Poetry of the Farm and Rural Life :: :: University of Virginia Library

When first the Indian, on his wild survey,
Broke from the covert of his forest way,
And on thy shore a breathing statue stood
To gaze upon thy silver-gleaming flood;
If ever Indian struck poetic fire,
Or faintest warble from Apollo's lyre,
If ever red-man breathed a grateful prayer
To the Great Spirit, it was then and there!

On our cold border of Canadian hills,
Midst lonely lakelets and unnoted rills,
Thou hast thy birth, sweet River of the Vale,
Of fountains purest, and that never fail.
My fancy paints thee on thy march begun,
The infant river's first essay to run:
A sturdy brooklet, gathering the springs,
And giving “promise of much greater things.”
So some bright genius, from a lonely birth,
Goes with his God-gifts to rejoice the earth.

On glides the stream, and with increasing length,
Receives in trust its volume and its strength:
Here, by wild mountain shagg'd with piney hair,
A brook comes tumbling down its rocky stair,
Leaps to thy bosom with a shout of joy,
Like some delighted, journey-promised boy;

There, more like maiden, sweet, composed, and still,
Steals from the plain the tributary rill.
Anon, fresh from its native mountains roll'd,
Wild Ammonoosuc, with its waters cold,
Adds to thy wealth; and farther still along,
Sweet Ashuelot hails thee with a song.
Pocomptuc, hermit of the western hills,
Gives to thy flood his own collected rills;
Fretted with toil, and seeking rest in thee,
Sinks to thy breast the laboring Chicopee;
And Westfield, murmuring for its Indian name,
Still bright and sparkling as at first it came
From Berkshire's caverned hills and rifts of snow,
Adds to thy pureness, as it swells thy flow.

Oh, life-blood of the valley, and of me!
Thus pulsing on, thy current seeks the sea;
And when thy shores give place to Ocean's tide
That opes before thee, rolling far and wide,
Like one whose life in blessing has been passed,
Thou glidest calmly to thy rest at last.

So rich and varied, with enchantment rare,
Along thy banks thy bordering beauties are;
Should painter copy faithfully and true
The scenic glories that belong to you,
Scarce nature copied would his picture seem,
But some bright, beautiful, ideal dream.
Variety is thine; as if to move
The multifarious taste of man to love:
Here, by green shores thy waters seem to sleep;
There, flashing, dashing, in a torrent leap,
Flecking with foam the trembling, cliffy shore,
And sending far abroad their muffled roar.

Oft, waked at midnight, I have mused to hear,
Borne by the night breeze to my “hearing ear,”
The solemn anthem of thy thundering tide,
Where Turner battled, and the Indian died.
Now lulled the breeze—a whisper hoarse of grief;
Now swelling rose the death-song of the chief;
And Justice, prompting with his rigid power,
Scann'd History's record at the thoughtful hour.
Ah, yet more just shall that stern record be
To those who died for love of home and thee!

Thou dost exert an influence in thy flow
Strong as thy current, and as silent too.
Thy shores that bless with beauty every eye,
Thy placid waters stealing calmly by,
Thy elms so full of dignity serene,
Thy mountains sleeping o'er a quiet scene,
Incite to peaceful thoughts, and ope the road
That leads “through Nature up to Nature's God.”

And many hardy wanderers of the deep,
Who plough its billows or beneath them sleep,
First dreamed of ocean in life's morn, when they
Toiled on thy banks, or strayed in childish play:
Thy mimic surges, whispering on the shore,
Awakened love for ocean's solemn roar;
Thy seaward journey, and expanse so wide,
Waked curious longings for the shoreless tide.
Then Fancy pictured, with her colors gay,
Their hopeful future, bright, and far away:
A life of daring on the ocean-wave,
The fadeless laurels of the seaman brave,
Such as Macdonough and Decatur wore,
The flag of Freedom and the battle's roar;

The piping winds, the music of the deep,
All vaguely blended as in dreams of sleep,
Wrought those high colors on their youthful brain
Which Time will fade, but not retouch again.

How oft a Ledyard can from distant lands
Look back to thy bright flood and silver sands
As first incentives to that spirit high
Which stirs the trav'ler, and directs his eye
O'er earth in search of paradise to roam,
To find, at last, 'twas left with thee at home

And much I owe thee; more than I can sing:
Ere half-fledged Fancy tried her fluttering wing,
When floating thoughts, of Truth and Fiction born,
Hung, like thy misty cloud on April morn,
O'er and around me—vapors of the brain,
Now like to something, now convolved again—
Thy charming influence shaped the forming strain;
It rose incited by thy Naiad throng;
God gave the elements—thou gav'st the song!
And kneeling, now, beside thy crystal brink,
Thou'rt the Piërian from which I drink.

Oh, sweetest stream that poet ever sung!
Here to thy waters is my offering flung.
Would that its worth were such, a bard might know
Thou wouldst upbear it whilst those waters flow!
And when in years that swift are stealing on,
I to the shadowy spirit-realms have gone,
Some bard more skilful and with sweeter lyre
May thee emblazon with Apollo's fire:
Smoother than mine his strains for thee may move,
But more devoted cannot be his love.

AUTUMNAL LEAVES.

I. MAPLE.

When withered leaves around my way
Drift in the fresh autumnal blast,
I view them, as they rustling play,
As Summer's phantoms flitting past.
In some still nook, or sheltering lee
Of roaring woods, they seem to me
When resting from their eddying flight,
To build departed Summer's urn;
Where Phœbus pours a saddened light
Like moonlight fanned to burn.

The rivulet lowers its babbling voice,
Past its brown banks runs dreamily;
It seems to take, as if from choice,
The melancholy minor key.
All nature's full of sympathy:
The winds and waters, woods and plains,
Together blend their dirge-like strains;
The lonely bird forbears to sing;
Grief-stifled seems each tuneful throat;
E'en darker grows the raven's wing,
And desert-like his note.

The herd-boy, keeping watch a-field
Beside the late outstanding grain,
Marks leaves in gusty circles wheeled
And scattered o'er the russet plain;
Or sees the wavy-line that floats
In the gray rack to flute-like notes;
Wild fowl are harrowing the sky,
The early harbingers of snow;
Far southward on his straining eye
All indistinct they grow.

The dying winds, as sets the sun,
Usher the gloaming and expire;
The frosty stars gleam, one by one,
Like ice reflecting distant fire.
The moon awaits her time to rise
To bathe with her cold light the skies;
The frost king creeps in stillness forth;
While shooting upward high and higher,
The nameless wizard of the north
Kindles his ghostly fire.

The peasant homeward hieing now,
Belated, turns his thoughtful gaze,
And sees on high the starry “Plough”
Pale through the evanescent blaze.
Thoughts, sad yet pleasing, crowd his mind;
Thoughts formless half, and half defined,
Such as the bard and painter feel,
But fail to picture or to sing;
Thoughts that of genius fix the seal
And point her upward wing!

The hunter, camped beside the spring,
Where the red maple sheltering stands,
As low the welling waters sing,
And cheerful shine his blazing brands,
Moodily muses as his eye
Watches the flashing northern sky,
And dreams in Odin's distant hall
Hunters some kingly banquet share,
And he, one day, when Death shall call,
Shall mingle with them there.

When withered leaves around my way
Drift in the fresh autumnal blast,
I look upon them as they play,
As Summer's phantoms flitting past.

In stilly nook, or sheltering lee
Of waving woods, they seem to me,
When gathering from their eddying flight,
To build departed Summer's urn,
Where Phœbus pours a mellowed light
Like moonlight fanned to burn.

II. CHESTNUT.

How beautiful the picture is that nature spreads to-day!
For autumn clothes her second-born in fanciful array;
And through the hazy lift the sun a softened splendor sends,
That wraps the scene in quietude,—a sweet enchantment lends.

How like to elves in elfin land yon troop of children go,
Turning the hill-side leaves to find the bright brown nut below!
And every treasure brings a shout, and brings all there to see,
Like as the eddying gust collects the honors of the tree.

The jay, that in the summer days was scarcely seen at all,
Flits frequent through the pictured bush, and startles with its call,
And seems to warn its feathered mates, with quick and earnest cries,
Beware of Winter's biting breath, and bitter scowling skies!

The squirrel on the mossy log, within the hollow wood,
Clucks loud to tell that he's secured a store of winter food;
His kinsman clad in “hoddin gray,” the hunter fain would see,
With tiny claws goes scratching up the rough, nut-bearing tree.

The duck, within the dented shore, where spreads the mimic bay,
Sits silent, motionless, save when a ripple rounds away;
And seems to watch the colored tints reflected from below,
Or list Dominion's coming step, so stealthy, and so slow!

I see the waters of the brook, that in the summer time
Went singing onward down the vale, a kind of “catch-me” chime,—
Now seem to linger by the bank, and linger by the brae,
As if all loth, from such a scene, to run in haste away.

Can fairy land,—can “land of dreams,” such scene enchanting show?
So soft the heavens smile above! so glad the earth below!
As if millennial angels had their banners bright unfurled,
And Peace, dear Peace! her censer swung in sweetness o'er the world!

III. ASH.

Sounds the rooster's wakeful warning:
'T is a damp and foggy morning,
Thick and gray;
Sure the shades of night are fled,
But there's something else instead
Of the day.
'T is the night, painted white,
And the eye is unavailing
In the vapor all assailing
With its shroud;
We are gloom'd, gloom'd, gloom'd!
All the landscape is entombed
In a cloud!

'T is the time when winds are sighing,
And the leaves—they are dying,
And are dead;
See the ashes, tall and slim,
Standing by the water's brim,
Where they fed;
How they shed all their dead
Summer plumes that hid the nest
Where the birdie took its rest
'Mid the leaves!
Down dripping, dripping, dripping,
Like the rain, softly slipping,
From the eaves.

There 's a sort of muffled drumming,
For the distant mill is humming,
Grinding grist;

And the fisher-king is winging,
And his clacking rattle springing
In the mist:
And I hear, seeming near,
As it were, the distant greeting
Of two early goers, meeting—
Strangely loud;
And the clipper, clipper, clipper!
How the wings of that “dipper”
Cut the cloud!

But the sun at last is wading
Through the vapor overshading—
There he shines!
And the curtain, upward stealing,
Slow the landscape is revealing,
“To the Nines.”
Stooks of grain on the plain
Look like wigwams on the prairie,
Some encampment of the wary
Brothers red;
And with tittle, tattle, tattle,
Waters sparkle as they prattle
O'er their bed.

But the eye of day is dimmer
Than in summer; has a glimmer
Palely bright;
Phœbus wearies of his toil,
Or is getting short of oil
For his light.
But the flowers still are ours:
There's a honeysuckle twining,
And the golden-rod is shining,
Bright to view;

And, oh! bonnie, bonnie, bonnie!
There's the fringy little honey,
Gentian blue!

And the days are shorter growing:
Down the Occidental going,
Sinks the sun;
And the stars that night adorn,
Clip the twilight, and are born,
All as one.
Oh, my soul! so they roll—
Roll the days, the months, the years!
Full of gladness, full of tears
Are our eyes;
Till, solemn, solemn, solemn,
Foots the sum-total column:
Here he lies!

A WINTER NIGHT'S EPISTLE.

To Editor Knickerbocker Magazine.

Wild is the night! for winter reigns;
The north-wind sounds its fiercest strains:
The shaking doors and window-panes
Make furious din;
And through the chinks the powdery grains
Come sifting in.

I'll mend the fire ere it decays,
Pile on the wood, and make it blaze:
This is one, surely, of the days
Of which we've read,
Or rather nights, when the Fiend strays
On errands dread!

There lies my dog, his brains a-baking,
And fierce gesticulations making;
In dreams the Snow-hill fox he's shaking
With mortal spite;
Or else he's giving or is taking
“Fits” in a fight.

Strange voices out-of-doors I hear:
The shout of rage, the howl of fear;
As if mad fiends from regions drear
In furious haste
Have broken loose, on wild career
To lay earth waste.

Some seem an awful organ thrumming;
Some on the roofs and walls are drumming;
And one, smoke-choked or singed in coming
Down the hot flue,
Is off, and sets the chimney humming
With angry w-h-e-w!

I'll whittle to a pen this quill,
And though the thing be fashioned ill,
Yet o'er this paper with such skill
I'll haply scratch it,
That he who dates “Up River” will,
He only, match it!

I've sometimes thought 't would be great pleasure
To have more learning and more leisure,
And give my muse fair chance to measure
Herself with others,
Who, though they deem such kin no treasure,
Are yet my brothers.

