John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.
Appendix I. Early and Uncollected VersesMogg Megone
Unmoving and tall in the light of the sky,
Where the spray of the cataract sparkles on high,
Lonely and sternly, save Mogg Megone?
Close to the verge of the rock is he,
While beneath him the Saco its work is doing,
Hurrying down to its grave, the sea,
And slow through the rock its pathway hewing!
Far down, through the mist of the falling river,
Which rises up like an incense ever,
The splintered points of the crags are seen,
With water howling and vexed between,
While the scooping whirl of the pool beneath
Seems an open throat, with its granite teeth!
Wherever his eye or his foot was set.
He is watchful: each form in the moonlight dim,
Of rock or of tree, is seen of him:
He listens; each sound from afar is caught,
The faintest shiver of leaf and limb:
But he sees not the waters, which foam and fret,
Whose moonlit spray has his moccasin wet,—
And the roar of their rushing, he hears it not.
Of the gnarl’d beech, whose naked root
Coils like a serpent at his foot,
Falls, checkered, on the Indian’s brow.
His head is bare, save only where
Waves in the wind one lock of hair,
Reserved for him, whoe’er he be,
More mighty than Megone in strife,
When breast to breast and knee to knee,
Above the fallen warrior’s life
Gleams, quick and keen, the scalping-knife.
And his gaudy and tasselled blanket on:
His knife hath a handle with gold inlaid,
And magic words on its polished blade,—
’T was the gift of Castine to Mogg Megone,
For a scalp or twain from the Yengees torn:
His gun was the gift of the Tarrantine,
And Modocawando’s wives had strung
The brass and the beads, which tinkle and shine
On the polished breach, and broad bright line
Of beaded wampum around it hung.
Grey Jocelyn’s eye is never sleeping,
And the garrison lights are burning clear,
Where Phillips’ men their watch are keeping.
Let him hie him away through the dank river fog,
Never rustling the boughs nor displacing the rocks,
For the eyes and the ears which are watching for Mogg
Are keener than those of the wolf or the fox.
Another,—the click of his gun is heard!
A footstep,—is it the step of Cleaves,
With Indian blood on his English sword?
Steals Harmon down from the sands of York,
With hand of iron and foot of cork?
Has Scamman, versed in Indian wile,
For vengeance left his vine-hung isle?
Hark! at that whistle, soft and low,
How lights the eye of Mogg Megone!
A smile gleams o’er his dusky brow,—
“Boon welcome, Johnny Boniton!”
And quick, keen glances to and fro,
The hunted outlaw, Boniton!
A low, lean, swarthy man is he,
With blanket-garb and buskined knee,
And naught of English fashion on;
For he hates the race from whence he sprung,
And he couches his words in the Indian tongue.
The water-rat shall hear him speak,—
The owl shall whoop in the white man’s ear,
That Mogg Megone, with his scalps, is here!”
He pauses,—dark, over cheek and brow,
A flush, as of shame, is stealing now:
“Sachem!” he says, “let me have the land,
Which stretches away upon either hand,
As far about as my feet can stray
In the half of a gentle summer’s day,
From the leaping brook to the Saco river,—
And the fair-haired girl, thou hast sought of me,
Shall sit in the Sachem’s wigwam, and be
The wife of Mogg Megone forever.”
A moment’s trace of powerful feeling,
Of love or triumph, or both perchance,
Over his proud, calm features stealing.
“The words of my father are very good;
He shall have the land, and water, and wood;
And he who harms the Sagamore John,
Shall feel the knife of Mogg Megone;
But the fawn of the Yengees shall sleep on my breast,
And the bird of the clearing shall sing in my nest.”
Falls gently on the white man’s arm,
And with a smile as shrewdly bland
As the deep voice is slow and calm,—
“Where is my father’s singing-bird,—
The sunny eye, and sunset hair?
I know I have my father’s word,
And that his word is good and fair;
But will my father tell me where
Megone shall go and look for his bride?—
For he sees her not by her father’s side.”
