Narrative and Legendary Poems, Complete / Volume I of The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier

     THE winding way the serpent takes
     The mystic water took,
     From where, to count its beaded lakes,
     The forest sped its brook.

     A narrow space 'twixt shore and shore,
     For sun or stars to fall,
     While evermore, behind, before,
     Closed in the forest wall.

     The dim wood hiding underneath
     Wan flowers without a name;
     Life tangled with decay and death,
     League after league the same.

     Unbroken over swamp and hill
     The rounding shadow lay,
     Save where the river cut at will
     A pathway to the day.

     Beside that track of air and light,
     Weak as a child unweaned,
     At shut of day a Christian knight
     Upon his henchman leaned.

     The embers of the sunset's fires
     Along the clouds burned down;
     "I see," he said, "the domes and spires
     Of Norembega town."

     "Alack! the domes, O master mine,
     Are golden clouds on high;
     Yon spire is but the branchless pine
     That cuts the evening sky."

     "Oh, hush and hark! What sounds are these
     But chants and holy hymns?"
     "Thou hear'st the breeze that stirs the trees
     Though all their leafy limbs."

     "Is it a chapel bell that fills
     The air with its low tone?"
     "Thou hear'st the tinkle of the rills,
     The insect's vesper drone."

     "The Christ be praised!—He sets for me
     A blessed cross in sight!"
     "Now, nay, 't is but yon blasted tree
     With two gaunt arms outright!"

     "Be it wind so sad or tree so stark,
     It mattereth not, my knave;
     Methinks to funeral hymns I hark,
     The cross is for my grave!

     "My life is sped; I shall not see
     My home-set sails again;
     The sweetest eyes of Normandie
     Shall watch for me in vain.

     "Yet onward still to ear and eye
     The baffling marvel calls;
     I fain would look before I die
     On Norembega's walls.

     "So, haply, it shall be thy part
     At Christian feet to lay
     The mystery of the desert's heart
     My dead hand plucked away.

     "Leave me an hour of rest; go thou
     And look from yonder heights;
     Perchance the valley even now
     Is starred with city lights."

     The henchman climbed the nearest hill,
     He saw nor tower nor town,
     But, through the drear woods, lone and still,
     The river rolling down.

     He heard the stealthy feet of things
     Whose shapes he could not see,
     A flutter as of evil wings,
     The fall of a dead tree.

     The pines stood black against the moon,
     A sword of fire beyond;
     He heard the wolf howl, and the loon
     Laugh from his reedy pond.

     He turned him back: "O master dear,
     We are but men misled;
     And thou hast sought a city here
     To find a grave instead."

     "As God shall will! what matters where
     A true man's cross may stand,
     So Heaven be o'er it here as there
     In pleasant Norman land?

     "These woods, perchance, no secret hide
     Of lordly tower and hall;
     Yon river in its wanderings wide
     Has washed no city wall;

     "Yet mirrored in the sullen stream
     The holy stars are given
     Is Norembega, then, a dream
     Whose waking is in Heaven?

     "No builded wonder of these lands
     My weary eyes shall see;
     A city never made with hands
     Alone awaiteth me—

     "'Urbs Syon mystica;' I see
     Its mansions passing fair,
     'Condita caelo;' let me be,
     Dear Lord, a dweller there!"

     Above the dying exile hung
     The vision of the bard,
     As faltered on his failing tongue
     The song of good Bernard.

     The henchman dug at dawn a grave
     Beneath the hemlocks brown,
     And to the desert's keeping gave
     The lord of fief and town.

     Years after, when the Sieur Champlain
     Sailed up the unknown stream,
     And Norembega proved again
     A shadow and a dream,

     He found the Norman's nameless grave
     Within the hemlock's shade,
     And, stretching wide its arms to save,
     The sign that God had made,

     The cross-boughed tree that marked the spot
     And made it holy ground
     He needs the earthly city not
     Who hath the heavenly found.

     1869.

