Selected Poems of John Greenleaf Whittier
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Year 5; Poetry

Selected Poems
of

John Greenleaf Whittier

1807-1892

John Greenleaf Whittier, the most outspoken abolitionist among the poets of his generation, was born into a Quaker farming family in Haverhill, Massachusetts, in 1807. Although his early life was one of relative hardship and isolation, his constant exposure to the wonders of nature gave him a poet’s appreciation for the beauties of the world around him. Known as 'the Quaker poet,’ he was influential in the anti-slavery movement, and served as secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society. When he moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he edited the Pennsylvania Freeman. Mobs attacked him several times because of his views.

1
The Wish of Today

I ask not now for gold to gild

With mocking shine a weary frame;

The yearning of the mind is stilled—

I ask not now for Fame.

A rose-cloud, dimly seen above,

Melting in heaven’s blue depths away—

O! sweet, fond dream of human Love!

For thee I may not pray.

But, bowed in lowliness of mind,

I make my humble wishes known—

I only ask a will resigned,

O Father, to thine own!

Today, beneath thy chastening eye,

I crave alone for peace and rest,

Submissive in thy hand to lie,

And feel that it is best.

A marvel seems the Universe,

A miracle our Life and Death;

A mystery which I cannot pierce,

Around, above, beneath.

In vain I task my aching brain,

In vain the sage’s thought I scan

I only feel how weak and vain,

How poor and blind, is man.

And now my spirit sighs for home,

And longs for light whereby to see,

And like a weary child, would come,

O Father, unto Thee!

Though oft, like letters traced on sand,

My weak resolves have passed away,

In mercy lend thy helping hand

Unto my prayer today!

2
Forgiveness

My heart was heavy, for its trust had been

Abused, its kindness answered with foul wrong;

So, turning gloomily from my fellow-men,

One summer Sabbath day I strolled among
the green mounds of the village burial place;

Where, pondering how all human love and hate

Find on sad level—and how, soon or late,

Wronged and wrong-doer, each with meekened face,

And cold hands folded over a still heart,

Pass the green threshold of our common grave,

Whither all footsteps tend, whence none depart.

Awed for myself, and pitying my race,

Our common sorrow, like a mighty wave,

Swept all my pride away, and trembling I forgave!

3
Autumn Thoughts

Gone hath the Spring, with all its flowers,

And gone the Summer’s pomp and show,

And Autumn, in his leafless bowers,

Is waiting for the Winter’s snow.

I said to Earth, so cold and gray,

“An emblem of myself thou art.”

“Not so,” the Earth did seem to say,

“For Spring shall warm my frozen heart.”

I soothe my wintry sleep with dreams

Of warmer sun and softer rain,

And wait to hear the sound of streams

And songs of merry birds again.

But thou, from whom the Spring hath gone,

For whom the flowers no longer blow,

Who standest blighted and forlorn,

Like Autumn waiting for the snow;

No hope is thine of sunnier hours,

Thy Winter shall no more depart;

No Spring revive thy wasted flowers,

Nor Summer warm thy frozen heart.

4
The Trailing Arbutus

I wandered lonely where the pine-trees made

Against the bitter East their barricade,

And, guided by its sweet

Perfume, I found, within a narrow dell,

The trailing spring flower tinted like a shell

Amid dry leaves and mosses at my feet.

From under dead boughs, for whose loss the pines

Moaned ceaseless overhead, the blossoming vines

Lifted their glad surprise,

While yet the bluebird smoothed in leafless trees

His feathers ruffled by the chill sea-breeze,

And snow-drifts lingered under April skies.

As, pausing, o’er the lonely flower I bent,

I thought of lives thus lowly, clogged and pent,

Which yet find room,

Through care and cumber, coldness and decay,

To lend a sweetness to the ungenial day

And make the sad earth happier for their bloom.

5
Storm on Lake Asquam

A cloud, like that the old-time Hebrew saw

On Carmel prophesying rain, began

To lift itself o’er wooded Cardigan,

Growing and blackening. Suddenly, a flaw

Of chill wind menaced; then a strong blast beat

Down the long valley’s murmuring pines, and woke

The noon-dream of the sleeping lake, and broke

Its smooth steel mirror at the mountains’ feet.

Thunderous and vast, a fire-veined darkness swept

Over the rough pine-bearded Asquam range;

A wraith of tempest, wonderful and strange,

From peak to peak the cloudy giant stepped.

One moment, as if challenging the storm,

Chocorua’s tall, defiant sentinel

Looked from his watch-tower; then the shadow fell,

And the wild rain-drift blotted out his form.

And over all the still unhidden sun,

Weaving its light through slant-blown veils of rain,

Smiled on the trouble, as hope smiles on pain;

And, when the tumult and the strife were done,

With one foot on the lake and one on land,

Framing within his crescent’s tinted streak

A far-off picture of the Melvin peak,

Spent broken clouds the rainbow’s angel spanned.

6
A Day

Talk not of sad November, when a day

Of warm, glad sunshine fills the sky of noon,

And a wind, borrowed from some morn of June,

Stirs the brown grasses and the leafless spray.

On the unfrosted pool the pillared pines

Lay their long shafts of shadow: the small rill,

Singing a pleasant song of summer still,

A line of silver, down the hill-slope shines.

Hushed the bird-voices and the hum of bees,

In the thin grass the crickets pipe no more;

But still the squirrel hoards his winter store,

And drops his nut-shells from the shag-bark trees.

Softly the dark green hemlocks whisper: high

Above, the spires of yellowing larches show,

Where the woodpecker and home-loving crow

And jay and nut-hatch winter’s threat defy.

O gracious beauty, ever new and old!

O sights and sounds of nature, doubly dear

When the low sunshine warns the closing year

Of snow-blown fields and waves of Arctic cold!

Close to my heart I fold each lovely thing

The sweet day yields; and, not disconsolate,

With the calm patience of the woods I wait

For leaf and blossom when God gives us Spring!

7
The Waiting

I wait and watch: before my eyes

Methinks the night grows thin and gray;

I wait and watch the eastern skies

To see the golden spears uprise

Beneath the oriflamme of day!

Like one whose limbs are bound in trance

I hear the day-sounds swell and grow,

And see across the twilight glance,

Troop after troop, in swift advance,

The shining ones with plumes of snow!

I know the errand of their feet,

I know what mighty work is theirs;

I can but lift up hands unmeet,

The threshing-floors of God to beat,

And speed them with unworthy prayers.

I will not dream in vain despair

The steps of progress wait for me:

The puny leverage of a hair

The planet’s impulse well may spare,

A drop of dew the tided sea.

The loss, if loss there be, is mine,

And yet not mine if understood;

For one shall grasp and one resign,

One drink life’s rue, and one its wine,

And God shall make the balance good.

Oh power to do! Oh baffled will!

Oh prayer and action! ye are one.

Who may not strive, may yet fulfil

The harder task of standing still,

And good but wished with God is done!

8
All’s Well

The clouds, which rise with thunder, slake

Our thirsty souls with rain;

The blow most dreaded falls to break

From off our limbs a chain;

And wrongs of man to man but make

The love of God more plain.

As through the shadowy lens of even

The eye looks farthest into heaven

On gleams of star and depths of blue

The glaring sunshine never knew!

9
Trust

The same old baffling questions! O my friend,

I cannot answer them. In vain I send

My soul into the dark, where never burn

The lamps of science, nor the natural light

Of Reason’s sun and stars! I cannot learn

Their great and solemn meanings, nor discern

The awful secrets of the eyes which turn

Evermore on us through the day and night

With silent challenge and a dumb demand,

Proffering the riddles of the dread unknown,

Like the calm Sphinxes, with their eyes of stone,

Questioning the centuries from their veils of sand!

I have no answer for myself or thee,

Save that I learned beside my mother’s knee;

“All is of God that is, and is to be;

And God is good.” Let this suffice us still,

Resting in childlike trust upon His will

Who moves to His great ends unthwarted by the ill.

