In the outskirts of the village,
     On the river's winding shores,
     Stand the Occidental plane-trees,
     Stand the ancient sycamores.

     One long century hath been numbered,
     And another half-way told,
     Since the rustic Irish gleeman
     Broke for them the virgin mould.

     Deftly set to Celtic music,
     At his violin's sound they grew,
     Through the moonlit eves of summer,
     Making Amphion's fable true.

     Rise again, then poor Hugh Tallant
     Pass in jerkin green along,
     With thy eyes brimful of laughter,
     And thy mouth as full of song.

     Pioneer of Erin's outcasts,
     With his fiddle and his pack;
     Little dreamed the village Saxons
     Of the myriads at his back.

     How he wrought with spade and fiddle,
     Delved by day and sang by night,
     With a hand that never wearied,
     And a heart forever light,—

     Still the gay tradition mingles
     With a record grave and drear,
     Like the rollic air of Cluny,
     With the solemn march of Mear.

     When the box-tree, white with blossoms,
     Made the sweet May woodlands glad,
     And the Aronia by the river
     Lighted up the swarming shad,

     And the bulging nets swept shoreward,
     With their silver-sided haul,
     Midst the shouts of dripping fishers,
     He was merriest of them all.

     When, among the jovial huskers,
     Love stole in at Labor's side,
     With the lusty airs of England,
     Soft his Celtic measures vied.

     Songs of love and wailing lyke—wake,
     And the merry fair's carouse;
     Of the wild Red Fox of Erin
     And the Woman of Three Cows,

     By the blazing hearths of winter,
     Pleasant seemed his simple tales,
     Midst the grimmer Yorkshire legends
     And the mountain myths of Wales.

     How the souls in Purgatory
     Scrambled up from fate forlorn,
     On St. Eleven's sackcloth ladder,
     Slyly hitched to Satan's horn.

     Of the fiddler who at Tara
     Played all night to ghosts of kings;
     Of the brown dwarfs, and the fairies
     Dancing in their moorland rings.

     Jolliest of our birds of singing,
     Best he loved the Bob-o-link.
     "Hush!" he 'd say, "the tipsy fairies
     Hear the little folks in drink!"

     Merry-faced, with spade and fiddle,
     Singing through the ancient town,
     Only this, of poor Hugh Tallant,
     Hath Tradition handed down.

     Not a stone his grave discloses;
     But if yet his spirit walks,
     'T is beneath the trees he planted,
     And when Bob-o-Lincoln talks;

     Green memorials of the gleeman!
     Linking still the river-shores,
     With their shadows cast by sunset,
     Stand Hugh Tallant's sycamores!

     When the Father of his Country
     Through the north-land riding came,
     And the roofs were starred with banners,
     And the steeples rang acclaim,—

     When each war-scarred Continental,
     Leaving smithy, mill, and farm,
     Waved his rusted sword in welcome,
     And shot off his old king's arm,—

     Slowly passed that August Presence
     Down the thronged and shouting street;
     Village girls as white as angels,
     Scattering flowers around his feet.

     Midway, where the plane-tree's shadow
     Deepest fell, his rein he drew
     On his stately head, uncovered,
     Cool and soft the west-wind blew.

     And he stood up in his stirrups,
     Looking up and looking down
     On the hills of Gold and Silver
     Rimming round the little town,—

     On the river, full of sunshine,
     To the lap of greenest vales
     Winding down from wooded headlands,
     Willow-skirted, white with sails.

     And he said, the landscape sweeping
     Slowly with his ungloved hand,
     "I have seen no prospect fairer
     In this goodly Eastern land."

     Then the bugles of his escort
     Stirred to life the cavalcade
     And that head, so bare and stately,
     Vanished down the depths of shade.

     Ever since, in town and farm-house,
     Life has had its ebb and flow;
     Thrice hath passed the human harvest
     To its garner green and low.

     But the trees the gleeman planted,
     Through the changes, changeless stand;
     As the marble calm of Tadmor
     Mocks the desert's shifting sand.

     Still the level moon at rising
     Silvers o'er each stately shaft;
     Still beneath them, half in shadow,
     Singing, glides the pleasure craft;

     Still beneath them, arm-enfolded,
     Love and Youth together stray;
     While, as heart to heart beats faster,
     More and more their feet delay.

     Where the ancient cobbler, Keezar,
     On the open hillside wrought,
     Singing, as he drew his stitches,
     Songs his German masters taught,

     Singing, with his gray hair floating
     Round his rosy ample face,—
     Now a thousand Saxon craftsmen
     Stitch and hammer in his place.

