Thine are all the gifts, O God!
     Thine the broken bread;
     Let the naked feet be shod,
     And the starving fed.

     Let Thy children, by Thy grace,
     Give as they abound,
     Till the poor have breathing-space,
     And the lost are found.

     Wiser than the miser's hoards
     Is the giver's choice;
     Sweeter than the song of birds
     Is the thankful voice.

     Welcome smiles on faces sad
     As the flowers of spring;
     Let the tender hearts be glad
     With the joy they bring.

     Happier for their pity's sake
     Make their sports and plays,
     And from lips of childhood take
     Thy perfected praise!

     I.
     THROUGH the streets of Marblehead
     Fast the red-winged terror sped;

     Blasting, withering, on it came,
     With its hundred tongues of flame,

     Where St. Michael's on its way
     Stood like chained Andromeda,

     Waiting on the rock, like her,
     Swift doom or deliverer!

     Church that, after sea-moss grew
     Over walls no longer new,

     Counted generations five,
     Four entombed and one alive;

     Heard the martial thousand tread
     Battleward from Marblehead;

     Saw within the rock-walled bay
     Treville's liked pennons play,

     And the fisher's dory met
     By the barge of Lafayette,

     Telling good news in advance
     Of the coming fleet of France!

     Church to reverend memories, dear,
     Quaint in desk and chandelier;

     Bell, whose century-rusted tongue
     Burials tolled and bridals rung;

     Loft, whose tiny organ kept
     Keys that Snetzler's hand had swept;

     Altar, o'er whose tablet old
     Sinai's law its thunders rolled!

     Suddenly the sharp cry came
     "Look! St. Michael's is aflame!"

     Round the low tower wall the fire
     Snake-like wound its coil of ire.

     Sacred in its gray respect
     From the jealousies of sect,

     "Save it," seemed the thought of all,
     "Save it, though our roof-trees fall!"

     Up the tower the young men sprung;
     One, the bravest, outward swung

     By the rope, whose kindling strands
     Smoked beneath the holder's hands,

     Smiting down with strokes of power
     Burning fragments from the tower.

     Then the gazing crowd beneath
     Broke the painful pause of breath;

     Brave men cheered from street to street,
     With home's ashes at their feet;

     Houseless women kerchiefs waved:
     "Thank the Lord! St. Michael's saved!"

     II.
     In the heart of Boston town
     Stands the church of old renown,

     From whose walls the impulse went
     Which set free a continent;

     From whose pulpit's oracle
     Prophecies of freedom fell;

     And whose steeple-rocking din
     Rang the nation's birth-day in!

     Standing at this very hour
     Perilled like St. Michael's tower,

     Held not in the clasp of flame,
     But by mammon's grasping claim.

     Shall it be of Boston said
     She is shamed by Marblehead?

     City of our pride! as there,
     Hast thou none to do and dare?

     Life was risked for Michael's shrine;
     Shall not wealth be staked for thine?

     Woe to thee, when men shall search
     Vainly for the Old South Church;

     When from Neck to Boston Stone,
     All thy pride of place is gone;

     When from Bay and railroad car,
     Stretched before them wide and far,

     Men shall only see a great
     Wilderness of brick and slate,

     Every holy spot o'erlaid
     By the commonplace of trade!

     City of our love': to thee
     Duty is but destiny.

     True to all thy record saith,
     Keep with thy traditions faith;

     Ere occasion's overpast,
     Hold its flowing forelock fast;

     Honor still the precedents
     Of a grand munificence;

     In thy old historic way
     Give, as thou didst yesterday

     At the South-land's call, or on
     Need's demand from fired St. John.

     Set thy Church's muffled bell
     Free the generous deed to tell.

     Let thy loyal hearts rejoice
     In the glad, sonorous voice,

     Ringing from the brazen mouth
     Of the bell of the Old South,—

     Ringing clearly, with a will,
     "What she was is Boston still!"

     1879

     O painter of the fruits and flowers,
     We own wise design,
     Where these human hands of ours
     May share work of Thine!

     Apart from Thee we plant in vain
     The root and sow the seed;
     Thy early and Thy later rain,
     Thy sun and dew we need.

     Our toil is sweet with thankfulness,
     Our burden is our boon;
     The curse of Earth's gray morning is
     The blessing of its noon.

     Why search the wide world everywhere
     For Eden's unknown ground?
     That garden of the primal pair
     May nevermore be found.

     But, blest by Thee, our patient toil
     May right the ancient wrong,
     And give to every clime and soil
     The beauty lost so long.

     Our homestead flowers and fruited trees
     May Eden's orchard shame;
     We taste the tempting sweets of these
     Like Eve, without her blame.

     And, North and South and East and West,
     The pride of every zone,
     The fairest, rarest, and the best
     May all be made our own.

     Its earliest shrines the young world sought
     In hill-groves and in bowers,
     The fittest offerings thither brought
     Were Thy own fruits and flowers.

     And still with reverent hands we cull
     Thy gifts each year renewed;
     The good is always beautiful,
     The beautiful is good.

