To the God of all sure mercies let my blessing rise
     to-day,
     From the scoffer and the cruel He hath plucked
     the spoil away;
     Yea, He who cooled the furnace around the faithful
     three,
     And tamed the Chaldean lions, hath set His hand-
     maid free!
     Last night I saw the sunset melt through my prison
     bars,
     Last night across my damp earth-floor fell the pale
     gleam of stars;
     In the coldness and the darkness all through the
     long night-time,
     My grated casement whitened with autumn's early
     rime.
     Alone, in that dark sorrow, hour after hour crept
     by;
     Star after star looked palely in and sank adown
     the sky;
     No sound amid night's stillness, save that which
     seemed to be
     The dull and heavy beating of the pulses of the sea;

     All night I sat unsleeping, for I knew that on the
     morrow
     The ruler and the cruel priest would mock me in
     my sorrow,
     Dragged to their place of market, and bargained
     for and sold,
     Like a lamb before the shambles, like a heifer
     from the fold!

     Oh, the weakness of the flesh was there, the
     shrinking and the shame;
     And the low voice of the Tempter like whispers to
     me came:
     "Why sit'st thou thus forlornly," the wicked
     murmur said,
     "Damp walls thy bower of beauty, cold earth thy
     maiden bed?

     "Where be the smiling faces, and voices soft and
     sweet,
     Seen in thy father's dwelling, heard in the pleasant
     street?
     Where be the youths whose glances, the summer
     Sabbath through,
     Turned tenderly and timidly unto thy father's pew?

     "Why sit'st thou here, Cassandra?-Bethink
     thee with what mirth
     Thy happy schoolmates gather around the warm
     bright hearth;
     How the crimson shadows tremble on foreheads
     white and fair,
     On eyes of merry girlhood, half hid in golden hair.

     "Not for thee the hearth-fire brightens, not for
     thee kind words are spoken,
     Not for thee the nuts of Wenham woods by laughing
     boys are broken;
     No first-fruits of the orchard within thy lap are
     laid,
     For thee no flowers of autumn the youthful hunters
     braid.

     "O weak, deluded maiden!—by crazy fancies
     led,
     With wild and raving railers an evil path to tread;
     To leave a wholesome worship, and teaching pure
     and sound,
     And mate with maniac women, loose-haired and
     sackcloth bound,—

     "Mad scoffers of the priesthood; who mock at
     things divine,
     Who rail against the pulpit, and holy bread and
     wine;
     Sore from their cart-tail scourgings, and from the
     pillory lame,
     Rejoicing in their wretchedness, and glorying in
     their shame.

     "And what a fate awaits thee!—a sadly toiling
     slave,
     Dragging the slowly lengthening chain of bondage
     to the grave!
     Think of thy woman's nature, subdued in hopeless
     thrall,
     The easy prey of any, the scoff and scorn of all!"

     Oh, ever as the Tempter spoke, and feeble Nature's
     fears
     Wrung drop by drop the scalding flow of unavailing
     tears,
     I wrestled down the evil thoughts, and strove in
     silent prayer,
     To feel, O Helper of the weak! that Thou indeed
     wert there!

     I thought of Paul and Silas, within Philippi's cell,
     And how from Peter's sleeping limbs the prison
     shackles fell,
     Till I seemed to hear the trailing of an angel's
     robe of white,
     And to feel a blessed presence invisible to sight.

     Bless the Lord for all his mercies!—for the peace
     and love I felt,
     Like dew of Hermon's holy hill, upon my spirit
     melt;
     When "Get behind me, Satan!" was the language
     of my heart,
     And I felt the Evil Tempter with all his doubts
     depart.

     Slow broke the gray cold morning; again the sunshine
     fell,
     Flecked with the shade of bar and grate within
     my lonely cell;
     The hoar-frost melted on the wall, and upward
     from the street
     Came careless laugh and idle word, and tread of
     passing feet.

     At length the heavy bolts fell back, my door was
     open cast,
     And slowly at the sheriff's side, up the long street
     I passed;
     I heard the murmur round me, and felt, but dared
     not see,
     How, from every door and window, the people
     gazed on me.

     And doubt and fear fell on me, shame burned upon
     my cheek,
     Swam earth and sky around me, my trembling
     limbs grew weak:
     "O Lord! support thy handmaid; and from her
     soul cast out
     The fear of man, which brings a snare, the weakness
     and the doubt."