10
Overruled

The threads our hands in blindness spin

No self-determined plan weaves in;

The shuttle of the unseen powers

Works out a pattern not as ours.

Ah! small the choice of him who sings

What sound shall leave the smitten strings;

Fate holds and guides the hand of art;

The singer’s is the servant’s part.

The wind-harp chooses not the tone

That through its trembling threads is blown;

The patient organ cannot guess

What hand its passive keys shall press.

Through wish, resolve, and act, our will

Is moved by undreamed forces still;

And no man measures in advance

His strength with untried circumstance.

As streams take hue from shade and sun,

As runs the life the song must run;

But, glad or sad, to His good end

God grant the varying notes may tend!

11
Requirement

We live by Faith; but Faith is not the slave

Of text and legend. Reason’s voice and God’s,

Nature’s and Duty’s, never are at odds.

What asks our Father of His children, save

Justice and mercy and humility,

A reasonable service of good deeds,

Pure living, tenderness to human needs,

Reverence and trust, and prayer for light to see

The Master’s footprints in our daily ways?

No knotted scourge nor sacrificial knife,

But the calm beauty of an ordered life

Whose very breathing is unworded praise!–

A life that stands as all true lives have stood,

Firm-rooted in the faith that God is Good.

12
Conduct

From the Mahabharata

Heed how thou livest. Do no act by day

Which from the night shall drive thy peace away.

In months of sun so live that months of rain

Shall still be happy. Evermore restrain

Evil and cherish good, so shall there be

Another and a happier life for thee.

13
The Light That is Felt

A tender child of summers three,

Seeking her little bed at night,

Paused on the dark stair timidly.

“Oh, mother! Take my hand,” said she,

“And then the dark will all be light.”

We older children grope our way

From dark behind to dark before;

And only when our hands we lay,

Dear Lord, in Thine, the night is day,

And there is darkness nevermore.

Reach downward to the sunless days

Wherein our guides are blind as we,

And faith is small and hope delays;

Take Thou the hands of prayer we raise,

And let us feel the light of Thee!

14
Laus Deo!

It is done!

Clang of bell and roar of gun

Send the tidings up and down.

How the belfries rock and reel!

How the great guns, peal on peal,

Fling the joy from town to town!

Ring, O bells!

Every stroke exulting tells

Of the burial hour of crime.

Loud and long, that all may hear,

Ring for every listening ear

Of Eternity and Time!

Let us kneel:

God’s own voice is in that peal,

And this spot is holy ground.

Lord, forgive us! What are we,

That our eyes this glory see,

That our ears have heard the sound!

For the Lord

On the whirlwind is abroad;

In the earthquake He has spoken;

He has smitten with His thunder

The iron walls asunder,

And the gates of brass are broken!

Loud and long

Lift the old exulting song;

Sing with Miriam by the sea,

He has cast the mighty down;

Horse and rider sink and drown;

“He hath triumphed gloriously!”

Did we dare,

In our agony of prayer,

Ask for more than He has done?

When was ever His right hand

Over any time or land

Stretched as now beneath the sun?

How they pale,

Ancient myth and song and tale,

In this wonder of our days,

When the cruel rod of war

Blossoms white with righteous law,

And the wrath of man is praise!

Blotted out!

All within and all about

Shall a fresher life begin;

Freer breathe the universe

As it rolls its heavy curse

On the dead and buried sin!

It is done!

In the circuit of the sun

Shall the sound thereof go forth.

It shall bid the sad rejoice,

It shall give the dumb a voice,

It shall belt with joy the earth!

Ring and swing,

Bells of joy! On morning’s wing

Send the song of praise abroad!

With a sound of broken chains

Tell the nations that he reigns,

Who alone is Lord and God!

15
The Eternal Goodness

O friends! with whom my feet have trod

The quiet aisles of prayer,

Glad witness to your zeal for God

And love of man I bear.

I trace your lines of argument;

Your logic linked and strong

I weigh as one who dreads dissent,

And fears a doubt as wrong.

But still my human hands are weak

To hold your iron creeds:

Against the words ye bid me speak

My heart within me pleads.

Who fathoms the Eternal Thought?

Who talks of scheme and plan?

The Lord is God! He needeth not

The poor device of man.

I walk with bare, hushed feet the ground

Ye tread with boldness shod;

I dare not fix with mete and bound

The love and power of God.

Ye praise His justice; even such

His pitying love I deem:

Ye seek a king; I fain would touch

The robe that hath no seam.

Ye see the curse which overbroods

A world of pain and loss;

I hear our Lord’s beatitudes

And prayer upon the cross.

More than your schoolmen teach, within

Myself, alas! I know:

Too dark ye cannot paint the sin,

Too small the merit show.

I bow my forehead to the dust,

I veil mine eyes for shame,

And urge, in trembling self-distrust,

A prayer without a claim.

I see the wrong that round me lies,

I feel the guilt within;

I hear, with groan and travail-cries,

The world confess its sin.

Yet, in the maddening maze of things,

And tossed by storm and flood,

To one fixed trust my spirit clings;

I know that God is good!

Not mine to look where cherubim

And seraphs may not see,

But nothing can be good in Him

Which evil is in me.

The wrong that pains my soul below

I dare not throne above,

I know not of His hate,—I know

His goodness and His love.

I dimly guess from blessings known

Of greater out of sight,

And, with the chastened Psalmist, own

His judgments too are right.

I long for household voices gone,

For vanished smiles I long,

But God hath led my dear ones on,

And He can do no wrong.

I know not what the future hath

Of marvel or surprise,

Assured alone that life and death

His mercy underlies.

And if my heart and flesh are weak

To bear an untried pain,

The bruisèd reed He will not break,

But strengthen and sustain.

No offering of my own I have,

Nor works my faith to prove;

I can but give the gifts He gave,

And plead His love for love.

And so beside the Silent Sea

I wait the muffled oar;

No harm from Him can come to me

On ocean or on shore.

I know not where His islands lift

Their fronded palms in air;

I only know I cannot drift

Beyond His love and care.

O brothers! if my faith is vain,

If hopes like these betray,

Pray for me that my feet may gain

The sure and safer way.

And Thou, O Lord! by whom are seen

Thy creatures as they be,

Forgive me if too close I lean

My human heart on Thee!

16
Maud Muller

Maud Muller on a summer’s day

Raked the meadow sweet with hay.

Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth

Of simple beauty and rustic health.

Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee

The mock-bird echoed from his tree.

But when she glanced to the far-off town

White from its hill-slope looking down,

The sweet song died, and a vague unrest

And a nameless longing filled her breast,—

A wish that she hardly dared to own,

For something better than she had known.

The Judge rode slowly down the lane,

Smoothing his horse’s chestnut mane.

He drew his bridle in the shade

Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid,

And asked a draught from the spring that flowed

Through the meadow across the road.

She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up,

And filled for him her small tin cup,

And blushed as she gave it, looking down

On her feet so bare, and her tattered gown.

“Thanks!” said the Judge; “a sweeter draught

From a fairer hand was never quaffed.”

He spoke of the grass and flowers and trees,

Of the singing birds and the humming bees;

Then talked of the haying, and wondered whether

The cloud in the west would bring foul weather.

And Maud forgot her brier-torn gown

And her graceful ankles bare and brown;

And listened, while a pleased surprise

Looked from her long-lashed hazel eyes.

At last, like one who for delay

Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away.

Maud Muller looked and sighed: “Ah me!

That I the Judge’s bride might be!

“He would dress me up in silks so fine,

And praise and toast me at his wine.

“My father should wear a broadcloth coat;

My brother should sail a pointed boat.

“I’d dress my mother so grand and gay,

And the baby should have a new toy each day.

“And I’d feed the hungry and clothe the poor,

And all should bless me who left our door.”

The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill,

And saw Maud Muller standing still.