     Thrice welcome from the Land of Flowers
     And golden-fruited orange bowers
     To this sweet, green-turfed June of ours!
     To her who, in our evil time,
     Dragged into light the nation's crime
     With strength beyond the strength of men,
     And, mightier than their swords, her pen!
     To her who world-wide entrance gave
     To the log-cabin of the slave;
     Made all his wrongs and sorrows known,
     And all earth's languages his own,—
     North, South, and East and West, made all
     The common air electrical,
     Until the o'ercharged bolts of heaven
     Blazed down, and every chain was riven!

     Welcome from each and all to her
     Whose Wooing of the Minister
     Revealed the warm heart of the man
     Beneath the creed-bound Puritan,
     And taught the kinship of the love
     Of man below and God above;
     To her whose vigorous pencil-strokes
     Sketched into life her Oldtown Folks;
     Whose fireside stories, grave or gay,
     In quaint Sam Lawson's vagrant way,
     With old New England's flavor rife,
     Waifs from her rude idyllic life,
     Are racy as the legends old
     By Chaucer or Boccaccio told;
     To her who keeps, through change of place
     And time, her native strength and grace,
     Alike where warm Sorrento smiles,
     Or where, by birchen-shaded isles,
     Whose summer winds have shivered o'er
     The icy drift of Labrador,
     She lifts to light the priceless Pearl
     Of Harpswell's angel-beckoned girl!
     To her at threescore years and ten
     Be tributes of the tongue and pen;
     Be honor, praise, and heart-thanks given,
     The loves of earth, the hopes of heaven!

     Ah, dearer than the praise that stirs
     The air to-day, our love is hers!
     She needs no guaranty of fame
     Whose own is linked with Freedom's name.
     Long ages after ours shall keep
     Her memory living while we sleep;
     The waves that wash our gray coast lines,
     The winds that rock the Southern pines,
     Shall sing of her; the unending years
     Shall tell her tale in unborn ears.
     And when, with sins and follies past,
     Are numbered color-hate and caste,
     White, black, and red shall own as one
     The noblest work by woman done.

     Outbound, your bark awaits you. Were I one
     Whose prayer availeth much, my wish should be
     Your favoring trade-wind and consenting sea.
     By sail or steed was never love outrun,
     And, here or there, love follows her in whom
     All graces and sweet charities unite,
     The old Greek beauty set in holier light;
     And her for whom New England's byways bloom,
     Who walks among us welcome as the Spring,
     Calling up blossoms where her light feet stray.
     God keep you both, make beautiful your way,
     Comfort, console, and bless; and safely bring,
     Ere yet I make upon a vaster sea
     The unreturning voyage, my friends to me.

     1882.

     My garden roses long ago
     Have perished from the leaf-strewn walks;
     Their pale, fair sisters smile no more
     Upon the sweet-brier stalks.

     Gone with the flower-time of my life,
     Spring's violets, summer's blooming pride,
     And Nature's winter and my own
     Stand, flowerless, side by side.

     So might I yesterday have sung;
     To-day, in bleak December's noon,
     Come sweetest fragrance, shapes, and hues,
     The rosy wealth of June!

     Bless the young bands that culled the gift,
     And bless the hearts that prompted it;
     If undeserved it comes, at least
     It seems not all unfit.

     Of old my Quaker ancestors
     Had gifts of forty stripes save one;
     To-day as many roses crown
     The gray head of their son.

     And with them, to my fancy's eye,
     The fresh-faced givers smiling come,
     And nine and thirty happy girls
     Make glad a lonely room.

     They bring the atmosphere of youth;
     The light and warmth of long ago
     Are in my heart, and on my cheek
     The airs of morning blow.

     O buds of girlhood, yet unblown,
     And fairer than the gift ye chose,
     For you may years like leaves unfold
     The heart of Sharon's rose.

     1883.

     The gulf of seven and fifty years
     We stretch our welcoming hands across;
     The distance but a pebble's toss
     Between us and our youth appears.

     For in life's school we linger on
     The remnant of a once full list;
     Conning our lessons, undismissed,
     With faces to the setting sun.

     And some have gone the unknown way,
     And some await the call to rest;
     Who knoweth whether it is best
     For those who went or those who stay?

     And yet despite of loss and ill,
     If faith and love and hope remain,
     Our length of days is not in vain,
     And life is well worth living still.

     Still to a gracious Providence
     The thanks of grateful hearts are due,
     For blessings when our lives were new,
     For all the good vouchsafed us since.

     The pain that spared us sorer hurt,
     The wish denied, the purpose crossed,
     And pleasure's fond occasions lost,
     Were mercies to our small desert.

     'T is something that we wander back,
     Gray pilgrims, to our ancient ways,
     And tender memories of old days
     Walk with us by the Merrimac;

     That even in life's afternoon
     A sense of youth comes back again,
     As through this cool September rain
     The still green woodlands dream of June.

     The eyes grown dim to present things
     Have keener sight for bygone years,
     And sweet and clear, in deafening ears,
     The bird that sang at morning sings.

     Dear comrades, scattered wide and far,
     Send from their homes their kindly word,
     And dearer ones, unseen, unheard,
     Smile on us from some heavenly star.