     Then the dreary shadows scattered, like a cloud in
     morning's breeze,
     And a low deep voice within me seemed whispering
     words like these:
     "Though thy earth be as the iron, and thy heaven
     a brazen wall,
     Trust still His loving-kindness whose power is over
     all."

     We paused at length, where at my feet the sunlit
     waters broke
     On glaring reach of shining beach, and shingly
     wall of rock;
     The merchant-ships lay idly there, in hard clear
     lines on high,
     Tracing with rope and slender spar their network
     on the sky.

     And there were ancient citizens, cloak-wrapped
     and grave and cold,
     And grim and stout sea-captains with faces bronzed
     and old,
     And on his horse, with Rawson, his cruel clerk at
     hand,
     Sat dark and haughty Endicott, the ruler of the
     land.

     And poisoning with his evil words the ruler's ready
     ear,
     The priest leaned o'er his saddle, with laugh and
     scoff and jeer;
     It stirred my soul, and from my lips the seal of
     silence broke,
     As if through woman's weakness a warning spirit
     spoke.

     I cried, "The Lord rebuke thee, thou smiter of the
     meek,
     Thou robber of the righteous, thou trampler of
     the weak!
     Go light the dark, cold hearth-stones,—go turn
     the prison lock
     Of the poor hearts thou hast hunted, thou wolf
     amid the flock!"

     Dark lowered the brows of Endicott, and with a
     deeper red
     O'er Rawson's wine-empurpled cheek the flush of
     anger spread;
     "Good people," quoth the white-lipped priest,
     "heed not her words so wild,
     Her Master speaks within her,—the Devil owns
     his child!"

     But gray heads shook, and young brows knit, the
     while the sheriff read
     That law the wicked rulers against the poor have
     made,
     Who to their house of Rimmon and idol priesthood
     bring
     No bended knee of worship, nor gainful offering.

     Then to the stout sea-captains the sheriff, turning,
     said,—
     "Which of ye, worthy seamen, will take this
     Quaker maid?
     In the Isle of fair Barbadoes, or on Virginia's
     shore,
     You may hold her at a higher price than Indian
     girl or Moor."

     Grim and silent stood the captains; and when
     again he cried,
     "Speak out, my worthy seamen!"—no voice, no
     sign replied;
     But I felt a hard hand press my own, and kind
     words met my ear,—
     "God bless thee, and preserve thee, my gentle girl
     and dear!"

     A weight seemed lifted from my heart, a pitying
     friend was nigh,—
     I felt it in his hard, rough hand, and saw it in his
     eye;
     And when again the sheriff spoke, that voice, so
     kind to me,
     Growled back its stormy answer like the roaring
     of the sea,—

     "Pile my ship with bars of silver, pack with coins
     of Spanish gold,
     From keel-piece up to deck-plank, the roomage of
     her hold,
     By the living God who made me!—I would sooner
     in your bay
     Sink ship and crew and cargo, than bear this child
     away!"

     "Well answered, worthy captain, shame on their
     cruel laws!"
     Ran through the crowd in murmurs loud the people's
     just applause.
     "Like the herdsman of Tekoa, in Israel of old,
     Shall we see the poor and righteous again for
     silver sold?"

     I looked on haughty Endicott; with weapon half-
     way drawn,
     Swept round the throng his lion glare of bitter hate
     and scorn;
     Fiercely he drew his bridle-rein, and turned in
     silence back,
     And sneering priest and baffled clerk rode
     murmuring in his track.

     Hard after them the sheriff looked, in bitterness of
     soul;
     Thrice smote his staff upon the ground, and
     crushed his parchment roll.
     "Good friends," he said, "since both have fled,
     the ruler and the priest,
     Judge ye, if from their further work I be not well
     released."

     Loud was the cheer which, full and clear, swept
     round the silent bay,
     As, with kind words and kinder looks, he bade me
     go my way;
     For He who turns the courses of the streamlet of
     the glen,
     And the river of great waters, had turned the
     hearts of men.

     Oh, at that hour the very earth seemed changed
     beneath my eye,
     A holier wonder round me rose the blue walls of
     the sky,
     A lovelier light on rock and hill and stream and
     woodland lay,
     And softer lapsed on sunnier sands the waters of
     the bay.

     Thanksgiving to the Lord of life! to Him all
     praises be,
     Who from the hands of evil men hath set his hand-
     maid free;
     All praise to Him before whose power the mighty
     are afraid,
     Who takes the crafty in the snare which for the
     poor is laid!