But how should I obtain a living,
And half my time to letters giving?
Translating from strange tongues, and thieving
What's not well known,
And set admiring fools believing
Its all my own?

I might as well just launch a shingle
Upon the brook whose waters jingle
Through my domain, on down the dingle,
The flood to greet,
And dream the chip will reach and mingle
With ocean's fleet.

That God whose lamp illumes the heaven,
Who breaks to us the vital leaven,
I feel and know to me has given
Light from His light;
But toils of common life have striven
To quench it, quite.

“There's poetry in farming.” True
But I have read, and so have you,
That “distance lends unto the view
Enchantment fair.”
For instance: digging gold will do
Till one gets there.

In summer planting, weeding, hoeing,
And practising “Knick's knack” at mowing,
(That science which you boast of knowing
So very well,)
The scorching sun no mean type showing
Of what's called hell.

In winter tugging with the flail,
Or sledding in a cutting gale,
Such as would send a gallant sail
In bare-poles seaward,
And blows your fore-nag's lusty tail
Straight out to leeward.

In place of literary talk,
With compeers in your daily walk,
It's “Shall you top, or cut the stalk
Of that 'ere crop?”
Or, “Sold yer cattle—how'll ye chalk
To sell, or swop?”

Not half the prose may well be told
Which farmers every day behold
In summer hot and winter cold,
Dull as 't is real;
Yet we've incentives manifold
To the ideal.

The pictures in the book of June;
The glorious dawn, the balmy noon;
“The dewy eve, the rising moon;”
All these are ours,
And all the recompensing boon
Of birds and flowers.

When Winter hurls his storms apace,
Oft piteous is the farmer's case:
Night comes—the blazing chimney-place
Stills all complaints;
Thaws out his features, till his face
Shines like a saint's.

There, while his cheer reeks to the ceiling,
He gets most comfortably feeling,
Thinking how barn and battened shieling,
Secure and warm,
His poor dependents safe are shielding
From the wild storm.

There he may read, and muse, and ponder
Upon this life, this world of wonder;
There, judge-like, he may set asunder
The truth from error,
And see in men of “blood and thunder”
No cause for terror.

There he may form just estimate
Of those the world calls good and great;
See fortune, circumstance, and fate
Create renown,
And give a knave a chair of state,
An ass a crown.

An old divine —he's been away
In “kingdom come” this many a day—
Once said, “Say what you have to say,
And then have done.”
The sum of that will I obey,
And carry one.

Adieu, dear Knick! Peace make your bed!
You, too, were country-born and bred,
And can appreciate all I've said,
And dare to print it.
Green be the laurel round your head,
And glory tint it!

Rev. Dr. Witherspoon of New Jersey, one of “the Signers.”

A WINTER MORNING'S EPISTLE TO SAME

January 18.

Dear Knick:

I'm siting meekly by the fire,
Watching the window-drifts grow higher.
A half-hour since, bold o'er my lyre,
I cried in rhyme,
Thalia, blessed! me inspire
To song sublime!

Whereat, at once the “frenzy fine”
That poets feel, is straightway mine,
And down, to trace the glowing line,
At once I set me,
With more than half the spicy Nine
Fain to abet me.

Thoughts vigorous as the living oak,
Yet shapeless in their forest cloak;
Like rank-and-file in battle-smoke,
Enough appearing
To warrant some decisive stroke,
Or general clearing:

Fancies around my goose-quill gleam,
As bright as ever led a dream;
Just on the very point, 't would seem,
Of being taken,
When Racket starts her noisy team,
The reins well shaken.

Her team consists of children three,
Whose mother says they “look like me;”
More lively “bairns” you'll seldom see,

More fond of noise;
I've not the heart to chill their glee,
And damp their joys.

So while I write they make their fun,
And various are the doings done:
Bear-shooting with a wooden gun,
Myself the bear;
Or ranting round the floor they run,
Sledding a chair.

A three-foot Stentor “Whoa! haw!” cries
His reckless hand the whip-lash plies;
We duck, and dodge, and wink our eyes
As 't whistles nigh us;
Till, crack! around my head it flies,
And I feel pious.

About that time it gets to be
“Hard sledding,” quite too hard for me;
I serve injunctions, but, you see,
Silence don't follow;
Young “E Plu. Unum,” full of glee,
Must bu'st or hollo.

Concerted music doesn't fail;
But “By-lo-Baby,” “Lily Dale,”
Are done most feelingly, with hale
Vociferations,
In all the key-notes of the scale,
With “variations.”

My thoughts grow dim and fancies scatter;
No use the muse to coax or flatter;
At most she'll compromise the matter

By bidding me
In gleesome childhood's storm-bound clatter
My theme to see.

In casting retrospective squint
O'er what is penned, it seems her hint
Is acted on—not much else in 't;
But then I'll send it;
And maybe you'll conclude to print
It as I've penned it.

I'll merely add a word, to say
The “world of letters” should straightway
Go into mourning; well they may;
They came near getting
A perfect gem; alack-a-day!
'T was spoiled in setting!

A MOTHER'S LAMENT.

'Twas when the rye was in the blow,
And Summer's breath was sweet,
My baby from my arms did go,
The Lord of love to meet.

Again the rye is in the blow,
The clover bloom is sweet;
But fairer flower than June can show,
Is dust beneath my feet.

Again the sheltering maples fling
Their shadows round my door;
Again the social warblers sing
As cheerly as before.

How beauteous once to me the bough!
How welcome once its shade!
But deeper shadow wraps me now,
Than e'er the maples made.

Still swings the bird her hammock there,
So happy with her own;
Ah me! I once her song could share,
But my dear nestling 's flown.

The gloaming shadows tint the vale,
The sober moon I see,
And lonely sounds the piping quail
Out on the darkening lea,

There's something gone, I do not see;
Lost, that I cannot find;
To me a mournful melody
Sounds in the voiceful wind.

Why, memory, wilt thou evoke
Sweet phantoms from the past?
O, why! to vanish like the smoke,
Swift fleeting in the blast.

TO A BOB-A-LINK.

Bard amongst birds! whose music prime
Makes glad our early summer-time;
Could I infuse into my rhyme
Thy jolly spirit,
How would the jingling numbers chime
With matchless merit!

Your temper never ranges low;
Indeed, such is your spirit's flow,
A certain smartness goes to show
You'll take repute in
That class, or order, which we know
As “highfalutin.”

How from the tall, see-sawing spray
You chant your crazy roundelay;
Or, chatting on your devious way,
Anon you pass,
Till whim your flight and lyric stay
In the tall grass.

Some birch-deserving youth I've seen,
Whose act and aim alike were mean,
Sneak slyly near thy leafy screen,
And round thy head
Let fly a direful volley keen
Of fire and lead.

But, lo! unharmed you took to wing,
And, as you flitted, seemed to sing:—
“Shoot Bob-a-link! you trifling thing!
Shoot Bob-a-link!
Your neck—Jack Ketch—some day—the string,
I think, think, think!”

You're up and stirring in the morn;
Scarce has the cock'rel blown his horn
Ere to my waking ears is borne
Thy half-heard lay,
Telling me sluggish sleep to scorn,
For comes the day.

At noon, when, as a general thing,
Your neighbor songsters fold the wing,
And languidly forbear to sing,
My ears take heed
That merry Bob is wandering
About the mead.

When sinks the setting sun away,
You prattle good-night to the day;
And homeward in the gloaming gray
As I retire,
You cheerly change from grave to gay
My droning lyre.

To the pale cit thy chance-heard strain
Brings back his early days again;
The flowering meads, the emerald plain,
Brooks, “banks, and braes;”
The golden links in memory's chain,—
His brightest days.

Oh, Bobby! thou'rt a biped rare!
Call on your kin—I've lots to spare;
Take choice, and build upon them where
It suits you best;
I'll brand the villain hands that dare
Disturb your nest.

EPISTLE TO HUGH AINSLIE.

A SCOTCH POET.

Dear FRIEND: Surprise you'll doubtless feel,
When this you get, and break the seal;
But one who wishes for your weal
Subscribes the writing;

The Muses, fiddling a Scotch reel,
Do the inditing.

'T is sympathy that prompts my line:
I never saw your face, and mine
You never saw; but I opine,
That's matter small:
The children of “the tuneful Nine”
Are brothers all.

The flowery, green Parnassian way,
What crowds bedust it in our day!
Faith! they've laid rails, and engines play
Te Deums on it,
And “ticket through” all who can pay
A third-rate sonnet.

For one, all independent grown,
I'll have Parnassus of my own!
Old Holyoke, or Ascutney's cone,
As classic should be,
Or grand Monadnock's regal throne:—
Ye gods! they could be!

How few who try the rural song
Strike notes that to the fields belong!
But lack some truthful feature strong:
As painters clever
Oft put the milkmaid on the wrong
Side of the heifer.

The fact is, he who doesn't know
The prose, the poetry can't show,
Of rural life, and make it glow
With life-blood warm:
Whoe'er that saw the beauteous bow,
Saw not the storm?

“May Washing!” —I would rather own
As mine that simple gem alone,
Than half the stilted poems thrown,
With flourish grand,
From the great press, and puffed and blown
About the land.

Whate'er may be your fortune's grade,
I'd take it, were the wager laid,
That you have seen both light and shade
Of Scottish life,
And weary has your heart been made
By worldly strife.

O brother bard! canst thou explain
Why Sorrow wakes the sweetest strain?
Just as we hear the dear refrain
That robins sing,
While showers down the drenching rain
In time of spring.

Blaw sweetly Scotia's pipes, my brither!
I luve her; she's my great grand-mither,
Sae there's a sort o' kindred tether
Hauds me to thee;
But mair thy sang, for sic anither
We rarely see.

Fame's eye may never yet have seen us;
Fate from the world's applause may screen us;
But shall these things suffice to wean us
From song? No! never!
The heirs of true poetic genius
Hold fast for ever!

Adieu, O bard of Nature's making!
Some day thy hand I may be taking:
Don't know: fain would—but Care is shaking
Full fast life's sand;
But I've a notion we'll be waking
In the leal land.

The title of a little poem of Mr. Ainslie's.

POEM

DELIVERED AT THE FIELD MEETING, BI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE TURNERS FALLS FIGHT.

Here, on this storied shore, within the sound
Of these old voiceful waters, have we met
To spend a profitable hour, and muse
Upon the past,—two hundred years agone.
And while we contemplate the present scene
We, too, may give to Fancy latitude,
In speculation on what here shall be
When centuries again have lapsed away.

And it is well at times to rest from cares
That all engross us, and to step aside
From life's highway, its dollars, din and dust,
To Nature's calm retreats, and let our souls
Be fed by her sweet whisperings,—the same
Forevermore, as yesterday, to-day.

Communing with the spirit of the Past,
And conversant with annals of the Old,
We dwell upon Time's workings, and take note
That he, though ever restless, changeful, swift,

Is like a rapid, overflowing stream
Bearing away our cherished fantasies,
Yet leaving on the shore for us to see
The solid grains of fertilizing Truth.

Lo! this is consecrated ground we tread!
The soil, the rocks, the very air we breathe
Are full of memories of a vanished race
Who here had being, and who cherished life
According to the light to them vouchsafed,—
Called “nature's darkness” by the sons of light.
Here Clio paused, and wrote a bloody page,
Whose color darkens and whose interest grows,—
Dark'ning and deep'ning with the lapse of Time.

O, Nature! let a son of thine bespeak
For thy poor children grace of charity!
Our eyes to-day feast on thy fairness;—see
Thy panorama, mountain, flood, and field,
Spread out in beauty, with the moon of May
Renewing verdure to these shoring fields;
While the broad bosom of our Indian stream
Mirrors thy beauties sweetly as of yore.
Thy look impresses us; thy promptings say:
This is your country! love it!—well you may.

Is it a wreath of mist from yonder flood,
Like to a human form, which there I see
On yonder islet that subtends the fall?
Or the grim spirit of the sylvan chief,
Wrapped in his robe of pride and dignity?
Is it the anthem of the thundering tide
Where Turner battled and the Indian died,
The voice I hear? or does the spirit speak?
O, listen well!—I act interpreter:

Did we not love it too? This goodly scene
Was our ancestral heritage; our right,
Our title, from the great Original.
Here were our Lares, our Penates here!
Our bones are mingled with the soil you till;
Our implements of warfare and the chase
Your plows uncover from the rest of years.
Our spirits note the plowman as he turns
Up to the sunlight of the white man's day
The things that once were ours, and hear him say
This was the Indian's! and with curious eye
Inspect it for a moment—then move on
Without a pang of pity in his breast
For all the Indian's wrongs; without a thought
Save “might makes right,”—the adage of his race.