     For life and death with God are one,
     Unchanged by seeming change His care
     And love are round us here and there;
     He breaks no thread His hand has spun.

     Soul touches soul, the muster roll
     Of life eternal has no gaps;
     And after half a century's lapse
     Our school-day ranks are closed and whole.

     Hail and farewell! We go our way;
     Where shadows end, we trust in light;
     The star that ushers in the night
     Is herald also of the day!

     Not on Penobscot's wooded bank the spires
     Of the sought City rose, nor yet beside
     The winding Charles, nor where the daily tide
     Of Naumkeag's haven rises and retires,
     The vision tarried; but somewhere we knew
     The beautiful gates must open to our quest,
     Somewhere that marvellous City of the West
     Would lift its towers and palace domes in view,
     And, to! at last its mystery is made known—
     Its only dwellers maidens fair and young,
     Its Princess such as England's Laureate sung;
     And safe from capture, save by love alone,
     It lends its beauty to the lake's green shore,
     And Norumbega is a myth no more.

     The land, that, from the rule of kings,
     In freeing us, itself made free,
     Our Old World Sister, to us brings
     Her sculptured Dream of Liberty,

     Unlike the shapes on Egypt's sands
     Uplifted by the toil-worn slave,
     On Freedom's soil with freemen's hands
     We rear the symbol free hands gave.

     O France, the beautiful! to thee
     Once more a debt of love we owe
     In peace beneath thy Colors Three,
     We hail a later Rochambeau!

     Rise, stately Symbol! holding forth
     Thy light and hope to all who sit
     In chains and darkness! Belt the earth
     With watch-fires from thy torch uplit!

     Reveal the primal mandate still
     Which Chaos heard and ceased to be,
     Trace on mid-air th' Eternal Will
     In signs of fire: "Let man be free!"

     Shine far, shine free, a guiding light
     To Reason's ways and Virtue's aim,
     A lightning-flash the wretch to smite
     Who shields his license with thy name!

     O storied vale of Merrimac
     Rejoice through all thy shade and shine,
     And from his century's sleep call back
     A brave and honored son of thine.

     Unveil his effigy between
     The living and the dead to-day;
     The fathers of the Old Thirteen
     Shall witness bear as spirits may.

     Unseen, unheard, his gray compeers
     The shades of Lee and Jefferson,
     Wise Franklin reverend with his years
     And Carroll, lord of Carrollton!

     Be thine henceforth a pride of place
     Beyond thy namesake's over-sea,
     Where scarce a stone is left to trace
     The Holy House of Amesbury.

     A prouder memory lingers round
     The birthplace of thy true man here
     Than that which haunts the refuge found
     By Arthur's mythic Guinevere.

     The plain deal table where he sat
     And signed a nation's title-deed
     Is dearer now to fame than that
     Which bore the scroll of Runnymede.

     Long as, on Freedom's natal morn,
     Shall ring the Independence bells,
     Give to thy dwellers yet unborn
     The lesson which his image tells.

     For in that hour of Destiny,
     Which tried the men of bravest stock,
     He knew the end alone must be
     A free land or a traitor's block.

     Among those picked and chosen men
     Than his, who here first drew his breath,
     No firmer fingers held the pen
     Which wrote for liberty or death.

     Not for their hearths and homes alone,
     But for the world their work was done;
     On all the winds their thought has flown
     Through all the circuit of the sun.

     We trace its flight by broken chains,
     By songs of grateful Labor still;
     To-day, in all her holy fanes,
     It rings the bells of freed Brazil.

     O hills that watched his boyhood's home,
     O earth and air that nursed him, give,
     In this memorial semblance, room
     To him who shall its bronze outlive!

     And thou, O Land he loved, rejoice
     That in the countless years to come,
     Whenever Freedom needs a voice,
     These sculptured lips shall not be dumb!

     I would not sin, in this half-playful strain,—
     Too light perhaps for serious years, though born
     Of the enforced leisure of slow pain,—
     Against the pure ideal which has drawn
     My feet to follow its far-shining gleam.
     A simple plot is mine: legends and runes
     Of credulous days, old fancies that have lain
     Silent, from boyhood taking voice again,
     Warmed into life once more, even as the tunes
     That, frozen in the fabled hunting-horn,
     Thawed into sound:—a winter fireside dream
     Of dawns and-sunsets by the summer sea,
     Whose sands are traversed by a silent throng
     Of voyagers from that vaster mystery
     Of which it is an emblem;—and the dear
     Memory of one who might have tuned my song
     To sweeter music by her delicate ear.

     When heats as of a tropic clime
     Burned all our inland valleys through,
     Three friends, the guests of summer time,
     Pitched their white tent where sea-winds blew.
     Behind them, marshes, seamed and crossed
     With narrow creeks, and flower-embossed,
     Stretched to the dark oak wood, whose leafy arms
     Screened from the stormy East the pleasant inland farms.