Flashes over the features of Mogg Megone,
In one of those glances which search within;
But the stolid calm of the Indian alone
Remains where the trace of emotion has been.
“Does the Sachem doubt? Let him go with me,
And the eyes of the Sachem his bride shall see.”
And watchful eyes and whispers soft,
The twain are stealing through the wood,
Leaving the downward-rushing flood,
Whose deep and solemn roar behind
Grows fainter on the evening wind.
Of the wolf, the hills among?—
Or the hooting of the owl,
On his leafy cradle swung?—
Quickly glancing, to and fro,
Listening to each sound they go
Round the columns of the pine,
Indistinct, in shadow, seeming
Like some old and pillared shrine;
With the soft and white moonshine,
Round the foliage-tracery shed
Of each column’s branching head,
For its lamps of worship gleaming!
And the sounds awakened there,
In the pine-leaves fine and small,
Soft and sweetly musical,
By the fingers of the air,
For the anthem’s dying fall
Lingering round some temple’s wall!
Niche and cornice round and round
Wailing like the ghost of sound!
Is not Nature’s worship thus,
Ceaseless ever, going on?
Hath it not a voice for us
In the thunder, or the tone
Of the leaf-harp faint and small,
Speaking to the unsealed ear
Words of blended love and fear,
Of the mighty Soul of all?
As they wound along through the crowded trees,
Where never had rung the axeman’s stroke
On the gnarlëd trunk of the rough-barked oak;—
Climbing the dead tree’s mossy log,
Breaking the mesh of the bramble fine,
Turning aside the wild grapevine,
And lightly crossing the quaking bog
Whose surface shakes at the leap of the frog,
And out of whose pools the ghostly fog
Creeps into the chill moonshine!
The preaching of the Holy Word:
Sanchekantacket’s isle of sand
Was once his father’s hunting land,
Where zealous Hiacoomes stood,—
The wild apostle of the wood,
Shook from his soul the fear of harm,
And trampled on the Powwaw’s charm;
Until the wizard’s curses hung
Suspended on his palsying tongue,
And the fierce warrior, grim and tall,
Trembled before the forest Paul!
Red through its seams a light is glowing,
On rock and bough and tree-trunk rude,
A narrow lustre throwing.
“Who ’s there?” a clear, firm voice demands;
“Hold, Ruth,—’t is I, the Sagamore!”
Quick, at the summons, hasty hands
Unclose the bolted door;
And on the outlaw’s daughter shine
The flashes of the kindled pine.
Like some young priestess of the wood,
The freeborn child of Solitude,
And bearing still the wild and rude,
Yet noble trace of Nature’s hands.
Her dark brown cheek has caught its stain
More from the sunshine than the rain;
Yet, where her long fair hair is parting,
A pure white brow into light is starting;
And, where the folds of her blanket sever,
Are neck and a bosom as white as ever
The foam-wreaths rise on the leaping river.
But in the convulsive quiver and grip
Of the muscles around her bloodless lip,
There is something painful and sad to see;
And her eye has a glance more sternly wild
Than even that of a forest child
In its fearless and untamed freedom should be.
Yet, seldom in hall or court are seen
So queenly a form and so noble a mien,
As freely and smiling she welcomes them there,—
Her outlawed sire and Mogg Megone:
“Pray, father, how does thy hunting fare?
And, Sachem, say,—does Scamman wear,
In spite of thy promise, a scalp of his own?”
Hurried and light is the maiden’s tone;
But a fearful meaning lurks within
Her glance, as it questions the eye of Megone,—
An awful meaning of guilt and sin!—
The Indian hath opened his blanket, and there
Hangs a human scalp by its long damp hair!
With hand upraised, with quick-drawn breath,
She meets that ghastly sign of death.
In one long, glassy, spectral stare
The enlarging eye is fastened there,
As if that mesh of pale brown hair
Had power to change at sight alone,
Even as the fearful locks which wound
Medusa’s fatal forehead round,
The gazer into stone.
With such a look Herodias read
The features of the bleeding head,
So looked the mad Moor on his dead,
Or the young Cenci as she stood,
O’er-dabbled with a father’s blood!