     THE years are many since, in youth and hope,
     Under the Charter Oak, our horoscope
     We drew thick-studded with all favoring stars.
     Now, with gray beards, and faces seamed with scars
     From life's hard battle, meeting once again,
     We smile, half sadly, over dreams so vain;
     Knowing, at last, that it is not in man
     Who walketh to direct his steps, or plan
     His permanent house of life. Alike we loved
     The muses' haunts, and all our fancies moved
     To measures of old song. How since that day
     Our feet have parted from the path that lay
     So fair before us! Rich, from lifelong search
     Of truth, within thy Academic porch
     Thou sittest now, lord of a realm of fact,
     Thy servitors the sciences exact;
     Still listening with thy hand on Nature's keys,
     To hear the Samian's spheral harmonies
     And rhythm of law. I called from dream and song,
     Thank God! so early to a strife so long,
     That, ere it closed, the black, abundant hair
     Of boyhood rested silver-sown and spare
     On manhood's temples, now at sunset-chime
     Tread with fond feet the path of morning time.
     And if perchance too late I linger where
     The flowers have ceased to blow, and trees are bare,
     Thou, wiser in thy choice, wilt scarcely blame
     The friend who shields his folly with thy name.
     AMESBURY, 10th mo., 1870.

           . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

     One Sabbath day my friend and I
     After the meeting, quietly
     Passed from the crowded village lanes,
     White with dry dust for lack of rains,
     And climbed the neighboring slope, with feet
     Slackened and heavy from the heat,
     Although the day was wellnigh done,
     And the low angle of the sun
     Along the naked hillside cast
     Our shadows as of giants vast.
     We reached, at length, the topmost swell,
     Whence, either way, the green turf fell
     In terraces of nature down
     To fruit-hung orchards, and the town
     With white, pretenceless houses, tall
     Church-steeples, and, o'ershadowing all,
     Huge mills whose windows had the look
     Of eager eyes that ill could brook
     The Sabbath rest. We traced the track
     Of the sea-seeking river back,
     Glistening for miles above its mouth,
     Through the long valley to the south,
     And, looking eastward, cool to view,
     Stretched the illimitable blue
     Of ocean, from its curved coast-line;
     Sombred and still, the warm sunshine
     Filled with pale gold-dust all the reach
     Of slumberous woods from hill to beach,—
     Slanted on walls of thronged retreats
     From city toil and dusty streets,
     On grassy bluff, and dune of sand,
     And rocky islands miles from land;
     Touched the far-glancing sails, and showed
     White lines of foam where long waves flowed
     Dumb in the distance. In the north,
     Dim through their misty hair, looked forth
     The space-dwarfed mountains to the sea,
     From mystery to mystery!

     So, sitting on that green hill-slope,
     We talked of human life, its hope
     And fear, and unsolved doubts, and what
     It might have been, and yet was not.
     And, when at last the evening air
     Grew sweeter for the bells of prayer
     Ringing in steeples far below,
     We watched the people churchward go,
     Each to his place, as if thereon
     The true shekinah only shone;
     And my friend queried how it came
     To pass that they who owned the same
     Great Master still could not agree
     To worship Him in company.
     Then, broadening in his thought, he ran
     Over the whole vast field of man,—
     The varying forms of faith and creed
     That somehow served the holders' need;
     In which, unquestioned, undenied,
     Uncounted millions lived and died;
     The bibles of the ancient folk,
     Through which the heart of nations spoke;
     The old moralities which lent
     To home its sweetness and content,
     And rendered possible to bear
     The life of peoples everywhere
     And asked if we, who boast of light,
     Claim not a too exclusive right
     To truths which must for all be meant,
     Like rain and sunshine freely sent.
     In bondage to the letter still,
     We give it power to cramp and kill,—
     To tax God's fulness with a scheme
     Narrower than Peter's house-top dream,
     His wisdom and his love with plans
     Poor and inadequate as man's.
     It must be that He witnesses
     Somehow to all men that He is
     That something of His saving grace
     Reaches the lowest of the race,
     Who, through strange creed and rite, may draw
     The hints of a diviner law.
     We walk in clearer light;—but then,
     Is He not God?—are they not men?
     Are His responsibilities
     For us alone and not for these?

     And I made answer: "Truth is one;
     And, in all lands beneath the sun,
     Whoso hath eyes to see may see
     The tokens of its unity.
     No scroll of creed its fulness wraps,
     We trace it not by school-boy maps,
     Free as the sun and air it is
     Of latitudes and boundaries.
     In Vedic verse, in dull Koran,
     Are messages of good to man;
     The angels to our Aryan sires
     Talked by the earliest household fires;
     The prophets of the elder day,
     The slant-eyed sages of Cathay,
     Read not the riddle all amiss
     Of higher life evolved from this.