     All the pastoral lanes so grassy
     Now are Traffic's dusty streets;
     From the village, grown a city,
     Fast the rural grace retreats.

     But, still green, and tall, and stately,
     On the river's winding shores,
     Stand the Occidental plane-trees,
     Stand, Hugh Taliant's sycamores.

     1857.

     PIPES of the misty moorlands,
     Voice of the glens and hills;
     The droning of the torrents,
     The treble of the rills!
     Not the braes of broom and heather,
     Nor the mountains dark with rain,
     Nor maiden bower, nor border tower,
     Have heard your sweetest strain!

     Dear to the Lowland reaper,
     And plaided mountaineer,—
     To the cottage and the castle
     The Scottish pipes are dear;—
     Sweet sounds the ancient pibroch
     O'er mountain, loch, and glade;
     But the sweetest of all music
     The pipes at Lucknow played.

     Day by day the Indian tiger
     Louder yelled, and nearer crept;
     Round and round the jungle-serpent
     Near and nearer circles swept.
     "Pray for rescue, wives and mothers,—
     Pray to-day!" the soldier said;
     "To-morrow, death's between us
     And the wrong and shame we dread."

     Oh, they listened, looked, and waited,
     Till their hope became despair;
     And the sobs of low bewailing
     Filled the pauses of their prayer.
     Then up spake a Scottish maiden,
     With her ear unto the ground
     "Dinna ye hear it?—dinna ye hear it?
     The pipes o' Havelock sound!"

     Hushed the wounded man his groaning;
     Hushed the wife her little ones;
     Alone they heard the drum-roll
     And the roar of Sepoy guns.
     But to sounds of home and childhood
     The Highland ear was true;—
     As her mother's cradle-crooning
     The mountain pipes she knew.

     Like the march of soundless music
     Through the vision of the seer,
     More of feeling than of hearing,
     Of the heart than of the ear,
     She knew the droning pibroch,
     She knew the Campbell's call
     "Hark! hear ye no' MacGregor's,
     The grandest o' them all!"

     Oh, they listened, dumb and breathless,
     And they caught the sound at last;
     Faint and far beyond the Goomtee
     Rose and fell the piper's blast
     Then a burst of wild thanksgiving
     Mingled woman's voice and man's;
     "God be praised!—the march of Havelock!
     The piping of the clans!"

     Louder, nearer, fierce as vengeance,
     Sharp and shrill as swords at strife,
     Came the wild MacGregor's clan-call,
     Stinging all the air to life.
     But when the far-off dust-cloud
     To plaided legions grew,
     Full tenderly and blithesomely
     The pipes of rescue blew!

     Round the silver domes of Lucknow,
     Moslem mosque and Pagan shrine,
     Breathed the air to Britons dearest,
     The air of Auld Lang Syne.
     O'er the cruel roll of war-drums
     Rose that sweet and homelike strain;
     And the tartan clove the turban,
     As the Goomtee cleaves the plain.

     Dear to the corn-land reaper
     And plaided mountaineer,—
     To the cottage and the castle
     The piper's song is dear.
     Sweet sounds the Gaelic pibroch
     O'er mountain, glen, and glade;
     But the sweetest of all music
     The Pipes at Lucknow played!

     1858.

     HERE is the place; right over the hill
     Runs the path I took;
     You can see the gap in the old wall still,
     And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook.

     There is the house, with the gate red-barred,
     And the poplars tall;
     And the barn's brown length, and the cattle-yard,
     And the white horns tossing above the wall.

     There are the beehives ranged in the sun;
     And down by the brink
     Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed-o'errun,
     Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink.

     A year has gone, as the tortoise goes,
     Heavy and slow;
     And the same rose blooms, and the same sun glows,
     And the same brook sings of a year ago.

     There's the same sweet clover-smell in the breeze;
     And the June sun warm
     Tangles his wings of fire in the trees,
     Setting, as then, over Fernside farm.

     I mind me how with a lover's care
     From my Sunday coat
     I brushed off the burrs, and smoothed my hair,
     And cooled at the brookside my brow and
     throat.

     Since we parted, a month had passed,—
     To love, a year;
     Down through the beeches I looked at last
     On the little red gate and the well-sweep near.

     I can see it all now,—the slantwise rain
     Of light through the leaves,
     The sundown's blaze on her window-pane,
     The bloom of her roses under the eaves.