     Sing, O my soul, rejoicingly, on evening's twilight
     calm
     Uplift the loud thanksgiving, pour forth the grateful
     psalm;
     Let all dear hearts with me rejoice, as did the
     saints of old,
     When of the Lord's good angel the rescued Peter
     told.

     And weep and howl, ye evil priests and mighty
     men of wrong,
     The Lord shall smite the proud, and lay His hand
     upon the strong.
     Woe to the wicked rulers in His avenging hour!
     Woe to the wolves who seek the flocks to raven
     and devour!

     But let the humble ones arise, the poor in heart
     be glad,
     And let the mourning ones again with robes of
     praise be clad.
     For He who cooled the furnace, and smoothed the
     stormy wave,
     And tamed the Chaldean lions, is mighty still to
     save!

     1843.

     DARK the halls, and cold the feast,
     Gone the bridemaids, gone the priest.
     All is over, all is done,
     Twain of yesterday are one!
     Blooming girl and manhood gray,
     Autumn in the arms of May!

     Hushed within and hushed without,
     Dancing feet and wrestlers' shout;
     Dies the bonfire on the hill;
     All is dark and all is still,
     Save the starlight, save the breeze
     Moaning through the graveyard trees,
     And the great sea-waves below,
     Pulse of the midnight beating slow.

     From the brief dream of a bride
     She hath wakened, at his side.
     With half-uttered shriek and start,—
     Feels she not his beating heart?
     And the pressure of his arm,
     And his breathing near and warm?

     Lightly from the bridal bed
     Springs that fair dishevelled head,
     And a feeling, new, intense,
     Half of shame, half innocence,
     Maiden fear and wonder speaks
     Through her lips and changing cheeks.

     From the oaken mantel glowing,
     Faintest light the lamp is throwing
     On the mirror's antique mould,
     High-backed chair, and wainscot old,
     And, through faded curtains stealing,
     His dark sleeping face revealing.

     Listless lies the strong man there,
     Silver-streaked his careless hair;
     Lips of love have left no trace
     On that hard and haughty face;
     And that forehead's knitted thought
     Love's soft hand hath not unwrought.

     "Yet," she sighs, "he loves me well,
     More than these calm lips will tell.
     Stooping to my lowly state,
     He hath made me rich and great,
     And I bless him, though he be
     Hard and stern to all save me!"

     While she speaketh, falls the light
     O'er her fingers small and white;
     Gold and gem, and costly ring
     Back the timid lustre fling,—
     Love's selectest gifts, and rare,
     His proud hand had fastened there.

     Gratefully she marks the glow
     From those tapering lines of snow;
     Fondly o'er the sleeper bending
     His black hair with golden blending,
     In her soft and light caress,
     Cheek and lip together press.

     Ha!—that start of horror! why
     That wild stare and wilder cry,
     Full of terror, full of pain?
     Is there madness in her brain?
     Hark! that gasping, hoarse and low,
     "Spare me,—spare me,—let me go!"

     God have mercy!—icy cold
     Spectral hands her own enfold,
     Drawing silently from them
     Love's fair gifts of gold and gem.
     "Waken! save me!" still as death
     At her side he slumbereth.

     Ring and bracelet all are gone,
     And that ice-cold hand withdrawn;
     But she hears a murmur low,
     Full of sweetness, full of woe,
     Half a sigh and half a moan
     "Fear not! give the dead her own!"

     Ah!—the dead wife's voice she knows!
     That cold hand whose pressure froze,
     Once in warmest life had borne
     Gem and band her own hath worn.
     "Wake thee! wake thee!" Lo, his eyes
     Open with a dull surprise.

     In his arms the strong man folds her,
     Closer to his breast he holds her;
     Trembling limbs his own are meeting,
     And he feels her heart's quick beating
     "Nay, my dearest, why this fear?"
     "Hush!" she saith, "the dead is here!"

     "Nay, a dream,—an idle dream."
     But before the lamp's pale gleam
     Tremblingly her hand she raises.
     There no more the diamond blazes,
     Clasp of pearl, or ring of gold,—
     "Ah!" she sighs, "her hand was cold!"

     Broken words of cheer he saith,
     But his dark lip quivereth,
     And as o'er the past he thinketh,
     From his young wife's arms he shrinketh;
     Can those soft arms round him lie,
     Underneath his dead wife's eye?