     "Nor doth it lessen what He taught,
     Or make the gospel Jesus brought
     Less precious, that His lips retold
     Some portion of that truth of old;
     Denying not the proven seers,
     The tested wisdom of the years;
     Confirming with his own impress
     The common law of righteousness.
     We search the world for truth; we cull
     The good, the pure, the beautiful,
     From graven stone and written scroll,
     From all old flower-fields of the soul;
     And, weary seekers of the best,
     We come back laden from our quest,
     To find that all the sages said
     Is in the Book our mothers read,
     And all our treasure of old thought
     In His harmonious fulness wrought
     Who gathers in one sheaf complete
     The scattered blades of God's sown wheat,
     The common growth that maketh good
     His all-embracing Fatherhood.

     "Wherever through the ages rise
     The altars of self-sacrifice,
     Where love its arms has opened wide,
     Or man for man has calmly died,
     I see the same white wings outspread
     That hovered o'er the Master's head!
     Up from undated time they come,
     The martyr souls of heathendom,
     And to His cross and passion bring
     Their fellowship of suffering.
     I trace His presence in the blind
     Pathetic gropings of my kind,—
     In prayers from sin and sorrow wrung,
     In cradle-hymns of life they sung,
     Each, in its measure, but a part
     Of the unmeasured Over-Heart;
     And with a stronger faith confess
     The greater that it owns the less.
     Good cause it is for thankfulness
     That the world-blessing of His life
     With the long past is not at strife;
     That the great marvel of His death
     To the one order witnesseth,
     No doubt of changeless goodness wakes,
     No link of cause and sequence breaks,
     But, one with nature, rooted is
     In the eternal verities;
     Whereby, while differing in degree
     As finite from infinity,
     The pain and loss for others borne,
     Love's crown of suffering meekly worn,
     The life man giveth for his friend
     Become vicarious in the end;
     Their healing place in nature take,
     And make life sweeter for their sake.

     "So welcome I from every source
     The tokens of that primal Force,
     Older than heaven itself, yet new
     As the young heart it reaches to,
     Beneath whose steady impulse rolls
     The tidal wave of human souls;
     Guide, comforter, and inward word,
     The eternal spirit of the Lord
     Nor fear I aught that science brings
     From searching through material things;
     Content to let its glasses prove,
     Not by the letter's oldness move,
     The myriad worlds on worlds that course
     The spaces of the universe;
     Since everywhere the Spirit walks
     The garden of the heart, and talks
     With man, as under Eden's trees,
     In all his varied languages.
     Why mourn above some hopeless flaw
     In the stone tables of the law,
     When scripture every day afresh
     Is traced on tablets of the flesh?
     By inward sense, by outward signs,
     God's presence still the heart divines;
     Through deepest joy of Him we learn,
     In sorest grief to Him we turn,
     And reason stoops its pride to share
     The child-like instinct of a prayer."

     And then, as is my wont, I told
     A story of the days of old,
     Not found in printed books,—in sooth,
     A fancy, with slight hint of truth,
     Showing how differing faiths agree
     In one sweet law of charity.
     Meanwhile the sky had golden grown,
     Our faces in its glory shone;
     But shadows down the valley swept,
     And gray below the ocean slept,
     As time and space I wandered o'er
     To tread the Mogul's marble floor,
     And see a fairer sunset fall
     On Jumna's wave and Agra's wall.

     The good Shah Akbar (peace be his alway!)
     Came forth from the Divan at close of day
     Bowed with the burden of his many cares,
     Worn with the hearing of unnumbered prayers,—
     Wild cries for justice, the importunate
     Appeals of greed and jealousy and hate,
     And all the strife of sect and creed and rite,
     Santon and Gouroo waging holy fight
     For the wise monarch, claiming not to be
     Allah's avenger, left his people free,
     With a faint hope, his Book scarce justified,
     That all the paths of faith, though severed wide,
     O'er which the feet of prayerful reverence passed,
     Met at the gate of Paradise at last.

