song and flowers,
The priceless soul in ruin lies;
Lost, dead to all those better powers
Which link this fallen world of ours
To God's clear-shining Paradise;
And wrong and shame and hideous crime
Are like the foliage of their clime,
The unshorn growth of centuries!

Turn, then, my heart; thy home is here;
No other now remains for thee:
The smile of love, and friendship's tear,
The tones that melted on thine ear,

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The mutual thrill of sympathy,
The welcome of the household band,
The pressure of the lip and hand,
Thou mayst not hear, nor feel, nor see.

God of my spirit! Thou, alone,
Who watchest o'er my pillowed head,
Whose ear is open to the moan
And sorrowing of thy child, hast known
The grief which at my heart has fed;
The struggle of my soul to rise
Above its earth-born sympathies;
The tears of many a sleepless bed!

Oh, be Thine arm, as it hath been,
In every test of heart and faith,—
The tempter's doubt, the wiles of men,
The heathen's scoff, the bosom sin,—
A helper and a stay beneath;
A strength in weakness, through the strife
And anguish of my wasting life—
My solace and my hope, in death!

1833.

MASSACHUSETTS.

[_]

Written on hearing that the Resolutions of the Legislature of Massachusetts on the subject of Slavery, presented by Hon. C. Cushing to the House of Representatives of the United States, had been laid on the table unread and unreferred, under the infamous rule of “Patton's Resolution.”

And have they spurned thy word,
Thou of the old Thirteen!
Whose soil, where Freedom's blood first poured,
Hath yet a darker green?
To outworn patience suffering long
Is insult added to the wrong?

And have they closed thy mouth,
And fixed the padlock fast?
Dumb as the black slave of the South!
Is this thy fate at last?
Oh shame! thy honored seal and sign
Trod under hoofs so asinine!

Call from the Capitol
Thy chosen ones again,
Unmeet for them the base control
Of Slavery's curbing rein!

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Unmeet for men like them to feel
The spurring of a rider's heel.

When votes are things of trade
And force is argument,
Call back to Quincy's shade
Thy old man eloquent.
Why leave him longer striving thus
With the wild beasts of Ephesus!

Back from the Capital—
It is no place for thee!
Beneath the arch of Heaven's blue wall,
Thy voice may still be free!
What power shall chain thy utterance there,
In God's free sun and freer air?

A voice is calling thee,
From all the martyr graves
Of those stern men, in death made free,
Who could not live as slaves.
The slumberings of thy honored dead
Are for thy sake disquieted.

So let thy Faneuil Hall
By freemen's feet be trod,
And give the echoes of its wall
Once more to Freedom's God!
And in the midst unseen shall stand
The mighty fathers of thy land.

Thy gathered sons shall feel
The soul of Adams near,
And Otis with his fiery zeal,
And Warren's onward cheer;
And heart to heart shall thrill as when
They moved and spake as living men.

Not on Potomac's side,
With treason in thy rear,
Can Freedom's holy cause be tried:
Not there, my State, but here.
Here must thy needed work be done,
The battle at thy hearth-stone won.

Proclaim a new crusade
Against the foes within;
From bar and pulpit, press and trade,
Cast out the shame and sin.
Then speak thy now-unheeded word,
Its lightest whisper shall be heard.