     She her fair young head can rest
     Soothed and childlike on his breast,
     And in trustful innocence
     Draw new strength and courage thence;
     He, the proud man, feels within
     But the cowardice of sin!

     She can murmur in her thought
     Simple prayers her mother taught,
     And His blessed angels call,
     Whose great love is over all;
     He, alone, in prayerless pride,
     Meets the dark Past at her side!

     One, who living shrank with dread
     From his look, or word, or tread,
     Unto whom her early grave
     Was as freedom to the slave,
     Moves him at this midnight hour,
     With the dead's unconscious power!

     Ah, the dead, the unforgot!
     From their solemn homes of thought,
     Where the cypress shadows blend
     Darkly over foe and friend,
     Or in love or sad rebuke,
     Back upon the living look.

     And the tenderest ones and weakest,
     Who their wrongs have borne the meekest,
     Lifting from those dark, still places,
     Sweet and sad-remembered faces,
     O'er the guilty hearts behind
     An unwitting triumph find.

     1843

     WE had been wandering for many days
     Through the rough northern country. We had seen
     The sunset, with its bars of purple cloud,
     Like a new heaven, shine upward from the lake
     Of Winnepiseogee; and had felt
     The sunrise breezes, midst the leafy isles
     Which stoop their summer beauty to the lips
     Of the bright waters. We had checked our steeds,
     Silent with wonder, where the mountain wall
     Is piled to heaven; and, through the narrow rift
     Of the vast rocks, against whose rugged feet
     Beats the mad torrent with perpetual roar,
     Where noonday is as twilight, and the wind
     Comes burdened with the everlasting moan
     Of forests and of far-off waterfalls,
     We had looked upward where the summer sky,
     Tasselled with clouds light-woven by the sun,
     Sprung its blue arch above the abutting crags
     O'er-roofing the vast portal of the land
     Beyond the wall of mountains. We had passed
     The high source of the Saco; and bewildered
     In the dwarf spruce-belts of the Crystal Hills,
     Had heard above us, like a voice in the cloud,
     The horn of Fabyan sounding; and atop
     Of old Agioochook had seen the mountains
     Piled to the northward, shagged with wood, and thick
     As meadow mole-hills,—the far sea of Casco,
     A white gleam on the horizon of the east;
     Fair lakes, embosomed in the woods and hills;
     Moosehillock's mountain range, and Kearsarge
     Lifting his granite forehead to the sun!

     And we had rested underneath the oaks
     Shadowing the bank, whose grassy spires are shaken
     By the perpetual beating of the falls
     Of the wild Ammonoosuc. We had tracked
     The winding Pemigewasset, overhung
     By beechen shadows, whitening down its rocks,
     Or lazily gliding through its intervals,
     From waving rye-fields sending up the gleam
     Of sunlit waters. We had seen the moon
     Rising behind Umbagog's eastern pines,
     Like a great Indian camp-fire; and its beams
     At midnight spanning with a bridge of silver
     The Merrimac by Uncanoonuc's falls.

     There were five souls of us whom travel's chance
     Had thrown together in these wild north hills
     A city lawyer, for a month escaping
     From his dull office, where the weary eye
     Saw only hot brick walls and close thronged streets;
     Briefless as yet, but with an eye to see
     Life's sunniest side, and with a heart to take
     Its chances all as godsends; and his brother,
     Pale from long pulpit studies, yet retaining
     The warmth and freshness of a genial heart,
     Whose mirror of the beautiful and true,
     In Man and Nature, was as yet undimmed
     By dust of theologic strife, or breath
     Of sect, or cobwebs of scholastic lore;
     Like a clear crystal calm of water, taking
     The hue and image of o'erleaning flowers,
     Sweet human faces, white clouds of the noon,
     Slant starlight glimpses through the dewy leaves,
     And tenderest moonrise. 'T was, in truth, a study,
     To mark his spirit, alternating between
     A decent and professional gravity
     And an irreverent mirthfulness, which often
     Laughed in the face of his divinity,
     Plucked off the sacred ephod, quite unshrined
     The oracle, and for the pattern priest
     Left us the man. A shrewd, sagacious merchant,
     To whom the soiled sheet found in Crawford's inn,
     Giving the latest news of city stocks
     And sales of cotton, had a deeper meaning
     Than the great presence of the awful mountains
     Glorified by the sunset; and his daughter,
     A delicate flower on whom had blown too long
     Those evil winds, which, sweeping from the ice
     And winnowing the fogs of Labrador,
     Shed their cold blight round Massachusetts Bay,
     With the same breath which stirs Spring's opening leaves
     And lifts her half-formed flower-bell on its stem,
     Poisoning our seaside atmosphere.

