That glorious picture of the air, Which summer'slight-robed angel forms On the dark ground of fading storms,

With pencil dipped in sunbeams there,

And, stretching out, on either hand,
O'er all that wide and unshorn land,
Till, weary of its gorgeousness,
The aching and the dazzled eye
Rests gladdened, on the calm blue
sky,-

Slumbers the mighty wilderness !
The oak, upon the windy hill,

Its dark green burthen upward heaves

The hemlock broods above its rill,
Its cone-like foliage darker still,

Against the birch's graceful stem, And the rough walnut-bough receives The sun upon its crowded leaves,

Each colored like a topaz gem;
And the tall maple wears with them
The coronal which autumn gives,

The brief, bright sign of ruin near,
The hectic of a dying year!

The hermit priest, who lingers now
On the Bald Mountain's shrubless brow,
The gray and thunder-smitten pile
Which marks afar the Desert Isle,13

While gazing on the scene below, May half forget the dreams of home, That nightly with his slumbers

come,

The tranquil skies of sunny France, The peasant's harvest song and dance, The vines around the hillsides wreathing

The soft airs midst their clusters breathing,

The wings which dipped, the stars which shone

Within thy bosom, blue Garonne ! And round the Abbey's shadowed wall, At morning spring and even-fall,

Sweet voices in the still air singing, The chant of many a holy hymn,

The solemn bell of vespers ringing,And hallowed torch-light falling dim On pictured saint and seraphim! For here beneath him lies unrolled, Bathed deep in morning's flood of gold, A vision gorgeous as the dream Of the beatified may seem,

When, as his Church's legends say, Borne upward in ecstatic bliss,

The rapt enthusiast soars away Unto a brighter world than this: A mortal's glimpse beyond the pale, A moment's lifting of the veil !

Far eastward o'er the lovely bay, Penobscot's clustered wigwams lay; And gently from that Indian town The verdant hillside slopes adown, To where the sparkling waters play

Upon the yellow sands below; And shooting round the winding shores Of narrow capes, and isles which lie Slumbering to ocean's lullaby,With birchen boat and glancing oars,

The red men to their fishing go; While from their planting ground is borne

The treasure of the golden corn,

By laughing girls, whose dark eyes glow Wild through the locks which o'er them flow.

The wrinkled squaw, whose toil is done,
Sits on her bear-skin in the sun,
Watching the huskers, with a smile
For each full ear which swells the pile;
And the old chief, who nevermore
May bend the bow or pull the oar,
Smokes gravely in his wigwam door,
Or slowly shapes, with axe of stone,
The arrow-head from flint and bone.

Beneath the westward turning eye
A thousand wooded islands lie, -
Gems of the waters! with each hue
Of brightness set in ocean's blue.
Each bears aloft its tuft of trees

Touched by the pencil of the frost,
And, with the motion of each breeze,
A moment seen, a moment lost,
Changing and blent, confused and
tossed,

The brighter with the darker crossed, Their thousand tints of beauty glow Down in the restless waves below,

And tremble in the sunny skies, As if, from waving bough to bough, Flitted the birds of paradise. There sleep Placentia's group, - and there

Père Breteaux marks the hour of prayer; And there, beneath the sea-worn cliff,

On which the Father's hut is seen, The Indian stays his rocking skiff, And peers the hemlock-boughs be

tween,

Half trembling, as he seeks to look
Upon the Jesuit's Cross and Book,14
There, gloomily against the sky
The Dark Isles rear their summits high;
And Desert Rock, abrupt and bare,
Lifts its gray turrets in the air,
Seen from afar, like some stronghold
Built by the ocean kings of old;
And, faint as smoke-wreath white and
thin,

Swells in the north vast Katahdin :
And, wandering from its marshy feet,
The broad Penobscot comes to meet

And mingle with his own bright bay. Slow sweep his dark and gathering floods,

Arched over by the ancient woods,
Which Time, in those dim solitudes,
Wielding the dull axe of Decay,
Alone hath ever shorn away.

Not thus, within the woods which hide
The beauty of thy azure tide,

And with their falling timbers block Thy broken currents, Kennebec ! Gazes the white man on the wreck

Ofthe down-trodden Norridgewock,— In one lone village hemmed at length, In battle shorn of half their strength, Turned, like the panther in his lair,

With his fast-flowing life-blood wet, For one last struggle of despair,

Wounded and faint, but tameless yet! Unreaped, upon the planting lands, The scant, neglected harvest stands: No shout is there, — no dance,

song:

-no

The aspect of the very child
Scow's with a meaning sad and wild
Of bitterness and wrong.
The almost infant Norridgewock
Essays to lift the tomahawk:
And plucks his father's knife away,
To mimic, in his frightful play,

The scalping of an English foe: Wreathes on his lip a horrid smile, Burns, like a snake's, his small eye, while

Some bough or sapling meets his blow. The fisher, as he drops his line,

II

That stranger's garb is soiled and torn,
And wet with dew and loosely worn;
Her fair neglected hair falls down
O'er cheeks with wind and sunshine
brown;

Yet still, in that disordered face,
The Jesuit's cautious eye can trace
Those elements of former grace
Which, half effaced, seem scarcely less,
Even now, than perfect loveliness.

With drooping head, and voice so low,
That scarce it meets the Jesuit's

ears,

While through her clasped fingers flow,
From the heart's fountain, hot and slow,
Her penitential tears, -
She tells the story of the woe
And evil of her years.

"O father, bear with me; my heart
Is sick and death-like, and my brain
Seems girdled with a fiery chain,
Whose scorching links will never part,
And never cool again.