     At full of tide their bolder shore
     Of sun-bleached sand the waters beat;
     At ebb, a smooth and glistening floor
     They touched with light, receding feet.
     Northward a 'green bluff broke the chain
     Of sand-hills; southward stretched a plain
     Of salt grass, with a river winding down,
     Sail-whitened, and beyond the steeples of the town,

     Whence sometimes, when the wind was light
     And dull the thunder of the beach,
     They heard the bells of morn and night
     Swing, miles away, their silver speech.
     Above low scarp and turf-grown wall
     They saw the fort-flag rise and fall;
     And, the first star to signal twilight's hour,
     The lamp-fire glimmer down from the tall light-house tower.

     They rested there, escaped awhile
     From cares that wear the life away,
     To eat the lotus of the Nile
     And drink the poppies of Cathay,—
     To fling their loads of custom down,
     Like drift-weed, on the sand-slopes brown,
     And in the sea waves drown the restless pack
     Of duties, claims, and needs that barked upon their track.

     One, with his beard scarce silvered, bore
     A ready credence in his looks,
     A lettered magnate, lording o'er
     An ever-widening realm of books.
     In him brain-currents, near and far,
     Converged as in a Leyden jar;
     The old, dead authors thronged him round about,
     And Elzevir's gray ghosts from leathern graves looked out.

     He knew each living pundit well,
     Could weigh the gifts of him or her,
     And well the market value tell
     Of poet and philosopher.
     But if he lost, the scenes behind,
     Somewhat of reverence vague and blind,
     Finding the actors human at the best,
     No readier lips than his the good he saw confessed.

     His boyhood fancies not outgrown,
     He loved himself the singer's art;
     Tenderly, gently, by his own
     He knew and judged an author's heart.
     No Rhadamanthine brow of doom
     Bowed the dazed pedant from his room;
     And bards, whose name is legion, if denied,
     Bore off alike intact their verses and their pride.

     Pleasant it was to roam about
     The lettered world as he had, done,
     And see the lords of song without
     Their singing robes and garlands on.
     With Wordsworth paddle Rydal mere,
     Taste rugged Elliott's home-brewed beer,
     And with the ears of Rogers, at fourscore,
     Hear Garrick's buskined tread and Walpole's wit once more.

     And one there was, a dreamer born,
     Who, with a mission to fulfil,
     Had left the Muses' haunts to turn
     The crank of an opinion-mill,
     Making his rustic reed of song
     A weapon in the war with wrong,
     Yoking his fancy to the breaking-plough
     That beam-deep turned the soil for truth to spring and grow.

     Too quiet seemed the man to ride
     The winged Hippogriff Reform;
     Was his a voice from side to side
     To pierce the tumult of the storm?
     A silent, shy, peace-loving man,
     He seemed no fiery partisan
     To hold his way against the public frown,
     The ban of Church and State, the fierce mob's hounding down.

     For while he wrought with strenuous will
     The work his hands had found to do,
     He heard the fitful music still
     Of winds that out of dream-land blew.
     The din about him could not drown
     What the strange voices whispered down;
     Along his task-field weird processions swept,
     The visionary pomp of stately phantoms stepped:

     The common air was thick with dreams,—
     He told them to the toiling crowd;
     Such music as the woods and streams
     Sang in his ear he sang aloud;
     In still, shut bays, on windy capes,
     He heard the call of beckoning shapes,
     And, as the gray old shadows prompted him,
     To homely moulds of rhyme he shaped their legends grim.

     He rested now his weary hands,
     And lightly moralized and laughed,
     As, tracing on the shifting sands
     A burlesque of his paper-craft,
     He saw the careless waves o'errun
     His words, as time before had done,
     Each day's tide-water washing clean away,
     Like letters from the sand, the work of yesterday.

     And one, whose Arab face was tanned
     By tropic sun and boreal frost,
     So travelled there was scarce a land
     Or people left him to exhaust,
     In idling mood had from him hurled
     The poor squeezed orange of the world,
     And in the tent-shade, as beneath a palm,
     Smoked, cross-legged like a Turk, in Oriental calm.

     The very waves that washed the sand
     Below him, he had seen before
     Whitening the Scandinavian strand
     And sultry Mauritanian shore.
     From ice-rimmed isles, from summer seas
     Palm-fringed, they bore him messages;
     He heard the plaintive Nubian songs again,
     And mule-bells tinkling down the mountain-paths of Spain.

     His memory round the ransacked earth
     On Puck's long girdle slid at ease;
     And, instant, to the valley's girth
     Of mountains, spice isles of the seas,
     Faith flowered in minster stones, Art's guess
     At truth and beauty, found access;
     Yet loved the while, that free cosmopolite,
     Old friends, old ways, and kept his boyhood's dreams in sight.

     Untouched as yet by wealth and pride,
     That virgin innocence of beach
     No shingly monster, hundred-eyed,
     Stared its gray sand-birds out of reach;
     Unhoused, save where, at intervals,
     The white tents showed their canvas walls,
     Where brief sojourners, in the cool, soft air,
     Forgot their inland heats, hard toil, and year-long care.

     Sometimes along the wheel-deep sand
     A one-horse wagon slowly crawled,
     Deep laden with a youthful band,
     Whose look some homestead old recalled;
     Brother perchance, and sisters twain,
     And one whose blue eyes told, more plain
     Than the free language of her rosy lip,
     Of the still dearer claim of love's relationship.

