THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK. 1
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 water-falls,
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 Titan 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.
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 Merrimack 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
Briefless as yet, but with an eye to see
Life's sunniest side, and with a heart to take Its chances all as God-sends; 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. "Twas, 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 sea-side atmosphere.
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
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 file 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 Merrimack, 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 moun. tains
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,
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