     He sought an alcove of his cool hareem,
     Where, far beneath, he heard the Jumna's stream
     Lapse soft and low along his palace wall,
     And all about the cool sound of the fall
     Of fountains, and of water circling free
     Through marble ducts along the balcony;
     The voice of women in the distance sweet,
     And, sweeter still, of one who, at his feet,
     Soothed his tired ear with songs of a far land
     Where Tagus shatters on the salt sea-sand
     The mirror of its cork-grown hills of drouth
     And vales of vine, at Lisbon's harbor-mouth.

     The date-palms rustled not; the peepul laid
     Its topmost boughs against the balustrade,
     Motionless as the mimic leaves and vines
     That, light and graceful as the shawl-designs
     Of Delhi or Umritsir, twined in stone;
     And the tired monarch, who aside had thrown
     The day's hard burden, sat from care apart,
     And let the quiet steal into his heart
     From the still hour. Below him Agra slept,
     By the long light of sunset overswept
     The river flowing through a level land,
     By mango-groves and banks of yellow sand,
     Skirted with lime and orange, gay kiosks,
     Fountains at play, tall minarets of mosques,
     Fair pleasure-gardens, with their flowering trees
     Relieved against the mournful cypresses;
     And, air-poised lightly as the blown sea-foam,
     The marble wonder of some holy dome
     Hung a white moonrise over the still wood,
     Glassing its beauty in a stiller flood.

     Silent the monarch gazed, until the night
     Swift-falling hid the city from his sight;
     Then to the woman at his feet he said
     "Tell me, O Miriam, something thou hast read
     In childhood of the Master of thy faith,
     Whom Islam also owns. Our Prophet saith
     'He was a true apostle, yea, a Word
     And Spirit sent before me from the Lord.'
     Thus the Book witnesseth; and well I know
     By what thou art, O dearest, it is so.
     As the lute's tone the maker's hand betrays,
     The sweet disciple speaks her Master's praise."

     Then Miriam, glad of heart, (for in some sort
     She cherished in the Moslem's liberal court
     The sweet traditions of a Christian child;
     And, through her life of sense, the undefiled
     And chaste ideal of the sinless One
     Gazed on her with an eye she might not shun,—
     The sad, reproachful look of pity, born
     Of love that hath no part in wrath or scorn,)
     Began, with low voice and moist eyes, to tell
     Of the all-loving Christ, and what befell
     When the fierce zealots, thirsting for her blood,
     Dragged to his feet a shame of womanhood.
     How, when his searching answer pierced within
     Each heart, and touched the secret of its sin,
     And her accusers fled his face before,
     He bade the poor one go and sin no more.
     And Akbar said, after a moment's thought,
     "Wise is the lesson by thy prophet taught;
     Woe unto him who judges and forgets
     What hidden evil his own heart besets!
     Something of this large charity I find
     In all the sects that sever human kind;
     I would to Allah that their lives agreed
     More nearly with the lesson of their creed!
     Those yellow Lamas who at Meerut pray
     By wind and water power, and love to say
     'He who forgiveth not shall, unforgiven,
     Fail of the rest of Buddha,' and who even
     Spare the black gnat that stings them, vex my ears
     With the poor hates and jealousies and fears
     Nursed in their human hives. That lean, fierce priest
     Of thy own people, (be his heart increased
     By Allah's love!) his black robes smelling yet
     Of Goa's roasted Jews, have I not met
     Meek-faced, barefooted, crying in the street
     The saying of his prophet true and sweet,—
     'He who is merciful shall mercy meet!'"

