The Indians speak of a beautiful river, Ar to the south, which they call MerriTack." SIEUR DE MONTS: 1604.]
STREAM of my fathers! sweetly still The sunset rays thy valley fill; Poured slantwise down the long defile, Wave, wood, and spire beneath them smile.
I see the winding Powow fold The green hill in its belt of gold, And following down its wavy line, Its sparkling waters blend with thine. There's not a tree upon thy side, Nor rock, which thy returning tide As yet hath left abrupt and stark Above thy evening water-mark; No calm cove with its rocky hem, No isle whose emerald swells begem Thy broad, smooth current; not a sail Bowed to the freshening ocean gale; No small boat with its busy oars, Nor gray wall sloping to thy shores; Nor farm-house with its maple shade, Or rigid poplar colonnade, But lies distinct and full in sight, Beneath this gush of sunset light. Centuries ago, that harbor-bar, Stretching its length of foam afar, And Salisbury's beach of shining sand, And yonder island's wave-smoothed strand,
Saw the adventurer's tiny sail
Flit, stooping from the eastern gale; 27 And o'er these woods and waters broke The cheer from Britain's hearts of oak, As brightly on the voyager's eye, Weary of forest, sea, and sky, Breaking the dull continuous wood, The Merrimack rolled down his flood; Mingling that clear pellucid brook,
Which channels vast Agioochook When spring-time's sun and shower unlock
The frozen fountains of the rock, And more abundant waters given From that pure lake, "The Smile of Heaven," 28
Tributes from vale and mountain-side,- With ocean's dark, eternal tide!
On yonder rocky cape, which braves The stormy challenge of the waves, Midst tangled vine and dwarfish wood, The hardy Anglo-Saxon stood, Planting upon the topmost crag The staff of England's battle-flag: And, while from out its heavy fold Saint George's crimson cross unrolled, Midst roll of drum and trumpet blare, And weapons brandishing in air, He gave to that lone promontory The sweetest name in all his story;29 Of her, the flower of Islam's daughters. Whose harems look on Stamboul's waters, -
Who, when the chance of war had bound
The Moslem chain his limbs around, Wreathed o'er with silk that iron chain, Soothed with her smiles his hours of pain,
And fondly to her youthful slave A dearer gift than freedom gave.
But look!-the yellow light no more Streams down on wave and verdant
While yonder lonely coast-light, set Within its wave-washed minaret, Half quenched, a beamless star and pale,
Shines dimly through its cloudy veil !
Home of my fathers! I have stood Where Hudson rolled his lordly flood: Seen sunrise rest and sunset fade Along his frowning Palisade; Looked down the Apalachian peak On Juniata's silver streak ; Have seen along his valley gleam The Mohawk's softly winding stream; The level light of sunset shine Through broad Potomac's hem of pine; And autumn's rainbow-tinted banner Hang light y o'er the Susquehanna; Yet, wheresoe'er his step might be, Thy wandering child looked back to thee !
Heard in his dreams thy river's sound Of murmuring on its pebbly bound, The unforgotten swell and roar Of waves on thy familiar shore; And saw, amidst the curtained gloom And quiet of his lonely room, Thy sunset scenes before him pass; As, in Agrippa's magic glass, The loved and lost arose to view, Remembered groves in greenness grew, Bathed still in childhood's morning dew,
Along whose bowers of beauty swept Whatever Memory's mourners wept, Sweet faces, which the charnel kept, Young, gentle eyes, which long had slept;
And while the gazer leaned to trace, More near, some dear familiar face, He wept to find the vision flown, A phantom and a dream alone!
GIFT from the cold and silent Past! A relic to the present cast; Left on the ever-changing strand Of shifting and unstable sand, Which wastes beneath the steady chime
And beating of the waves of Time!
Who from its bed of primal rock First wrenched thy dark, unshapely block?
Whose hand, of curious skill untaught, Thy rude and savage outline wrought? The waters of my native stream Are glancing in the sun's warm beam : From sail-urged keel and flashing oar The circles widen to its shore; And cultured field and peopled town Slope to its willowed margin down. Yet, while this morning breeze is bring- ing
The home-life sound of school-bells ringing,
And rolling wheel, and rapid jar Of the fire-winged and steedless car, And voices from the wayside near Come quick and blended on my ear, A spell is in this old gray stone,— My thoughts are with the Past alone!