Were we not men, and like your selfish selves
Called the Great Spirit, Father?—brothers all?
Wild and untutored,—savage, as you say,
But, for all that, your Father's children, too,
By Nature nurtured, and to Nature true.

Where slept the pity that you since have shown
To your black brother whom you could enslave?
What blessed spirit from the Good on high
Prompted your hearts to give them liberty,
Yet generous mercy to our race deny?
Did he possess the soil he trod upon?
Were his such pleasant, goodly scenes as this,
Its teeming soil, its wealth of food and game?—
Speak! was it Christian charity alone,
Or did the elements political,
More potent still, combine and underlie
The glorious act that goes for Mercy's own?

Alas for human goodness! we had lands,
And timbered hills, and food-supplying streams,
And mineral grounds, rich with the precious ores.
You came, and looked upon, and saw them good.
Then Envy sowed her seed; her rank roots grew
And filled your hearts with covetous desire,
Born of the power that wars against the Good.—
Rest for your arms, rest for your marching feet,—
No rest was yours, till, with a conscience scared
By “might makes right,” we're gone, and you are here!

No sachem of your race who aims to be
Its mighty chieftain, and none other who
Desires a seat in your great council lodge,
Declares his purpose and intent to be
To see wrong righted; that his charity,
Broad like a mantle, wraps all in its folds;
That at his hands our wasted nations shall
Receive the honest justice that you boast
Dwells in your temples reared for her abode.

No! such avowal would at once dispel
His hopes, and strike his aspirations dead.
His people crave our lands,—those lands will have,
And still make show of Christian charity:
Grant us a pittance, that the world may see
Their generosity; and still excite
By studied arts, our tribes to useless strife
That the same eyes may see how prompt they are
To plunder and possess in Justice's name.

A prophet of your nation once has said
Words that should ope your ears again to hear:—

“But I can see another sight
To which the white man's eyes are blind:
His race may vanish hence, like mine,
And leave no trace behind,
Save ruins o'er the country spread,
And the white stones above the dead.”

The voice is hushed; but still the form is there,—
Mighty King Philip! Time makes bare to-day
Fair Truth; e'en as the day-king brightening
Dispels the shrouding and distorting fogs
That supervene, at times, autumnal frosts.
Kingly Metacom! warrior, patriot, sage!
Now that thy bones are dust, thy country ours;
Now that Time's hand has poured for centuries
Its Lethean waters o'er the bloody past,
We can review thy actions and can pass
Unbiased judgment on thy motives true.
Maligned as savage, underprized as man,
Thy soul was with that real greatness rich
Which stamps the nobleman of Nature's own,
Distinctive from the misnamed counterfeit.
Condemned by us because thou didst possess
Those lofty qualities which we admire
And glorify, when with us they appear.

No bard with song-wrought laurels crowned thy brow;
No orator thy great deeds magnified;
No press spread forth to an admiring world
Thy statesmanship and patriotic worth;
No grateful country could reward thy deeds
With honors high and fame's emblazonry;—

Nor didst thou covet these. Thy piercing ken
Read through the darkness of futurity
The doom so surely waiting for thy race,
And thy great heart to mighty effort stirred,
Counting life nothing in Oppression's yoke.

Rest! spirit, rest!
The sounding aisles of free New England's woods.—
Her life-blood, gushing from the shaded fonts
That slaked thy thirst, still trickling from the hills
With murmured plaint,—and, ceaseless, leading all,
Yon torrent's voice, deep, solemn, and sublime,
Thy requiem shall be!

The wraith has vanished! still another form
Of eager, restless air, in place succeeds,
Lacking the sachem's pose of dignity.—
Is it his voice now speaks? or varying airs
That change the toning numbers of the fall:—

Behold me, Enterprise!—sprung from the Plow,
The Axe, Loom, Anvil, and the Common School,
I claim them all as ancestry; but first
My filial pride acknowledges the Plow.

I am the spirit that in early days
Did build your barges and contrive the ways,
Obstructions conquering, that Commerce might
The waters of your river utilize,
And bring the recompense that all derive
From well-timed industry. I, too, am he
Who, tiring of the locomotion slow,
Laid down the iron rails these shores along,

Brought forth the iron horse and harnessed him
To thunder through your valley with his freights,
And wake the echoes with his rousing shrieks.

I, too, am he who laid this mighty work
At Nature's own suggestion, and have turned
The tireless energies of this mad tide
To work for man and his aggrandizement.

Yonder you see beginnings; but the end
Is in the future far; when I who speak
And you who listen long have passed away;—
Yea, when the children of your children's child,
As generations shall in turn succeed,
Shall hither gather to renew this day,—
Scarce this sweet spot they'll find,—this cool retreat,
These verdant pines, this grassy shade they'll see,
But blocks of brick and stone, and graded streets;
Nature displaced by crowned and regnant Art,
And Trade's confusion dinning in their ears.

Here, where the fisher stood and speared his prey;
Here, where the Indian, happy in the wild,
Thanked the Great Spirit for this paradise,—
Shall stretch the broad highways from shore to shore,
And din of traffic and its roar shall drown
The thunder of the falling flood below.

That vision vanisheth! What do I see?
Faces of friends, dear and familiar all.
Welcome! thrice welcome to my native haunts,

To interchange those kind amenities
That lighten life's sad burthens, and inspire
The soul to dwell on something else—beyond.

THE BLUE-BIRD.

When warm rains fall and soft winds sweep
Away the wintry drift,
When swollen brooks run down the steep,
And gray with mist the lift;
When through the vale the floods out-pour
And crashing icy floes,
With swash, and dash, and wild uproar,
Trend with the melted snows;
When all the plain with snow-broth swims,
And teams, on half bare road,
With swinging heads and cordy limbs,
Drag the resistant load;—
A twitter from the tree we hear,
Some bars of music sweet,
And gloomy thoughts give place to cheer
As we the minstrel greet.

Sweet little harbinger of Spring,
Green fields, and sunbright days!
O, welcome! with thy azure wing
And softly warbled lays.
While other songsters loiter still
In regions of the sun,
I bless thy hardy little will
To tell of Winter done,
Its dark, cold days and bitter skies,

Its wild and gusty nights:—
Of spring, unfolding to our eyes
Her mantle of delights.

The farmer hears thee, and he knows
Of earth's awaking life;
Tells of thy advent as he goes
Homeward, to “weans and wife;”
And eyes grow bright, and smiles steal o'er
The sober face of care,
And crowded grows the cottage door
To catch the vision rare.
The swart boy in the sugar-bush,
Who loves his gun to try,
The crow's discordant croak will hush
With “murder-aiming” eye;
But when thy liquid numbers fall
On his delighted ear,
He welcomes thee with answering call,
Nor harms thee, hovering near.

Sweet blue-bird, type of winged Hope!
When darkness like the tomb
Begirts earth's pilgrims, and they grope
In sadness and in gloom;
Hope whispers soft a word of cheer
O'er the dismaying scene,
Till through the folds of blackness peer
Bright skies and living green.

ON PLANTING AN ELM TREE.

Live now, for shelter and for shade!
And live thou wilt, I trust,
And flourish, when thy planter's laid
To slumber in the dust.

Out from the snowy north blows high
The bleak, pre-warning gale;
And scudding thro' the heavy sky,
The 'lated wild fowl sail.

All naked are thy infant limbs,
Benumbed these hands of mine,
And hoarsely sing these wintry hymns
Of summer and “lang syne.”

But all in faith I've digged thy bed,
And fixed thee in the soil,
For fancy has thy future read,
And recompensed my toil.

I see aloft thy branchy head,
Thy good-time-coming prime,
A canopy of verdure spread
Wide, beautiful, sublime.

And by the dallying summer air
Thy breezy harps are played;
The warbling birds are sporting there,
And children in thy shade.

Here may the way-worn pause to rest
When beats the sultry noon;
Here come the sleepless care oppress'd,
Communing with the moon.

And generations shall arise,
Live, die, forgotten be,
While thou art stretching toward the skies
A time-defying tree.

So, in the name of God, Amen!
I give, bequeath, devise
Thee to those generations, when
Successive they may rise.

THE RUINED MILL.

I sat upon the broken wall and cast the line and hook
Below, within the waters of the half-obstructed brook;
And looked about, in moody thought, the dwindled surface o'er,
Where spread a lakelet's broad expanse, and deep, in days of yore.

Behind me leaned the ruined mill, in downhill of decay;
Its timbers bare, and gaping side half-opened to the day;
Its leaky flume and useless wheel all green with stagnant slime,
The water gurgling underneath with melancholy chime.

A phebe fearless built her nest within a leaning brace,
The solitary cheerful thing about the cheerless place;
And even she appeared to feel—or 'twas my somber mood,—
That poets e'en may overpaint the charms of solitude.

I thought on Time's mutations and the changes I had seen
Since the landscape of life's morning to me was fresh and green;—
“The very fish are changed!” I cried, and drew a shiner out
Where once I took, with boyish pride, a thirty-two ounce trout.

Then here was business, here was stir,—the bustle and the whirl,
Here came the jolly yeomanry, here came the clownish churl;
Here idlers by the winter fire, with checkers or with whist,
Quite willing waited while the stones were humming out the grist.

Here was the gossip and the wit of all the country side;
Here small official slates were made, and small officials tried;
With coming grain and going meal the frequent teams were seen;
Now, all approaches hitherward are sodded o'er with green.

Where are the men who hither brought the corn to make their bread?
I knew them when a little boy;—they're sleeping with the dead!
Like grain they're garnered up within some storehouse of the soul,
And of the miller long ago hath Death required toll.

So I thought on Time's mutations, of schemers and their schemes;
How very like, indeed, they are to dreamers and their dreams;
And when we contemplate the past, and when we dreams resume,
The self-same lamp that lights the one the other doth illume.

NOCTURNE.

When I've seen the little infant
To bearded manhood grown,
With cares of life upon him
And children of his own;

When I recollect the sapling
My boyish eyes did see,
To every breeze a plaything,—
Now grown a mighty tree;

When I see the forest monarch
I well knew in his prime
Now lying prone, a victim
To the stayless trend of Time;

When I stand and cast about me,
Like one lost and alone,
And call for old companions,
To find they all are gone;

Then I feel like one who searches
In vain the ashes o'er
To find a spark to kindle
A hearth that glows no more.

LINES

On finding a Dead Young Bird in the Corn-field, while Hoeing.

Poor little bird! 'tis sad to see
Thee lying here so sorrily,
Lost from thy native sheltering tree,
And leaf-roofed nest.
Beside this hill of corn shall be
Thy noteless rest.

Did wanton school-boy hurl the stone?
Or murderous villain aim the gun?
Or, yester evening, when the sun
Sank down the hill,
Did the cold rain-rills round thee run,
To drench and chill?

Now, bright around thee pours the day;
The springing corn-blades waving play,
And all thy sportive mates are gay
With tuneful breath.
O, do they know that here you stay
Songless in death?

'Tis thus with selfish man, I know:
He sees a fellow mortal go,
And, saving when he feels the blow
Strike home and near,
He little heeds the sufferer's woe,
The mourner's tear.

Ah, me! I'd once a birdie sweet,
Whose days, like thine, were winged and fleet!
The angels came; her little feet
Had weary grown,
And with them to the blest retreat,
Long since, she's flown!

A STORMY NIGHT'S EPISTLE TO “OLD KNICK.”

This stormy night is just the time
To spin “Old Knick” a skein of rhyme,
A sort of homely thrum;
The spinning won't be finely done,
My wheel, once touched, is apt to run
Hap-hazard, with a hum.
Still, if will wear this thrum of mine,

It easy might be worse;
There are, who spin too very fine
The thread of their discourse.

They fabric fine appearing stuff,
The work may all be well enough,
No knots or kinks therein,
It shows in market extra nice,
The buyer merely asks the price,
And jingles out “the tin.”
But proving, second thought, 'tis said,
The eyes will open full;
He's bought a fine, long pretty thread
But precious little wool.

I doubt not, this blockading storm
Is snowing round your cottage warm,
As it begirts my own;
I doubt not, that this very night,
All cosy in your sanctum bright,
You hear it rage and moan.
I ken your heart; a pensive face
Tells what to mind is brought,
And moves your current pen to trace
The humane, tender thought.

My cat comes powdered from the byre;
(That dog has no more need of fire,
He perished long ago;)—
I ope the door to let puss in:
Puff! comes the blast with gusty din
And white with drifting snow.
Avaunt! and keep the broad outside,
Wild riders of the storm!
No blazing fuel, freely plied,
Your polar breath can warm!