     With cheeks of russet-orchard tint,
     The light laugh of their native rills,
     The perfume of their garden's mint,
     The breezy freedom of the hills,
     They bore, in unrestrained delight,
     The motto of the Garter's knight,
     Careless as if from every gazing thing
     Hid by their innocence, as Gyges by his ring.

     The clanging sea-fowl came and went,
     The hunter's gun in the marshes rang;
     At nightfall from a neighboring tent
     A flute-voiced woman sweetly sang.
     Loose-haired, barefooted, hand-in-hand,
     Young girls went tripping down the sand;
     And youths and maidens, sitting in the moon,
     Dreamed o'er the old fond dream from which we wake too soon.

     At times their fishing-lines they plied,
     With an old Triton at the oar,
     Salt as the sea-wind, tough and dried
     As a lean cusk from Labrador.
     Strange tales he told of wreck and storm,—
     Had seen the sea-snake's awful form,
     And heard the ghosts on Haley's Isle complain,
     Speak him off shore, and beg a passage to old Spain!

     And there, on breezy morns, they saw
     The fishing-schooners outward run,
     Their low-bent sails in tack and flaw
     Turned white or dark to shade and sun.
     Sometimes, in calms of closing day,
     They watched the spectral mirage play,
     Saw low, far islands looming tall and nigh,
     And ships, with upturned keels, sail like a sea the sky.

     Sometimes a cloud, with thunder black,
     Stooped low upon the darkening main,
     Piercing the waves along its track
     With the slant javelins of rain.
     And when west-wind and sunshine warm
     Chased out to sea its wrecks of storm,
     They saw the prismy hues in thin spray showers
     Where the green buds of waves burst into white froth flowers.

     And when along the line of shore
     The mists crept upward chill and damp,
     Stretched, careless, on their sandy floor
     Beneath the flaring lantern lamp,
     They talked of all things old and new,
     Read, slept, and dreamed as idlers do;
     And in the unquestioned freedom of the tent,
     Body and o'er-taxed mind to healthful ease unbent.

     Once, when the sunset splendors died,
     And, trampling up the sloping sand,
     In lines outreaching far and wide,
     The white-waned billows swept to land,
     Dim seen across the gathering shade,
     A vast and ghostly cavalcade,
     They sat around their lighted kerosene,
     Hearing the deep bass roar their every pause between.

     Then, urged thereto, the Editor
     Within his full portfolio dipped,
     Feigning excuse while seaching for
     (With secret pride) his manuscript.
     His pale face flushed from eye to beard,
     With nervous cough his throat he cleared,
     And, in a voice so tremulous it betrayed
     The anxious fondness of an author's heart, he read:

            .     .     .     .     .

     Rivermouth Rocks are fair to see,
     By dawn or sunset shone across,
     When the ebb of the sea has left them free,
     To dry their fringes of gold-green moss
     For there the river comes winding down,
     From salt sea-meadows and uplands brown,
     And waves on the outer rocks afoam
     Shout to its waters, "Welcome home!"

     And fair are the sunny isles in view
     East of the grisly Head of the Boar,
     And Agamenticus lifts its blue
     Disk of a cloud the woodlands o'er;
     And southerly, when the tide is down,
     'Twixt white sea-waves and sand-hills brown,
     The beach-birds dance and the gray gulls wheel
     Over a floor of burnished steel.

     Once, in the old Colonial days,
     Two hundred years ago and more,
     A boat sailed down through the winding ways
     Of Hampton River to that low shore,
     Full of a goodly company
     Sailing out on the summer sea,
     Veering to catch the land-breeze light,
     With the Boar to left and the Rocks to right.

     In Hampton meadows, where mowers laid
     Their scythes to the swaths of salted grass,
     "Ah, well-a-day! our hay must be made!"
     A young man sighed, who saw them pass.
     Loud laughed his fellows to see him stand
     Whetting his scythe with a listless hand,
     Hearing a voice in a far-off song,
     Watching a white hand beckoning long.

     "Fie on the witch!" cried a merry girl,
     As they rounded the point where Goody Cole
     Sat by her door with her wheel atwirl,
     A bent and blear-eyed poor old soul.
     "Oho!" she muttered, "ye 're brave to-day!
     But I hear the little waves laugh and say,
     'The broth will be cold that waits at home;
     For it 's one to go, but another to come!'"

     "She's cursed," said the skipper; "speak her fair:
     I'm scary always to see her shake
     Her wicked head, with its wild gray hair,
     And nose like a hawk, and eyes like a snake."
     But merrily still, with laugh and shout,
     From Hampton River the boat sailed out,
     Till the huts and the flakes on Star seemed nigh,
     And they lost the scent of the pines of Rye.

     They dropped their lines in the lazy tide,
     Drawing up haddock and mottled cod;
     They saw not the Shadow that walked beside,
     They heard not the feet with silence shod.
     But thicker and thicker a hot mist grew,
     Shot by the lightnings through and through;
     And muffled growls, like the growl of a beast,
     Ran along the sky from west to east.