A change!-The steepled town no mo Stretches along the sail-thronged shore' Like palace-domes in sunset's cloud, Fade sun-gilt spire and mansion proud: Spectrally rising where they stood, I see the old, primeval wood: Dark, shadow-like, on either hand I see its solemn waste expand: It climbs the green and cultured hill, It arches o'er the valley's rill; And leans from cliff and crag, to thro.y Its wild arms o'er the stream below. Unchanged, alone, the same bright
flapped by the sea-wind's gusty sweep Round icy drift, and headland steep. Wild Jutland's wives and Lochlin's daughters
Have watched them fading o'er the
Lessening through driving mist and
Like white-winged sea-birds on their way!
Onward they glide, - and now I view Their iron-armed and stalwart crew; Joy glistens in each wild blue eye, Turned to green earth and summer sky: Each broad, seamed breast has cast aside Its cumbering vest of shaggy hide; Bared to the sun and soft warm air, Streams back the Norsemen's yellow hair.
I see the gleam of axe and spear, The sound of smitten shields I hear, Keeping a harsh and fitting time To Saga's chant, and Runic rhyme ; Such lays as Zetland's Scald has sung, His gray and naked isles among; Or muttered low at midnight hour Round Odin's mossy stone of power. The wolf beneath the Arctic moon Has answered to that startling rune; The Gael has heard its stormy swell, The light Frank knows its summons well;
Iona's sable-stoled Culdee
Has heard it sounding o'er the sea, And swept, with hoary beard and hair, His altar's foot in trembling prayer! 'Tis past, the 'wildering vision dies In darkness on my dreaming eyes!
The forest vanishes in air, Hill-slope and vale lie starkly bare; I hear the common tread of men, And hum of work-day life again : The mystic relic seems alone A broken mass of common stone; And if it be the chiselled limb Of Berserker or idol grim,- A fragment of Valhalla's Thor, The stormy Viking's god of War, Or Praga of the Runic lay, Or love-awakening Siona, I know not, for no graven line, Nor Druid mark, nor Runic sign, Is left me here, by which to trace Its name, or origin, or place. Yet, for this vision of the Past, This glance upon its darkness cast, My spirit bows in gratitude Before the Giver of all good, Who fashioned so the human mind, That, from the waste of Time behind A simple stone, or mound of earth, Can summon the departed forth; Quicken the Past to life again, The Present lose in what hath been, And in their primal freshness show The buried forms of long ago. As if a portion of that Thought By which the Eternal will is wrought, Whose impulse fills anew with breath The frozen solitude of Death,
To mortal mind were sometimes lent, To mortal musings sometimes sent, To whisper -- even when it seems But Memory's fantasy of dreams- Through the mind's waste of woe and sin,
Of an immortal origin !
To the God of all sure mercies let my blessing rise to-day,
From the scoffer and the cruel He hath plucked the spoil away,- Yea, He who cooled the furnace around the faithful three, And tamed the Chaldean lions, hath set His handmaid free!
Last night I saw the sunset melt through my prison bars, Last night across my damp earth-floor fell the pale gleam of stars; In the coldness and the darkness all through the long night-time, My grated casement whitened with autumn's early rime.
Alone, in that dark sorrow, hour after hour crept by; Star after star looked palely in and sank adown the sky No sound amid night's stillness, save that which seemed to be The dull and heavy beating of the pulses of the sea;
All night I sat unsleeping, for I knew that on the morrow The ruler and the cruel priest would mock me in my sorrow, Dragged to their place of market, and bargained for and sold, Like a lamb before the shambles, like a heifer from the fold!
O, the weakness of the flesh was there, -the shrinking and the shame; And the low voice of the Tempter like whispers to me came : "Why sit'st thou thus forlornly!" the wicked murmur said, "Damp walls thy bower of beauty, cold earth thy maiden bed?
"Where be the smiling faces, and voices soft and sweet, Seen in thy father's dwelling, heard in the pleasant street? Where be the youths whose glances, the summer Sabbath through, Turned tenderly and timidly unto thy father's pew?