There pussy in the corner sits,
And while her furry coat emits
The freshness of the night,
She looks as “meek as Moses” while
She perpetrates a feline smile,
And purrs in sheer delight.
I love kind mercy to extend
E'en to a mousing cat;
However much thereof we lend,
We're borrowers, at that.

Thick frost encrusts the window-panes;
The storm I see not, but its strains
Are heard in awful play:
The spiteful dash against the glass,
The grumbled sough, as off they pass,
Hoarse-humming, far away.
Where now's that little feathered dot
Of life, I saw to-day?
Has she some canny shelter got?
Or blown in death away?

She flitted, cheeping, round my head,
At morn, as I the cattle fed;
Her voice was low and sweet,
As if she craved my garnered store;
Poor thing! but for thy coyness, more
Thou'd hadst than thou could'st eat,
Or did she with prophetic ken
This awful night foresee,
And call for Summer back again,
And her infolding tree?

Scarce bigger than my thumb was she;
A crumb a loaf for her would be;
She flitted and was gone;

Yet that bird haunts my thoughts to-night:
May He, who notes the sparrows, light
For her a cheerful dawn!
And thus all breathing life is spent,
See-sawing, like the boy;
See, ‘winter of our discontent;’
Saw, summer-time of joy.

The clock has threatened to strike ten:
Retiring hour for honest men;
For rogues an o'er late one;
I'll slip the band from off the wheel,
Tell off the thread upon the reel,
And even call it done.
And quite a lusty skein I've got!
You think so—don't you—sort o'?—
If forty threads compose a “knot,”
Here's two knots and a quarter.

A NIGHT IN A COUNTRY INN.

“Ay free aff-han' your story tell.”

It was drip, drip, all day, very well I remember,
Back along in the forties, and month of November,
The highways were heavy, my nag worn and weary,
The scenery blinked at most dismally dreary,
For the Green Mountain range, to my grim contemplation,
Seemed the fag-end of all out-of-doors and creation.
For hours not a soul had I seen on my way.
If 'twere ever man-haunted, it wasn't that day;
And with the exception, in one or two cases,
Of rain-shedding hovels in out of way places,
With a phiz at the panes like to that of a woman,
I had counted myself there the only thing human.
Tho' the “hills were a thousand,” my vision could scan,
The Lord had no ‘cattle’ there, neither had man;
Unless I except one forlorn looking cow,
That man must have owned,—not the Lord, any how.
As she stood by the side of a ramshackle shed,
Her feet in a half-bushel measure could tread;
Her caudal curl'd under her ribs and her bones,
As plain to be seen as the big bowlder stones,

With a sort of hysterical grin on her face,
That moved me to laughter, tho' sad was my case;
That face was a tableau, most striking, thought I,
Of Job's wife's, when she told him to “curse God and die!”
Down a gorge led my road, and my horse carried me
On a path that the mid summer sun couldn't see,
For the hemlocks so shady, so solemn, so thick;
And night then came down ‘like a thousand of brick.’
I mean it fell heavy and dead, like a log;
The rain holding up for a down-falling fog,—
Such a fog!—Metaphysics! no scholar of thine
Was ever more mistified, reader of mine.
My horse, in the cloud, hung his head and crawled down;
I thinking if Tartarus bottomed the town,
Could only imagine what his thoughts could be,—
His progress was more than his master could see.
I could hear his feet fall, and could feel a slight jog,
But it seemed like a treadmill revolved in the fog,
Or more like a horse-boat a-ferrying o'er,
For a swelled mountain stream filled my ears with its roar;
And Fancy began my location to fix:
Old Charon a horse-boat over the styx.
Perhaps “Pomp” was thinking, if horses e'er think,
His master knew best where was provant and drink,
And trusted his rider's superior skill.
As men often trust to a demagogue's will,

And think that their leader knows what he's about,
When his course is too blind for their eyes to make out.
An hour, more or less, of monotonous tread,
Horse turned a right angle, I lifted my head.
And high in the air hung a beacon of light,
Thrice large as old Jupiter on a clear night,
But whether of heaven or earth, I knew not,
Till Pomp pricked his ears and broke into a trot,
And with three minutes trotting, mayhap little more,
Brought me up to the “Green Mountain Coffee House” door.

Who wouldn't rejoice, after journey like mine,
To get where his features could soften and shine?
Tho' rough be his welcome,—his company be
Bar-room haunting idlers, of every degree,
He knows he can learn, if he isn't a fool,
Something new in each class of humanity's school.

The host I judged Dutch, or of Dutch-land descent,
For he smoked when he sat, and he smoked when he went;
Descended, perhaps, from some lofty old Van,
But shook-down and dumpy descended the man,
Shut into himself like a telescope slide,
And longitude covered by latitude wide.
Kind-hearted he seemed, and appeared to aspire
To make his guests happy, and keep a good fire.
That fire! it was one of the old-fashioned kind,
Like those in the back-wooded country we find;
By those that were lit by our sires on the hearth,
The focus of comfort, good cheer and of mirth.

That fire as it flickered and blazed up the flue,
Lit scenes that Will Mount with his easel should view;
For the rain of the day and the night's foggy weather
Set the “birds of a feather” to flocking together.
The wit of the hamlet, o'er lazy for work;
The rough mountain hind talked of taters and pork;
The blacksmith talked learned in things of his line;
The miller, all “tight” as a hard knot in twine;
The doctor, who managed, by hook or by crook,
To be pretty well “smashed,” and yet dignified look;
The greenhorn as gawky as gawky could be,—
Not green as he thought, but oh! verdant was he;
And a certain old fellow they called “Uncle Mose,”
Very queer in his countenance, queer in his clothes,
Who sat in one corner, his feet on the jamb,
And listened to all, but kept mum as a clam.
A hot iron poker lay red in the coals,
Suggestive of flip and of rollicking souls,
And I made up my mind by an inference fair,
That the law made in Maine never troubled them there.

Well settled among them, I listened to each;
The question, the answer, the jest, or the speech,
Till the greenhorn, whose “organ of language” was great,
Led out by one posted, began to narrate
His travels, perhaps for the fiftieth time,
But new to the stranger who jotted in rhyme.
Now, man may be green, like myself, I opine,
And yet not exhibit its every sign;

But if the great showman this “species” could get,
The tide of his fortunes might flood again yet.
His figure was outre; his making-up wrong;
His body quite short, and his legs very long,
Loose-jointed and crooked; in fine he seem'd made
Of remnants, left o'er from the man-making trade.
With eyes like a frog's, near the top of his skull,
The color of pewter, and that very dull,
They fix'd upon this and on that with a stare,
His jaw dropping down with the vacantest air;
In short, he was just, both in looks and condition,
Illustrated verdure, a live definition!
His voice was a sort of asthmatical jet,
The blurt and the wheeze of a crack'd clarionet.
Imagine, O reader, the looks of the “cretur,”
While I shall attempt his narration in metre:—

THE GREENHORN'S ACCOUNT OF HIS VISIT TO THE CITY.

The greenhorn commences his story in a scientific manner.

You've heard 'em tell of “walks in life”?
Well, I have heard 'em too;
But the greatest walk I ever had
I guess I'll tell to you;
About it you may wish to hear,
Because it's awful true.

Never had been an extensive traveller.

I went the city once to see,
I'd heard so much about
(A dozen miles from home before
I never had been out);
I wore a suit of new sheep's gray,
And cow-hides thick and stout.

How he happened to go.

You see, that year my dad and I
Rais'd “notions” more 'n a plenty,
And he had promised me a share,
'Cause I was one-and-twenty;
So he to market with a load
Out to North River sent me.

How he got to town.

I hitch'd old Dobbin to a post,
Nigh where I'd stopped to trade,
And went aboard a steamboat there
To see how it was made.
First thing I knew, we were half-way
To York, the captain said.

Determines to “go it.”

I felt a little down at first,
Till we the town could spy;
My pockets, tho', were full of rocks
That I'd been laying by;
Methought, since most young fellows “train,”
So now for once will I.

Sagely exposes a lie.

Up what they called Broadway I walked;—
(A fellow told me 'twas.
But I have reason now to think
He lied to me, because
It wasn't wider than the lane
That leads to miller Shaw's.)

Buys a gold watch.

About the third man that I met
A gold watch offered me;
It was a splendid looking thing
As ever I did see;
I gave him for't my silver watch,
And dollars thirty-three.

Finds that all is not gold that shines.

I felt, as you may well suppose,
Elated with my trade,
Till afterwards a jeweller
A little reck'ning made,
And called a bushel of them worth
Less money than I paid.

Acts very discreetly.

A crowd was rushing up and down,
Some meetings sure were nigh;
And so I thought I'd wait until
The “heft” of them got by;
And thro' a window look at prints
That just then struck my eye.

But don't accomplish his object.

stood the pictures viewing there
For half an hour or more,
But faith! the crowd was just as great,
Or greater than before;
And some that pushed and jostled me,
About a greenhorn swore.

Makes an alarming discovery.

Well, on I went; but soon perceived
My coat behind felt queer,
And on examination found
'Twas cut off, “slick and clear!”
Thinks I, am I a-dreaming now,
Or what means all this 'ere?

Sundry valuables missing.

You see, my pocket-book was gone,
And “bran'-new” handkerchief,
And half a card of gingerbread,
And all, 'tis my belief,—
For now I've reason so to think,—
Were taken by a thief.

Meets with a slight disaster.

Thinks I, I'll cross to t'other side,
The coast there looks more clear;
A carriage struck my pantaloons,
And tore them in the rear;
I said that half the road was mine,—
The driver didn't hear.

Is accosted by an unknown fair.

Well, soon I met a lady fine,—
She must have been a belle,—
She smiled, and spoke to me, and seemed
To know me very well;
But who she was I couldn't think,
And now I cannot tell.

Feels flattered and puts his best foot foremost.

She asked me if my friends were well,
And seemed to pity me;
Invited me to walk with her,
And stop with her to tea;
You may believe I honored felt,
And tried polite to be.

Is suddenly taken from “the evil to come.”

I first apologized to her
For all my damaged plight,
And for her invitations kind
Thanked her with bows polite;
But scraping back a step or two,
I vanished from her sight.

Mysterious disappearance. Oblivion; and serious quotation.

For through a scuttle in the walk
I fell like so much lead;
And for a little season then
The light of reason fled;
But when my sense returned I spoke
These lines of Watts I'd read:—
“Down to the regions of the dead,
With endless curses on his head.”

Is unjustly accused.

But while attempting to escape,
A servant came for coal,
Who gave an outcry and alarm,
To find me in the hole;
Then people came and took me out,
And asked me what I stole.

An eventful night.

That night they locked me in a cell,
With scamps of every grade;
I “hollered” murder half the night,
The other half I prayed.
I've reason now to think my hair
That night turned gray a shade.

Thinks the judge piously disposed.

At morn they took me 'fore a judge—
A righteous judge was he!—
He heard my story with a smile,
And straightway set me free;
And made a pious speech about
Uncommon verdancy.

Exit, and home reception.

The next walk that I took was just
To walk straight to the boat,
And for a passage pawned my boots
And remnant of my coat.
When I got home my father said
He'd swap me for a shoat.

The laugh that followed when he ended,
With jibes and squibs of satire blended,
Was such as idlers only hear,—
Rich music to a loafer's ear.
The greenhorn turned his grinning phiz,
And gasped out something like to this,

Which caught my ear, disjointed, blent
With the uprousing merriment:—
“Laugh—ef you want to—but, I swow,
It's a fact—truth,—I tell you now!”
Soon conversation chang'd to play
Upon the topics of the day;
News, stale enough in distant town,
Just in the “Hollow” ushered down;
Murder and rapine, loss by fire,
Steamboat explosions, extra dire;—
Till last at politics they went,
And much of breath and speech were spent
On measures for their country's good;—
For, reader, be it understood,
It was the time, one year in four,
We dread and joy to see well o'er,
When politicians drive their trade,
And some man President is made.
The doctor, with an effort big
To speak, defined himself “a Whig”;
The farmer and the blacksmith, both
Said they wore Democratic cloth;
The miller, biting off a quid,
Said he thought “just as doctor did”;
Old “Mose” would not define at all;
The wit, lean'd back against the wall,
His chair uplifted on two legs,
Shaving a pine stick into pegs,
Said, not much difference he could see
'Twixt tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee
(Original with him, no doubt,
But since then quoted all about).

You're right, my friend, the stranger said,
I've little wisdom in my head,
And yet abroad have seen some things
Your speech to recollection brings;
And I will tell a little story
About the road to fame and glory.

THE STRANGER'S TALE.

THE WAY IT IS DONE.—WITH A MORAL.