     Then the skipper looked from the darkening sea
     Up to the dimmed and wading sun;
     But he spake like a brave man cheerily,
     "Yet there is time for our homeward run."
     Veering and tacking, they backward wore;
     And just as a breath-from the woods ashore
     Blew out to whisper of danger past,
     The wrath of the storm came down at last!

     The skipper hauled at the heavy sail
     "God be our help!" he only cried,
     As the roaring gale, like the stroke of a flail,
     Smote the boat on its starboard side.
     The Shoalsmen looked, but saw alone
     Dark films of rain-cloud slantwise blown,
     Wild rocks lit up by the lightning's glare,
     The strife and torment of sea and air.

     Goody Cole looked out from her door
     The Isles of Shoals were drowned and gone,
     Scarcely she saw the Head of the Boar
     Toss the foam from tusks of stone.
     She clasped her hands with a grip of pain,
     The tear on her cheek was not of rain
     "They are lost," she muttered, "boat and crew!
     Lord, forgive me! my words were true!"

     Suddenly seaward swept the squall;
     The low sun smote through cloudy rack;
     The Shoals stood clear in the light, and all
     The trend of the coast lay hard and black.
     But far and wide as eye could reach,
     No life was seen upon wave or beach;
     The boat that went out at morning never
     Sailed back again into Hampton River.

     O mower, lean on thy bended snath,
     Look from the meadows green and low
     The wind of the sea is a waft of death,
     The waves are singing a song of woe!
     By silent river, by moaning sea,
     Long and vain shall thy watching be
     Never again shall the sweet voice call,
     Never the white hand rise and fall!

     O Rivermouth Rocks, how sad a sight
     Ye saw in the light of breaking day
     Dead faces looking up cold and white
     From sand and seaweed where they lay.
     The mad old witch-wife wailed and wept,
     And cursed the tide as it backward crept
     "Crawl back, crawl back, blue water-snake
     Leave your dead for the hearts that break!"

     Solemn it was in that old day
     In Hampton town and its log-built church,
     Where side by side the coffins lay
     And the mourners stood in aisle and porch.
     In the singing-seats young eyes were dim,
     The voices faltered that raised the hymn,
     And Father Dalton, grave and stern,
     Sobbed through his prayer and wept in turn.

     But his ancient colleague did not pray;
     Under the weight of his fourscore years
     He stood apart with the iron-gray
     Of his strong brows knitted to hide his tears;
     And a fair-faced woman of doubtful fame,
     Linking her own with his honored name,
     Subtle as sin, at his side withstood
     The felt reproach of her neighborhood.

     Apart with them, like them forbid,
     Old Goody Cole looked drearily round,
     As, two by two, with their faces hid,
     The mourners walked to the burying-ground.
     She let the staff from her clasped hands fall
     "Lord, forgive us! we're sinners all!"
     And the voice of the old man answered her
     "Amen!" said Father Bachiler.

     So, as I sat upon Appledore
     In the calm of a closing summer day,
     And the broken lines of Hampton shore
     In purple mist of cloudland lay,
     The Rivermouth Rocks their story told;
     And waves aglow with sunset gold,
     Rising and breaking in steady chime,
     Beat the rhythm and kept the time.

     And the sunset paled, and warmed once more
     With a softer, tenderer after-glow;
     In the east was moon-rise, with boats off-shore
     And sails in the distance drifting slow.
     The beacon glimmered from Portsmouth bar,
     The White Isle kindled its great red star;
     And life and death in my old-time lay
     Mingled in peace like the night and day!

            .     .     .     .     .

     "Well!" said the Man of Books, "your story
     Is really not ill told in verse.
     As the Celt said of purgatory,
     One might go farther and fare worse."
     The Reader smiled; and once again
     With steadier voice took up his strain,
     While the fair singer from the neighboring tent
     Drew near, and at his side a graceful listener bent.

     1864.

     At the mouth of the Melvin River, which empties into Moulton-Bay in
     Lake Winnipesaukee, is a great mound. The Ossipee Indians had their
     home in the neighborhood of the bay, which is plentifully stocked
     with fish, and many relics of their occupation have been found.

     Where the Great Lake's sunny smiles
     Dimple round its hundred isles,
     And the mountain's granite ledge
     Cleaves the water like a wedge,
     Ringed about with smooth, gray stones,
     Rest the giant's mighty bones.

     Close beside, in shade and gleam,
     Laughs and ripples Melvin stream;
     Melvin water, mountain-born,
     All fair flowers its banks adorn;
     All the woodland's voices meet,
     Mingling with its murmurs sweet.

     Over lowlands forest-grown,
     Over waters island-strown,
     Over silver-sanded beach,
     Leaf-locked bay and misty reach,
     Melvin stream and burial-heap,
     Watch and ward the mountains keep.

     Who that Titan cromlech fills?
     Forest-kaiser, lord o' the hills?
     Knight who on the birchen tree
     Carved his savage heraldry?
     Priest o' the pine-wood temples dim,
     Prophet, sage, or wizard grim?