“A form more fair, a face more sweet,

Ne’er hath it been my lot to meet.

“And her modest answer and graceful air

Show her wise and good as she is fair.

“Would she were mine, and I to-day,

Like her, a harvester of hay.

“No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs,

Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues,

“But low of cattle and song of birds,

And health and quiet and loving words.”

But he thought of his sisters, proud and cold,

And his mother, vain of her rank and gold.

So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on,

And Maud was left in the field alone.

But the lawyers smiled that afternoon,

When he hummed in court an old love-tune;

And the young girl mused beside the well

Till the rain on the unraked clover fell.

He wedded a wife of richest dower,

Who lived for fashion, as he for power.

Yet oft, in his marble hearth’s bright glow,

He watched a picture come and go;

And sweet Maud Muller’s hazel eyes

Looked out in their innocent surprise.

Oft, when the wine in his glass was red,

He longed for the wayside well instead;

And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms

To dream of meadows and clover-blooms.

And the proud man sighed, and with a secret pain,

“Ah, that I were free again!

“Free as when I rode that day,

Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay.”

She wedded a man unlearned and poor,

And many children played round her door.

But care and sorrow, and childbirth pain,

Left their traces on heart and brain.

And oft, when the summer sun shone hot

On the new-mown hay in the meadow lot,

And she heard the little spring brook fall

Over the roadside, through a wall,

In the shade of the apple-tree again

She saw a rider draw his rein;

And, gazing down with timid grace,

She felt his pleased eyes read her face.

Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls

Stretched away into stately halls;

The weary wheel to a spinet turned,

The tallow candle an astral burned,

And for him who sat by the chimney lug,

Dozing and grumbling o’er pipe and mug,

A manly form at her side she saw,

And joy was duty and love was law.

Then she took up her burden of life again,

Saying only, “It might have been.”

Alas for the maiden, alas for the Judge,

For rich repiner and household drudge!

God pity them both and pity us all,

Who vainly the dreams of youth recall.

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,

The saddest are these: “It might have been!”

Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies

Deeply buried from human eyes;

And, in the hereafter, angels may

Roll the stone from its grave away!

17
The Corn Song

Heap high the farmer’s wintry hoard!

Heap high the golden corn!

No richer gift has Autumn poured

From out her lavish horn!

Let other lands, exulting, glean

The apple from the pine,

The orange from its glossy green,

The cluster from the vine;

We better love the hardy gift

Our rugged vales bestow,

To cheer us when the storm shall drift

Our harvest-fields with snow.

Through vales of grass and meads of flowers

Our ploughs their furrows made,

While on the hills the sun and showers

Of changeful April played.

We dropped the seed o’er hill and plain

Beneath the sun of May,

And frightened from our sprouting grain

The robber crows away.

All through the long, bright days of June

Its leaves grew green and fair,

And waved in hot midsummer’s noon

Its soft and yellow hair.

And now, with autumn’s moonlit eves,

Its harvest-time has come,

We pluck away the frosted leaves,

And bear the treasure home.

There, when the snows about us drift,

And winter winds are cold,

Fair hands the broken grain shall sift,

And knead its meal of gold.

Let vapid idlers loll in silk

Around their costly board;

Give us the bowl of samp and milk,

By homespun beauty poured!

Where’er the wide old kitchen hearth

Sends up its smoky curls,

Who will not thank the kindly earth

And bless our farmer girls!

Then shame on all the proud and vain,

Whose folly laughs to scorn

The blessing of our hardy grain,

Our wealth of golden corn!

Let earth withhold her goodly root,

Let mildew blight the rye,

Give to the worm the orchard’s fruit,

The wheat-field to the fly:

But let the good old crop adorn

The hills our fathers trod;

Still let us, for his golden corn,

Send up our thanks to God!

18
Barbara Frietchie

Up from the meadows rich with corn,

Clear in the cool September morn,

The clustered spires of Frederick stand

Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.

Round about them orchards sweep,

Apple and peach trees fruited deep,

Fair as the garden of the Lord

To the eyes of the famished rebel horde,

On that pleasant morn of the early fall

When Lee marched o’er the mountain-wall;

Over the mountains winding down,

Horse and foot, into Frederick town.

Forty flags with their silver stars,

Forty flags with their crimson bars,

Flapped in the morning wind: the sun

Of noon looked down, and saw not one.

Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then,

Bowed with her fourscore years and ten;

Bravest of all in Frederick town,

She took up the flag the men hauled down;

In her attic window the staff she set,

To show that one heart was loyal yet.

Up the street came the rebel tread,

Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.

Under his slouched hat left and right

He glanced; the old flag met his sight.

“Halt!” - the dust-brown ranks stood fast.

“Fire!” - out blazed the rifle-blast.

It shivered the window, pane and sash;

It rent the banner with seam and gash.

Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff

Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf.

She leaned far out on the window-sill,

And shook it forth with a royal will.

“Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,

But spare your country’s flag,” she said.

A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,

Over the face of the leader came;

The nobler nature within him stirred

To life at that woman’s deed and word;

“Who touches a hair of yon gray head

Dies like a dog! March on!” he said.

All day long through Frederick street

Sounded the tread of marching feet:

All day long that free flag tost

Over the heads of the rebel host.

Ever its torn folds rose and fell

On the loyal winds that loved it well;

And through the hillgaps sunset light

Shone over it with a warm good-night.

Barbara Frietchie’s work is o’er,

And the Rebel rides on his raids no more.

Honor to her! and let a tear

Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall’s bier.

Over Barbara Frietchie’s grave,

Flag of Freedom and Union, wave!

Peace and order and beauty draw

Round thy symbol of light and law;

And ever the stars above look down

On thy stars below in Frederick town!

19
Dear Lord and Father of Mankind

Dear Lord and Father of mankind,

Forgive our foolish ways;

Reclothe us in our rightful mind,

In purer lives Thy service find,

In deeper reverence, praise.

In simple trust like theirs who heard,

Beside the Syrian sea,

The gracious calling of the Lord,

Let us, like them, without a word,

Rise up and follow Thee.

O Sabbath rest by Galilee,

O calm of hills above,

Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee

The silence of eternity,

Interpreted by love!

With that deep hush subduing all

Our words and works that drown

The tender whisper of Thy call,

As noiseless let Thy blessing fall

As fell Thy manna down.

Drop Thy still dews of quietness,

Till all our strivings cease;

Take from our souls the strain and stress,

And let our ordered lives confess

The beauty of Thy peace.

Breathe through the heats of our desire

Thy coolness and Thy balm;

Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;

Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,

O still, small voice of calm.

20
Ichabod1

So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn

Which once he wore!

The glory from his gray hairs gone

Forevermore!

Revile him not, the Tempter hath

A snare for all;

And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath,

Befit his fall!

Oh, dumb be passion’s stormy rage,

When he who might

Have lighted up and led his age,

Falls back in night.

Scorn! would the angels laugh, to mark

A bright soul driven,

Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark,

From hope and heaven!

Let not the land once proud of him

Insult him now,

Nor brand with deeper shame his dim,

Dishonored brow.

But let its humbled sons, instead,

From sea to lake,

A long lament, as for the dead,

In sadness make.

Of all we loved and honored, naught

Save power remains;

A fallen angel’s pride of thought,

Still strong in chains.

All else is gone; from those great eyes

The soul has fled:

When faith is lost, when honor dies,

The man is dead!

Then, pay the reverence of old days

To his dead fame;

Walk backward, with averted gaze,

And hide the shame!

21
Telling the Bees

Here is the place; right over the hill

Runs the path I took;

You can see the gap in the old wall still,

And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook.

There is the house, with the gate red-barred,

And the poplars tall;

And the barn’s brown length, and the cattle-yard,

And the white horns tossing above the wall.

There are the beehives ranged in the sun;

And down by the brink

Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed-o’errun,

Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink.