'Twas early one morn, in a log-cabin land,
Where the tallest air-castles, however, are planned,
Where swagger is often mistaken for sense,
And faith is a thing of no small consequence.
I mean not that faith which is taught in the Bible,—
The backwoods professor would sue for a libel;
The faith of the Book sees a mansion in heaven,
But this sees a town where a stake is just driven.

'Twas early one morn; 'twas the Fourth of July;
Some time must elapse ere the sun lit the sky;
And, thinking o'er-night of the glorious day,
'Twas natural my dreams, too, should wander that way.
So I dreamed, as a Yankee boy frequently will,
Of Lexington, Concord, and old Bunker Hill;
Saw the redcoated column up Bunker arise;
Heard old Putnam's speech 'bout the “white of their eyes.”
They neared the redoubt, and the guns bristled o'er;
But just as the Yankees their volley would pour,

Martial sounds 'gan to rise,
And I opened my eyes,
And thought 'twas a part of the dream gone before.
But I listened, so still;
It was not Bunker Hill,
But without in the street they were making uproar;
While a man with a fife
Squealed as if for his life,
And a drum put in shakes Ole Bull might adore.

Sleep fled past a doubt; so I dress'd and went out;
Had you seen what I saw, you'd have laughed with a shout:
The offspring of Orpheus, blowing the fife,
By the “cut of his jib,” wasn't long for this life;
For five feet and five I should judge the utmost
Longitudinal metre his person could boast;
But Nature, kind dame, had made up, it would seem,
Deficit in length, by the “breadth of his beam.”
His hat was “caved in”—had of brim scarce a bit;
He wore a short jacket, too small for a fit;
And a ludicrous thought flitted over my mind,
That the fifer was very full breasted behind.

The drummer, beside him, personified Saul;
As gaunt as a greyhound, and bony, and tall.
But ever I can
Describe you this man,
I'll state the condition of both—that is all:
Though scarcely 'twas morn,
They'd both had their corn,
Were so drunk, that to stand, they must lean on the wall;

The din and devotion
Inspired them with motion,
At March! they would go; but at Halt! they would sprawl.

Were I good with the charcoal, my tale I'd adorn
With a sketch of the drummer that auspicious morn.
A view of his figure—a side view—to me
Looked, more than aught else, like a bad figure 3;
His hat, which had suffered, was cocked on one side;
His breeks were too short, by a foot, and too wide;
On the toe of his left foot, and heel of his right,
He hitched to the tune of the “Soldier's Delight.”
His aspect was fierce, with a sprinkling of woe,
His eyes dead ahead, and his arms akimbo;
The poor fifer, I fear,
When he staggered too near,
Received from his elbows a cruel side blow;
A pause would occur,
A trill or a slur,
But the roll of the drum was unbroken, I know;
For the sticks down would come
On the head of the drum,
And the way rub-a-dub rattled out wasn't slow.

The rabble behind them were trundling a gun,
About a ten-pounder, I judged such an one;
But foremost, and leading the glorious van,
Marched a man, 'tis my plan to ban if I can.
In his gait, in his dress, in his dignified air,
With his “brethren in arms” like a prince he'd compare;
He'd striven for office, he'd striven for fame.
He longed for a deed to emblazon his name.

The law was his hobby, at least by pretence;
He was great on a case without need of defence;
And his talents, beside, most decidedly were,
For the use of his countrymen, la militaire.
How he lived, the Lord knows; but 'twas my calculation,
It was partly on faith, partly on speculation.
He appeared to feel grand; yea, he felt rather bigger
Than the man who had seen Gen'ral Washington's “nigger!”
But I'll prove him full soon, if my proof doesn't fail,
A “creature of circumstance”; so to our tale.

I joined in the march, with an inkling of fun;
The music roll'd on, and they trundled the gun.
They came to a spot,
A square vacant lot,
Called after the name of the great Washington.
The gun was now tried,
The match was applied,
And forth belched the thunder to herald the sun.
It looked like a fight,
For overcome quite
The martial musicians lay stretched like the done.

Bang! bang! went the gun, till there wanted but one
More shot, and the job for the sunrise was done;
'Twas likely to fail, for I heard a man swear
That nothing to serve for a wadding was there.
To fail in completion the shame would be great,
Amounting almost to the shame of defeat.
No! that wouldn't do; they must give the last shot,
But where was a wadding at hand to be got?

Our hero stood near, in contemplative mood,
Ruminating a speech, as a cow does her cud;
But, sudden a thought!
His pocket he sought
And drew forth a handkerchief dirty as mud.
“Here! take that! my lad,
And use it, egad!
The gun shall not fail for the want of a wad!”
Soon the gun roared anew,
Into shreds the rag flew;—
“There goes my best handkerchief—silk one—by—”

A drizzle set in; and the gun was now housed;
But fame, for our hero, was fully aroused.
Her echoing trump was at once to her mouth;
All over the district, east, west, north, and south,
His name spread abroad; and, spreading, the story
Gathered in bulk, while it gathered him glory;
Till, by the time that the story had back again got,
In the “last war” he'd killed twenty men at one shot!

The next thing we see in the “People's Gazette”;
Our hero for Congress his visage has set.
The editor, there, Mr. Butcher's-meat's-ris,
Comes out with a column of something like this:

“It is time for the people to rouse from their sleep!
The wolves are abroad in the clothing of sheep;
But give the pull long,
The pull very strong,
The pull altogether.—Oh! pull while you weep!
'Tis our duty to sow,
Though our readers must know,
No personal benefit hoping to reap.

Come, bards, tune your lays
To our candidate's praise,
And we to the music our eyeballs will keep.
Our man is a patriot, true as the sun;
Familiarly known as the ‘Son-of-a-gun!’
For what man but he, on that glorious day
When patriots gather, as patriots may;
When likely to fail was the national round,
And brave men e'en wept when no wadding was found;
Save he who would suffer, unanswered, we say,
His own private wardrobe to be shot away?
Let his name, like the clouds, o'er Columbia scud!
Let his name brightly gleam in the annals of blood!
Let this deed of his fame be embalmed with the tale
Of Putnam's bold feat, or the hanging of Hale!”

Success seemed more sure, as election drew nigher;
But one “circumstance” more knocked his fat in the fire;
For lo! there was one
That morn, by the gun,
Who did not exactly belong to the squire;
So merely for sport
He spread the report,
The candidate was as profane as a liar;
That he stood on the spot
When the 'kerchief was shot,
And the squire swore so bad he was forced to retire!

Enough;—for the other side sought out this man;
A dollar in hand, and a swig at the can;
Deposition was made 'fore a magistrate lawful;
The man on his oath said the swearing was awful;

And next day appeared in the “Voice of the People”
A yarn half as long as a meeting-house steeple.
Therein 'twas shown clear as the light of the sun,
That they should not vote for the Son-of-a-gun.
They called on the people to rally anew
And vote for their candidate, called the “True Blue.”
He had all the other man's patriot pride;
Was rather inclined to be pious, beside;
Sure, slander pursued him, but still 'twasn't true
He once was indicted for stealing an ewe;
He held to equality when people meet,—
Been seen shaking hands with a “nig” in the street;
And as for his courage, why blest be his name,
He had entered a house that was roaring on flame,
And saved, at the imminent risk of his life,
A print representing John Rogers and wife;
Then hurrah for True Blue! for he only can save
Our country from Ruin's oblivious grave!

The contest grew fiercer each following day,
The young and the old of both sides joined the fray;
Some voters were bought,
Some duels were fought;
One man had a part of his thigh shot away;
Both editors wrote,
The people would quote,
The candidates mounted the stump for display;
While some Oberlin men,
To the number of ten,
Bethought it a matter for which they should pray.

The day came at last, the ballots were cast,
And both parties' colors were nailed to the mast;
But the Oberlin men,
To the number of ten,
Struck the friends of Son-of-a-gun all aghast!
For neither they knew
The “Gun” or “True Blue,”
But thought it the safest to vote for the last.
And this, as their reasons for voting, they gave:
A man who would greet
A poor nig in the street,
Must certainly be a good friend of the slave;
And a man who would swear,
As profane as the “'square,”
Must certainly be an ungodly old knave.
“True Blue” was returned by majority ten,
And those were the votes of the Oberlin men.

MORAL.

Let every “constituent” coming to call,
Who's seen an election, and lived through it all,
With blush of conviction acknowledge, forsooth,
That the tale I have told isn't far from the truth.
When a President's up, or lower the grade
Of seekers for office, a hubbub is made;
A green one, perusing the prints at such times,
Would deem they'd selected a man for his crimes.
And though we can't say but a “Son-of-a-gun,”
Or another “True Blue,” too often is run,
'Twould be better by far
To have less wordy war,
Less blazonry, billingsgate, twitting, and pun;
For it all ends in self,
The pickings and pelf,—
Division takes place when the battle is won;

But the government stands
Though it changes its hands,
And keeps forward march, as it ever has done.

The story ended, and the flip
Went circling round from hand to lip;
The stranger paid the shot, you see,
Because they'd listened patiently.
Then conversation grew more gay;
Most had some funny thing say,
Till by degrees their stories grew
Warped sadly from the truth askew.
The Farmer told a mighty fib
About the virtues of his rib;
What webs she wove; how long they wore—
Never wore out and never tore.
The very breeches he had on
Got hitch'd a white-oak stump upon
One day, while ploughing; he held fast
And cheered his oxen, till at last
Stump, root and all, broke from the ground,
But left his breeches whole and sound.
The Blacksmith said, when he could see
Better than now, repeatedly
Cast iron he had welded well;
And tho' the thing seem'd strange to tell,
All that was needed, on the whole,
Was gumption and right kind of coal.
The Wit said that his mother's brother,
Or great-grandfather—one or t'other—
Scud in a dreadful gale at sea
That blew straight to eternity,

Ninety-six knots an hour, with all
The masts gone o'erboard in the squall,
And nothing but one scupper nail
Stuck in the deck in place of sail;
While o'er it stood one of the crew
To drive it in, if worse it blew!
The Miller's turn came next to try,
And he essayed a foolish lie
About the rats, or one great rat
That in his mill lived sleek and fat;
Watch'd him in all he had to do,
Was tame, and very knowing, too.
He said the rat, time and again,
Had sat and watched the grinding grain,
Perched on the hopper; and if he
Forgot to take toll properly,
The rat would squeak and fidget round,
Until the toll dish it had found;
Select the right one, and would bring it
If small; if large, the rat would sling it.
The Doctor, still tremendous “blue,”
Had no doubt that the tale was true;
He now knew why, when he sent grain,
So little flour came back again;
He wouldn't say the miller stole it,—
The rat had made him double toll it.
'Twas a strange rat, continued he,—
Strange fact in nat'ral history;
But he a yellow dog once had
That cast his ratship in the shade.
In his young days he played the flute;
The music charm'd the knowing brute,
Who'd sit for hours and hear him do it,
And whine a sort of second to it.

At last, the dog of yellow hairs
Attempted whining several airs,
And practised “Yankee Doodle,” till
The flute knock'd under to his skill.
The dog at last essayed to play,
Or whine out “Hail Columbia.”
He practised long, with patience rare,
And nearly perfect got the air;
Still doggedly resolved to mend it,—
The trouble was he couldn't end it,
But the last strains would keep re-whining,
Till painful 'twas to hear him trying.
And so for days the poor dog tried,
Grew thin upon it, sick and died;
A clear case of a broken heart,
A martyr to the tuneful art.
A great dog, that!—continued he,—
And brought his hand down forcibly,—
Hundreds, with lib'ral offers, sought him,
But, faith! no money could have bought him.
Such is a sample of things told
By those blue worthies; and if old
Munchausen had himself been there,
He'd found his peers, and rivals fair.
“Come, Uncle Mose!” at last cried they,
“Let's hear what you have got to say.”
But Uncle Mose, in accents slow,
Said he'd no wond'rous things to show.
“But we know better,” they replied;
“You've been all o'er the country-side
Have been a soldier, and in strife,
And led a most eventful life;

So to hear something now, we mean,
That you have done, or heard, or seen.”
“Well, gentlemen,” quoth Uncle Mose,
Brushing pipe-ashes from his clothes,—
“I've no great things to tell, indeed;
But if you're willing to give heed,
A little simple thing I'll show,
That happened many years ago.”

UNCLE MOSE'S STORY.