     But, next day, so it chanced, as night began
     To fall, a murmur through the hareem ran
     That one, recalling in her dusky face
     The full-lipped, mild-eyed beauty of a race
     Known as the blameless Ethiops of Greek song,
     Plotting to do her royal master wrong,
     Watching, reproachful of the lingering light,
     The evening shadows deepen for her flight,
     Love-guided, to her home in a far land,
     Now waited death at the great Shah's command.
     Shapely as that dark princess for whose smile
     A world was bartered, daughter of the Nile
     Herself, and veiling in her large, soft eyes
     The passion and the languor of her skies,
     The Abyssinian knelt low at the feet
     Of her stern lord: "O king, if it be meet,
     And for thy honor's sake," she said, "that I,
     Who am the humblest of thy slaves, should die,
     I will not tax thy mercy to forgive.
     Easier it is to die than to outlive
     All that life gave me,—him whose wrong of thee
     Was but the outcome of his love for me,
     Cherished from childhood, when, beneath the shade
     Of templed Axum, side by side we played.
     Stolen from his arms, my lover followed me
     Through weary seasons over land and sea;
     And two days since, sitting disconsolate
     Within the shadow of the hareem gate,
     Suddenly, as if dropping from the sky,
     Down from the lattice of the balcony
     Fell the sweet song by Tigre's cowherds sung
     In the old music of his native tongue.
     He knew my voice, for love is quick of ear,
     Answering in song.

                          This night he waited near
     To fly with me. The fault was mine alone
     He knew thee not, he did but seek his own;
     Who, in the very shadow of thy throne,
     Sharing thy bounty, knowing all thou art,
     Greatest and best of men, and in her heart
     Grateful to tears for favor undeserved,
     Turned ever homeward, nor one moment swerved
     From her young love. He looked into my eyes,
     He heard my voice, and could not otherwise
     Than he hath done; yet, save one wild embrace
     When first we stood together face to face,
     And all that fate had done since last we met
     Seemed but a dream that left us children yet,
     He hath not wronged thee nor thy royal bed;
     Spare him, O king! and slay me in his stead!"

     But over Akbar's brows the frown hung black,
     And, turning to the eunuch at his back,
     "Take them," he said, "and let the Jumna's waves
     Hide both my shame and these accursed slaves!"
     His loathly length the unsexed bondman bowed
     "On my head be it!"

                           Straightway from a cloud
     Of dainty shawls and veils of woven mist
     The Christian Miriam rose, and, stooping, kissed
     The monarch's hand. Loose down her shoulders bare
     Swept all the rippled darkness of her hair,
     Veiling the bosom that, with high, quick swell
     Of fear and pity, through it rose and fell.

     "Alas!" she cried, "hast thou forgotten quite
     The words of Him we spake of yesternight?
     Or thy own prophet's, 'Whoso doth endure
     And pardon, of eternal life is sure'?
     O great and good! be thy revenge alone
     Felt in thy mercy to the erring shown;
     Let thwarted love and youth their pardon plead,
     Who sinned but in intent, and not in deed!"

     One moment the strong frame of Akbar shook
     With the great storm of passion. Then his look
     Softened to her uplifted face, that still
     Pleaded more strongly than all words, until
     Its pride and anger seemed like overblown,
     Spent clouds of thunder left to tell alone
     Of strife and overcoming. With bowed head,
     And smiting on his bosom: "God," he said,
     "Alone is great, and let His holy name
     Be honored, even to His servant's shame!
     Well spake thy prophet, Miriam,—he alone
     Who hath not sinned is meet to cast a stone
     At such as these, who here their doom await,
     Held like myself in the strong grasp of fate.
     They sinned through love, as I through love forgive;
     Take them beyond my realm, but let them live!"

     And, like a chorus to the words of grace,
     The ancient Fakir, sitting in his place,
     Motionless as an idol and as grim,
     In the pavilion Akbar built for him
     Under the court-yard trees, (for he was wise,
     Knew Menu's laws, and through his close-shut eyes
     Saw things far off, and as an open book
     Into the thoughts of other men could look,)
     Began, half chant, half howling, to rehearse
     The fragment of a holy Vedic verse;
     And thus it ran: "He who all things forgives
     Conquers himself and all things else, and lives
     Above the reach of wrong or hate or fear,
     Calm as the gods, to whom he is most dear."

     Two leagues from Agra still the traveller sees
     The tomb of Akbar through its cypress-trees;
     And, near at hand, the marble walls that hide
     The Christian Begum sleeping at his side.
     And o'er her vault of burial (who shall tell
     If it be chance alone or miracle?)
     The Mission press with tireless hand unrolls
     The words of Jesus on its lettered scrolls,—
     Tells, in all tongues, the tale of mercy o'er,
     And bids the guilty, "Go and sin no more!"

             . . . . . . . . . . .