"Why sit'st thou here, Cassandra? - Bethink thee with what mirth Thy happy schoolmates gather around the warm bright hearth; How the crimson shadows tremble on foreheads white and fair, On eyes of merry girlhood, half hid in golden hair.
"Not for thee the hearth-fire brightens, not for thee kind words are spoken Not for thee the nuts of Wenham woods by laughing boys are broken, No first-fruits of the orchard within thy lap are laid,
For thee no flowers of autumn the youthful hunters braid.
"O, weak, deluded maiden! - by crazy fancies led,
With wild and raving railers an evil path to tread ;
To leave a wholesome worship, and teaching pure and sound;
And mate with maniac women, loose-haired and sackcloth bound.
"Mad scoffers of the priesthood, who mock at things divine, Who rail against the pulpit, and holy bread and wine; Sore from their cart-tail scourgings, and from the pillory lame, Rejoicing in their wretchedness, and glorying in their shame.
"And what a fate awaits thee? -a sadly toiling slave, Dragging the slowly lengthening chain of bondage to the grave! Think of thy woman's nature, subdued in hopeless thrall, The easy prey of any, the scoff and scorn of all !"
O, ever as the Tempter spoke, and feeble Nature's fears Wrung drop by drop the scalding flow of unavailing tears, I wrestled down the evil thoughts, and strove in silent prayer, To feel, O Helper of the weak! that Thou indeed wert there !
I thought of Paul and Silas, within Philippi's cell, And how from Peter's sleeping limbs the prison-shackles fell, Till I seemed to hear the trailing of an angel's robe of white, And to feel a blessed presence invisible to sight.
Bless the Lord for all his mercies ! - for the peace and love I felt, Like dew of Hermon's holy hill, upon my spirit melt;
When, "Get behind me, Satan !" was the language of my heart, And I felt the Evil Tempter with all his doubts depart.
Slow broke the gray cold morning; again the sunshine fell, Flecked with the shade of bar and grate within my lonely cell; The hoar-frost melted on the wall, and upward from the street Came careless laugh and idle word, and tread of passing feet.
At length the heavy bolts fell back, my door was open cast, And slowly at the sheriff's side, up the long street I passed; I heard the murmur round me, and felt, but dared not see, How, from every door and window, the people gazed on me.
And doubt and fear fell on me, shame burned upon my cheek, Swam earth and sky around me, my trembling limbs grew weak: "O Lord! support thy handmaid; and from her soul cast out The fear of man, which brings a snare, — the weakness and the doubt."
Then the dreary shadows scattered, like a cloud in morning's breeze, And a low deep voice within me seemed whispering words like these: "Though thy earth be as the iron, and thy heaven a brazen wall, Trust still His loving-kindness whose power is over all."
We paused at length, where at my feet the sunlit waters broke On glaring reach of shining beach, and shingly wall of rock; The merchant-ships lay idly there, in hard clear lines on high, Tracing with rope and slender spar their network on the sky.
And there were ancient citizens, cloak-wrapped and grave and cold, And grim and stout sea-captains with faces bronzed and old, And on his horse, with Rawson, his cruel clerk at hand, Sat dark and haughty Endicott, the ruler of the land.
And poisoning with his evil words the ruler's ready ear,
The priest leaned o'er his saddle, with laugh and scoff and jeer; It stirred my soul, and from my lips the seal of silence broke, As if through woman's weakness a warning spirit spoke.
I cried, "The Lord rebuke thee, thou smiter of the meek, Thou robber of the righteous, thou trampler of the weak! Go light the dark, cold hearth-stones, go turn the prison lock Of the poor hearts thou hast hunted, thou wolf amid the flock !"
Dark lowered the brows of Endicott, and with a deeper red O'er Rawson's wine-empurpled cheek the flush of anger spread; "Good people," quoth the white-lipped priest, "heed not her words so wild, Her Master speaks within her, the Devil owns his child!
gray heads shook, and young brows knit, the while the sheriff read
That law the wicked rulers against the poor have made,
Who to their house of Rimmon and idol priesthood bring No bended knee of worship, nor gainful offering.
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