The little thing I tell about
Happened, you see, when I was out
In the last war. I used to do
My duty, like a soldier true,
And all my company were brave
Men as e'er saw a standard wave.
Our courage was so noted grown
That through the army we were known,
From what, in many a bloody fight,
We'd “gi'n and took,” as “Death's Delight.”
I say the men were all true blue;
Each one some feat of prowess knew,
And rough and ready, aye, to show—
Except myself, of course, you know.
At last a little thing took place—
A chance for honor or disgrace—
Made some impression on my mind;
Tho', after all, 'twa'n't much, you'll find.
We then were stationed near the line,
This “true blue” company of mine;

The enemy just o'er the border
Were camp'd in scientific order;
And frequently our scouts were sent
To reconnoitre their intent.
One morn myself and others three
Were sent to see what we could see,
And warily we kept our tramp
Some two, three miles outside our camp,
Each man of us determined he
Some new thing to report would see;
And, faith! we saw, too late to hit one,
Three Indians scouting for the Briton.
They just from out the bush broke cover,
Pop! bang! and laid my comrades over.
It was a serious time for me,
Thus left a lone minority,
And so, thought I, here gives leg bail,
Or who'll be left to tell the tale?
So, gentlemen, you see I run,
Believe me, more for life than fun,
And being then young, strong, and fleet,
Grass did not grow beneath my feet.
Over my shoulder I could see
The three red devils after me;
And after running till I felt
That I should into soap-grease melt,
On looking back, I saw that one
Redskin the others had outrun,
And with his hatchet poised to throw,
Was just preparing for the blow.
I wheeled with desperate intent,
My eye along the barrel bent
And let its direful contents fly,
And blow'd him to eternity.

Then swift as ever on I run,
Reloading, as I ran, my gun,
Kicking off this, and then that shoe,—
Hard followed by the vengeful two!
I ran till at the point of death;
My heart throb'd hard, I gasped for breath:
But looking back, could see that one
Redskin the other had outrun.
And with his hatchet poised to throw,
Was just preparing for the blow.
I wheeled with desperate intent,
My eye along the barrel bent,
And let its direful contents fly,
And blow'd him to eternity!
Then on again I led the race;
Short seem'd to me my day of grace;
'Twas yet a good mile to the camp,
'Twixt it and me a miry swamp,
Where 'twere impossible to run;
But I reloaded my good gun
While running like a panting deer
With bloodhounds gaping in his rear.
Just as I neared the swamp, I knew
The game was o'er, the race was through;
The sweat was steaming thro' my coat,
My heart seem'd right here, in my throat,
My knees felt weak, my eyes grew dim,
All things around appeared to swim;
But still resolved was I to make
One effort more, for life's dear sake;
So turning round, I yet could see
The Redskin no great way from me,
And with his hatchet poised to throw,
Was just preparing for the blow.

I wheeled with desperate intent,
My eye along the barrel bent,
And—“Hang it, Uncle Mose!” cried one,
“You blowed him, also;—do have done!”

No, gentlemen, drawled Uncle Mose,
As with a quiet air he rose
To go; no, gentlemen, said he,
That fellow,—d-a-a-mn him! he killed me!

“Landlord,” quoth I, “the clock says morn,
Give Uncle Mose an extra horn;
The others have done fairly well,
But we'll allow he bears the bell.”

SONGS.

MARY, MAVOURNIN, ACUSHLA MA CREE.

The world it is wide, and the world it is cold,
And dear to the worldling are silver and gold,
But dearer by far is my Mary to me,
My Mary, mavournin, acushla ma cree!

The city may boast of its mansions so fair,
I care not, tho' beauty in splendor is there;
In a lone, quiet nook a brown cottage I see,—
There's Mary, mavournin, acushla ma cree!

Bright gems, such as sparkle in royalty's crown,
May deck with their lustre the belles of the town.
But the light of thine eye is a jewel to me,
My Mary, mavournin, acushla ma cree!

Abroad have I roved like a bird from its nest,
And viewed Nature's charms from the east to the west,
But her charms—dearest charms—sweetly centre for me
In Mary, mavournin, acushla ma cree!

Mary, darling, blood of my heart.

THE WINDS THAT FROM MONADNOCK BLOW.

The winds that from Monadnock blow,
When April caps his head with snow,
Are not so cutting, not so chill,
As woman can be when she will.
Yet, after all, an April snow
Is but a transient thing, we know.

The blessed breeze that round us plays
In summer's horrid, torrid days,
Is not with kindliness so fraught
As woman can be when she ought.
So be she kind, or be she chill,
She's dear, delightful woman still.

JOSIE, JOSEPHINE.

Pretty maiden, picking berries
In the pastures green;
Cheeks like roses, lips like cherries,—
Josie, Josephine!

Joy is in thy features glowing,
Gladness dwells with thee;
Rose of June! so sweetly blowing,
Rose of June to me.

Rich the rural setting round thee,
But the GEM art thou;
Sure if Love had never bound me,
He will hold me now.

Half so winning, half so clever
Ne'er was Gallia's queen;
Empress in this bosom ever,
Josie, Josephine!

WHAT TIME THE KINE CAME DOWN THE BRAE.

What time the kine came down the brae,
And Vesper showed her light,
I held across the fields my way,
To pass a happy night.
Oh! there is nothing on the earth,
Beneath the sky above,
That brighten can the heart of man,
Like Woman, with her love.

A robin carolled, sweet and clear,
A hymn to parting day;
I would have lingered, him to hear,
If love had let me stay.
Oh! there is nothing on the earth, etc.

I saw her at the cottage door,
Beneath a climbing vine,
And thought, with worlds I should be poor,
If she were never mine.
Oh! there is nothing on the earth, etc.

How sweet the welcome that I sought!
How sparkling, yet sincere!
Her speaking eye, that told the thought
She would not let me hear!
Oh! there is nothing on the earth, etc.

The cock was crowing for the day,
When homeward I returned;
How cold the dewdrops round my way!
How warm my bosom burned!
Oh! there is nothing on the earth,
Beneath the sky above,
That brighten can the heart of man,
Like Woman, with her love.

A FEW LINES TO THE DEVIL, AND A WORD TO THE READER.

Justly abhorred as thou shouldst be,
Yet sometimes it appears to me
The long, black list ascribed to thee
Is hardly fair;
Still granting thee, as all agree,
The lion's share.

How oft thy attributes are taken
By men with gusts of temper shaken,
Men riotous, men God-forsaken,
Who never think
How you some day will smoke their bacon
Black as this ink!

A loafer's bowels give him pain,—
“Ache like the devil,” he'll complain;
Whatever's sad, or bad, or vain—
All “like the devil”;
Thou hast been, and wilt aye remain
The old All Evil.

Thou'rt made most strangely to compare
To what is foul and what is fair;
To heat, to cold, to what is rare
As crows not black;
To what is thick as is the hair
On Bose's back.

Art thou a spirit or a body?
Dost water drink, or purchase toddy?
Dost of State Agent buy? O Lo'ddy!
They say I must;
Our towns grow thirsty as old Roddy
Mac Dry-as-dust.

100

If thou'rt a body, I don't see
How comes thy great ubiquity.
E'en if a spirit, how can be
Thy mighty sway?
A higher Power is over thee
All must obey.

But I will waive all speculation
And take the old received narration
That you “still live” and have a station
Deep down below,
And where I pray, in contemplation,
Never to go.

Your title Mammon, God of Gold,
Is fittest name of all you hold;
It gives a clew, so we unfold
To light of day
The secret of your powers untold
And general sway.

My observation this discloses:—
A man may be as “meek as Moses,”
As sweet with virtues as the roses
In bonnie June,
Yet people pass him with their noses
Like the new moon.

He may a humble follower be
Of Him who died on Calvary,
And yet his brethren may agree,
With “sweet accord,”
He's no “great shakes” to them, you see,
But to the Lord.

And would you know the reason why?
You know it better now than I;

101

But some this letter may espy
Who're no such scholars.
To them four words will make reply:
He lacks the dollars.

But while men feign great consequence,
Great virtue, philanthropic sense,
I think you never make pretence
To aught but evil,
Or to be else than the intense
And downright Devil.

That's candid, surely; and if ever
Mankind would grow more good and clever,
They must their own deceit dissever,
And look within;
And at thy door, in future, never
Lay every sin.

Don't take the trouble to reply
To this epistle. Know that I
Have not Job's patience, but should die
With best of nursing,
And fear that potsherd come to try,
There might be cursing.

Yet one can't tell what he might do;
Surprise themselves and others, too;
Folks will sometimes—that's very true—
For once be clever!
Let me alone and I will you,
Henceforth forever.

And thou who read'st, don't think me wrong
To beat this diabolic gong;

102

I know it is no polished song
Where dactyls gleam;
The language, too, is something strong,
But how's the theme?

Rejoicing in the honor of being just appointed Town Agent.

TO THE VIOLIN.

INSCRIBED TO R. D. HAWLEY, HARTFORD, OWNER OF “KING JOSEPH,” CALLED THE FINEST OLD VIOLIN IN THE WORLD.

Cherish “King Joseph!” Who may tell
What sweet, enchanting numbers dwell
Within that time-stained, trembling shell?
I fain would hear
A master hand, with magic spell,
Bid them appear.

Sweet solace of a lonely hour,
All gratefully I own thy dower
To recreate,—when cares devour
Life's peace, life's rest.
My spirit thy reviving power
Seeks, and is blest.

What genius first invented thee?
The pages of chronology
We scan in vain his name to see;
He's lost to fame,
But sweet Euterpe's Gem shall be
Thy titled name.

103

More like thy infant state was rude;
Like some wild floweret of the wood,
Untrained, yet giving likelihood
Of richness vast,
That cultivation, skilled and good,
Brings forth at last.

Once did a good old grandame say
Thou wert a wicked thing and gay;
But since, “beyond the bourne,” away
With Paganini,
She's heard that master spirit play,—
What say you, granny?

I'm thinking had King David known
Thee, and the skill in handling shown
That he displayed in slinging stone,
It's safe in saying
That Saul the spear had never thrown
To stop his playing.

And furthermore, compared with you,
That harp, which makes so much ado,
Was a dull bird, according to
My observation;
Or else we moderns don't renew
Its fabrication.

When prospects dismally are blue;
When straight-sent projects slant askew;
When wants are great and ways are few,
'Tis then, old shell,
Thou canst exorcise and eschew
The evil spell.

When thoughts, a sad and gloomy train,
Parade upon the mental plain,

104

And reason's strongest force is vain
To clear the field,
Thy cheerful, animating strain
Will make them yield.

Princes and poets, priests and kings,
Have drawn the music of thy strings;
Statesmen have given airy wings
To cares of state,
To dwell upon the beauteous things
Thou canst create.

Some homeless wanderer, maybe,
Far from his own nativity,
Who's lived his household gods to see
Spread to the blast,
Halts feebly on, but unto thee
Clings to the last.

Such are thy charms, I do not wonder
That he who forged our July thunder,
Which woke the land to rend asunder
Our British chains,
Should daily o'er thee love to ponder
And wake thy strains.

When soft on Bernard sleeps the dew,
And over Powsic's bosky blue
The yellow moon climbs into view,
Calm and serene,
How dear communion is with you!
How sweet the scene!

105

Gone then the labors of the day;
Flown Care's ill-omened birds of prey;
Thy gliding sweetness brings a ray
Of hope so clear,
That clouds and darkness lift away
And disappear!

President Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, was a skilful performer on the violin, and devoted two hours daily to its practice.

THE DESERTED SCHOOL-HOUSE.

I.

'Twas a desolate spot on a drear, lonely lot,
Where the wild winter winds blew amain,
And the summer suns beat with a tropical heat
On the sands that reflected again,—
There the old school-house stood, all a ruin and rude,
With mosses o'erstrewed and o'erlain.

II.

O'er its roof rose a pine leaning off an incline
From its line, perpendicular base,
With a hole in its side where a bonfire had died,
And the bark warping wide from its face;
And its arms gaunt and bare, sprawled aloft in the air
Like the spectre of Care, o'er the place.

III.

O'er the threshold I stept, and a harvest I reapt
Of thoughts, as I swept with my eye
The walls, grim and old, with the stain and the mould,
And the carvings untold, and O, fie!

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And the sketchings in coal of some fanciful soul
Long ago o'er the goal of Good-by.

IV.

For I thought how of yore on the ruinous floor
Ranged the half-score, or more, of the “class,”
To be catechised well, or to read, or to spell,
On the grammar to dwell, and to “pass”;
The grown and the stout, the woman, about,
The little, the lout, and the lass;

V.

Of the “master” severe, with his pen o'er his ear,
And the eye piercing clear through and through;
With his ferule in hand, and the word of command
That was sore to withstand, I tell you;
Of the awe that was felt when with culprits he dealt,
The outcry, the welt black and blue.

VI.