     It chanced that as we turned upon our homeward way,
     A drear northeastern storm came howling up
     The valley of the Saco; and that girl
     Who had stood with us upon Mount Washington,
     Her brown locks ruffled by the wind which whirled
     In gusts around its sharp, cold pinnacle,
     Who had joined our gay trout-fishing in the streams
     Which lave that giant's feet; whose laugh was heard
     Like a bird's carol on the sunrise breeze
     Which swelled our sail amidst the lake's green islands,
     Shrank from its harsh, chill breath, and visibly drooped
     Like a flower in the frost. So, in that quiet inn
     Which looks from Conway on the mountains piled
     Heavily against the horizon of the north,
     Like summer thunder-clouds, we made our home
     And while the mist hung over dripping hills,
     And the cold wind-driven rain-drops all day long
     Beat their sad music upon roof and pane,
     We strove to cheer our gentle invalid.

     The lawyer in the pauses of the storm
     Went angling down the Saco, and, returning,
     Recounted his adventures and mishaps;
     Gave us the history of his scaly clients,
     Mingling with ludicrous yet apt citations
     Of barbarous law Latin, passages
     From Izaak Walton's Angler, sweet and fresh
     As the flower-skirted streams of Staffordshire,
     Where, under aged trees, the southwest wind
     Of soft June mornings fanned the thin, white hair
     Of the sage fisher. And, if truth be told,
     Our youthful candidate forsook his sermons,
     His commentaries, articles and creeds,
     For the fair page of human loveliness,
     The missal of young hearts, whose sacred text
     Is music, its illumining, sweet smiles.
     He sang the songs she loved; and in his low,
     Deep, earnest voice, recited many a page
     Of poetry, the holiest, tenderest lines
     Of the sad bard of Olney, the sweet songs,
     Simple and beautiful as Truth and Nature,
     Of him whose whitened locks on Rydal Mount
     Are lifted yet by morning breezes blowing
     From the green hills, immortal in his lays.
     And for myself, obedient to her wish,
     I searched our landlord's proffered library,—
     A well-thumbed Bunyan, with its nice wood pictures
     Of scaly fiends and angels not unlike them;
     Watts' unmelodious psalms; Astrology's
     Last home, a musty pile of almanacs,
     And an old chronicle of border wars
     And Indian history. And, as I read
     A story of the marriage of the Chief
     Of Saugus to the dusky Weetamoo,
     Daughter of Passaconaway, who dwelt
     In the old time upon the Merrimac,
     Our fair one, in the playful exercise
     Of her prerogative,—the right divine
     Of youth and beauty,—bade us versify
     The legend, and with ready pencil sketched
     Its plan and outlines, laughingly assigning
     To each his part, and barring our excuses
     With absolute will. So, like the cavaliers
     Whose voices still are heard in the Romance
     Of silver-tongued Boccaccio, on the banks
     Of Arno, with soft tales of love beguiling
     The ear of languid beauty, plague-exiled
     From stately Florence, we rehearsed our rhymes
     To their fair auditor, and shared by turns
     Her kind approval and her playful censure.

     It may be that these fragments owe alone
     To the fair setting of their circumstances,—
     The associations of time, scene, and audience,—
     Their place amid the pictures which fill up
     The chambers of my memory. Yet I trust
     That some, who sigh, while wandering in thought,
     Pilgrims of Romance o'er the olden world,
     That our broad land,—our sea-like lakes and mountains
     Piled to the clouds, our rivers overhung
     By forests which have known no other change
     For ages than the budding and the fall
     Of leaves, our valleys lovelier than those
     Which the old poets sang of,—should but figure
     On the apocryphal chart of speculation
     As pastures, wood-lots, mill-sites, with the privileges,
     Rights, and appurtenances, which make up
     A Yankee Paradise, unsung, unknown,
     To beautiful tradition; even their names,
     Whose melody yet lingers like the last
     Vibration of the red man's requiem,
     Exchanged for syllables significant,
     Of cotton-mill and rail-car, will look kindly
     Upon this effort to call up the ghost
     Of our dim Past, and listen with pleased ear
     To the responses of the questioned Shade.