     Just the same as a month before,—
     The house and the trees,
     The barn's brown gable, the vine by the door,—
     Nothing changed but the hives of bees.

     Before them, under the garden wall,
     Forward and back,
     Went drearily singing the chore-girl small,
     Draping each hive with a shred of black.

     Trembling, I listened: the summer sun
     Had the chill of snow;
     For I knew she was telling the bees of one
     Gone on the journey we all must go.

     Then I said to myself, "My Mary weeps
     For the dead to-day;
     Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps
     The fret and the pain of his age away."

     But her dog whined low; on the doorway sill,
     With his cane to his chin,
     The old man sat; and the chore-girl still
     Sung to the bees stealing out and in.

     And the song she was singing ever since
     In my ear sounds on:—
     "Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence!
     Mistress Mary is dead and gone!"

     1858.

     When the reaper's task was ended, and the
     summer wearing late,
     Parson Avery sailed from Newbury, with his wife
     and children eight,
     Dropping down the river-harbor in the shallop
     "Watch and Wait."

     Pleasantly lay the clearings in the mellow summer-
     morn,
     With the newly planted orchards dropping their
     fruits first-born,
     And the home-roofs like brown islands amid a sea
     of corn.

     Broad meadows reached out seaward the tided
     creeks between,
     And hills rolled wave-like inland, with oaks and
     walnuts green;—
     A fairer home, a goodlier land, his eyes had never seen.

     Yet away sailed Parson Avery, away where duty led,
     And the voice of God seemed calling, to break the
     living bread
     To the souls of fishers starving on the rocks of
     Marblehead.

     All day they sailed: at nightfall the pleasant land-
     breeze died,
     The blackening sky, at midnight, its starry lights
     denied,
     And far and low the thunder of tempest prophesied.

     Blotted out were all the coast-lines, gone were rock,
     and wood, and sand;
     Grimly anxious stood the skipper with the rudder
     in his hand,
     And questioned of the darkness what was sea and
     what was land.

     And the preacher heard his dear ones, nestled
     round him, weeping sore,
     "Never heed, my little children! Christ is walking
     on before;
     To the pleasant land of heaven, where the sea shall
     be no more."

     All at once the great cloud parted, like a curtain
     drawn aside,
     To let down the torch of lightning on the terror
     far and wide;
     And the thunder and the whirlwind together smote
     the tide.

     There was wailing in the shallop, woman's wail
     and man's despair,
     A crash of breaking timbers on the rocks so sharp
     and bare,
     And, through it all, the murmur of Father Avery's
     prayer.

     From his struggle in the darkness with the wild
     waves and the blast,
     On a rock, where every billow broke above him as
     it passed,
     Alone, of all his household, the man of God was
     cast.

     There a comrade heard him praying, in the pause
     of wave and wind
     "All my own have gone before me, and I linger
     just behind;
     Not for life I ask, but only for the rest Thy
     ransomed find!

     "In this night of death I challenge the promise of
     Thy word!—
     Let me see the great salvation of which mine ears
     have heard!—
     Let me pass from hence forgiven, through the
     grace of Christ, our Lord!

     "In the baptism of these waters wash white my
     every sin,
     And let me follow up to Thee my household and
     my kin!
     Open the sea-gate of Thy heaven, and let me enter
     in!"

     When the Christian sings his death-song, all the
     listening heavens draw near,
     And the angels, leaning over the walls of crystal,
     hear
     How the notes so faint and broken swell to music
     in God's ear.

     The ear of God was open to His servant's last
     request;
     As the strong wave swept him downward the sweet
     hymn upward pressed,
     And the soul of Father Avery went, singing, to its
     rest.

     There was wailing on the mainland, from the rocks
     of Marblehead;
     In the stricken church of Newbury the notes of
     prayer were read;
     And long, by board and hearthstone, the living
     mourned the dead.

     And still the fishers outbound, or scudding from
     the squall,
     With grave and reverent faces, the ancient tale
     recall,
     When they see the white waves breaking on the
     Rock of Avery's Fall!

     1808.

     FAR away in the twilight time
     Of every people, in every clime,
     Dragons and griffins and monsters dire,
     Born of water, and air, and fire,
     Or nursed, like the Python, in the mud
     And ooze of the old Deucalion flood,
     Crawl and wriggle and foam with rage,
     Through dusk tradition and ballad age.
     So from the childhood of Newbury town
     And its time of fable the tale comes down
     Of a terror which haunted bush and brake,
     The Amphisbaena, the Double Snake!

