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Monadnock from Wachuset
I WOULD I were a painter, for the sake | |
| Of a sweet picture, and of her who led, | |
| A fitting guide, with reverential tread, | |
| Into that mountain mystery. First a lake | |
| Tinted with sunset; next the wavy lines | 5 |
| Of far receding hills; and yet more far | |
| Monadnock lifting from his night of pines | |
| His rosy forehead to the evening star. | |
| Beside us, purple-zoned, Wachusett laid | |
| His head against the West, whose warm light made | 10 |
| His aureole; and o’er him, sharp and clear, | |
| Like a shaft of lightning in mid-launching stayed, | |
| A single level cloud-line, shone upon | |
| By the fierce glances of the sunken sun, | |
| Menaced the darkness with its golden spear! | 15 |
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| So twilight deepened round us. Still and black | |
| The great woods climbed the mountain at our back; | |
| And on their skirts, where yet the lingering day | |
| On the shorn greenness of the clearing lay, | |
| The brown old farm-house like a bird’s-nest hung. | 20 |
| With home-life sounds the desert air was stirred: | |
| The bleat of sheep along the hill we heard, | |
| The bucket plashing in the cool, sweet well, | |
| The pasture-bars that clattered as they fell; | |
| Dogs barked, fowls fluttered, cattle lowed; the gate | 25 |
| Of the barnyard creaked beneath the merry weight | |
| Of sun-brown children, listening, while they swung, | |
| The welcome sound of supper-call to hear; | |
| And down the shadowy lane, in tinklings clear, | |
| The pastoral curfew of the cow-bell rung. | 30 |
| Thus soothed and pleased, our backward path we took, | |
| Praising the farmer’s home. He only spake, | |
| Looking into the sunset o’er the lake, | |
| Like one to whom the far-off is most near: | |
| “Yes, most folks think it has a pleasant look; | 35 |
| I love it for my good old mother’s sake, | |
| Who lived and died here in the peace of God!” | |
| The lesson of his words we pondered o’er, | |
| As silently we turned the eastern flank | |
| Of the mountain, where its shadow deepest sank, | 40 |
| Doubling the night along our rugged road: | |
| We felt that man was more than his abode,— | |
| The inward life than Nature’s raiment more; | |
| And the warm sky, the sundown-tinted hill, | |
| The forest and the lake, seemed dwarfed and dim | 45 |
| Before the saintly soul, whose human will | |
| Meekly in the Eternal footsteps trod, | |
| Making her homely toil and household ways | |
| An earthly echo of the song of praise | |
| Swelling from angel lips and harps of seraphim. | 50 |
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