POEMS. THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK. 1 We had been wandering for many days The sunrise breezes, midst the leafy isles We had looked upward where the summer sky, A white gleam on the horizon of the east; And we had rested underneath the oaks shaken By the perpetual beating of the falls By beechen shadows, whitening down its rocks, From waving rye-fields sending up the gleam 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 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 Plucked off the sacred ephod, quite unshrined Left us the man. A shrewd, sagacious merchant, And sales of cotton had a deeper meaning 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, It chanced 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 |