     Thou who makest the tale thy mirth,
     Consider that strip of Christian earth
     On the desolate shore of a sailless sea,
     Full of terror and mystery,
     Half redeemed from the evil hold
     Of the wood so dreary, and dark, and old,
     Which drank with its lips of leaves the dew
     When Time was young, and the world was new,
     And wove its shadows with sun and moon,
     Ere the stones of Cheops were squared and hewn.
     Think of the sea's dread monotone,
     Of the mournful wail from the pine-wood blown,
     Of the strange, vast splendors that lit the North,
     Of the troubled throes of the quaking earth,
     And the dismal tales the Indian told,
     Till the settler's heart at his hearth grew cold,
     And he shrank from the tawny wizard boasts,
     And the hovering shadows seemed full of ghosts,
     And above, below, and on every side,
     The fear of his creed seemed verified;—
     And think, if his lot were now thine own,
     To grope with terrors nor named nor known,
     How laxer muscle and weaker nerve
     And a feebler faith thy need might serve;
     And own to thyself the wonder more
     That the snake had two heads, and not a score!

     Whether he lurked in the Oldtown fen
     Or the gray earth-flax of the Devil's Den,
     Or swam in the wooded Artichoke,
     Or coiled by the Northman's Written Rock,
     Nothing on record is left to show;
     Only the fact that he lived, we know,
     And left the cast of a double head
     In the scaly mask which he yearly shed.
     For he carried a head where his tail should be,
     And the two, of course, could never agree,
     But wriggled about with main and might,
     Now to the left and now to the right;
     Pulling and twisting this way and that,
     Neither knew what the other was at.

     A snake with two beads, lurking so near!
     Judge of the wonder, guess at the fear!
     Think what ancient gossips might say,
     Shaking their heads in their dreary way,
     Between the meetings on Sabbath-day!
     How urchins, searching at day's decline
     The Common Pasture for sheep or kine,
     The terrible double-ganger heard
     In leafy rustle or whir of bird!
     Think what a zest it gave to the sport,
     In berry-time, of the younger sort,
     As over pastures blackberry-twined,
     Reuben and Dorothy lagged behind,
     And closer and closer, for fear of harm,
     The maiden clung to her lover's arm;
     And how the spark, who was forced to stay,
     By his sweetheart's fears, till the break of day,
     Thanked the snake for the fond delay.

     Far and wide the tale was told,
     Like a snowball growing while it rolled.
     The nurse hushed with it the baby's cry;
     And it served, in the worthy minister's eye,
     To paint the primitive serpent by.
     Cotton Mather came galloping down
     All the way to Newbury town,
     With his eyes agog and his ears set wide,
     And his marvellous inkhorn at his side;
     Stirring the while in the shallow pool
     Of his brains for the lore he learned at school,
     To garnish the story, with here a streak
     Of Latin, and there another of Greek
     And the tales he heard and the notes he took,
     Behold! are they not in his Wonder-Book?

     Stories, like dragons, are hard to kill.
     If the snake does not, the tale runs still
     In Byfield Meadows, on Pipestave Hill.
     And still, whenever husband and wife
     Publish the shame of their daily strife,
     And, with mad cross-purpose, tug and strain
     At either end of the marriage-chain,
     The gossips say, with a knowing shake
     Of their gray heads, "Look at the Double Snake
     One in body and two in will,
     The Amphisbaena is living still!"

     1859.

     I CALL the old time back: I bring my lay
     in tender memory of the summer day
     When, where our native river lapsed away,

     We dreamed it over, while the thrushes made
     Songs of their own, and the great pine-trees laid
     On warm noonlights the masses of their shade.

     And she was with us, living o'er again
     Her life in ours, despite of years and pain,—
     The Autumn's brightness after latter rain.

     Beautiful in her holy peace as one
     Who stands, at evening, when the work is done,
     Glorified in the setting of the sun!

     Her memory makes our common landscape seem
     Fairer than any of which painters dream;
     Lights the brown hills and sings in every stream;

     For she whose speech was always truth's pure gold
     Heard, not unpleased, its simple legends told,
     And loved with us the beautiful and old.

     Across the level tableland,
     A grassy, rarely trodden way,
     With thinnest skirt of birchen spray

     And stunted growth of cedar, leads
     To where you see the dull plain fall
     Sheer off, steep-slanted, ploughed by all

     The seasons' rainfalls. On its brink
     The over-leaning harebells swing,
     With roots half bare the pine-trees cling;

     And, through the shadow looking west,
     You see the wavering river flow
     Along a vale, that far below

     Holds to the sun, the sheltering hills
     And glimmering water-line between,
     Broad fields of corn and meadows green,

     And fruit-bent orchards grouped around
     The low brown roofs and painted eaves,
     And chimney-tops half hid in leaves.