It moves that marble countenance,
As if at once within her strove
Pity with shame, and hate with love.
The Past recalls its joy and pain,
Old memories rise before her brain,—
The lips which love’s embraces met,
The hand her tears of parting wet,
The voice whose pleading tones beguiled
The pleased ear of the forest-child,—
And tears she may no more repress
Reveal her lingering tenderness.
More deep and dark than manhood may;
But when the mockery of Fate
Hath left Revenge its chosen way,
And the fell curse, which years have nursed.
Full on the spoiler’s head hath burst,—
When all her wrong, and shame, and pain,
Burns fiercely on his heart and brain,—
Still lingers something of the spell
Which bound her to the traitor’s bosom,—
Still, midst the vengeful fires of hell,
Some flowers of old affection blossom.
With a fierce expression of wrath and scorn,—
He hoarsely whispers, “Ruth, beware!
Is this the time to be playing the fool,—
Crying over a paltry lock of hair,
Like a love-sick girl at school?—
Curse on it!—an Indian can see and hear:
Away,—and prepare our evening cheer!”
Her tearful eye and her varying brow,—
With a serpent eye, which kindles and burns,
Like a fiery star in the upper air:
On sire and daughter his fierce glance turns:—
“Has my old white father a scalp to spare?
For his young one loves the pale brown hair
Of the scalp of an English dog far more
Than Mogg Megone, or his wigwam floor;
Go,—Mogg is wise: he will keep his land,—
And Sagamore John, when he feels with his hand,
Shall miss his scalp where it grew before.”
The lip is clenched,—the tears are still,—
God pity thee, Ruth Boniton!
With what a strength of will
Are nature’s feelings in thy breast,
As with an iron hand, repressed!
And how, upon that nameless woe,
Quick as the pulse can come and go,
While shakes the unsteadfast knee, and yet
The bosom heaves,—the eye is wet,—
Has thy dark spirit power to stay
The heart’s wild current on its way?
And whence that baleful strength of guile,
Which over that still working brow
And tearful eye and cheek can throw
The mockery of a smile?
Warned by her father’s blackening frown,
With one strong effort crushing down
Grief, hate, remorse, she meets again
The savage murderer’s sullen gaze,
And scarcely look or tone betrays
How the heart strives beneath its chain.
Because she cries with an ache in her tooth,
Which would make a Sagamore jump and cry,
And look about with a woman’s eye?
No,—Ruth will sit in the Sachem’s door
And braid the mats for his wigwam floor,
And broil his fish and tender fawn,
And weave his wampum, and grind his corn,—
For she loves the brave and the wise, and none
Are braver and wiser than Mogg Megone!”
With grave, calm face, and half-shut eye,
He sits upon the wigwam floor,
And watches Ruth go by,
Intent upon her household care;
And ever and anon, the while,
Or on the maiden, or her fare,
Which smokes in grateful promise there,
Bestows his quiet smile.
But those which love’s own fancies dress,—
The sum of Indian happiness!—
A wigwam, where the warm sunshine
Looks in among the groves of pine,—
A stream, where, round thy light canoe,
The trout and salmon dart in view,
And the fair girl, before thee now,
Spreading thy mat with hand of snow,
Or plying, in the dews of morn,
Her hoe amidst thy patch of corn,
Or offering up, at eve, to thee,
Thy birchen dish of hominy!
Venison and succotash have gone,—
For long these dwellers of the wood
Have felt the gnawing want of food.
But untasted of Ruth is the frugal cheer,—
With head averted, yet ready ear,
She stands by the side of her austere sire,
Feeding, at times, the unequal fire
With the yellow knots of the pitch-pine tree,
Whose flaring light, as they kindle, falls
On the cottage-roof, and its black log walls,
And over its inmates three.
The fire-water burns at the lip of Megone:
“Will the Sachem hear what his father shall ask?
Will he make his mark, that it may be known,
On the speaking-leaf, that he gives the land,
From the Sachem’s own, to his father’s hand?”