A year has gone, as the tortoise goes,

Heavy and slow;

And the same rose blows, and the same sun glows,

And the same brook sings of a year ago.

There 's the same sweet clover-smell in the breeze;

And the June sun warm

Tangles his wings of fire in the trees,

Setting, as then, over Fernside farm.

I mind me how with a lover’s care

From my Sunday coat

I brushed off the burrs, and smoothed my hair,

And cooled at the brookside my brow and throat.

Since we parted, a month had passed, –

To love, a year;

Down through the beeches I looked at last

On the little red gate and the well-sweep near.

I can see it all now,—the slantwise rain

Of light through the leaves,

The sundown’s blaze on her window-pane,

The bloom of her roses under the eaves.

Just the same as a month before, –

The house and the trees,

The barn’s brown gable, the vine by the door, –

Nothing changed but the hives of bees.

Before them, under the garden wall,

Forward and back,

Went drearily singing the chore-girl small,

Draping each hive with a shred of black.

Trembling, I listened: the summer sun

Had the chill of snow;

For I knew she was telling the bees of one

Gone on the journey we all must go!

Then I said to myself, “My Mary weeps

For the dead to-day:

Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps

The fret and the pain of his age away.”

But her dog whined low; on the doorway sill,

With his cane to his chin,

The old man sat; and the chore-girl still

Sung to the bees stealing out and in.

And the song she was singing ever since

In my ear sounds on: –

“Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence!

Mistress Mary is dead and gone!”

22
The Farewell of a Virginia Slave Mother to her Daughters Sold into Southern Bondage

Gone, gone,—sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone.

Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings,

Where the noisome insect stings,

Where the fever demon strews

Poison with the falling dews,

Where the sickly sunbeams glare

Through the hot and misty air;

Gone, gone,—sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone,

From Virginia’s hills and waters;

Woe is me, my stolen daughters!

Gone, gone,—sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone.

There no mother’s eye is near them,

There no mother’s ear can hear them;

Never, when the torturing lash

Seams their back with many a gash,

Shall a mother’s kindness bless them,

Or a mother’s arms caress them.

Gone, gone,—sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone,

From Virginia’s hills and waters;

Woe is me, my stolen daughters!

Gone, gone,—sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone.

Oh, when weary, sad, and slow,

From the fields at night they go,

Faint with toil, and racked with pain,

To their cheerless homes again,

There no brother’s voice shall greet them;

There no father’s welcome meet them.

Gone, gone,—sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone,

From Virginia’s hills and waters;

Woe is me, my stolen daughters!

Gone, gone,—sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone.

From the tree whose shadow lay

On their childhood’s place of play;

From the cool spring where they drank;

Rock, and hill, and rivulet bank;

From the solemn house of prayer,

And the holy counsels there;

Gone, gone,—sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone,

From Virginia’s hills and waters;

Woe is me, my stolen daughters!

Gone, gone,—sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone;

Toiling through the weary day,

And at night the spoiler’s prey.

Oh, that they had earlier died,

Sleeping calmly, side by side,

Where the tyrant’s power is o’er,

And the fetter galls no more!

Gone, gone,—sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone,

From Virginia’s hills and waters;

Woe is me, my stolen daughters!

Gone, gone,—sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone.

By the holy love He beareth;

By the bruised reed He spareth;

Oh, may He, to whom alone

All their cruel wrongs are known,

Still their hope and refuge prove,

With a more than mother’s love.

Gone, gone,—sold and gone,

To the rice-swamp dank and lone,

From Virginia’s hills and waters;

Woe is me, my stolen daughters!

23
The Christian Slave2

A Christian! going, gone!

Who bids for God’s own image? for his grace,

Which that poor victim of the market-place

Hath in her suffering won?

My God! can such things be?

Hast Thou not said that whatsoe’er is done

Unto Thy weakest and Thy humblest one

Is even done to Thee?

In that sad victim, then,

Child of Thy pitying love, I see Thee stand;

Once more the jest-word of a mocking band,

Bound, sold, and scourged again!

A Christian up for sale!

Wet with her blood your whips, o’ertask her frame,

Make her life loathsome with your wrong and shame,

Her patience shall not fail!

A heathen hand might deal

Back on your heads the gathered wrong of years:

But her low, broken prayer and nightly tears,

Ye neither heed nor feel.

Con well thy lesson o’er,

Thou prudent teacher, tell the toiling slave

No dangerous tale of Him who came to save

The outcast and the poor.

But wisely shut the ray

Of God’s free Gospel from her simple heart,

And to her darkened mind alone impart

One stern command, Obey!

So shalt thou deftly raise

The market price of human flesh; and while

On thee, their pampered guest, the planters smile,

Thy church shall praise.

Grave, reverend men shall tell

From Northern pulpits how thy work was blest,

While in that vile South Sodom first and best,

Thy poor disciples sell.

Oh, shame! the Moslem thrall,

Who, with his master, to the Prophet kneels,

While turning to the sacred Kebla feels

His fetters break and fall.

Cheers for the turbaned Bey

Of robber-peopled Tunis! he hath torn

The dark slave-dungeons open, and hath borne

Their inmates into day:

But our poor slave in vain

Turns to the Christian shrine his aching eyes;

Its rites will only swell his market price,

And rivet on his chain.

God of all right! how long

Shall priestly robbers at Thine altar stand,

Lifting in prayer to Thee, the bloody hand

And haughty brow of wrong?

Oh, from the fields of cane,

From the low rice-swamp, from the trader’s cell;

From the black slave-ship’s foul and loathsome hell,

And coffle’s weary chain;

Hoarse, horrible, and strong,

Rises to Heaven that agonizing cry,

Filling the arches of the hollow sky,

How long, O God, how long?

24
The Fishermen

Hurrah! the seaward breezes

Sweep down the bay amain;

Heave up, my lads, the anchor!

Run up the sail again!

Leave to the lubber landsmen

The rail-car and the steed;

The stars of heaven shall guide us,

The breath of heaven shall speed.

From the hill-top looks the steeple,

And the lighthouse from the sand;

And the scattered pines are waving

Their farewell from the land.

One glance, my lads, behind us,

For the homes we leave one sigh,

Ere we take the change and chances

Of the ocean and the sky.

Now, brothers, for the icebergs

Of frozen Labrador,

Floating spectral in the moonshine,

Along the low, black shore!

Where like snow the gannet’s feathers

On Brador’s rocks are shed,

And the noisy murr are flying,

Like black scuds, overhead;

Where in mist the rock is hiding,

And the sharp reef lurks below,

And the white squall smites in summer,

And the autumn tempests blow;

Where, through gray and rolling vapor,

From evening unto morn,

A thousand boats are hailing,

Horn answering unto horn.

Hurrah! for the Red Island,

With the white cross on its crown!

Hurrah! for Meccatina,

And its mountains bare and brown!

Where the Caribou’s tall antlers

O’er the dwarf-wood freely toss,

And the footstep of the Mickmack

Has no sound upon the moss.

There we’ll drop our lines, and gather

Old Ocean’s treasures in,

Where’er the mottled mackerel

Turns up a steel-dark fin.

The sea’s our field of harvest,

Its scaly tribes our grain;

We’ll reap the teeming waters

As at home they reap the plain!

Our wet hands spread the carpet,

And light the hearth of home;

From our fish, as in the old time,

The silver coin shall come.

As the demon fled the chamber

Where the fish of Tobit lay,

So ours from all our dwellings

Shall frighten Want away.

Though the mist upon our jackets

In the bitter air congeals,

And our lines wind stiff and slowly

From off the frozen reels;

Though the fog be dark around us,

And the storm blow high and loud,

We will whistle down the wild wind,

And laugh beneath the cloud!

In the darkness as in daylight,

On the water as on land,

God’s eye is looking on us,

And beneath us is His hand!

Death will find us soon or later,

On the deck or in the cot;

And we cannot meet him better

Than in working out our lot.