     No warmer valley hides behind
     Yon wind-scourged sand-dunes, cold and bleak;
     No fairer river comes to seek

     The wave-sung welcome of the sea,
     Or mark the northmost border line
     Of sun-loved growths of nut and vine.

     Here, ground-fast in their native fields,
     Untempted by the city's gain,
     The quiet farmer folk remain

     Who bear the pleasant name of Friends,
     And keep their fathers' gentle ways
     And simple speech of Bible days;

     In whose neat homesteads woman holds
     With modest ease her equal place,
     And wears upon her tranquil face

     The look of one who, merging not
     Her self-hood in another's will,
     Is love's and duty's handmaid still.

     Pass with me down the path that winds
     Through birches to the open land,
     Where, close upon the river strand

     You mark a cellar, vine o'errun,
     Above whose wall of loosened stones
     The sumach lifts its reddening cones,

     And the black nightshade's berries shine,
     And broad, unsightly burdocks fold
     The household ruin, century-old.

     Here, in the dim colonial time
     Of sterner lives and gloomier faith,
     A woman lived, tradition saith,

     Who wrought her neighbors foul annoy,
     And witched and plagued the country-side,
     Till at the hangman's hand she died.

     Sit with me while the westering day
     Falls slantwise down the quiet vale,
     And, haply ere yon loitering sail,

     That rounds the upper headland, falls
     Below Deer Island's pines, or sees
     Behind it Hawkswood's belt of trees

     Rise black against the sinking sun,
     My idyl of its days of old,
     The valley's legend, shall be told.

     It was the pleasant harvest-time,
     When cellar-bins are closely stowed,
     And garrets bend beneath their load,

     And the old swallow-haunted barns,—
     Brown-gabled, long, and full of seams
     Through which the rooted sunlight streams,

     And winds blow freshly in, to shake
     The red plumes of the roosted cocks,
     And the loose hay-mow's scented locks,

     Are filled with summer's ripened stores,
     Its odorous grass and barley sheaves,
     From their low scaffolds to their eaves.

     On Esek Harden's oaken floor,
     With many an autumn threshing worn,
     Lay the heaped ears of unhusked corn.

     And thither came young men and maids,
     Beneath a moon that, large and low,
     Lit that sweet eve of long ago.

     They took their places; some by chance,
     And others by a merry voice
     Or sweet smile guided to their choice.

     How pleasantly the rising moon,
     Between the shadow of the mows,
     Looked on them through the great elm-boughs!

     On sturdy boyhood, sun-embrowned,
     On girlhood with its solid curves
     Of healthful strength and painless nerves!

     And jests went round, and laughs that made
     The house-dog answer with his howl,
     And kept astir the barn-yard fowl;

     And quaint old songs their fathers sung
     In Derby dales and Yorkshire moors,
     Ere Norman William trod their shores;

     And tales, whose merry license shook
     The fat sides of the Saxon thane,
     Forgetful of the hovering Dane,—

     Rude plays to Celt and Cimbri known,
     The charms and riddles that beguiled
     On Oxus' banks the young world's child,—

     That primal picture-speech wherein
     Have youth and maid the story told,
     So new in each, so dateless old,

     Recalling pastoral Ruth in her
     Who waited, blushing and demure,
     The red-ear's kiss of forfeiture.

     But still the sweetest voice was mute
     That river-valley ever heard
     From lips of maid or throat of bird;

     For Mabel Martin sat apart,
     And let the hay-mow's shadow fall
     Upon the loveliest face of all.

     She sat apart, as one forbid,
     Who knew that none would condescend
     To own the Witch-wife's child a friend.

     The seasons scarce had gone their round,
     Since curious thousands thronged to see
     Her mother at the gallows-tree;

     And mocked the prison-palsied limbs
     That faltered on the fatal stairs,
     And wan lip trembling with its prayers!

     Few questioned of the sorrowing child,
     Or, when they saw the mother die;
     Dreamed of the daughter's agony.

     They went up to their homes that day,
     As men and Christians justified
     God willed it, and the wretch had died!

     Dear God and Father of us all,
     Forgive our faith in cruel lies,—
     Forgive the blindness that denies!

     Forgive thy creature when he takes,
     For the all-perfect love Thou art,
     Some grim creation of his heart.