     It now was dew-fall; very still
     The night lay on the lonely hill,
     Down which our homeward steps we bent,
     And, silent, through great silence went,
     Save that the tireless crickets played
     Their long, monotonous serenade.
     A young moon, at its narrowest,
     Curved sharp against the darkening west;
     And, momently, the beacon's star,
     Slow wheeling o'er its rock afar,
     From out the level darkness shot
     One instant and again was not.
     And then my friend spake quietly
     The thought of both: "Yon crescent see!
     Like Islam's symbol-moon it gives
     Hints of the light whereby it lives
     Somewhat of goodness, something true
     From sun and spirit shining through
     All faiths, all worlds, as through the dark
     Of ocean shines the lighthouse spark,
     Attests the presence everywhere
     Of love and providential care.
     The faith the old Norse heart confessed
     In one dear name,—the hopefulest
     And tenderest heard from mortal lips
     In pangs of birth or death, from ships
     Ice-bitten in the winter sea,
     Or lisped beside a mother's knee,—
     The wiser world hath not outgrown,
     And the All-Father is our own!"

     NAUHAUGHT, the Indian deacon, who of old
     Dwelt, poor but blameless, where his narrowing Cape
     Stretches its shrunk arm out to all the winds
     And the relentless smiting of the waves,
     Awoke one morning from a pleasant dream
     Of a good angel dropping in his hand
     A fair, broad gold-piece, in the name of God.

     He rose and went forth with the early day
     Far inland, where the voices of the waves
     Mellowed and Mingled with the whispering leaves,
     As, through the tangle of the low, thick woods,
     He searched his traps. Therein nor beast nor bird
     He found; though meanwhile in the reedy pools
     The otter plashed, and underneath the pines
     The partridge drummed: and as his thoughts went back
     To the sick wife and little child at home,
     What marvel that the poor man felt his faith
     Too weak to bear its burden,—like a rope
     That, strand by strand uncoiling, breaks above
     The hand that grasps it. "Even now, O Lord!
     Send me," he prayed, "the angel of my dream!
     Nauhaught is very poor; he cannot wait."

     Even as he spake he heard at his bare feet
     A low, metallic clink, and, looking down,
     He saw a dainty purse with disks of gold
     Crowding its silken net. Awhile he held
     The treasure up before his eyes, alone
     With his great need, feeling the wondrous coins
     Slide through his eager fingers, one by one.
     So then the dream was true. The angel brought
     One broad piece only; should he take all these?
     Who would be wiser, in the blind, dumb woods?
     The loser, doubtless rich, would scarcely miss
     This dropped crumb from a table always full.
     Still, while he mused, he seemed to hear the cry
     Of a starved child; the sick face of his wife
     Tempted him. Heart and flesh in fierce revolt
     Urged the wild license of his savage youth
     Against his later scruples. Bitter toil,
     Prayer, fasting, dread of blame, and pitiless eyes
     To watch his halting,—had he lost for these
     The freedom of the woods;—the hunting-grounds
     Of happy spirits for a walled-in heaven
     Of everlasting psalms? One healed the sick
     Very far off thousands of moons ago
     Had he not prayed him night and day to come
     And cure his bed-bound wife? Was there a hell?
     Were all his fathers' people writhing there—
     Like the poor shell-fish set to boil alive—
     Forever, dying never? If he kept
     This gold, so needed, would the dreadful God
     Torment him like a Mohawk's captive stuck
     With slow-consuming splinters? Would the saints
     And the white angels dance and laugh to see him
     Burn like a pitch-pine torch? His Christian garb
     Seemed falling from him; with the fear and shame
     Of Adam naked at the cool of day,
     He gazed around. A black snake lay in coil
     On the hot sand, a crow with sidelong eye
     Watched from a dead bough. All his Indian lore
     Of evil blending with a convert's faith
     In the supernal terrors of the Book,
     He saw the Tempter in the coiling snake
     And ominous, black-winged bird; and all the while
     The low rebuking of the distant waves
     Stole in upon him like the voice of God
     Among the trees of Eden. Girding up
     His soul's loins with a resolute hand, he thrust
     The base thought from him: "Nauhaught, be a man
     Starve, if need be; but, while you live, look out
     From honest eyes on all men, unashamed.
     God help me! I am deacon of the church,
     A baptized, praying Indian! Should I do
     This secret meanness, even the barken knots
     Of the old trees would turn to eyes to see it,
     The birds would tell of it, and all the leaves
     Whisper above me: 'Nauhaught is a thief!'
     The sun would know it, and the stars that hide
     Behind his light would watch me, and at night
     Follow me with their sharp, accusing eyes.
     Yea, thou, God, seest me!" Then Nauhaught drew
     Closer his belt of leather, dulling thus
     The pain of hunger, and walked bravely back
     To the brown fishing-hamlet by the sea;
     And, pausing at the inn-door, cheerily asked
     "Who hath lost aught to-day?"
     "I," said a voice;
     "Ten golden pieces, in a silken purse,
     My daughter's handiwork." He looked, and to
     One stood before him in a coat of frieze,
     And the glazed hat of a seafaring man,
     Shrewd-faced, broad-shouldered, with no trace of wings.
     Marvelling, he dropped within the stranger's hand
     The silken web, and turned to go his way.
     But the man said: "A tithe at least is yours;
     Take it in God's name as an honest man."
     And as the deacon's dusky fingers closed
     Over the golden gift, "Yea, in God's name
     I take it, with a poor man's thanks," he said.
     So down the street that, like a river of sand,
     Ran, white in sunshine, to the summer sea,
     He sought his home singing and praising God;
     And when his neighbors in their careless way
     Spoke of the owner of the silken purse—
     A Wellfleet skipper, known in every port
     That the Cape opens in its sandy wall—
     He answered, with a wise smile, to himself
     "I saw the angel where they see a man."
     1870.

