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THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK.

Window-tracery, small and slight,
Woven of the willow white,
Lent a dimly checkered light,

And the night-stars glimmered down,
Where the lodge-fire's heavy smoke,
Slowly through an opening broke,
In the low roof, ribbed with oak,
Sheathed with hemlock brown.

Gloomed behind the changeless shade, By the solemn pine-wood made; Through the rugged palisade,

In the open foreground planted, Glimpses came of rowers rowing, Stir of leaves and wild-flowers blowing, Steel-like gleams of water flowing, In the sunlight slanted.

Here the mighty Bashaba,

Held his long-unquestioned sway,
From the White Hills, far away,

To the great sea's sounding shore;
Chief of chiefs, his regal word
All the river Sachems heard,
At his call the war-dance stirred,
Or was still once more.

There his spoils of chase and war,
Jaw of wolf and black bear's paw,
Panther's skin and eagle's claw,

Lay beside his axe and bow;
And, adown the roof-pole hung,
Loosely on a snake-skin strung,
In the smoke his scalp-locks swung
Grimly to and fro.

Nightly down the river going,
Swifter was the hunter's rowing,
When he saw that lodge-fire glowing
O'er the waters still and red;

And the squaw's dark eye burned brighter,

And she drew her blanket tighter,
As, with quicker step and lighter,
From that door she fled.

For that chief had magic skill,
And a Panisee's dark will,
Over powers of good and ill,

Powers which bless and powers which ban,

Wizard lord of Pennacook,

Chiefs upon their war-path shook,
When they met the steady look

Of that wise dark man.

Tales of him the gray squaw told, When the winter night-wind cold Pierced her blanket's thickest fold,

And the fire burned low and small,
Till the very child abed,
Drew its bear-skin over head,
Shrinking from the pale lights shed
On the trembling wall.

All the subtle spirits hiding
Under earth or wave, abiding
In the caverned rock, or riding
Misty clouds or morning breeze;
Every dark intelligence,
Secret soul, and influence

Of all things which outward sense
Feels, or hears, or sees, -

These the wizard's skill confessed,
At his bidding banned or blessed,
Stormful woke or lulled to rest

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Wind and cloud, and fire and flood; Burned for him the drifted snow, Bade through ice fresh lilies blow, And the leaves of summer grow Over winter's wood!

Not untrue that tale of old!
Now, as then, the wise and bold
All the powers of Nature hold
Subject to their kingly will;
From the wondering crowds ashore,
Treading life's wild waters o'er,
As upon a marble floor,

Moves the strong man still.

Still, to such, life's elements
With their sterner laws dispense,
And the chain of consequence

Broken in their pathway lies;
Time and change their vassals making,
Flowers from icy pillows waking,
Tresses of the sunrise shaking
Over midnight skies.

Still, to earnest souls, the sun
Rests on towered Gibeon,
And the moon of Ajalon

Lights the battle-grounds of life; To his aid the strong reverses Hidden powers and giant forces, And the high stars, in their courses, Mingle in his strife!

III. THE DAUGHTER.

THE SOOt-black brows of men, -the yell

Of women thronging round the bed,

The tinkling charm of ring and shell, — The Powah whispering o'er the dead!

All these the Sachem's home had known,

When, on her journey long and wild To the dim World of Souls, alone, In her young beauty passed the mother of his child.

Three bow-shots from the Sachem's dwelling

They laid her in the walnut shade, Where a green hillock gently swelling Her fitting mound of burial made. There trailed the vine in summer hours,

The tree-perched squirrel dropped his shell,

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ter's way;

And dazzling in the summer noon The blade of her light oar threw off its shower of spray!

Unknown to her the rigid rule,
The dull restraint, the chiding
frown,

The weary torture of the school,
The taming of wild nature down.
Her only lore, the legends told

Around the hunter's fire at night; Stars rose and set, and seasons rolled, Flowers bloomed and snow-flakes fell, unquestioned in her sight.

Unknown to her the subtle skill

With which the artist-eye can trace In rock and tree and lake and hill The outlines of divinest grace; Unknown the fine soul's keen unrest. Which sees, admires, yet yearns alway:

THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK,

Too closely on her mother's breast To note her smiles of love the child of Nature lay!

It is enough for such to be

Of common, natural things a part,
To feel, with bird and stream and tree,
The pulses of the same great heart;
But we, from Nature long exiled

In our cold homes of Art and
Thought,

Grieve like the stranger-tended child, Which seeks its mother's arms, and sees but feels them not.

The garden rose may richly bloom
In cultured soil and genial air,
To cloud the light of Fashion's room
Or droop in Beauty's midnight hair,
In lonelier grace, to sun and dew

The sweetbrier on the hillside
show's

Its single leaf and fainter hue, Untrained and wildly free, yet still a sister rose !

Thus o'er the heart of Weetamoo Their mingling shades of joy and ill

The instincts of her nature threw, The savage was a woman still. Midst outlines dim of maiden schemes,

Heart-colored prophecies of lite, Rose on the ground of her young dreams

The light of a new home, -the lover and the wife.

IV. THE WEDDING.

COOL and dark fell the autumn night, But the Bashaba's wigwam glowed with light,

For down from its roof by green withes hung

Flaring and smoking the pine-knots

swung.

And along the river great wood-fires Shot into the night their long red spires, Showing behind the tall, dark wood, Flashing before on the sweeping flood.

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In the changeful wind, with shimmer and shade,

Now high, now low, that firelight played,

On tree-leaves wet with evening dews, On gliding water and still canoes.

The trapper that night on Turee's brook, And the weary fisher on Contoocook, Saw over the marshes and through the pine,

And down on the river the dance-lights shine.

For the Saugus Sachem had come to

WOO

The Bashaba's daughter Weetamoo, And laid at her father's feet that night His softest furs and wampum white.

From the Crystal Hills to the fa southeast

The river Sagamores came to the feast: And chiefs whose homes the sea-winds shook,

Sat down on the mats of Pennacook. They came from Sunapee's shore of rock,

From the snowy sources of Snooganock, And from rough Coos whose thick woods shake

Their pine-cones in Umbagog Lake.

From Ammonoosuc's mountain pass, Wild as his home, came Chepewass; And the Keenomps of the hills which throw

Their shade on the Smile of Manito.

With pipes of peace and bows unstrung, Glowing with paint came old and young, In wampum and furs and feathers arrayed

To the dance and feast the Bashaba made.

Bird of the air and beast of the field, All which the woods and waters yield, On dishes of birch and hemlock piled, Garnished and graced that banquet wild.

Steaks of the brown bear fat and large From the rocky slopes of the Kearsarge;

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