     Cast down our idols, overturn
     Our bloody altars; let us see
     Thyself in Thy humanity!

     Young Mabel from her mother's grave
     Crept to her desolate hearth-stone,
     And wrestled with her fate alone;

     With love, and anger, and despair,
     The phantoms of disordered sense,
     The awful doubts of Providence!

     Oh, dreary broke the winter days,
     And dreary fell the winter nights
     When, one by one, the neighboring lights

     Went out, and human sounds grew still,
     And all the phantom-peopled dark
     Closed round her hearth-fire's dying spark.

     And summer days were sad and long,
     And sad the uncompanioned eyes,
     And sadder sunset-tinted leaves,

     And Indian Summer's airs of balm;
     She scarcely felt the soft caress,
     The beauty died of loneliness!

     The school-boys jeered her as they passed,
     And, when she sought the house of prayer,
     Her mother's curse pursued her there.

     And still o'er many a neighboring door
     She saw the horseshoe's curved charm,
     To guard against her mother's harm!

     That mother, poor and sick and lame,
     Who daily, by the old arm-chair,
     Folded her withered hands in prayer;—

     Who turned, in Salem's dreary jail,
     Her worn old Bible o'er and o'er,
     When her dim eyes could read no more!

     Sore tried and pained, the poor girl kept
     Her faith, and trusted that her way,
     So dark, would somewhere meet the day.

     And still her weary wheel went round
     Day after day, with no relief
     Small leisure have the poor for grief.

     So in the shadow Mabel sits;
     Untouched by mirth she sees and hears,
     Her smile is sadder than her tears.

     But cruel eyes have found her out,
     And cruel lips repeat her name,
     And taunt her with her mother's shame.

     She answered not with railing words,
     But drew her apron o'er her face,
     And, sobbing, glided from the place.

     And only pausing at the door,
     Her sad eyes met the troubled gaze
     Of one who, in her better days,

     Had been her warm and steady friend,
     Ere yet her mother's doom had made
     Even Esek Harden half afraid.

     He felt that mute appeal of tears,
     And, starting, with an angry frown,
     Hushed all the wicked murmurs down.

     "Good neighbors mine," he sternly said,
     "This passes harmless mirth or jest;
     I brook no insult to my guest.

     "She is indeed her mother's child;
     But God's sweet pity ministers
     Unto no whiter soul than hers.

     "Let Goody Martin rest in peace;
     I never knew her harm a fly,
     And witch or not, God knows—not I.

     "I know who swore her life away;
     And as God lives, I'd not condemn
     An Indian dog on word of them."

     The broadest lands in all the town,
     The skill to guide, the power to awe,
     Were Harden's; and his word was law.

     None dared withstand him to his face,
     But one sly maiden spake aside
     "The little witch is evil-eyed!

     "Her mother only killed a cow,
     Or witched a churn or dairy-pan;
     But she, forsooth, must charm a man!"

     Poor Mabel, homeward turning, passed
     The nameless terrors of the wood,
     And saw, as if a ghost pursued,

     Her shadow gliding in the moon;
     The soft breath of the west-wind gave
     A chill as from her mother's grave.

     How dreary seemed the silent house!
     Wide in the moonbeams' ghastly glare
     Its windows had a dead man's stare!

     And, like a gaunt and spectral hand,
     The tremulous shadow of a birch
     Reached out and touched the door's low porch,

     As if to lift its latch; hard by,
     A sudden warning call she beard,
     The night-cry of a boding bird.

     She leaned against the door; her face,
     So fair, so young, so full of pain,
     White in the moonlight's silver rain.

     The river, on its pebbled rim,
     Made music such as childhood knew;
     The door-yard tree was whispered through

     By voices such as childhood's ear
     Had heard in moonlights long ago;
     And through the willow-boughs below.

     She saw the rippled waters shine;
     Beyond, in waves of shade and light,
     The hills rolled off into the night.

     She saw and heard, but over all
     A sense of some transforming spell,
     The shadow of her sick heart fell.

     And still across the wooded space
     The harvest lights of Harden shone,
     And song and jest and laugh went on.

     And he, so gentle, true, and strong,
     Of men the bravest and the best,
     Had he, too, scorned her with the rest?

     She strove to drown her sense of wrong,
     And, in her old and simple way,
     To teach her bitter heart to pray.

     Poor child! the prayer, begun in faith,
     Grew to a low, despairing cry
     Of utter misery: "Let me die!