The fire-water shines in the Indian’s eyes,
As he rises, the white man’s bidding to do:
“Wuttamuttata—weekan! Mogg is wise,—
For the water he drinks is strong and new,—
Mogg’s heart is great!—will he shut his hand,
When his father asks for a little land?”—
With unsteady fingers, the Indian has drawn
On the parchment the shape of a hunter’s bow,
“Boon water,—boon water,—Sagamore John!
Wuttamuttata,—weekan! our hearts will grow!”
He drinks yet deeper,—he mutters low,—
He reels on his bear-skin to and fro,—
His head falls down on his naked breast,—
He struggles, and sinks to a drunken rest.
Is darker than ever with evil thought—
“The fool has signed his warrant; but how
And when shall the deed be wrought?
Speak, Ruth! why, what the devil is there,
To fix thy gaze in that empty air?—
Speak, Ruth! by my soul, if I thought that tear,
Which shames thyself and our purpose here,
Were shed for that cursed and pale-faced dog,
Whose green scalp hangs from the belt of Mogg,
And whose beastly soul is in Satan’s keeping,—
This—this!”—he dashes his hand upon
The rattling stock of his loaded gun,—
“Should send thee with him to do thy weeping!”
Sinks at that low, sepulchral tone,
Hollow and deep, as it were spoken
By the unmoving tongue of death,—
Or from some statue’s lips had broken,—
A sound without a breath!
“Father!—my life I value less
Than yonder fool his gaudy dress;
And how it ends it matters not,
By heart-break or by rifle-shot;
But spare awhile the scoff and threat,—
Our business is not finished yet.”
To draw up again the bow unbent.
Harm thee, my Ruth! I only sought
To frighten off thy gloomy thought;
Come,—let ’s be friends!” He seeks to clasp
His daughter’s cold, damp hand in his.
Ruth startles from her father’s grasp,
As if each nerve and muscle felt,
Instinctively, the touch of guilt,
Through all their subtle sympathies.
“What shall be done with yonder dog?
Scamman is dead, and revenge is thine,—
The deed is signed and the land is mine;
And this drunken fool is of use no more,
Save as thy hopeful bridegroom, and sooth,
’T were Christian mercy to finish him, Ruth,
Now, while he lies like a beast on our floor,—
If not for thine, at least for his sake,
Rather than let the poor dog awake
To drain my flask, and claim as his bride
Such a forest devil to run by his side,—
Such a Wetuomanit as thou wouldst make!”
The sleeping Indian is striving to rise,
With his knife in his hand, and glaring eyes!—
“Wagh!—Mogg will have the pale-face’s hair,
For his knife is sharp, and his fingers can help
The hair to pull and the skin to peel,—
Let him cry like a woman and twist like an eel,
The great Captain Scamman must lose his scalp!
And Ruth, when she sees it, shall dance with Mogg.”
His eyes are fixed,—but his lips draw in,—
With a low, hoarse chuckle, and fiendish grin,—
And he sinks again, like a senseless log.
But she gazes down on the murderer,
Whose broken and dreamful slumbers tell
Too much for her ear of that deed of hell.
She sees the knife, with its slaughter red,
And the dark fingers clenching the bearskin bed!
What thoughts of horror and madness whirl
Through the burning brain of that fallen girl!
Its muzzle is close to the Indian’s ear,—
But he drops it again. “Some one may be nigh,
And I would not that even the wolves should hear.”
He draws his knife from its deer-skin belt,—
Its edge with his fingers is slowly felt;—
Kneeling down on one knee, by the Indian’s side,
From his throat he opens the blanket wide;
And twice or thrice he feebly essays
A trembling hand with the knife to raise.
My life from a cold and wintry grave,
When the storm came down from Agioochook,
And the north-wind howled, and the tree-tops shook,—
And I strove, in the drifts of the rushing snow,
Till my knees grew weak and I could not go,
And I felt the cold to my vitals creep,
And my heart’s blood stiffen, and pulses sleep!
I cannot strike him—Ruth Boniton!
In the Devil’s name, tell me—what ’s to be done?”
