A white gleam on the horizon of the east;

Fair lakes, embosomed in the woods and hills;

Moosehillock's mountain range, and Kearsarge

Lifting his Titan forehead to the sun!

And we had rested underneath the oaks Shadowing the bank, whose grassy spires are shaken

By the perpetual beating of the falls Of the wild Ammonoosuc. We had tracked

The winding Pemigewasset, overhung By beechen shadows, whitening down its rocks,

Or lazily gliding through its intervals, From waving rye-fields sending up the gleam

Of sunlit waters. We had seen the

moon

Rising behind Umbagog's eastern pines, Like a great Indian camp-fire; and its beams

At midnight spanning with a bridge of silver

The Merrimack by Uncanoonuc's falls.

There were five souls of us whom trav

el'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

Its chances all as godsends; and his brother,

Pale from long pulpit studies, yet retaining

The warmth and freshness of a genial heart,

Whose mirror of the beautiful and true, In Man and Nature, was as yet undimmed

By dust of theologic strife, or breath Of sect, or cobwebs of scholastic lore; Like a clear crystal calm of water, taking The hue and image of o'erleaning flow

ers,

Sweet human faces, white clouds of the noon,

Slant starlight glimpses through the dewy leaves,

And tenderest moonrise. 'T was, in truth, a study,

To mark his spirit, alternating between
A decent and professional gravity
And an irreverent mirthfulness, which
often

Laughed in the face of his divinity, Plucked off the sacred ephod, quite unshrined

The oracle, and for the pattern priest 'Left us the man. A shrewd, sagacious merchant,

To whom the soiled sheet found in Crawford's inn,

Giving the latest news of city stocks And sales of cotton, had a deeper mean

It chanced That as we turned upon our homeward way,

A drear northeastern storm came howling up

The valley of the Saco; and that girl Who had stood with us upon Mount Washington,

Her brown locks ruffled by the wind which whirled

In gusts around its sharp cold pinnacle, 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

Heavilyagainst the horizon of the north, Like summer thunder clouds, we made our home:

And while the mist hung over dripping hills,

And the cold wind-driven rain-drops all day long

Beat their sad music upon roof and pane, We strove to cheer our gentle invalid.

The lawyer in the pauses of the storm Went angling down the Saco, and, returning,

Recounted his adventures and mishaps;
Gave us the history of his scaly clients,
Mingling with ludicrous yet apt citations
Of barbarous law Latin, passages
From Izaak Walton's Angler, sweet and
fresh

As the flower-skirted streams of Staf fordshire,

Where, under aged trees, the southwest wind

Of soft June mornings fanned the thin, white hair

Of the sage fisher. And, if truth be told, Our youthful candidate forsook his ser

ture,

Of him whose whitened locks on Rydal Mount

Are lifted yet by morning breezes blowing

From the green hills, immortal in his lays.

And for myself, obedient to her wish, 1 searched our landlord's proffered library,

A well-thumbed Bunyan, with its nice wood pictures

Of scaly fiends and angels not unlike them,

Watts' unmelodious psalms, -Astrology's

Last home, a musty pile of almanacs,
And an old chronicle of border wars
And Indian history. And, as I read
A story of the marriage of the Chief
Of Saugus to the dusky Weetamoo,
Daughter of Passaconaway, who dwelt
In the old time upon the Merrimack,
Our fair one, in the playful exercise
Of her prerogative, the right divine
Of youth and beauty, - bade us versify
The legend, and with ready pencil

sketched

Its plan and outlines, laughingly as

signing

To each his part, and barring our excuses With absolute will. So, like the cavaliers

Whose voices still are heard in the Ro

25

It may be that these fragments owe alone

To the fair setting of their circumstances,

The associations of time, scene, and audience,

Their place amid the pictures which fill up

The chambers of my memory. Yet I

trust

To the responses of the questioned Shade.

I. THE MERRIMACK.

O CHILD of that white-crested mountain whose springs

Gush forth in the shade of the cliff eagle's wings,

There the boy shaped his arrows, and there the shy maid

Wove her many-hued baskets and bright wampum braid.

O Stream of the Mountains! if answer of thine

Could rise from thy waters to question of mine,

Methinks through the din of thy thronged banks a moan Of sorrow would swell for the days which have gone.

Not for thee the dull jar of the loom and the wheel,

The gliding of shuttles, the ringing of steel;

But that old voice of waters, of bird and of breeze,

The dip of the wild-fowl, the rustling

of trees!

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

brighter,

burned

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

27

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!