     "Oh! take me from the scornful eyes,
     And hide me where the cruel speech
     And mocking finger may not reach!

     "I dare not breathe my mother's name
     A daughter's right I dare not crave
     To weep above her unblest grave!

     "Let me not live until my heart,
     With few to pity, and with none
     To love me, hardens into stone.

     "O God! have mercy on Thy child,
     Whose faith in Thee grows weak and small,
     And take me ere I lose it all!"

     A shadow on the moonlight fell,
     And murmuring wind and wave became
     A voice whose burden was her name.

     Had then God heard her? Had He sent
     His angel down? In flesh and blood,
     Before her Esek Harden stood!

     He laid his hand upon her arm
     "Dear Mabel, this no more shall be;
     Who scoffs at you must scoff at me.

     "You know rough Esek Harden well;
     And if he seems no suitor gay,
     And if his hair is touched with gray,

     "The maiden grown shall never find
     His heart less warm than when she smiled,
     Upon his knees, a little child!"

     Her tears of grief were tears of joy,
     As, folded in his strong embrace,
     She looked in Esek Harden's face.

     "O truest friend of all'" she said,
     "God bless you for your kindly thought,
     And make me worthy of my lot!"

     He led her forth, and, blent in one,
     Beside their happy pathway ran
     The shadows of the maid and man.

     He led her through his dewy fields,
     To where the swinging lanterns glowed,
     And through the doors the huskers showed.

     "Good friends and neighbors!" Esek said,
     "I'm weary of this lonely life;
     In Mabel see my chosen wife!

     "She greets you kindly, one and all;
     The past is past, and all offence
     Falls harmless from her innocence.

     "Henceforth she stands no more alone;
     You know what Esek Harden is;—
     He brooks no wrong to him or his.

     "Now let the merriest tales be told,
     And let the sweetest songs be sung
     That ever made the old heart young!

     "For now the lost has found a home;
     And a lone hearth shall brighter burn,
     As all the household joys return!"

     Oh, pleasantly the harvest-moon,
     Between the shadow of the mows,
     Looked on them through the great elm—boughs!

     On Mabel's curls of golden hair,
     On Esek's shaggy strength it fell;
     And the wind whispered, "It is well!"

     Up and down the village streets
     Strange are the forms my fancy meets,
     For the thoughts and things of to-day are hid,
     And through the veil of a closed lid
     The ancient worthies I see again
     I hear the tap of the elder's cane,
     And his awful periwig I see,
     And the silver buckles of shoe and knee.
     Stately and slow, with thoughtful air,
     His black cap hiding his whitened hair,
     Walks the Judge of the great Assize,
     Samuel Sewall the good and wise.
     His face with lines of firmness wrought,
     He wears the look of a man unbought,
     Who swears to his hurt and changes not;
     Yet, touched and softened nevertheless
     With the grace of Christian gentleness,
     The face that a child would climb to kiss!
     True and tender and brave and just,
     That man might honor and woman trust.

     Touching and sad, a tale is told,
     Like a penitent hymn of the Psalmist old,
     Of the fast which the good man lifelong kept to
     With a haunting sorrow that never slept,
     As the circling year brought round the time
     Of an error that left the sting of crime,
     When he sat on the bench of the witchcraft courts,
     With the laws of Moses and Hale's Reports,
     And spake, in the name of both, the word
     That gave the witch's neck to the cord,
     And piled the oaken planks that pressed
     The feeble life from the warlock's breast!
     All the day long, from dawn to dawn,
     His door was bolted, his curtain drawn;
     No foot on his silent threshold trod,
     No eye looked on him save that of God,
     As he baffled the ghosts of the dead with charms
     Of penitent tears, and prayers, and psalms,
     And, with precious proofs from the sacred word
     Of the boundless pity and love of the Lord,
     His faith confirmed and his trust renewed
     That the sin of his ignorance, sorely rued,
     Might be washed away in the mingled flood
     Of his human sorrow and Christ's dear blood!

     Green forever the memory be
     Of the Judge of the old Theocracy,
     Whom even his errors glorified,
     Like a far-seen, sunlit mountain-side
     By the cloudy shadows which o'er it glide!
     Honor and praise to the Puritan
     Who the halting step of his age outran,
     And, seeing the infinite worth of man
     In the priceless gift the Father gave,
     In the infinite love that stooped to save,
     Dared not brand his brother a slave
     "Who doth such wrong," he was wont to say,
     In his own quaint, picture-loving way,
     "Flings up to Heaven a hand-grenade
     Which God shall cast down upon his head!"