Is stricken down from Virtue’s sky,
As, with the downcast star of morn,
Some gems of light are with it drawn,
And, through its night of darkness, play
Some tokens of its primal day,
Some lofty feelings linger still,—
The strength to dare, the nerve to meet
Whatever threatens with defeat
Its all-indomitable will!—
But lacks the mean of mind and heart,
Though eager for the gains of crime,
Or, at his chosen place and time,
The strength to bear his evil part;
And, shielded by his very Vice,
Escapes from Crime by Cowardice.
And lips drawn tight across her teeth,
Showing their locked embrace beneath,
In the red firelight: “Mogg must die!
Give me the knife!” The outlaw turns,
Shuddering in heart and limb away,—
But, fitfully there, the hearth-fire burns,
And he sees on the wall strange shadows play.
A lifted arm, a tremulous blade,
Are dimly pictured in light and shade,
Plunging down in the darkness. Hark, that cry
Again—and again—he sees it fall,
That shadowy arm down the lighted wall!
He hears quick footsteps—a shape flits by—
The door on its rusted hinges creaks:—
“Ruth—daughter Ruth!” the outlaw shrieks.
But no sound comes back,—he is standing alone
By the mangled corse of Mogg Megone!
On tree and wigwam, wave and rock.
Bathed in the autumnal sunshine, stirred
At intervals by breeze and bird,
And wearing all the hues which glow
In heaven’s own pure and perfect bow,
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
Rests, gladdened, on the calm blue sky,—
Slumbers the mighty wilderness!
The oak, upon the windy hill,
Its dark green burthen upward heaves—
The hemlock broods above its rill,
Its cone-like foliage darker still,
Against the birch’s graceful stem,
And the rough walnut-bough receives
The sun upon its crowded leaves,
Each colored like a topaz gem;
And the tall maple wears with them
The coronal, which autumn gives,
The brief, bright sign of ruin near,
The hectic of a dying year!
On the Bald Mountain’s shrubless brow,
The gray and thunder-smitten pile
Which marks afar the Desert Isle,
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 torchlight 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
Unto a brighter world than this:
A mortal’s glimpse beyond the pale,—
A moment’s lifting of the veil!
Penobscot’s clustered wigwams lay;
And gently from that Indian town
The verdant hillside slopes adown,
To where the sparkling waters play
Upon the yellow sands below;
And shooting round the winding shores
Of narrow capes, and isles which lie
Slumbering to ocean’s lullaby,—
With birchen boat and glancing oars,
The red men to their fishing go;
While from their planting ground is borne
The treasure of the golden corn,
By laughing girls, whose dark eyes glow
Wild through the locks which o’er them flow,
The wrinkled squaw, whose toil is done,
Sits on her bear-skin in the sun,
Watching the huskers, with a smile
For each full ear which swells the pile;
And the old chief, who nevermore
May bend the bow or pull the oar,
Smokes gravely in his wigwam door,
Or slowly shapes, with axe of stone,
The arrow-head from flint and bone.
A thousand wooded islands lie,
Gems of the waters! with each hue
Of brightness set in ocean’s blue.
Each bears aloft its tuft of trees
Touched by the pencil of the frost,
And, with the motion of each breeze,
A moment seen, a moment lost,
Changing and blent, confused and tossed,
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,
On which the Father’s hut is seen,
The Indian stays his rocking skiff,
And peers the hemlock-boughs between,
Half trembling, as he seeks to look
Upon the Jesuit’s Cross and Book.
There, gloomily against the sky
The Dark Isles rear their summits high;
And Desert Rock, abrupt and bare,
Lifts its gray turrets in the air,
Seen from afar, like some stronghold
Built by the ocean kings of old;
And, faint as smoke-wreath white and thin,
Swells in the north vast Katahdin:
And, wandering from its marshy feet,
The broad Penobscot comes to meet
And mingle with his own bright bay.
Slow sweep his dark and gathering floods,
Arched over by the ancient woods,
Which Time, in those dim solitudes,
Wielding the dull axe of Decay,
Alone hath ever shorn away.