Hurrah! hurrah! the west-wind

Comes freshening down the bay,

The rising sails are filling;

Give way, my lads, give way!

Leave the coward landsman clinging

To the dull earth, like a weed;

The stars of heaven shall guide us,

The breath of heaven shall speed!

25
The Ship-Builders

The sky is ruddy in the east,

The earth is gray below,

And, spectral in the river-mist,

The ship’s white timbers show.

Then let the sounds of measured stroke

And grating saw begin;

The broad-axe to the gnarled oak,

The mallet to the pin!

Hark! roars the bellows, blast on blast,

The sooty smithy jars,

And fire-sparks, rising far and fast,

Are fading with the stars.

All day for us the smith shall stand

Beside that flashing forge;

All day for us his heavy hand

The groaning anvil scourge.

From far-off hills, the panting team

For us is toiling near;

For us the raftsmen down the stream

Their island barges steer.

Rings out for us the axe-man’s stroke

In forests old and still;

For us the century-circled oak

Falls crashing down his hill.

Up! up! in nobler toil than ours

No craftsmen bear a part:

We make of Nature’s giant powers

The slaves of human Art.

Lay rib to rib and beam to beam,

And drive the treenails free;

Nor faithless joint nor yawning seam

Shall tempt the searching sea!

Where’er the keel of our good ship

The sea’s rough field shall plough;

Where’er her tossing spars shall drip

With salt-spray caught below;

That ship must heed her master’s beck,

Her helm obey his hand,

And seamen tread her reeling deck

As if they trod the land.

Her oaken ribs the vulture-beak

Of Northern ice may peel;

The sunken rock and coral peak

May grate along her keel;

And know we well the painted shell

We give to wind and wave,

Must float, the sailor’s citadel,

Or sink, the sailor’s grave!

Ho! strike away the bars and blocks,

And set the good ship free!

Why lingers on these dusty rocks

The young bride of the sea?

Look! how she moves adown the grooves,

In graceful beauty now!

How lowly on the breast she loves

Sinks down her virgin prow!

God bless-her! wheresoe’er the breeze

Her snowy wing shall fan,

Aside the frozen Hebrides,

Or sultry Hindostan!

Where’er, in mart or on the main,

With peaceful flag unfurled,

She helps to wind the silken chain

Of commerce round the world!

Speed on the ship! But let her bear

No merchandise of sin,

No groaning cargo of despair

Her roomy hold within;

No Lethean drug for Eastern lands,

For poison-draught for ours;

But honest fruits of toiling hands

And Nature’s sun and showers.

Be hers the Prairie’s golden grain,

The Desert’s golden sand,

The clustered fruits of sunny Spain,

The spice of Morning-land!

Her pathway on the open main

May blessings follow free,

And glad hearts welcome back again

Her white sails from the sea!

26
The Huskers

It was late in mild October, and the long autumnal rain

Had left the summer harvest-fields all green with grass again;

The first sharp frosts had fallen, leaving all the woodlands gay

With the hues of summer’s rainbow, or the meadow flowers of May.

Through a thin, dry mist, that morning, the sun rose broad and red,

At first a rayless disk of fire, he brightened as he sped;

Yet, even his noontide glory fell chastened and subdued,

On the cornfields and the orchards, and softly pictured wood.

And all that quiet afternoon, slow sloping to the night,

He wove with golden shuttle the haze with yellow light;

Slanting through the painted beeches, he glorified the hill;

And, beneath it, pond and meadow lay brighter, greener still.

And shouting boys in woodland haunts caught glimpses of that sky,

Flecked by the many-tinted leaves, and laughed, they knew not why;

And school-girls, gay with aster-flowers, beside the meadow brooks,

Mingled the glow of autumn with the sunshine of sweet looks.

From spire and barn looked westerly the patient weathercocks;

But even the birches on the hill stood motionless as rocks.

No sound was in the woodlands, save the squirrel’s dropping shell,

And the yellow leaves among the boughs, low rustling as they fell.

The summer grains were harvested; the stubblefields lay dry,

Where June winds rolled, in light and shade, the pale green waves of rye;

But still, on gentle hill-slopes, in valleys fringed with wood,

Ungathered, bleaching in the sun, the heavy corn crop stood.

Bent low, by autumn’s wind and rain, through husks that, dry and sere,

Unfolded from their ripened charge, shone out the yellow ear;

Beneath, the turnip lay concealed, in many a verdant fold,

And glistened in the slanting light the pumpkin’s sphere of gold.

There wrought the busy harvesters; and many a creaking wain

Bore slowly to the long barn-floor is load of husk and grain;

Till broad and red, as when he rose, the sun sank down, at last,

And like a merry guest’s farewell, the day in brightness passed.

And lo! as through the western pines, on meadow, stream, and pond,

Flamed the red radiance of a sky, set all afire beyond,

Slowly o’er the eastern sea-bluffs a milder glory shone,

And the sunset and the moonrise were mingled into one!

As thus into the quiet night the twilight lapsed away,

And deeper in the brightening moon the tranquil shadows lay;

From many a brown old farm-house, and hamlet without name,

Their milking and their home-tasks done, the merry huskers came.

Swung o’er the heaped-up harvest, from pitchforks in the mow,

Shone dimly down the lanterns on the pleasant scene below;

The growing pile of husks behind, the golden ears before,

And laughing eyes and busy hands and brown cheeks glimmering o’er.

Half hidden, in a quiet nook, serene of look and heart,

Talking their old times over, the old men sat apart;

While up and down the unhusked pile, or nestling in its shade,

At hide-and-seek, with laugh and shout, the happy children played.

Urged by the good host’s daughter, a maiden young and fair,

Lifting to light her sweet blue eyes and pride of soft brown hair,

The master of the village school, sleek of hair and smooth of tongue,

To the quaint tune of some old psalm, a husking-ballad sung.

Snow Bound

A Winter Idyl

“As the Spirit of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so Good Spirits, which be Angels of Light, are augmented not only by the Divine light of the Sun, but also by our common Wood Fire: and as the Celestial Fire drives away dark spirits, so also this our fire of Wood doth the same.”

Cor. Agrippa, Occult Philosophy, Book I, ch. v.

“Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,

Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,

Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air

Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven,

And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.

The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet

Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit

Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed

In a tumultuous privacy of Storm.”

Emerson, The Snow Storm.

The sun that brief December day

Rose cheerless over hills of gray,

And, darkly circled, gave at noon

A sadder light than waning moon.

Slow tracing down the thickening sky

Its mute and ominous prophecy,

A portent seeming less than threat,

It sank from sight before it set.

A chill no coat, however stout,

Of homespun stuff could quite shut out,

A hard, dull bitterness of cold,

That checked, mid-vein, the circling race

Of life-blood in the sharpened face,

The coming of the snow-storm told.

The wind blew east; we heard the roar

Of Ocean on his wintry shore,

And felt the strong pulse throbbing there

Beat with low rhythm our inland air.

Meanwhile we did our nightly chores,

Brought in the wood from out the doors,

Littered the stalls, and from the mows

Raked down the herd’s-grass for the cows;

Heard the horse whinnying for his corn;

And, sharply clashing horn on horn,

Impatient down the stanchion rows

The cattle shake their walnut bows;

While, peering from his early perch

Upon the scaffold’s pole of birch,

The cock his crested helmet bent

And down his querulous challenge sent.

Unwarmed by any sunset light

The gray day darkened into night,

A night made hoary with the swarm

And whirl-dance of the blinding storm,

As zigzag, wavering to and fro,

Crossed and recrossed the wingëd snow:

And ere the early bedtime came

The white drift piled the window-frame,

And through the glass the clothes-line posts

Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.

The old familiar sights of ours

Took marvellous shapes; strange domes and towers

Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood,

Or garden-wall, or belt of wood;

A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed,

A fenceless drift what once was road;

The bridle-post an old man sat

With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat;

The well-curb had a Chinese roof;

And even the long sweep, high aloof,

In its slant spendor, seemed to tell

Of Pisa’s leaning miracle.