     ANNIE and Rhoda, sisters twain,
     Woke in the night to the sound of rain,

     The rush of wind, the ramp and roar
     Of great waves climbing a rocky shore.

     Annie rose up in her bed-gown white,
     And looked out into the storm and night.

     "Hush, and hearken!" she cried in fear,
     "Hearest thou nothing, sister dear?"

     "I hear the sea, and the plash of rain,
     And roar of the northeast hurricane.

     "Get thee back to the bed so warm,
     No good comes of watching a storm.

     "What is it to thee, I fain would know,
     That waves are roaring and wild winds blow?

     "No lover of thine's afloat to miss
     The harbor-lights on a night like this."

     "But I heard a voice cry out my name,
     Up from the sea on the wind it came.

     "Twice and thrice have I heard it call,
     And the voice is the voice of Estwick Hall!"

     On her pillow the sister tossed her head.
     "Hall of the Heron is safe," she said.

     "In the tautest schooner that ever swam
     He rides at anchor in Anisquam.

     "And, if in peril from swamping sea
     Or lee shore rocks, would he call on thee?"

     But the girl heard only the wind and tide,
     And wringing her small white hands she cried,

     "O sister Rhoda, there's something wrong;
     I hear it again, so loud and long.

     "'Annie! Annie!' I hear it call,
     And the voice is the voice of Estwick Hall!"

     Up sprang the elder, with eyes aflame,
     "Thou liest! He never would call thy name!

     "If he did, I would pray the wind and sea
     To keep him forever from thee and me!"

     Then out of the sea blew a dreadful blast;
     Like the cry of a dying man it passed.

     The young girl hushed on her lips a groan,
     But through her tears a strange light shone,—

     The solemn joy of her heart's release
     To own and cherish its love in peace.

     "Dearest!" she whispered, under breath,
     "Life was a lie, but true is death.

     "The love I hid from myself away
     Shall crown me now in the light of day.

     "My ears shall never to wooer list,
     Never by lover my lips be kissed.

     "Sacred to thee am I henceforth,
     Thou in heaven and I on earth!"

     She came and stood by her sister's bed
     "Hall of the Heron is dead!" she said.

     "The wind and the waves their work have done,
     We shall see him no more beneath the sun.

     "Little will reek that heart of thine,
     It loved him not with a love like mine.

     "I, for his sake, were he but here,
     Could hem and 'broider thy bridal gear,

     "Though hands should tremble and eyes be wet,
     And stitch for stitch in my heart be set.

     "But now my soul with his soul I wed;
     Thine the living, and mine the dead!"

     1871.