The beauty of thy azure tide,
And with their falling timbers block
Thy broken currents, Kennebec!
Gazes the white man on the wreck
Of the 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
Of bitterness and wrong.
The almost infant Norridgewock
Essays to lift the tomahawk;
And plucks his father’s knife away,
To mimic, in his frightful play,
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,
Starts, when he sees the hazels quiver
Along the margin of the river,
Looks up and down the rippling tide,
And grasps the firelock at his side.
For Bomazeen from Tacconock
Has sent his runners to Norridgewock,
With tidings that Moulton and Harmon of York
Far up the river have come:
They have left their boats, they have entered the wood,
And filled the depths of the solitude
With the sound of the ranger’s drum.
The flowing river, and bathe its feet;
The bare-washed rock, and the drooping grass,
And the creeping vine, as the waters pass,
A rude and unshapely chapel stands,
Built up in that wild by unskilled hands,
Yet the traveller knows it a place of prayer,
For the holy sign of the cross is there:
And should he chance at that place to be,
Of a Sabbath morn, or some hallowed day,
When prayers are made and masses are said,
Some for the living and some for the dead,
Well might that traveller start to see
The tall dark forms, that take their way
From the birch canoe, on the river-shore,
And the forest paths, to that chapel door;
And marvel to mark the naked knees
And the dusky foreheads bending there,
While, in coarse white vesture, over these
In blessing or in prayer,
Stretching abroad his thin pale hands,
Like a shrouded ghost, the Jesuit stands.
The Jesuit, silent and sad and pale,
Anxiously heeding some fearful tale,
Which a stranger is telling him.
That stranger’s garb is soiled and torn,
And wet with dew and loosely worn;
Her fair neglected hair falls down
O’er cheeks with wind and sunshine brown;
Yet still, in that disordered face,
The Jesuit’s cautious eye can trace
Those elements of former grace
Which, half effaced, seem scarcely less,
Even now, than perfect loveliness.
That scarce it meets the Jesuit’s ears,
While through her clasped fingers flow,
From the heart’s fountain, hot and slow,
Her penitential tears,—
She tells the story of the woe
And evil of her years.
Is sick and death-like, and my brain
Seems girdled with a fiery chain,
Whose scorching links will never part,
And never cool again.
Bear with me while I speak, but turn
Away that gentle eye, the while;
The fires of guilt more fiercely burn
Beneath its holy smile;
For half I fancy I can see
My mother’s sainted look in thee.
Mournfully sinking day by day,
And with a hold on life as frail
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.
There was a brightness not of mirth,
A light whose clear intensity
Was borrowed not of earth.
Along her cheek a deepening red
Told where the feverish hectic fed;
And yet, each fatal token gave
To the mild beauty of her face
A newer and a dearer grace,
Unwarning of the grave.
’T was like the hue which Autumn gives
To yonder changed and dying leaves,
Breathed over by his frosty breath;
Scarce can the gazer feel that this
Is but the spoiler’s treacherous kiss,
The mocking-smile of Death!
When summer’s eve was dear to us,
And, fading from the darkening dell,
The glory of the sunset fell
On wooded Agamenticus,—
When, sitting by our cottage wall,
The murmur of the Saco’s fall,
And the south-wind’s expiring sighs,
Came, softly blending, on my ear,
With the low tones I loved to hear:
Tales of the pure, the good, the wise,
The holy men and maids of old,
In the all-sacred pages told;
Of Rachel, stooped at Haran’s fountains,
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!
Her step grew weaker in our hall,
And fainter, at each even-fall,
Her sad voice died away.
Yet on her thin, pale lip, the while,
Sat Resignation’s holy smile:
And even my father checked his tread,
And hushed his voice, beside her bed:
Beneath the calm and sad rebuke
Of her meek eye’s imploring look,
The scowl of hate his brow forsook,
And in his stern and gloomy eye,
At times, a few unwonted tears
Wet the dark lashes, which for years
Hatred and pride had kept so dry.