Of the “schoolma'am” so kind, so obligingly blind
As never to mind little failings;
Of her love for her care; of no learning to spare,
But of heart prompt to share in their ailings;
Of the “last day” so sad, when, in holiday clad,
Her last tokens were had with loud wailings.

VII.

They are gone! all are gone; and the ruin is lone,
And the wind with a moan whistles through,
And the voice of the Past I detect in the blast—
O dreamer! at last, so with you!

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What is life but a school? The great Master gives rule;
Act the wise, shun the fool, and be true.

RHEUMATISM.

Burns had the toothache,—but, O cracky!
D'ye ever have a “crick in the back,” eh?
Or sweet sciatic' to attack ye,
Boring your hip?
Or rheumatism sharp to rack ye
With twisting grip?

Toothache, forsooth, is bad enough,
But there's a remedy, tho' rough;
Step to the dentist in a huff,
Be prompt and bold;
Sit down, and cry, “Come on, Macduff,”
With iron cold!

One gentle wrench! and all is done;
'Tis finished, even while begun,
And tho' you thought earth, moon, and sun
Had smashed together,
You know that you've the victory won,
And all's fair weather.

But mark the man who, hale and strong,
Would willing drive his work along,
For work drives him; a whistle, song,
His toil beguiles;
His cattle fear not gad or thong,—
Their master smiles.

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But, all at once, ascends a howl!
He looks as solemn as an owl;
His smiles depart; a painful scowl
Steals o'er his phiz;
Perhaps his language isn't foul,—
Perhaps it is.

What can have wrought a change so quick,
And turned the well man to the sick,
His spine into a rigid stick
That breaks to bend?
He's stricken with the woful “crick”
The Furies send.

With awful dignity, and slow,
He seeks the crib his cattle know;
Unyokes them; harshly bids them, Go!—
Thwack! there—go faster;
While in-doors, grappling with the foe,
Retires the master.

First, brandy out of apples fried,
Hot with red pepper, is applied;
“Mustang,” “Pain-killer” next is tried,
Without avail;
Some old-wives' salve, hot shovel dried,—
In turn to fail.

O, see him, whom no thing could frighten,
Proud as a drover safe at Brighton!
Now, best of markets could not lighten
His aggravations;
His back scored like the rock at Dighton,
By “applications.”

He rises slowly from his chair,
Remains half bent a moment;—there!

109

Now comes the pinch,—take care!—take care!
Just grin, and go it!
He straightens up with, Oh!—I—swear!
As saith the poet.

His pitying, sympathetic bride
Tries hard a quiet smile to hide;
His guileless infants open wide
Their wondering eyes,
To see their lofty Union “slide,”
Holding his thighs.

O for the heart of him of old
Who high-priced pottage made and sold!
Who wrestled with the angel, bold,
Until the morning;
Sciatic, and the angel's hold,
The whole time scorning.

“I will not let thee go,” he said,
“Except thou bless me.” Reader, dread,
Give me your blessing; and if led
By human-ism,
Attribute aught amiss you've read
To Rheumatism.

See Genesis, chapter xxxii. 24–26.

AUTUMNAL.

The yellow leaves, the sober sun,
The shaven harvest plain,
Betoken summer's work is done
And autumn here again.

110

And as upon the scene I gaze,—
The pleasing, fading show,—
How from the Eld come other days,
And autumns long ago!

A boy, inspired by Nature's charm,
Her willing devotee,
The lonely limits of the farm
Were all the world to me.

The streamy vale, the smoky haze,
The bordering mountains blue,
The mild attempered solar blaze,
The woods in splendors new.

The well-kept gun, the happy dog
That scoured the water brink,
And sought in woods or sedgy bog
The squirrel or the mink.

The happy nights I mind again
That with those days were wed:—
The kettle bubbling on the crane,
The feast of chestnuts spread.

The south wind in the maples o'er
The lowly kitchen eaves,
The fitful sound, without the door,
Of rustling, drifting leaves.

The social chat, the well-worn book
Of fancy or of lore,
Or tales beside the chimney-nook,
Well loved, though heard before.

What wonder, to the man of years,
Who sees with careful eyes,
Such vision of the past appears
A blessed paradise!

111

THE BORDER HUNTER.

When the sun of the wilderness settles away,
With the dark winter night fast approaching,
And the breath of the North, like a spirit of prey,
On the sun's vanished warmth is encroaching,

Note the lone border hunter, afar from his home,
Alone, save his dog,—cold and weary;
His thoughts on the past and companionship roam,
While the prospect at present is dreary.

So he strikes up a spark and he kindles a light,
And anon the bright blaze is ascending,
And the chill of the wind and the glooms of the night
Stand aloof from the cheer he is tending.

And he basks in its warmth, and his dog too seems glad
As he licks his wet coat that is smoking;
And the hunter forgets that before he was sad,
In the comfort his fire is evoking.

I have been there and know; and I think how a friend,
When one is o'erclouded by sorrow,
Can comfort and cheer, and a blessing extend
To help him till dawns the to-morrow.

THE HUNTER'S HOME.

A lonely and sequestered spot
It was, where stood the hunter's cot;
No neighbor's chimney smoked the sky,
No highway brought the passer-by;

112

No sound of art there reached the ear,
No plough-boy, even, whistled near;
Naught but the wild “commingled hum,—
Voice of the desert, never dumb.”

Yet it was pleasant there to be
And its outlook of beauty see:—
The bordering blue of mountains far,
The valley wide where waters are;
The rolling slopes, in autumn dun,
Warmed by the Indian summer sun;
The forest on the upland wide
In all its grand primeval pride;
The cold spring bubbling near at hand,
Its basin white with filtering sand;
And near by, from a dark ravine,
A stream went winding o'er the scene.

Beneath the lee of sheltering wood
On easy slope the cottage stood;
A low-eaved, weather-beaten one,
With door that faced the southing sun;
While either side, two maples spread
A branchy archway overhead.

Here, all secluded and alone,
Dwelt the old hunter and his crone;
A couple past their prime in years,
But hale as middle life appears;—
Simple as children in the lore
That blazes from the college door;
And yet, they wisely understood
All craft pertaining to the wood;—
All Nature's signs in earth or sky,
Could make their points and reason why,

113

Till one skilled in scholastic lore,
Who sought to teach them to explore,
Could, when his steps might homeward turn,
Confess he yet had much to learn.

From them the tyro learned to set
The fatal trap and lucky net;
From them the farmer learned to tell
The coming season, fair or fell;
To them the ailing came for aid
In herbal compounds that they made,
And wondrous was that aid, be sure,—
Or was it faith that wrought the cure?

Here happy lived the honest pair,
Unvexed by worldly ways and care;
Their wants but few, and well supplied;
Their comforts rude, but undenied.

When night in autumn settled wild
And the dead leaves in drifts were piled;
Or when hoarse roaring came the blast
Of Winter, driving madly past,—
How pleasant 'twas, secure and warm,
To bide the peltings of the storm
Beside the hunter's chimney wide
That yawned half o'er the cottage side,
And watch the blazing logs that threw
Their lambent flames half up the flue;
And hear the kind old hunter tell
Of the exploits he loved so well;
While the surroundings pictured all:—
The well-kept gun upon the wall;
The horn with quaint devices etched;
The otter's skin so smoothly stretched;
The bunch of pelts,—old biddy's foes,—
All deftly hanging by the nose;

114

The shapely snow-shoes, laced with care;
The branching antlers fastened there;
With other trophies of the chase,
All pointed out with date and place.
His dog, too, on the hearthstone wide,
His brave companion, and his pride,
To whom he spoke in word and tone
Just as he talked to any one;—
And, what is strange, perhaps, to tell,
Dog seemed to comprehend as well.

Or, bringing forth his violin,
He drew the bow and turned the pin,
Till, all in harmony complete,
He woke such strains of music sweet
Would bring a cripple to his feet.

The color of the dark old shell
Matched with its master's visage well;
And neither player nor the played
Looked the grand music that they made.

O, I've at famous concerts been
And heard the mad harmonic din;
Strains full of fury and of sound
Where no significance is found;—
But hear some master-spirit raise
The good old airs of other days!—
The soulful ones that father Time
Wedded to reason and to rhyme
Long, long ago,—ere Strauss was born,
Or Wagner sighted Luna's horn;—
And all Time's blottings have withstood
For reason that withstand they should.

So played the hunter, while the rain
Pattered against the darkened pane,

115

And the night-wind with soughing sound
Blew wild the lonely dwelling round.
Some plaintive strathspey, passing sweet,
Went gliding on its rhythmic feet;
Anon, some bold and martial spell,
Heroic, woke the trembling shell,
Or sounding hornpipe by his bow
Rocked through the scale from high to low
In notes as sweet as e'er were born
Of robin in the dawn of morn.

O ye who pore o'er heavy books,
And leave the lessons of the brooks;
Who, prompt o'er Fiction's dreams to weep,
Ne'er heard the forest anthem deep;—
O ye, who born of pride and place,
Ne'er studied Nature's honest face,—
Deem not her lowly children fools;—
She has her teachings and her schools.

A WINTER THAW.

'Tis winter; but the night is mild
After the softening rains;
The snow is gone, save here and there
A drifted patch remains.

The mantling vapor wraps the hill,
From off the humid ground;
A fox is barking in the cloud,—
I hear the lonely sound.

116

I hear the swash of swollen floods
Along the streamy vale,
And e'en the cascade's whisper-voice
Roars like a coming gale.

The stars are hidden; and the moon
Shows like a spectre white
Behind the rack that draws aloft
Its curtain o'er her light.

'Tis a weird night; the traveller,
Alone upon the road,
Sees wayside windows burnished bright,
And longs for his abode.

UNADILLA BROOK.

Sweet stream, how memories o'er thee spring,
Like autumn morning's filmy wing,
That marks thy winding way!
For life's first light, my earliest days,
Were tethered to thy “banks and braes”
With bonds that surely stay.

The Indian loved thee, for I trace,
Hither and yon, his dwelling place
Along thy pleasant plains;
And oft my ploughshare's cleaving way
Turns upward to the light of day
All that of him remains.

How soft this Indian summer sun
Shines on thy waters as they run,
And shores of fading green!

117

The Spirit of the Past appears,
And lifts the veil that hides the years
That you and I have seen.

And as I backward look away,
I see the barefoot child at play
Thy tuneful path beside;
Or, in his rudely fashioned boat
I see him set himself afloat
With all a sailor's pride.

The sunny bank, the sandy down,
Named for some great commercial town,
His ports of entry made;—
The awe he felt in floating o'er
Thy deeps enshadowed by the shore
And black with alders' shade!

The frequent shipwreck that he met;
The slow home progress, dripping wet;
The careful mother's pain;
The birch prescription, well applied
To quell the rising seaman's pride,—
But, ah! applied in vain.

Do children see with larger eyes?
Or is thy volume less in size?
It seems that both must be;
For then full brimmed thy current flowed,
Thy awful pools no bottom showed!—
A river thou to me.

The fisher-boy with line and hook;
The spangled people of the brook;
The lustrous pearl so rare;

118

The mink, the musquash, and the duck;—
Did ever boy have braver luck,
Or more enjoyment share!

And since,—how many days I've wrought
Along thy side, enwrapt in thought,
Communing, lone, with thee!
The happy, careless song you bore
Was babbled as in days of yore,
But sad my minstrelsy.

The fatal morn, the solemn day,
Flown, save from memory, far away,—
There it is vivid yet,—
When dead upon thy bosom fell
The honored sire I loved so well!—
Can ever I forget?

Ah, me! if offered to enjoy
The happy freedom of the boy,
And live it o'er again,
And pay the tax of ripened years,
The griefs, the troubles and the tears,—
The offer were in vain.

Sweet Unadilla! when my eyes
See thee no more, thy voice will rise,
Soft murmuring along
Its liquid, gliding melody,—
Oh, could the bard awake with thee
The never-dying song!

119

POEM

DELIVERED AT THE RETURN OF THE “OLD INDIAN DOOR,” AND FAIR AND FESTIVAL AT DEERFIELD, MASS., FEB. 29, 1868.

When one has passed upon a weary way,
And toil and dangers have consumed the day;
When restless care and all his stock of skill
Barely averted the impending ill;—
How welcome, thrice, to him his fireside bright,
That glows before him with its ruddy light!
Gone, then, the perils of the weary way;
Gone, then, the torturing troubles of the day;
Refreshed and happy in his easy chair,
He rests at ease, and cries “Avaunt!” to care.