     Widely as heaven and hell, contrast
     That brave old jurist of the past
     And the cunning trickster and knave of courts
     Who the holy features of Truth distorts,
     Ruling as right the will of the strong,
     Poverty, crime, and weakness wrong;
     Wide-eared to power, to the wronged and weak
     Deaf as Egypt's gods of leek;
     Scoffing aside at party's nod
     Order of nature and law of God;
     For whose dabbled ermine respect were waste,
     Reverence folly, and awe misplaced;
     Justice of whom 't were vain to seek
     As from Koordish robber or Syrian Sheik!
     Oh, leave the wretch to his bribes and sins;
     Let him rot in the web of lies he spins!
     To the saintly soul of the early day,
     To the Christian judge, let us turn and say
     "Praise and thanks for an honest man!—
     Glory to God for the Puritan!"

     I see, far southward, this quiet day,
     The hills of Newbury rolling away,
     With the many tints of the season gay,
     Dreamily blending in autumn mist
     Crimson, and gold, and amethyst.
     Long and low, with dwarf trees crowned,
     Plum Island lies, like a whale aground,
     A stone's toss over the narrow sound.
     Inland, as far as the eye can go,
     The hills curve round like a bended bow;
     A silver arrow from out them sprung,
     I see the shine of the Quasycung;
     And, round and round, over valley and hill,
     Old roads winding, as old roads will,
     Here to a ferry, and there to a mill;
     And glimpses of chimneys and gabled eaves,
     Through green elm arches and maple leaves,—
     Old homesteads sacred to all that can
     Gladden or sadden the heart of man,
     Over whose thresholds of oak and stone
     Life and Death have come and gone
     There pictured tiles in the fireplace show,
     Great beams sag from the ceiling low,
     The dresser glitters with polished wares,
     The long clock ticks on the foot-worn stairs,
     And the low, broad chimney shows the crack
     By the earthquake made a century back.
     Up from their midst springs the village spire
     With the crest of its cock in the sun afire;
     Beyond are orchards and planting lands,
     And great salt marshes and glimmering sands,
     And, where north and south the coast-lines run,
     The blink of the sea in breeze and sun!

     I see it all like a chart unrolled,
     But my thoughts are full of the past and old,
     I hear the tales of my boyhood told;
     And the shadows and shapes of early days
     Flit dimly by in the veiling haze,
     With measured movement and rhythmic chime
     Weaving like shuttles my web of rhyme.
     I think of the old man wise and good
     Who once on yon misty hillsides stood,
     (A poet who never measured rhyme,
     A seer unknown to his dull-eared time,)
     And, propped on his staff of age, looked down,
     With his boyhood's love, on his native town,
     Where, written, as if on its hills and plains,
     His burden of prophecy yet remains,
     For the voices of wood, and wave, and wind
     To read in the ear of the musing mind:—

     "As long as Plum Island, to guard the coast
     As God appointed, shall keep its post;
     As long as a salmon shall haunt the deep
     Of Merrimac River, or sturgeon leap;
     As long as pickerel swift and slim,
     Or red-backed perch, in Crane Pond swim;
     As long as the annual sea-fowl know
     Their time to come and their time to go;
     As long as cattle shall roam at will
     The green, grass meadows by Turkey Hill;
     As long as sheep shall look from the side
     Of Oldtown Hill on marishes wide,
     And Parker River, and salt-sea tide;
     As long as a wandering pigeon shall search
     The fields below from his white-oak perch,
     When the barley-harvest is ripe and shorn,
     And the dry husks fall from the standing corn;
     As long as Nature shall not grow old,
     Nor drop her work from her doting hold,
     And her care for the Indian corn forget,
     And the yellow rows in pairs to set;—
     So long shall Christians here be born,
     Grow up and ripen as God's sweet corn!—
     By the beak of bird, by the breath of frost,
     Shall never a holy ear be lost,
     But, husked by Death in the Planter's sight,
     Be sown again in the fields of light!"

     The Island still is purple with plums,
     Up the river the salmon comes,
     The sturgeon leaps, and the wild-fowl feeds
     On hillside berries and marish seeds,—
     All the beautiful signs remain,
     From spring-time sowing to autumn rain
     The good man's vision returns again!
     And let us hope, as well we can,
     That the Silent Angel who garners man
     May find some grain as of old lie found
     In the human cornfield ripe and sound,
     And the Lord of the Harvest deign to own
     The precious seed by the fathers sown!

     1859.