| |
1697
(Excerpt)
UP and down the village streets | |
| Strange are the forms my fancy meets, | |
| For the thoughts and things of to-day are hid, | |
| And through the veil of a closéd lid | |
| The ancient worthies I see again: | 5 |
| I hear the tap of the elder’s cane, | |
| And his awful periwig I see, | |
| And the silver buckles of shoe and knee. | |
| Stately and slow, with thoughtful air, | |
| His black cap hiding his whitened hair, | 10 |
| Walks the Judge of the great Assize, | |
| Samuel Sewall the good and wise, | |
| His face with lines of firmness wrought, | |
| He wears the look of a man unbought, | |
| Who swears to his hurt and changes not; | 15 |
| Yet, touched and softened nevertheless | |
| With the grace of Christian gentleness, | |
| The face that a child would climb to kiss! | |
| True and tender and brave and just, | |
| That man might honor and woman trust. * * * * * | 20 |
| I see, far southward, this quiet day, | |
| The hills of Newbury rolling away, | |
| With the many tints of the season gay, | |
| Dreamily blending in autumn mist | |
| Crimson and gold and amethyst. | 25 |
| Long and low, with dwarf trees crowned, | |
| Plum Island lies, like a whale aground, | |
| A stone’s toss over the narrow sound. | |
| Inland, as far as the eye can go, | |
| The hills curve round like a bended bow; | 30 |
| A silver arrow from out them sprung, | |
| I see the shine of the Quasycung; | |
| And, round and round, over valley and hill, | |
| Old roads winding, as old roads will, | |
| Here to a ferry, and there to a mill; | 35 |
| And glimpses of chimneys and gabled eaves, | |
| Through green elm arches and maple leaves,— | |
| Old homesteads sacred to all that can | |
| Gladden or sadden the heart of man,— | |
| Over whose thresholds of oak and stone | 40 |
| Life and Death have come and gone! | |
| There pictured tiles in the fireplace show, | |
| Great beams sag from the ceiling low, | |
| The dresser glitters with polished wares, | |
| The long clock ticks on the foot-worn stairs, | 45 |
| And the low, broad chimney shows the crack | |
| By the earthquake made a century back. | |
| Up from their midst springs the village spire | |
| With the crest of its cock in the sun afire; | |
| Beyond are orchards and planting lands, | 50 |
| And great salt marshes and glimmering sands, | |
| And, where north and south the coast-lines run, | |
| The blink of the sea in breeze and sun! | |
| |
| I see it all like a chart unrolled, | |
| But my thoughts are full of the past and old; | 55 |
| I hear the tales of my boyhood told, | |
| And the shadows and shapes of early days | |
| Flit dimly by in the veiling haze, | |
| With measured movement and rhythmic chime | |
| Weaving like shuttles my web of rhyme. | 60 |
| I think of the old man wise and good | |
| Who once on yon misty hillsides stood, | |
| (A poet who never measured rhyme, | |
| A seer unknown to his dull-eared time,) | |
| And, propped on his staff of age, looked down, | 65 |
| With his boyhood’s love, on his native town, | |
| Where, written, as if on its hills and plains, | |
| His burden of prophecy yet remains, | |
| For the voices of wood and wave and wind | |
| To read in the ear of the musing mind:— | 70 |
| |
| “As long as Plum Island, to guard the coast | |
| As God appointed, shall keep its post; | |
| As long as a salmon shall haunt the deep | |
| Of Merrimac River, or sturgeon leap; | |
| As long as pickerel swift and slim, | 75 |
| Or red-backed perch, in Crane Pond swim; | |
| As long as the annual sea-fowl know | |
| Their time to come and their time to go; | |
| As long as cattle shall roam at will | |
| The green, grass meadows by Turkey Hill; | 80 |
| As long as sheep shall look from the side | |
| Of Oldtown Hill on marishes wide, | |
| And Parker River, and salt-sea tide; | |
| As long as a wandering pigeon shall search | |
| The fields below from his white-oak perch, | 85 |
| When the barley-harvest is ripe and shorn, | |
| And the dry husks fall from the standing corn; | |
| As long as Nature shall not grow old, | |
| Nor drop her work from her doting hold, | |
| And her care for the Indian corn forget, | 90 |
| And the yellow rows in pairs to set;— | |
| So long shall Christians here be born, | |
| Grow up and ripen as God’s sweet corn!— | |
| By the beak of bird, by the breath of frost, | |
| Shall never a holy ear be lost, | 95 |
| But, husked by Death in the Planter’s sight, | |
| Be sown again in the fields of light!” | |
| The Island still is purple with plums, | |
| Up the river the salmon comes, | |
| The sturgeon leaps, and the wild-fowl feeds | 100 |
| On hillside berries and marish seeds,— | |
| All the beautiful signs remain, | |
| From spring-time sowing to autumn rain | |
| The good man’s vision returns again! | |
| And let us hope, as well we can, | 105 |
| That the Silent Angel who garners man | |
| May find some grain as of old he found | |
| In the human cornfield ripe and sound, | |
| And the Lord of the Harvest deign to own | |
| The precious seed by the fathers sown! | 110 |
| |