     O child of that white-crested mountain whose
     springs
     Gush forth in the shade of the cliff-eagle's
     wings,
     Down whose slopes to the lowlands thy wild waters
     shine,
     Leaping gray walls of rock, flashing through the
     dwarf pine;
     From that cloud-curtained cradle so cold and so
     lone,
     From the arms of that wintry-locked mother of
     stone,
     By hills hung with forests, through vales wide and
     free,
     Thy mountain-born brightness glanced down to the
     sea.

     No bridge arched thy waters save that where the
     trees
     Stretched their long arms above thee and kissed in
     the breeze:
     No sound save the lapse of the waves on thy
     shores,
     The plunging of otters, the light dip of oars.

     Green-tufted, oak-shaded, by Amoskeag's fall
     Thy twin Uncanoonucs rose stately and tall,
     Thy Nashua meadows lay green and unshorn,
     And the hills of Pentucket were tasselled with
     corn.
     But thy Pennacook valley was fairer than these,
     And greener its grasses and taller its trees,
     Ere the sound of an axe in the forest had rung,
     Or the mower his scythe in the meadows had
     swung.

     In their sheltered repose looking out from the
     wood
     The bark-builded wigwams of Pennacook stood;
     There glided the corn-dance, the council-fire shone,
     And against the red war-post the hatchet was
     thrown.

     There the old smoked in silence their pipes, and
     the young
     To the pike and the white-perch their baited lines
     flung;
     There the boy shaped his arrows, and there the
     shy maid
     Wove her many-hued baskets and bright wampum
     braid.

     O Stream of the Mountains! if answer of thine
     Could rise from thy waters to question of mine,
     Methinks through the din of thy thronged banks
     a moan
     Of sorrow would swell for the days which have
     gone.

     Not for thee the dull jar of the loom and the wheel,
     The gliding of shuttles, the ringing of steel;
     But that old voice of waters, of bird and of breeze,
     The dip of the wild-fowl, the rustling of trees.

     Lift we the twilight curtains of the Past,
     And, turning from familiar sight and sound,
     Sadly and full of reverence let us cast
     A glance upon Tradition's shadowy ground,
     Led by the few pale lights which, glimmering round
     That dim, strange land of Eld, seem dying fast;
     And that which history gives not to the eye,
     The faded coloring of Time's tapestry,
     Let Fancy, with her dream-dipped brush, supply.

     Roof of bark and walls of pine,
     Through whose chinks the sunbeams shine,
     Tracing many a golden line
     On the ample floor within;
     Where, upon that earth-floor stark,
     Lay the gaudy mats of bark,
     With the bear's hide, rough and dark,
     And the red-deer's skin.

     Window-tracery, small and slight,
     Woven of the willow white,
     Lent a dimly checkered light;
     And the night-stars glimmered down,
     Where the lodge-fire's heavy smoke,
     Slowly through an opening broke,
     In the low roof, ribbed with oak,
     Sheathed with hemlock brown.

     Gloomed behind the changeless shade
     By the solemn pine-wood made;
     Through the rugged palisade,
     In the open foreground planted,
     Glimpses came of rowers rowing,
     Stir of leaves and wild-flowers blowing,
     Steel-like gleams of water flowing,
     In the sunlight slanted.

     Here the mighty Bashaba
     Held his long-unquestioned sway,
     From the White Hills, far away,
     To the great sea's sounding shore;
     Chief of chiefs, his regal word
     All the river Sachems heard,
     At his call the war-dance stirred,
     Or was still once more.

     There his spoils of chase and war,
     Jaw of wolf and black bear's paw,
     Panther's skin and eagle's claw,
     Lay beside his axe and bow;
     And, adown the roof-pole hung,
     Loosely on a snake-skin strung,
     In the smoke his scalp-locks swung
     Grimly to and fro.

     Nightly down the river going,
     Swifter was the hunter's rowing,
     When he saw that lodge-fire, glowing
     O'er the waters still and red;
     And the squaw's dark eye burned brighter,
     And she drew her blanket tighter,
     As, with quicker step and lighter,
     From that door she fled.

     For that chief had magic skill,
     And a Panisee's dark will,
     Over powers of good and ill,
     Powers which bless and powers which ban;
     Wizard lord of Pennacook,
     Chiefs upon their war-path shook,
     When they met the steady look
     Of that wise dark man.

     Tales of him the gray squaw told,
     When the winter night-wind cold
     Pierced her blanket's thickest fold,
     And her fire burned low and small,
     Till the very child abed,
     Drew its bear-skin over bead,
     Shrinking from the pale lights shed
     On the trembling wall.