As if an angel’s hand had smoothed
The still, white features into rest,
Silent and cold, without a breath
To stir the drapery on her breast,
Pain, with its keen and poisoned fang,
The horror of the mortal pang,
The suffering look her brow had worn,
The fear, the strife, the anguish gone,—
She slept at last in death!
Walk on the earth, and look on us,
And lay upon the living’s head
Their blessing or their curse?
For, oh, last night she stood by me,
As I lay beneath the woodland tree!”
“Jesu! what was it my daughter saw?”
The dried leaves did not feel her tread;
She stood by me in the wan moonlight,
In the white robes of the dead!
Pale, and very mournfully
She bent her light form over me.
I heard no sound, I felt no breath
Breathe o’er me from that face of death:
Its blue eyes rested on my own,
Rayless and cold as eyes of stone;
Yet, in their fixed, unchanging gaze,
Something, which spoke of early days,—
A sadness in their quiet glare,
As if love’s smile were frozen there,—
Came o’er me with an icy thrill;
O God! I feel its presence still!”
“How passed the vision, daughter mine?”
As a wreath of mist will twist and twine,
And scatter, and melt into the light;
So scattering, melting on my sight,
The pale, cold vision passed;
But those sad eyes were fixed on mine
Mournfully to the last.”
That spirit passed before thine eye!”
That deeds of mine have summoned her
From the unbreathing sepulchre,
To leave her last rebuke with me.
Ah, woe for me! my mother died
Just at the moment when I stood
Close on the verge of womanhood,
A child in everything beside;
And when my wild heart needed most
Her gentle counsels, they were lost.
Of frequent change and daily strife;
And—God forgive him! left his child
To feel, like him, a freedom wild;
To love the red man’s dwelling-place,
The birch boat on his shaded floods,
The wild excitement of the chase
Sweeping the ancient woods,
The camp-fire, blazing on the shore
Of the still lakes, the clear stream where
The idle fisher sets his weir,
Or angles in the shade, far more
Than that restraining awe I felt
Beneath my gentle mother’s care,
When nightly at her knee I knelt,
With childhood’s simple prayer.
Of unchecked freedom passed.
Amid the ancient solitude
Of unshorn grass and waving wood
And waters glancing bright and fast,
A softened voice was in my ear,
Sweet as those lulling sounds and fine
The hunter lifts his head to hear,
Now far and faint, now full and near—
The murmur of the wind-swept pine.
A manly form was ever nigh,
A bold, free hunter, with an eye
Whose dark, keen glance had power to wake
Both fear and love, to awe and charm;
’T was as the wizard rattlesnake,
Whose evil glances lure to harm—
Whose cold and small and glittering eye,
And brilliant coil, and changing dye,
Draw, step by step, the gazer near,
With drooping wing and cry of fear,
Yet powerless all to turn away,
A conscious, but a willing prey!
Merged in one feeling deep and strong.
Faded the world which I had known,
A poor vain shadow, cold and waste;
In the warm present bliss alone
Seemed I of actual life to taste.
Fond longings dimly understood,
The glow of passion’s quickening blood,
And cherished fantasies which press
The young lip with a dream’s caress;
The heart’s forecast and prophecy
Took form and life before my eye,
Seen in the glance which met my own,
Heard in the soft and pleading tone,
Felt in the arms around me cast,
And warm heart-pulses beating fast.
Ah! scarcely yet to God above
With deeper trust, with stronger love,
Has prayerful saint his meek heart lent,
Or cloistered nun at twilight bent,
Than I, before a human shrine,
As mortal and as frail as mine,
With heart, and soul, and mind, and form,
Knelt madly to a fellow-worm.
An awful light came bursting in.
The shrine was cold at which I knelt,
The idol of that shrine was gone;
A humbled thing of shame and guilt,
Outcast, and spurned and lone,
Wrapt in the shadows of my crime,
With withering heart and burning brain,
And tears that fell like fiery rain,
I passed a fearful time.
In heart and soul it wrought a change;
My father’s voice was in my ear;
It whispered of revenge!
