That glorious picture of the air, Which summer's light-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 kests gladdened, on the calm blue sky, Slumbers the mighty wilderness! The oak, upon the windy hill, Its dark green burthen upward The hemlock broods above its rill, Against the birch's graceful stem, And the rough walnut-bough receives The sun upon its crowded leaves, Each colored like a topaz gem; The brief, bright sign of ruin near, The hermit priest, who lingers now 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 Far eastward o'er the lovely bay, Upon the yellow sands below; The treasure of the golden corn, The wrinkled squaw, whose toil is done, Beneath the westward turning eye Touched by the pencil of the frost, 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, MOGG MEGONE. 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 Swells in the north vast Katahdin : Arched over by the ancient woods, Not thus, within the woods which hide 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, - no song: The aspect of the very child Scowls with a meaning sad and wild 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, That stranger's garb is soiled and torn, Yet still, in that disordered face, With drooping head, and voice so low, ears, While through her clasped fingers flow, "O father, bear with me; my heart Bear with me while I speak, -but turn "My dear lost mother! sad and pale, 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 Unwarning of the grave. 'T was like the hue which Autumn gives "Sweet were the tales she used to tell On wooded Agamenticus, And the south-wind's expiring sighs wise, The holy men and maids of old, In the all-sacred pages told; tha Of Rachel, stooped at Haran's four 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! |