     Rugged type of primal man,
     Grim utilitarian,
     Loving woods for hunt and prowl,
     Lake and hill for fish and fowl,
     As the brown bear blind and dull
     To the grand and beautiful:

     Not for him the lesson drawn
     From the mountains smit with dawn,
     Star-rise, moon-rise, flowers of May,
     Sunset's purple bloom of day,—
     Took his life no hue from thence,
     Poor amid such affluence?

     Haply unto hill and tree
     All too near akin was he
     Unto him who stands afar
     Nature's marvels greatest are;
     Who the mountain purple seeks
     Must not climb the higher peaks.

     Yet who knows in winter tramp,
     Or the midnight of the camp,
     What revealings faint and far,
     Stealing down from moon and star,
     Kindled in that human clod
     Thought of destiny and God?

     Stateliest forest patriarch,
     Grand in robes of skin and bark,
     What sepulchral mysteries,
     What weird funeral-rites, were his?
     What sharp wail, what drear lament,
     Back scared wolf and eagle sent?

     Now, whate'er he may have been,
     Low he lies as other men;
     On his mound the partridge drums,
     There the noisy blue-jay comes;
     Rank nor name nor pomp has he
     In the grave's democracy.

     Part thy blue lips, Northern lake!
     Moss-grown rocks, your silence break!
     Tell the tale, thou ancient tree!
     Thou, too, slide-worn Ossipee!
     Speak, and tell us how and when
     Lived and died this king of men!

     Wordless moans the ancient pine;
     Lake and mountain give no sign;
     Vain to trace this ring of stones;
     Vain the search of crumbling bones
     Deepest of all mysteries,
     And the saddest, silence is.

     Nameless, noteless, clay with clay
     Mingles slowly day by day;
     But somewhere, for good or ill,
     That dark soul is living still;
     Somewhere yet that atom's force
     Moves the light-poised universe.

     Strange that on his burial-sod
     Harebells bloom, and golden-rod,
     While the soul's dark horoscope
     Holds no starry sign of hope!
     Is the Unseen with sight at odds?
     Nature's pity more than God's?

     Thus I mused by Melvin's side,
     While the summer eventide
     Made the woods and inland sea
     And the mountains mystery;
     And the hush of earth and air
     Seemed the pause before a prayer,—

     Prayer for him, for all who rest,
     Mother Earth, upon thy breast,—
     Lapped on Christian turf, or hid
     In rock-cave or pyramid
     All who sleep, as all who live,
     Well may need the prayer, "Forgive!"

     Desert-smothered caravan,
     Knee-deep dust that once was man,
     Battle-trenches ghastly piled,
     Ocean-floors with white bones tiled,
     Crowded tomb and mounded sod,
     Dumbly crave that prayer to God.

     Oh, the generations old
     Over whom no church-bells tolled,
     Christless, lifting up blind eyes
     To the silence of the skies!
     For the innumerable dead
     Is my soul disquieted.

     Where be now these silent hosts?
     Where the camping-ground of ghosts?
     Where the spectral conscripts led
     To the white tents of the dead?
     What strange shore or chartless sea
     Holds the awful mystery?

     Then the warm sky stooped to make
     Double sunset in the lake;
     While above I saw with it,
     Range on range, the mountains lit;
     And the calm and splendor stole
     Like an answer to my soul.

     Hear'st thou, O of little faith,
     What to thee the mountain saith,
     What is whispered by the trees?
     Cast on God thy care for these;
     Trust Him, if thy sight be dim
     Doubt for them is doubt of Him.

     "Blind must be their close-shut eyes
     Where like night the sunshine lies,
     Fiery-linked the self-forged chain
     Binding ever sin to pain,
     Strong their prison-house of will,
     But without He waiteth still.

     "Not with hatred's undertow
     Doth the Love Eternal flow;
     Every chain that spirits wear
     Crumbles in the breath of prayer;
     And the penitent's desire
     Opens every gate of fire.

     "Still Thy love, O Christ arisen,
     Yearns to reach these souls in prison!
     Through all depths of sin and loss
     Drops the plummet of Thy cross!
     Never yet abyss was found
     Deeper than that cross could sound!"

     Therefore well may Nature keep
     Equal faith with all who sleep,
     Set her watch of hills around
     Christian grave and heathen mound,
     And to cairn and kirkyard send
     Summer's flowery dividend.

     Keep, O pleasant Melvin stream,
     Thy sweet laugh in shade and gleam
     On the Indian's grassy tomb
     Swing, O flowers, your bells of bloom!
     Deep below, as high above,
     Sweeps the circle of God's love.
     1865

            .     .     .     .     .

     He paused and questioned with his eye
     The hearers' verdict on his song.
     A low voice asked: Is 't well to pry
     Into the secrets which belong
     Only to God?—The life to be
     Is still the unguessed mystery
     Unsealed, unpierced the cloudy walls remain,
     We beat with dream and wish the soundless doors in vain.

     "But faith beyond our sight may go."
     He said: "The gracious Fatherhood
     Can only know above, below,
     Eternal purposes of good.
     From our free heritage of will,
     The bitter springs of pain and ill
     Flow only in all worlds. The perfect day
     Of God is shadowless, and love is love alway."