Bear with me while I speak, -but turn
Away that gentle eye, the while,
The fires of guilt more fiercely burn
Beneath its holy smile;
For half I fancy I can see
My mother's sainted look in thee.

"My dear lost mother! sad and pale, Mournfully sinking day by day, And with a hold on life as frail

As frosted leaves, that, thin and gray, Hang feebly on their parent spray, And tremble in the gale; Yet watching o'er my childishness With patient fondness, not the less For all the agony which kept Her blue eye wakeful, while I slept; And checking every tear and groan That haply might have waked my own, And bearing still, without offence, My idle words, and petulance; Reproving with a tear, and, while The tooth of pain was keenly preying Upon her very heart, repaying My brief repentance with a smile. "O. in her meek, forgiving eye There was a brightness not of mirth, A light whose clear intensity Was borrowed not of earth.

Along her cheek a deepening red
Told where the feverish hectic fed;
And yet, each fatal token gave
To the mild beauty of her face
A newer and a dearer grace,
Unwarning of the grave.

'T was like the hue which Autumn gives
To yonder changed and dying leaves,
Breathed over by his frosty breath;
Scarce can the gazer feel that this
Is but the spoiler's treacherous kiss,
The mocking-smile of Death!
"Sweet were the tales she used to tell
When summer's eve was dear to us,
And, fading from the darkening dell,
The glory of the sunset fell

--

On wooded Agamenticus, When, sitting by our cottage wall, The murmur of the Saco's fail,

And the south-wind's expiring sighs Came, softly blending, on my ear, With the low tones I loved to hear: Tales of the pure, the good, - the wise,

The holy men and maids of old,
In the all-sacred pages told;-
Of Rachel, stooped at Haran's foun-
tains,

Amid her father's thirsty flock,
Beautiful to her kinsman seeming
As the bright angels of his dreaming,
On Padan-aran's holy rock;
Of gentle Ruth, and her who kept

Her awful vigil on the mountains, By Israel's virgin daughters wept ; ̧ Of Miriam, with her maidens, singing

The song for grateful Israel meet, While every crimson wave was bringing The spoils of Egypt at her feet; Of her, Samaria's humble daughter, Who paused to hear, beside her well, Lessons of love and truth, which fell Softly as Shiloh's flowing water;

And saw, beneath his pilgrim guise, The Promised One, so long foretold By holy seer and bard of old,

Revealed before her wondering eyes!

And even my father checked his tread,
And hushed his voice, beside her bed:
Beneath the calm and sad rebuke
Of her meek eye's imploring look,
The scowl of hate his brow forsook,
And in his stern and gloomy eye,
At times, a few unwonted tears
Wet the dark lashes, which for years
Hatred and pride had kept so dry.

"Calm as a child to slumber soothed, As if an angel's hand had smoothed

The still, white features into rest, Silent and cold, without a breath

To stir the drapery on her breast, Pain, with its keen and poisoned fang, The horror of the mortal pang, The suffering look her brow had worn, The fear, the strife, the anguish gone, She slept at last in death!

"O, tell me, father, can the dead

Walk on the earth, and look on us, And lay upon the living's head

Their blessing or their curse? For, O, last night she stood by me, As I lay beneath the woodland tree!"

The Jesuit crosses himself in awe,"Jesu! what was it my daughter saw?"

"She came to me last night.

The dried leaves did not feel her
tread ;

She stood by me in the wan moonlight,
In the white robes of the dead!
Pale, and very mournfully
She bent her light form over me.
I heard no sound, I felt no breath
Breathe o'er me from that face of death:
Its blue eyes rested on my own,
Rayless and cold as eyes of stone;
Yet, in their fixed, unchanging gaze,
Something, which spoke of early days, -
A sadness in their quiet glare,
As if love's smile were frozen there, -
Came o'er me with an icy thrill;
O God! I feel its presence still!'

The Jesuit makes the holy sign, —
"How passed the vision, daughter

mine?"

"All dimly in the wan moonshine,

As a wreath of mist will twist and twine,

13

And scatter, and melt into the light,
So scattering, -melting on my sight,
The pale, cold vision passed;
But those sad eyes were fixed on mine
Mournfully to the last."

"God help thee, daughter, tell me why
That spirit passed before thine eye!
"Father, I know not, save it be

That deeds of mine have summoned her

From the unbreathing sepulchre, To leave her last rebuke with me. Ah, woe for me! my mother died Just at the moment when I stood Close on the verge of womanhood, A child in everything beside; And when my wild heart needed most Her gentle counsels, they were lost.

My father lived a stormy life, Of frequent change and daily strife: And,God forgive him! left his child To feel, like him, a freedom wild; To love the red man's dwelling-place,

The birch boat on his shaded floods, The wild excitement of the chase

Sweeping the ancient woods, The camp-fire, blazing on the shore Of the still lakes, the clear stream, where

The idle fisher sets his wear, Or angles in the shade, far more

Than that restraining awe I felt Beneath my gentle mother's care,

When nightly at her knee I knelt, With childhood's simple prayer.

"There came a change. The wild, glad mood

Of unchecked freedom passed.
Amid the ancient solitude
Of unshorn grass and waving wood,

And waters glancing bright and fast,
A softened voice was in my ear,
Sweet as those lulling sounds and fine
The hunter lifts his head to hear,
Now far and faint, now full and near-
The murmur of the wind-swept pine.
A manly form was ever nigh,
A bold, free hunter, with an eye

Whose dark, keen glance had power to wake

Both fear and love, -to awe and charm ;