A prompt, decisive man, no breath

Our father wasted: “Boys, a path!”

Well pleased (for when did farmer boy

Count such a summons less than joy?)

Our buskins on our feet we drew;

With mittened hands, and caps drawn low,

To guard our necks and ears from snow,

We cut the solid whiteness through.

And, where the drift was deepest, made

A tunnel walled and overlaid

With dazzling crystal: we had read

Of rare Aladdin’s wondrous cave,

And to our own his name we gave,

With many a wish the luck were ours

To test his lamp’s supernal powers.

We reached the barn with merry din,

And roused the prisoned brutes within.

The old horse thrust his long head out,

And grave with wonder gazed about;

The cock his lusty greeting said,

And forth his speckled harem led;

The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked,

And mild reproach of hunger looked;

The hornëd patriarch of the sheep,

Like Egypt’s Amun roused from sleep,

Shook his sage head with gesture mute,

And emphasized with stamp of foot.

All day the gusty north-wind bore

The loosening drift its breath before;

Low circling round its southern zone,

The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone.

No church-bell lent its Christian tone

To the savage air, no social smoke

Curled over woods of snow-hung oak.

A solitude made more intense

By dreary-voicëd elements,

The shrieking of the mindless wind,

The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind,

And on the glass the unmeaning beat

Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet.

Beyond the circle of our hearth

No welcome sound of toil or mirth

Unbound the spell, and testified

Of human life and thought outside.

We minded that the sharpest ear

The buried brooklet could not hear,

The music of whose liquid lip

Had been to us companionship,

And, in our lonely life, had grown

To have an almost human tone.

As night drew on, and, from the crest

Of wooded knolls that ridged the west,

The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank

From sight beneath the smothering bank,

We piled, with care, our nightly stack

Of wood against the chimney-back, –

The oaken log, green, huge, and thick,

And on its top the stout back-stick;

The knotty forestick laid apart,

And filled between with curious art

The ragged brush; then, hovering near,

We watched the first red blaze appear,

Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam

On whitewashed wall and sagging beam,

Until the old, rude-furnished room

Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom;

While radiant with a mimic flame

Outside the sparkling drift became,

And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree

Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free.

The crane and pendent trammels showed,

The Turks’ heads on the andirons glowed;

While childish fancy, prompt to tell

The meaning of the miracle,

Whispered the old rhyme: “Under the tree,

When fire outdoors burns merrily,

There the witches are making tea.”

The moon above the eastern wood

Shone at its full; the hill-range stood

Transfigured in the silver flood,

Its blown snows flashing cold and keen,

Dead white, save where some sharp ravine

Took shadow, or the sombre green

Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black

Against the whiteness at their back.

For such a world and such a night

Most fitting that unwarming light,

Which only seemd where’er it fell

To make the coldness visible.

Shut in from all the world without,

We sat the clean-winged hearth about,

Content to let the north-wind roar

In baffled rage at pane and door,

While the red logs before us beat

The frost-line back with tropic heat;

And ever, when a louder blast

Shook beam and rafter as it passed,

The merrier up its roaring draught

The great throat of the chimney laughed;

The house-dog on his paws outspread

Laid to the fire his drowsy head,

The cat’s dark silhouette on the wall

A couchant tiger’s seemed to fall;

And, for the winter fireside meet,

Between the andirons’ straddling feet,

The mug of cider simmered slow,

The apples sputtered in a row,

And, close at hand, the basket stood

With nuts from brown October’s wood.

What matter how the night behaved?

What matter how the north-wind raved?

Blow high, blow low, not all its snow

Could quench our hearth-fire’s ruddy glow.

O Time and Change!—with hair as gray

As was my sire’s that winter day,

How strange it seems with so much gone,

Of life and love, to still live on!

Ah, brother! only I and thou

Are left of all that circle now, –

The dear home faces whereupon

That fitful firelight paled and shone.

Henceforward, listen as we will,

The voices of that hearth are still;

Look where we may, the wide earth o’er,

Those lighted faces smile no more.

We tread the paths their feet have worn,

We sit beneath their orchard trees,

We hear, like them, the hum of bees

And rustle of the bladed corn;

We turn the pages that they read,

Their written words we linger o’er.

But in the sun they cast no shade,

No voice is heard, no sign is made,

No step is on the conscious floor!

Yet love will dream, and Faith will trust

(Since He who knows our need is just),

That somehow, somewhere, meet we must.

Alas for him who never sees

The stars shine through his cypress-trees!

Who, hopeless, lays his dead away,

Nor looks to see the breaking day

Across the mourful marbles play!

Who hath not learned, in hours of faith,

The truth to flesh and sense unknown,

That Life is ever lord of Death,

And Love can never lose its own!

We sped the time with stories old,

Wrought puzzles out, and riddles told,

Or stammered from our school-book lore

“The Chief of Gambia’s golden shore.”

How often since, when all the land

Was clay in Slavery’s shaping hand,

As if a far-blown trumpet stirred

The languorous sin-sick air, I heard:

“Does not the voice of reason cry,

Claim the first right which Nature gave,

From the red scourge of bondage to fly,

Nor deign to live a burdened slave!”

Our father rode again his ride

On Memphremagog’s wooded side;

Sat down again to moose and samp

In trapper’s hut and Indian camp;

Lived o’er the old idyllic ease

Beneath St. François’ hemlock-trees;

Again for him the moonlight shone

On Norman cap and bodiced zone;

Again he heard the violin play

Which led the village dance away,

And mingled in its merry whirl

The grandam and the laughing girl.

Or, nearer home, our steps he led

Where Salisbury’s level marshes spread

Mile-wide as flied the laden bee;

Where merry mowers, hale and strong,

Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths along

The low green prairies of the sea.

We shared the fishing off Boar’s Head,

And round the rocky Isles of Shoals

The hake-broil on the drift-wood coals;

The chowder on the sand-beach made,

Dipped by the hungry, steaming hot,

With spoons of clam-shell from the pot.

We heard the tales of witchcraft old,

And dream and sign and marvel told

To sleepy listeners as they lay

Stretched idly on the salted hay,

Adrift along the winding shores,

When favoring breezes deigned to blow

The square sail of the gundelow

And idle lay the useless oars.

Our mother, while she turned her wheel

Or run the new-knit stocking-heel,

Told how the Indian hordes came down

At midnight on Concheco town,

And how her own great-uncle bore

His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore.

Recalling, in her fitting phrase,

So rich and picturesque and free

(The common unrhymed poetry

Of simple life and country ways),

The story of her early days, –

She made us welcome to her home;

Old hearths grew wide to give us room;

We stole with her a frightened look

At the gray wizard’s conjuring-book,

The fame whereof went far and wide

Through all the simple country side;

We heard the hawks at twilight play,

The boat-horn on Piscataqua,

The loon’s weird laughter far away;

We fished her little trout-brook, knew

What flowers in wood and meadow grew,

What sunny hillsides autumn-brown

She climbed to shake the ripe nuts down,

Saw where in sheltered cove and bay,

The ducks’ black squadron anchored lay,

And heard the wild-geese calling loud

Beneath the gray November cloud.

Then, haply, with a look more grave,

And soberer tone, some tale she gave

From painful Sewel’s ancient tome,

Beloved in every Quaker home,

Of faith fire-winged by martyrdom,

Or Chalkley’s Journal, old and quaint, –

Gentlest of skippers, rare sea-saint! –

Who, when the dreary calms prevailed,

And water-butt and bread-cask failed,

And cruel, hungry eyes pursued

His portly presence, mad for food,

With dark hints muttered under breath

Of casting lots for life or death,

Offered, if Heaven withheld supplies,

To be himself the sacrifice.

Then, suddenly, as if to save

The good man from his living grave,

A ripple on the water grew,

A school of porpoise flashed in view.