So, when a hardy and adventurous band
Break up the fallow of a savage land,
And wage with Circumstance a fearful strife,—
One hand for daily bread, and one for life;
One eye to guide the plough, and one to spy
The lurking foeman, and the danger nigh;—
When, through the perils of successive years,
By sleepless watch, by prayers, by blood, and tears,
Success awards them with a civic crown,
They are become a People, and a Town,—
Then, as the peaceful years roll smoothly on,
The dangers vanished, and the foeman gone,
And smiling fields in place of savage land,—
How can the children of that hardy band
Exult in peaceful, plenteous homes, at last,
And shut the door upon the trials past?
Door, did I say? Ah! that's the very thing
I came, to-night, to Deerfield street to sing;

120

And, whate'er some may say, I say not wrong,
'Tis no mean theme for sermon or for song.
For instance: “Door of Mercy,”—“Door of Hope”;
And yet, this kind is scarce within my scope.
I yield the showing of these blessed doors
To Dr. Crawford, and to Brother Moors,
Hoping you'll enter in their thresholds o'er,—
And point my numbers to the “Indian Door.”

Door of Old Memories! thy battered face
We welcome home again, its fittest place.
There are who're said to “go away from home”
(Meaning from welfare)—wherefore didst thou roam?

Here, where you stood in those dark days of yore,
And did brave duty as a Bolted Door;
Where you withstood the Indians' fiendish rage
Who on your tablet scored a bloody page;
Where you survived the havoc and the flame,
And float Time's tide, to-day, a Door of Fame;—
Here, where for long decades of years gone down
You've served attractor to this grand old town,
Made for yourself and physics one name more,—
For thou hast been, shalt be, Attraction's Door.
Here, where years since, a wonder-loving boy,
I first beheld thee with a solemn joy,
Gazed on thy silent face, but speaking scars,
And dreamed of “auld lang syne” and Indian wars,
Door of the Past thou wast, indeed, to me,
And Door of Deerfield thou shalt ever be!

121

Here, grim old relic! thou shalt aye repose,
By keepers guarded, unassailed by foes;
Stronger in age than most doors in their prime,
The Indian's hatchet and the scythe of Time
Thou hast defied; and tho' no more for harm
'Gainst thee the painted warrior nerves his arm,
Shalt still defy the blade of Time so keen,
Till he his scythe shall change for the machine.

Bless thee, old relic!—old, and brave, and scarred!
And bless Old Deerfield! says her grandson Bard.
Towns may traditions have, by Error spun,
She has the Door of History,—here's the one!

The reverend orators on the occasion.

123

LINES TO A TURTLE,

MARKED IN 1841 AND MET AGAIN WHILE HAYING IN 1878.

Well met again, old crony queer!
To me you little changed appear
Since first I met you in the year
Forty and one.
Though seven-and-thirty years, 'tis clear,
Since then are gone.

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The same stern face, and nose so Roman;
Its counterpart “Aunt Liz” could show one.
Are you a turtle-man or woman?
Aunt Liz was both,
And not a crawler or a slow one,
I'd take my oath.

Well, well! you seem to take life easy;
No cares oppress or troubles tease ye;
If doubts, misapprehensions seize ye,
In goes your head,
And for as long as it may please ye
You're same as dead.

How different with human kind!
In constant harassment of mind,
And if no real ill he find
To brood and ponder,
Imagination stands behind
All drafts to honor.

Ah, little could the mower tell
The day he carved upon your shell
The letters that begin to spell
His humble name,
What held the Future, fair or fell,
Or praise, or blame!

Of those who wrought with him that day,
Here by the brookside making hay,
All, save himself, are laid away
In their last sleep,
And one brave heart lies in the gray
And solemn deep.

The changes, too, that scarce the tongue
Can tell, or comprehend the young!

125

Here where the tool of Time we swung,
The team is mowing;
And where the whetstone's music rung,
The gear is going.

Then news was stale ere we could hear
From the old world, now brought so near
By telegraphic cantrip queer
From Morse we borrow,
That if to-day “Vic” scratch her ear,
We know to-morrow.

And now the telephone, they say,
Will bring a voice that's far away
Close to our ear, so that we may,—
When one may try so,—
Hear old Zip Coon his banjo play
Out in Ohio.

And more than that, so rumor teaches,
We may can up, as one would peaches,
Music and poems, sermons, speeches,
And then let loose
Their softest tones and loudest screeches,
Whene'er we choose.

Since then have politics run mad;
We've sagged to leeward, and the bad;
A bitter dose of war have had,
And still are ailing,—
A war which all the country clad
In weeds of wailing.

Then straight and narrow was the way
Up leading to eternal day;

126

At least, our preachers used to say
Such was the case;
It's widened now, and thereon they
Two-forty pace.

New lights have dawned on us benighted;
New creeds are framed, old doctrines slighted;
Credulity thrives well delighted;
The medium sergeant
Now warns up spirits to be sighted,—
(None seen but ardent).

But you seem anxious to be going;
No wonder, after such bestowing;
But who knows what Time will be showing
Four decades on?
When we no more at time of mowing
Shall meet anon.

Good by! Full long you've borne my card;
Long o'er it yet may you keep ward!
I hope that none will use you hard,
But when they meet you,
Respect the feelings of a bard,
And kindly greet you.

128

INDIAN SUMMER.

Soft falls the hazy light upon
The hillside, plain, and vale;
The yellow leaves bestrew my path,
And down the stream they sail.
I note them halting by the brink,
And idling as they run,
Or dancing o'er the ripples bright
That glimmer in the sun.

On yonder woody bank I hear
A rustling 'mid the leaves;
Borne on the still and hollow air
The sound my ear deceives;
I deem the heavy-treading kine
Are coming down the brae,
When nothing but a squirrel light
Is skipping there away.

129

The hunter's distant gun I hear
The forest echoes wake;
'Tis pity that such sullen sounds
The holy calm should break!
I fancy how with dying throes
The harmless quarry bleeds;
How man but little mercy shows,
Who so much mercy needs!

A solitary bee afield,
Allured by these bright hours,
Flits like a fay before my eyes;—
She'll find no honey-flowers,
For they have perished; one by one
I marked them fade from view,
And nothing but the blackened stalk
Appears where late they grew.

How kind, how pleasant is this sun,
When cold the winds have blown!
The winds that bear the early frosts
Down from the bleaker zone.
'Tis not the burning August sun,
Nor that of fierce July,
But soft effulgence lights the earth,
And glorifies the sky.

It is the Indian summer time!
So full of placid joy;
The dolce far niente that
I dreamed of when a boy.
And it is like a blissful dream,
Like such it soon is past;
Too bright to linger with us long,
Too beautiful to last.

130

THE FIELD FLOWER.

I bade the panting oxen stay
The turf-inverting plough,
For fervid beat the vernal day,
And damp with toil my brow.

So, idly halting with the team,
For want of else to do
I pulled a flower, beneath the beam,
That o'er the furrow grew.

A thousand times I'd seen it blow
And crushed it with the plough,
But never cared its name to know
Or heed it, until now.

Now, as I scann'd with new delight
Its leaves and petals o'er,
A wondrous beauty met my sight,
Not dreamed its own before.

And as the plough moved on again
I followed, musing how
Among the lofty sons of men
Worth may as humbly bow;

Exempt, as is yon little flower,
Alike from praise or blame;
As homely in its outward dower,
As noteless in a name;

Unnoticed by the would-be great,
Downtrodden and passed by,
As sure beneath life's furrow weight
In cold neglect to lie;

Unless, perchance,—the chance how rare!
Some turn of fortune's wheel
Lift from the dust the treasure fair,
And all its wealth reveal.

131

A NEW-YEAR'S LAY—1880.

Alone I walk life's rugged track
With slow and sober tread;
Its rising sun a long way back,—
Its sundown there ahead.

Alone! for she, my hope, my pride,
Who gave me all her trust,
Has, wayworn, fallen by my side,
And slumbers in the dust.

Alone! for others who began
The march that I essayed,
Have broken ranks, and one by one
Are resting in the shade.

Too rough the way; too fierce the strife;
Too burdensome the load;
They've fallen in the march of life,
And left me on the road.

Yet not alone! for memory dear
Calls them around me still;
Their voices fancy bids me hear;
Their looks remembrance fill.

In what blest realms do they now wear
The meed of soldiers true,
Promoted from the strife to share
The peace I cannot view?

Beat, heart! the bosom of a man!
Lift hope and courage high!
Well will the Great Commander plan;
March on, and trust, and try!

132

NIGHT WATCH—AUGUST 31.

O thou to whom the rolling years
Are moments of our time;
Thou whose existence, lone, appears
Eternal and sublime!

I see Thy star-bespangled sky,
Thy comet-torches shine,
And wonder if Thine awful eye
Can notice me or mine!

I hear Thy voice in thunder fill
The caverns of the sky,
And wonder if the prayer I will
Comes to Thy hearing nigh.

I see Thy whirling breath uptwist
And dash the forest down;
And think, how futile to resist
The anger of Thy frown!

I gaze upon the fields of space
No mortal foot hath trod,
And in the awful Boundless, trace
The mystery of God.

THE OLD COUNTRY CHURCH.

A pilgrim paused upon the hill that overlooked the dale
O'er which the Indian summer spread its soft, enchanting eil;

133

There lay the hamlet, as of old, a print in Nature's book;
There ran the babbling waters of the ever-flowing brook;
And there, amid its neighbor trees, and pointing upward higher,
Stood the old parish meeting-house, and lifted up its spire.

Then passed before the pilgrim's view a vision of his youth,
When led within those sacred walls to hear of God and Truth;—
The pulpit, on its pedestal, with carvings quaint and rare;
The time-stained pews, devoid of paint, and ranged upon the square;
The wasps that would, with spring-time days, mysteriously come,
And flies that had a dusky look and sanctuary hum.

The good old Dominie aloft, with reverential look,
The open volume spread before,—that mighty folio book;
His moralizing sermon, and his matchless gift of prayer,
And sacerdotal robe of silk that graced his sacred air;
The canopy above his head, suspended by a hand,—
A point of wonder to the child, and speculation grand.

134

The choir that in the gallery in solemn order stood,
Their venerable leader, half as musical as good;
His wooden pitch-pipe, dark with age, his beating motions queer,
Leading the old-time melodies of Dundee and of Mear;
And when his arm would slowly on through Windham's measures sweep,
The old would very solemn feel, and little sinners weep.

The congregation, old and young, were gathered there again:
The magistrate who kept a store, and shining Sunday cane;
The honest farmer, gray and old,—old-fashioned even then,
Who slept, and woke and stroked his queue, and went to sleep again;
The good-wife with her placid face set in a ruffled frill,
So redolent of piety, and caraway, and dill.

The youngster, awkward in his best, but comfortless, array,
With reddened face, and collar limp, a-sweating out the day;
The maiden blooming as the flower that tastefully she wore;
The pauper and the blackamoor together near the door;
While, unadmonished by the truths within the Gospel lines,
Some ne'er-do-well, in corner pew, was “cutting up his shines.”

135

E'en the old dog, that knew full well whenever Sunday came,
And left off secular pursuits, and worriment of game,
To follow, like disciple meek, his goodly master there,
And calmly take his wonted place upon the pulpit stair;
And, ere he slept, would cast about in such a pious way
As said: You see a Christian dog that keeps the Sabbath day.

Where are they now? the pilgrim sighed,—the congregation dear,
That gathered in the former days to worship and to hear?
And, as he spoke, his vision fell where in the hazy light
“God's acre” lay in turfy mounds and monumental white;
No answer broke the stillness of the drowsy, dreamy air,
For answer none was needed well to tell him they were there

WIND OF THE WINTER NIGHT.

Wind of the winter night! I hear
Thy midnight voice, weird, wild, and drear,
Sad, solemn, slow;
Hear it without my window pane
Sound, in the soul-arousing strain,
The voice of long ago.

136

That hollow, voiceful spirit tone,
An instant heard, then vanished, gone,
Unlocks the past;
And lights of other days that lie
Deep in the mists of memory,
Flash bright and fast!

Some vivid scene of long ago,
Of life's first fires, or love's soft glow,
Buried for years
In ashes of the past from sight,
Wakes, at the tone, again to light,
And reappears.

The form, the words of some loved one
Once by my side, now parted, gone
To realms unseen;
Or, haply, separated wide
By weary leagues of land and tide;
And years between.

O memory sad! O memory sweet!
How often, thus evoked, I meet
Again my lost!
My arms are outstretched to embrace,
But heart to heart, and face to face
Is but the ghost.

Mysterious life! How little we
Know what we are, or what shall be
When “dust to dust”;
But that dread Power that formed the soul
Is wise to order and control;
There rest, and trust.

THE END.