     "I know," she said, "the letter kills;
     That on our arid fields of strife
     And heat of clashing texts distils
     The clew of spirit and of life.
     But, searching still the written Word,
     I fain would find, Thus saith the Lord,
     A voucher for the hope I also feel
     That sin can give no wound beyond love's power to heal."

     "Pray," said the Man of Books, "give o'er
     A theme too vast for time and place.
     Go on, Sir Poet, ride once more
     Your hobby at his old free pace.
     But let him keep, with step discreet,
     The solid earth beneath his feet.
     In the great mystery which around us lies,
     The wisest is a fool, the fool Heaven-helped is wise."

     The Traveller said: "If songs have creeds,
     Their choice of them let singers make;
     But Art no other sanction needs
     Than beauty for its own fair sake.
     It grinds not in the mill of use,
     Nor asks for leave, nor begs excuse;
     It makes the flexile laws it deigns to own,
     And gives its atmosphere its color and its tone.

     "Confess, old friend, your austere school
     Has left your fancy little chance;
     You square to reason's rigid rule
     The flowing outlines of romance.
     With conscience keen from exercise,
     And chronic fear of compromise,
     You check the free play of your rhymes, to clap
     A moral underneath, and spring it like a trap."

     The sweet voice answered: "Better so
     Than bolder flights that know no check;
     Better to use the bit, than throw
     The reins all loose on fancy's neck.
     The liberal range of Art should be
     The breadth of Christian liberty,
     Restrained alone by challenge and alarm
     Where its charmed footsteps tread the border land of harm.

     "Beyond the poet's sweet dream lives
     The eternal epic of the man.
     He wisest is who only gives,
     True to himself, the best he can;
     Who, drifting in the winds of praise,
     The inward monitor obeys;
     And, with the boldness that confesses fear,
     Takes in the crowded sail, and lets his conscience steer.

     "Thanks for the fitting word he speaks,
     Nor less for doubtful word unspoken;
     For the false model that he breaks,
     As for the moulded grace unbroken;
     For what is missed and what remains,
     For losses which are truest gains,
     For reverence conscious of the Eternal eye,
     And truth too fair to need the garnish of a lie."

     Laughing, the Critic bowed. "I yield
     The point without another word;
     Who ever yet a case appealed
     Where beauty's judgment had been heard?
     And you, my good friend, owe to me
     Your warmest thanks for such a plea,
     As true withal as sweet. For my offence
     Of cavil, let her words be ample recompense."

     Across the sea one lighthouse star,
     With crimson ray that came and went,
     Revolving on its tower afar,
     Looked through the doorway of the tent.
     While outward, over sand-slopes wet,
     The lamp flashed down its yellow jet
     On the long wash of waves, with red and green
     Tangles of weltering weed through the white foam-wreaths seen.

     "Sing while we may,—another day
     May bring enough of sorrow;'—thus
     Our Traveller in his own sweet lay,
     His Crimean camp-song, hints to us,"
     The lady said. "So let it be;
     Sing us a song," exclaimed all three.
     She smiled: "I can but marvel at your choice
     To hear our poet's words through my poor borrowed voice."

            .     .     .     .     .

     Her window opens to the bay,
     On glistening light or misty gray,
     And there at dawn and set of day
     In prayer she kneels.

     "Dear Lord!" she saith, "to many a borne
     From wind and wave the wanderers come;
     I only see the tossing foam
     Of stranger keels.

     "Blown out and in by summer gales,
     The stately ships, with crowded sails,
     And sailors leaning o'er their rails,
     Before me glide;
     They come, they go, but nevermore,
     Spice-laden from the Indian shore,
     I see his swift-winged Isidore
     The waves divide.

     "O Thou! with whom the night is day
     And one the near and far away,
     Look out on yon gray waste, and say
     Where lingers he.
     Alive, perchance, on some lone beach
     Or thirsty isle beyond the reach
     Of man, he hears the mocking speech
     Of wind and sea.

     "O dread and cruel deep, reveal
     The secret which thy waves conceal,
     And, ye wild sea-birds, hither wheel
     And tell your tale.
     Let winds that tossed his raven hair
     A message from my lost one bear,—
     Some thought of me, a last fond prayer
     Or dying wail!

     "Come, with your dreariest truth shut out
     The fears that haunt me round about;
     O God! I cannot bear this doubt
     That stifles breath.
     The worst is better than the dread;
     Give me but leave to mourn my dead
     Asleep in trust and hope, instead
     Of life in death!"

     It might have been the evening breeze
     That whispered in the garden trees,
     It might have been the sound of seas
     That rose and fell;
     But, with her heart, if not her ear,
     The old loved voice she seemed to hear
     "I wait to meet thee: be of cheer,
     For all is well!"
     1865

            .     .     .     .     .

     The sweet voice into silence went,
     A silence which was almost pain
     As through it rolled the long lament,
     The cadence of the mournful main.
     Glancing his written pages o'er,
     The Reader tried his part once more;
     Leaving the land of hackmatack and pine
     For Tuscan valleys glad with olive and with vine.