     All the subtle spirits hiding
     Under earth or wave, abiding
     In the caverned rock, or riding
     Misty clouds or morning breeze;
     Every dark intelligence,
     Secret soul, and influence
     Of all things which outward sense
     Feels, or bears, or sees,—

     These the wizard's skill confessed,
     At his bidding banned or blessed,
     Stormful woke or lulled to rest
     Wind and cloud, and fire and flood;
     Burned for him the drifted snow,
     Bade through ice fresh lilies blow,
     And the leaves of summer grow
     Over winter's wood!

     Not untrue that tale of old!
     Now, as then, the wise and bold
     All the powers of Nature hold
     Subject to their kingly will;
     From the wondering crowds ashore,
     Treading life's wild waters o'er,
     As upon a marble floor,
     Moves the strong man still.

     Still, to such, life's elements
     With their sterner laws dispense,
     And the chain of consequence
     Broken in their pathway lies;
     Time and change their vassals making,
     Flowers from icy pillows waking,
     Tresses of the sunrise shaking
     Over midnight skies.
     Still, to th' earnest soul, the sun
     Rests on towered Gibeon,
     And the moon of Ajalon
     Lights the battle-grounds of life;
     To his aid the strong reverses
     Hidden powers and giant forces,
     And the high stars, in their courses,
     Mingle in his strife!

     The soot-black brows of men, the yell
     Of women thronging round the bed,
     The tinkling charm of ring and shell,
     The Powah whispering o'er the dead!

     All these the Sachem's home had known,
     When, on her journey long and wild
     To the dim World of Souls, alone,
     In her young beauty passed the mother of his child.

     Three bow-shots from the Sachem's dwelling
     They laid her in the walnut shade,
     Where a green hillock gently swelling
     Her fitting mound of burial made.
     There trailed the vine in summer hours,
     The tree-perched squirrel dropped his shell,—
     On velvet moss and pale-hued flowers,
     Woven with leaf and spray, the softened sunshine fell!

     The Indian's heart is hard and cold,
     It closes darkly o'er its care,
     And formed in Nature's sternest mould,
     Is slow to feel, and strong to bear.
     The war-paint on the Sachem's face,
     Unwet with tears, shone fierce and red,
     And still, in battle or in chase,
     Dry leaf and snow-rime crisped beneath his
     foremost tread.

     Yet when her name was heard no more,
     And when the robe her mother gave,
     And small, light moccasin she wore,
     Had slowly wasted on her grave,
     Unmarked of him the dark maids sped
     Their sunset dance and moonlit play;
     No other shared his lonely bed,
     No other fair young head upon his bosom lay.

     A lone, stern man. Yet, as sometimes
     The tempest-smitten tree receives
     From one small root the sap which climbs
     Its topmost spray and crowning leaves,
     So from his child the Sachem drew
     A life of Love and Hope, and felt
     His cold and rugged nature through
     The softness and the warmth of her young
     being melt.

     A laugh which in the woodland rang
     Bemocking April's gladdest bird,—
     A light and graceful form which sprang
     To meet him when his step was heard,—
     Eyes by his lodge-fire flashing dark,
     Small fingers stringing bead and shell
     Or weaving mats of bright-hued bark,—
     With these the household-god had graced
     his wigwam well.

     Child of the forest! strong and free,
     Slight-robed, with loosely flowing hair,
     She swam the lake or climbed the tree,
     Or struck the flying bird in air.
     O'er the heaped drifts of winter's moon
     Her snow-shoes tracked the hunter's way;
     And dazzling in the summer noon
     The blade of her light oar threw off its shower
     of spray!

     Unknown to her the rigid rule,
     The dull restraint, the chiding frown,
     The weary torture of the school,
     The taming of wild nature down.
     Her only lore, the legends told
     Around the hunter's fire at night;
     Stars rose and set, and seasons rolled,
     Flowers bloomed and snow-flakes fell, unquestioned
     in her sight.

     Unknown to her the subtle skill
     With which the artist-eye can trace
     In rock and tree and lake and hill
     The outlines of divinest grace;
     Unknown the fine soul's keen unrest,
     Which sees, admires, yet yearns alway;
     Too closely on her mother's breast
     To note her smiles of love the child of Nature lay!