“Take, eat,” he said, “and be content;

These fishes in my stead are sent

By Him who gave the tangled ram

To spare the child of Abraham.”

Our uncle, innocent of books,

Was rich in lore of fields and brooks,

The ancient teachers never dumb

Of Nature’s unhoused lyceum.

In moons and tides and weather wise,

He read the clouds as prophecies,

And foul or fair could well divine,

By many an occult hint and sign,

Holding the cunning-warded keys

To all the woodcraft mysteries;

Himself to Nature’s heart so near

That all her voices in his ear

Of beast or bird had meanings clear,

Like Apollonius of old,

Who knew the tales the sparrows told,

Or Hermes, who interpreted

What the sage cranes of Nilus said;

A simple, guileless, childlike man,

Content to live where life began;

Strong only on his native grounds,

The little world of sights and sounds

Whose girdle was the parish bounds,

Whereof his fondly partial pride

The common features magnified,

As Surrey hills to mountains grew

In White of Selborne’s loving view, –

He told how teal and loon he shot,

And how the eagle’s eggs he got,

The feats on pond and river done,

The prodigies of rod and gun;

Till, warming with the tales he told,

Forgotten was the outside cold,

The bitter wind unheeded blew,

From ripening corn the pigeons flew,

The partridge drummed i’ the wood, the mink

Went fishing down the river-brink.

The woodchuck, like a hermit gray,

Peered from the doorway of his cell;

The muskrat plied the mason’s trade,

And tier by tier his mud-walls laid;

And from the shagbark overhead

The grizzled squirrel dropped his shell.

Next, the dear aunt, whose smile of cheer

And voice in dreams I see and hear, –

The sweetest woman ever Fate

Perverse denied a household mate,

Who, lonely, homeless, not the less

Found peace in love’s unselfishness,

And welcome wheresoe’er she went,

A calm and gracious element,

Whose presence seemed the sweet income

And womanly atmosphere of home, –

Called up her girlhood memories,

The huskings and the apple-bees,

The sleigh-rides and the summer sails,

Weaving through all the poor details

And homespuun warp of circumstance

A golden woof-thread of romance.

For well she kept her genial mood

And simple faith of maidenhood;

Before her still a cloud-land lay,

The mirage loomed across her way;

The morning dew, that dries so soon

With others, glistened at her noon;

Through years of toil and soil and care,

From glossy tress to thin gray hair,

All unprofaned she held apart

The virgin fancies of the heart.

Be shame to him of woman born

Who hath for such but thought of scorn.

There, too, our elder sister plied

Her evening task the stand beside;

A full, rich nature, free to trust,

Truthful and almost sternly just,

Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act,

And make her generous thought a fact,

Keeping with many a light disguise

The secret of self-sacrifice.

O heart sore-tried! thou hast the best

That Heaven itself coud give thee,—rest,

Rest from all bitter thoughts and things!

How many a poor one’s blessing went

With thee beneath the low green tent

Whose curtain never outward swings!

As one who held herself a part

Of all she saw, and let her heart

Against the household bosom lean,

Upon the motley-braided mat

Our yougest and our dearest sat,

Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes,

Now bathed in the unfading green

And holy peace of Paradise.

Oh, looking from some heavenly hill,

Or from the shade of saintly palms,

Or silver reach of river calms,

Do those large eyes behold me still?

With me one little year ago: –

The chill weight of the winter snow

For months upon her grave has lain;

And now, when summer south-winds blow

And brier and harebell bloom again,

I tread the pleasant paths we trod,

I see the violet-sprinkled sod

Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak

The hillside flowers she loved to seek,

Yet following me where’er I went

With dark eyes full of love’s content.

The birds are glad; the brier-rose fills

The air with sweetness; all the hills

Stretch green to June’s unclouded sky;

But still I wait with ear and eye,

For something gone which should be nigh,

A loss in all familiar things,

In flower that blooms, and bird that sings.

And yet, dear heart! remembering thee,

Am I not richer than of old?

Safe in thy immortality,

What change can reach the wealth I hold?

What chance can mar the pearl and gold

Thy love hath left in trust with me?

And while in late life’s late afternoon,

Where cool and long the shadows grow,

I walk to meet the night that soon

Shall shape and shadow overflow,

I cannot feel that thou art far,

Since near at need the angels are;

And when the sunset gates unbar,

Shall I not see thee waiting stand,

And, white against the evening star,

The welcome of thy beckoning hand?

Brisk wielder of the birch and rule,

The master of the local school

Held at the fire his favored place,

Its warm glow lit a laughing face

Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce appeared

The uncertain prophecy of beard.

He teased the mitten-blinded cat,

Played cross-pins on my uncle’s hat,

Sang songs, and told us what befalls

In classic Dartmouth’s college halls.

Born the wild Northern hills among,

From whence his yeoman father wrung

By patient toil subsistence scant,

Not competence and yet not want,

He early gained the power to pay

His cheerful, self-reliant way;

Could doff at ease his scholar’s gown

To peddle wares from town to town;

Or through the long vacation’s reach

In lonely lowland districts teach,

Where all the droll experience found

At stranger hearths in boarding round,

The moonlit skater’s keen delight,

The sleigh-drive through the frosty night,

The rustic party, with its rough

Accompaniment of blind-man’s-buff,

And whirling-plate, and forfeits paid,

His winter task a pastime made.

Happy the snow-locked homes wherein

He tuned his merry violin,

Or played the athlete in the barn,

Or held the good dame’s winding-yarn,

Or mirth-provoking versions told

Of classic legends rare and old,

Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome

Had all the commonplace of home,

And little seemed at best the odds

'Twixt Yankee pedlers and old gods;

Where Pindus-born Arachthus took

The guise of any grist-mill brok,

And dread Olympus at his will

Became a huckleberry hill.

A careless boy that night he seemed;

But at his desk he had the look

And air of one who wisely schemed,

And hostage from the future took

In trainëd thought and lore of book.

Large-brained, clear-eyed, of such as he

Shall Freedom’s young apostles be,

Who, following in War’s bloody trail,

Shall every lingering wrong assail;

All chains from limb and spirit strike,

Uplift the black and white alike;

Scatter before their swift advance

The darkness and the ignorance,

The pride, the lust, the squalid sloth,

Which nurtured Treason’s monstrous growth,

Made murder pastime, and the hell

Of prison-torture possible;

The cruel lie of caste refute,

Old forms remould, and substitute

For Slavery’s lash the freeman’s will,

For blind routine, wise-handed skill;

A school-house plant on every hill,

Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thence

The quick wires of intelligence;

Till North and South together brought

Shall own the same electric thought,

In peace a common flag salute,

And, side by side in labor’s free

And unresentful revalry,

Harvest the fields wherein they fought.

Another guest that winter night

Flashed back from lustrous eyes the light.

Unmarked by time, and yet not young,

The honeyed music of her tongue

And words of meekness scarcely told

A nature passionate and bold,

Strong, self-concentred, spurning guide,

Its milder features dwarded beside

Her unbent will’s majestic pride.

She sat among us, at the test,

A not unfeared, half-welcome guest,

Rebuking with her cultured phrase

Our homeliness of words and ways.

A certain pard-like, treacherous grace

Swayed the lithe limbs and dropped the lash,

Lent the white teeth their dazzling flash;

And under low brows, black with night,

Rayed out at times a dangerous light;

The sharp heat-lightnings of her face

Presaging ill to him whom Fate

Condemned to share her love or hate.

A woman tropical, intense

In thought and act, in soul and sense,

She blended in a like degree

The vixen and the devotee,

Revealing with each freak of feint

The temper of Petruchio’s Kate,

The raptures of Siena’s saint.

Her tapering hand and rounded wrist

Had facile power to form a fist;

The warm, dark languish of her eyes

Was never safe from wrath’s surprise.

Brows saintly calm and lips devout

Knew every change of scowl and pout;

And the sweet voice had notes more high

And shrill for social battle-cry.