     THE robins sang in the orchard, the buds into
     blossoms grew;
     Little of human sorrow the buds and the robins
     knew!
     Sick, in an alien household, the poor French
     neutral lay;
     Into her lonesome garret fell the light of the April
     day,
     Through the dusty window, curtained by the spider's
     warp and woof,
     On the loose-laid floor of hemlock, on oaken ribs
     of roof,
     The bedquilt's faded patchwork, the teacups on the
     stand,
     The wheel with flaxen tangle, as it dropped from
     her sick hand.

     What to her was the song of the robin, or warm
     morning light,
     As she lay in the trance of the dying, heedless of
     sound or sight?

     Done was the work of her bands, she had eaten her
     bitter bread;
     The world of the alien people lay behind her dim
     and dead.

     But her soul went back to its child-time; she saw
     the sun o'erflow
     With gold the Basin of Minas, and set over
     Gaspereau;

     The low, bare flats at ebb-tide, the rush of the sea
     at flood,
     Through inlet and creek and river, from dike to
     upland wood;

     The gulls in the red of morning, the fish-hawk's
     rise and fall,
     The drift of the fog in moonshine, over the dark
     coast-wall.

     She saw the face of her mother, she heard the song
     she sang;
     And far off, faintly, slowly, the bell for vespers
     rang.

     By her bed the hard-faced mistress sat, smoothing
     the wrinkled sheet,
     Peering into the face, so helpless, and feeling the
     ice-cold feet.

     With a vague remorse atoning for her greed and
     long abuse,
     By care no longer heeded and pity too late for use.

     Up the stairs of the garret softly the son of the
     mistress stepped,
     Leaned over the head-board, covering his face with
     his hands, and wept.

     Outspake the mother, who watched him sharply,
     with brow a-frown
     "What! love you the Papist, the beggar, the
     charge of the town?"

     Be she Papist or beggar who lies here, I know
     and God knows
     I love her, and fain would go with her wherever
     she goes!

     "O mother! that sweet face came pleading, for
     love so athirst.
     You saw but the town-charge; I knew her God's
     angel at first."

     Shaking her gray head, the mistress hushed down
     a bitter cry;
     And awed by the silence and shadow of death
     drawing nigh,

     She murmured a psalm of the Bible; but closer
     the young girl pressed,
     With the last of her life in her fingers, the cross
     to her breast.

     "My son, come away," cried the mother, her voice
     cruel grown.
     "She is joined to her idols, like Ephraim; let her
     alone!"

     But he knelt with his hand on her forehead, his
     lips to her ear,
     And he called back the soul that was passing
     "Marguerite, do you hear?"

     She paused on the threshold of Heaven; love, pity,
     surprise,
     Wistful, tender, lit up for an instant the cloud of
     her eyes.

     With his heart on his lips he kissed her, but never
     her cheek grew red,
     And the words the living long for he spake in the
     ear of the dead.

     And the robins sang in the orchard, where buds to
     blossoms grew;
     Of the folded hands and the still face never the
     robins knew!

     1871.

     MY old Welsh neighbor over the way
     Crept slowly out in the sun of spring,
     Pushed from her ears the locks of gray,
     And listened to hear the robin sing.

     Her grandson, playing at marbles, stopped,
     And, cruel in sport as boys will be,
     Tossed a stone at the bird, who hopped
     From bough to bough in the apple-tree.

     "Nay!" said the grandmother; "have you not heard,
     My poor, bad boy! of the fiery pit,
     And how, drop by drop, this merciful bird
     Carries the water that quenches it?

     "He brings cool dew in his little bill,
     And lets it fall on the souls of sin
     You can see the mark on his red breast still
     Of fires that scorch as he drops it in.

     "My poor Bron rhuddyn! my breast-burned bird,
     Singing so sweetly from limb to limb,
     Very dear to the heart of Our Lord
     Is he who pities the lost like Him!"

     "Amen!" I said to the beautiful myth;
     "Sing, bird of God, in my heart as well:
     Each good thought is a drop wherewith
     To cool and lessen the fires of hell.

     "Prayers of love like rain-drops fall,
     Tears of pity are cooling dew,
     And dear to the heart of Our Lord are all
     Who suffer like Him in the good they do!"

     1871.