     It is enough for such to be
     Of common, natural things a part,
     To feel, with bird and stream and tree,
     The pulses of the same great heart;
     But we, from Nature long exiled,
     In our cold homes of Art and Thought
     Grieve like the stranger-tended child,
     Which seeks its mother's arms, and sees but feels
     them not.

     The garden rose may richly bloom
     In cultured soil and genial air,
     To cloud the light of Fashion's room
     Or droop in Beauty's midnight hair;
     In lonelier grace, to sun and dew
     The sweetbrier on the hillside shows
     Its single leaf and fainter hue,
     Untrained and wildly free, yet still a sister rose!

     Thus o'er the heart of Weetamoo
     Their mingling shades of joy and ill
     The instincts of her nature threw;
     The savage was a woman still.
     Midst outlines dim of maiden schemes,
     Heart-colored prophecies of life,
     Rose on the ground of her young dreams
     The light of a new home, the lover and the wife.

     Cool and dark fell the autumn night,
     But the Bashaba's wigwam glowed with light,
     For down from its roof, by green withes hung,
     Flaring and smoking the pine-knots swung.

     And along the river great wood-fires
     Shot into the night their long, red spires,
     Showing behind the tall, dark wood,
     Flashing before on the sweeping flood.

     In the changeful wind, with shimmer and shade,
     Now high, now low, that firelight played,
     On tree-leaves wet with evening dews,
     On gliding water and still canoes.

     The trapper that night on Turee's brook,
     And the weary fisher on Contoocook,
     Saw over the marshes, and through the pine,
     And down on the river, the dance-lights shine.
     For the Saugus Sachem had come to woo
     The Bashaba's daughter Weetamoo,
     And laid at her father's feet that night
     His softest furs and wampum white.

     From the Crystal Hills to the far southeast
     The river Sagamores came to the feast;
     And chiefs whose homes the sea-winds shook
     Sat down on the mats of Pennacook.

     They came from Sunapee's shore of rock,
     From the snowy sources of Snooganock,
     And from rough Coos whose thick woods shake
     Their pine-cones in Umbagog Lake.

     From Ammonoosuc's mountain pass,
     Wild as his home, came Chepewass;
     And the Keenomps of the bills which throw
     Their shade on the Smile of Manito.

     With pipes of peace and bows unstrung,
     Glowing with paint came old and young,
     In wampum and furs and feathers arrayed,
     To the dance and feast the Bashaba made.

     Bird of the air and beast of the field,
     All which the woods and the waters yield,
     On dishes of birch and hemlock piled,
     Garnished and graced that banquet wild.

     Steaks of the brown bear fat and large
     From the rocky slopes of the Kearsarge;
     Delicate trout from Babboosuck brook,
     And salmon speared in the Contoocook;

     Squirrels which fed where nuts fell thick
     in the gravelly bed of the Otternic;
     And small wild-hens in reed-snares caught
     from the banks of Sondagardee brought;

     Pike and perch from the Suncook taken,
     Nuts from the trees of the Black Hills shaken,
     Cranberries picked in the Squamscot bog,
     And grapes from the vines of Piscataquog:

     And, drawn from that great stone vase which stands
     In the river scooped by a spirit's hands,
     Garnished with spoons of shell and horn,
     Stood the birchen dishes of smoking corn.

     Thus bird of the air and beast of the field,
     All which the woods and the waters yield,
     Furnished in that olden day
     The bridal feast of the Bashaba.

     And merrily when that feast was done
     On the fire-lit green the dance begun,
     With squaws' shrill stave, and deeper hum
     Of old men beating the Indian drum.

     Painted and plumed, with scalp-locks flowing,
     And red arms tossing and black eyes glowing,
     Now in the light and now in the shade
     Around the fires the dancers played.

     The step was quicker, the song more shrill,
     And the beat of the small drums louder still
     Whenever within the circle drew
     The Saugus Sachem and Weetamoo.

     The moons of forty winters had shed
     Their snow upon that chieftain's head,
     And toil and care and battle's chance
     Had seamed his hard, dark countenance.

     A fawn beside the bison grim,—
     Why turns the bride's fond eye on him,
     In whose cold look is naught beside
     The triumph of a sullen pride?

     Ask why the graceful grape entwines
     The rough oak with her arm of vines;
     And why the gray rock's rugged cheek
     The soft lips of the mosses seek.

     Why, with wise instinct, Nature seems
     To harmonize her wide extremes,
     Linking the stronger with the weak,
     The haughty with the soft and meek!