Since then what old cathedral town

Has missed her pilgrim staff and gown,

What convent-gate has held its lock

Against the challenge of her knock!

Through Smyrna’s plague-hushed thoroughfares,

Up sea-set Malta’s rocky stair,

Gray olive slopes of hills that hem

Thy tombs and shrines, Jerusalem,

Or startling on her desert throne

The crazy Queen of Lebanon

With claims fantastic as her own,

Her tireless feet have held their way;

And still, unrestful. bowed, and gray,

She watches under Eastern skies,

With hope each day renewed and fresh,

The Lord’s quick coming in the flesh,

Whereof she dreams and prophecies!

Where’er her troubled path may be,

The Lord’s sweet pity with her go!

The outward wayward life we see,

The hidden springs we may not know.

Nor is it given us to discern

What threads the fatal sisters spun,

Through what ancestral years has run

The sorrow with the woman born,

What forged her cruel chain of moods,

What set her feet in solitudes,

And held the love within her mute,

What mingled madness in the blood

A life-long discord and annoy,

Water of tears with oil of joy,

And hid within the folded bud

Peversities of flower and fruit.

It is not ours to separate

The tangled skien of will and fate,

To show what metes and bounds should stand

Upon the soul’s debatable land,

And between choice and Providence

Divide the circle of events;

But He who knows our frame is just,

Merciful and compassionate,

And full of sweet assurances

And hope for all the language is,

That He remembereth we are dust!

At last the great logs, crumbling low,

Sent out a dull and duller glow,

The bull’s-eye watch that hung in view,

Ticking its weary circuit through,

Pointed with mutely warning sign

Its black hand to the hour of nine.

That sign the pleasant circle. broke:

My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke,

Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray

And laid it tenderly away;

Then roused himself to safely cover

The dull red brands with ashes over,

And while, with care, our mother laid

The work aside, her steps she stayed

One moment, seeking to express

Her grateful sense of happiness

For food and shelter, warmth and health,

And love’s contentment more than wealth,

With simple wishes (not the weak,

Vain prayers which no fulfilment seek,

But such as warm the generous heart,

O’er-prompt to do with Heaven its part)

That none might lack, that bitter night,

For bread and clothing, warmth and light.

Within our beds awhile we heard

The wind that round the gables roared,

With now and then a ruder shock,

Which made our very bedsteads rock.

We heard the loosened clapboards tost,

The board-nails snapping in the frost;

And on us, through the unplastered wall,

Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall.

But sleep stole on, as sleep will do

When hearts are light and life is new;

Faint and more faint the murmurs grew,

Till in the summer-land of dreams

They softened to the sound of streams,

Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars,

And lapsing waves on quiet shores.

Next morn we wakened with the shout

Of merry voices high and clear;

And saw the teamsters drawing near

To break the drifted highways out.

Down the long hillside treading slow

We saw the half-buried oxen go,

Shaking the snow from heads uptost,

Their straining nostrils white with frost.

Before our door the stragglins train

Drew up, an added team to gain.

The elders threshed their hands a-cold,

Passed, with the cider-mug, their jokes

From lip to lip; the younger folks

Down the loose snow-banks, wrestling rolled,

Then toiled again the cavalcade

O’er windy hill, through clogged ravine,

And woodland paths that wound between

Low drooping pine-boughs winter-weighed.

From every barn a team afoot,

At every house a new recruit,

Where, drawn by Nature’s subtlest law,

Haply the watchful young men saw

Sweet doorway pictures of the curls

And curious eyes of merry girls,

Lifting their hands in mock defence

Against the snow-ball’s compliments,

And reading in each missive tost

The charm with Eden never lost.

We heard once more the sleigh-bells’ sound;

And, following where the teamsters led,

The wise old Doctor went his round,

Just pausing at our door to say,

In the brief autocratic way

Of one who, prompt at Duty’s call

Was free to urge her claim on all,

That some poor neighbor sick abed

At night our mother’s aid would need.

For, one in generous thought and deed

What mattered in the sufferer’s sight

The Quaker matron’s inward light,

The Doctor’s mail of Calvin’s creed?

All hearts confess the saints elect

Who, twain in faith, in love agree,

And melt not in an acid sect

The Christian pearl of charity!

So days went on: a week had passed

Since the great world was heard from last.

The Almanac we studied o’er,

Read and reread our little store

Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score;

One harmless novel, mostly hid

From younger eyes, a book forbid,

And poetry (or good or bad,

A single book was all we had),

Where Ellwood’s meek, drab-skirted Muse,

A stranger to the heathen Nine,

Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine,

The wars of David and the Jews.

At last the flourndering carrier bore

The village paper to our door.

Lo! broadening outward as we read,

To warmer zones the horizon spread;

In panoramic length unrolled

We saw the marvels that it told.

Before us passed the painted Creeks,

And daft McGregor on his raids

In Costa Rica’s everglades.

And up Taygetos winding slow

Rode Ypsilanti’s Mainote Greeks,

A Turk’s head at each saddle-bow!

Welcome to us its week-old news,

Its corner for the rustic Muse

Its monthly gauge of snow and rain,

Its record, mingling in a breath

The wedding bell and dirge of death:

Jest, anecdote, and love-lorn tale,

The latest culprit sent to jail;

Its hue and cry of stolen and lost,

Its vendue sales and goods at cost,

And traffic calling loud for gain.

We felt the stir of hall and street,

The pulse of life that round us beat;

The chill embargo of the snow

Was melted in the genial glow;

Wide swung again our ice-locked door,

And all the world was ours once more!

Clasp, Angel of the backword look

And folded wings of ashen gray

And voice of echoes far away,

The brazen covers of thy book;

The weird palimpsest old and vast,

Wherein thou hid’st the spectral past;

Where, closely mingling, pale and glow

The characters of joy and woe;

The monographs of outlived years,

Or smile-illumed or dim with tears,

Green hills of life that slope to death,

And haunts of home, whose vistaed trees

Shade off to mournful cypresses,

With the white amaranths underneath.

Even while I look, I can but heed

The restless sands’ incessant fall,

Importunate hours that hours succeed

Each clamorous with its own sharp need,

And duty keeping pace with all.

Shut down and clasp with heavy lids;

I hear again the voice that bids

The dreamer leave his dream midway

For larger hopes and graver fears:

Life greatens in these later years,

The century’s aloe flowers to-day!

Yet, haply, in some lull of life,

Some Truce of God which breaks its strife,

The wordling’s eyes shall gather dew,

Dreaming in throngful city ways

Of winter joys his boyhood knew;

And dear and early friends—the few

Who yet remain—shall pause to view

These Flemish pictures of old days;

Sit with me by the homestead hearth

And stretch the hands of memory forth

To warm them at the wood-fire’s blaze!

And thanks untraced to lips unknown

Shall greet me like the odors blown

From unseen meadows newly mown,

Or lilies floating in some pond,

Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond;

The traveller owns the grateful sense

Of sweetness near, he knows not whence,

And, pausing takes with forehead bare

The benediction of the air.

Notes

↑1 On March 7, 1850, New Hampshire senator Daniel Webster gave a noted speech in which he supported the political settlement known as the Missouri Compromise, by which new slave states could enter the Union. Whittier had been a supporter of Webster since the early 1830’s and was thunderstruck by his move, as were many abolitionists. In the National Anti-Slavery Standard, James Russell Lowell demanded rhetorically “Shall not the Recording Angel write Ichabod (inglorious one) after the name of this man in the great book of Doom?” Whittier adopted the biblical name as the title for his political denunciation of Webster.

↑2 In a publication of L. F. Tasistro—Random Shots and Southern Breezes—is a description of a slave auction at New Orleans, at which the auctioneer recommended the woman on the stand as “A good Christian!” It was not uncommon to see advertisements of slaves for sale, in which they were described as pious or as members of the church. In one advertisement a slave was noted as “a Baptist preacher.”