A new and fiercer feeling swept
All lingering tenderness away;
And tiger passions, which had slept
In childhood’s better day,
Unknown, unfelt, arose at length
In all their own demoniac strength.
By words deceived, by smiles beguiled,
Of crime the cheated instrument,
Upon our fatal errands went.
Through camp and town and wilderness
He tracked his victim; and, at last,
Just when the tide of hate had passed,
And milder thoughts came warm and fast,
Exulting, at my feet he cast
The bloody token of success.
I saw the buried past uprise,
And gather, in a single hour,
Its ghost-like memories!
And then I felt, alas! too late,
That underneath the mask of hate,
That shame and guilt and wrong had thrown
O’er feelings which they might not own,
The heart’s wild love had known no change;
And still that deep and hidden love,
With its first fondness, wept above
The victim of its own revenge!
There lay the fearful scalp, and there
The blood was on its pale brown hair!
I thought not of the victim’s scorn,
I thought not of his baleful guile,
My deadly wrong, my outcast name,
The characters of sin and shame
On heart and forehead drawn;
I only saw that victim’s smile,
The still, green places where we met,—
The moonlit branches, dewy wet;
I only felt, I only heard
The greeting and the parting word,—
The smile, the embrace, the tone, which made
An Eden of the forest shade.
With what a deadly hate, and deep,
I saw that Indian murderer lie
Before me, in his drunken sleep!
What though for me the deed was done,
And words of mine had sped him on!
Yet when he murmured, as he slept,
The horrors of that deed of blood,
The tide of utter madness swept
O’er brain and bosom, like a flood.
And, father, with this hand of mine”—
“Ha! what didst thou?” the Jesuit cries,
Shuddering, as smitten with sudden pain,
And shading, with one thin hand, his eyes,
With the other he makes the holy sign.
“—I smote him as I would a worm;
With heart as steeled, with nerves as firm:
He never woke again!”
Speak, I would know that victim’s name.”
As Saco’s Sachem,—Mogg Megone!”
What keen desires, what cherished schemes,
What hopes, that time may not recall,
Are darkened by that chieftain’s fall!
Was he not pledged, by cross and vow,
To lift the hatchet of his sire,
And, round his own, the Church’s foe,
To light the avenging fire?
Who now the Tarrantine shall wake,
For thine and for the Church’s sake?
Who summon to the scene
Of conquest and unsparing strife,
And vengeance dearer than his life,
The fiery-souled Castine?
Three backward steps the Jesuit takes,
His long, thin frame as ague shakes;
And loathing hate is in his eye,
As from his lips these words of fear
Fall hoarsely on the maiden’s ear,—
“The soul that sinneth shall surely die!”
Checked midway in the fearful chase,
When bursts, upon his eye and ear,
The gaunt, gray robber, baying near,
Between him and his hiding-place;
While still behind, with yell and blow,
Sweeps, like a storm, the coming foe.
“Save me, O holy man!” her cry
Fills all the void, as if a tongue,
Unseen, from rib and rafter hung,
Thrilling with mortal agony;
Her hands are clasping the Jesuit’s knee,
And her eye looks fearfully into his own;—
“Off, woman of sin! nay, touch not me
With those fingers of blood; begone!”
With a gesture of horror, he spurns the form
That writhes at his feet like a trodden worm.
Guilty in the sight of Heaven,
With a keener woe be riven,
For its weak and sinful trust
In the strength of human dust;
And its anguish thrill afresh,
For each vain reliance given
To the failing arm of flesh.
On thy throbbing brow of pain,
Baffled in thy life-long quest,
Overworn with toiling vain,
How ill thy troubled musings fit
The holy quiet of a breast
With the Dove of Peace at rest,
Sweetly brooding over it.
Thoughts are thine which have no part
With the meek and pure of heart,
Undisturbed by outward things,
Resting in the heavenly shade,
By the overspreading wings
Of the Blessed Spirit made.
Thoughts of strife and hate and wrong
Sweep thy heated brain along,
Fading hopes for whose success
It were sin to breathe a prayer;—
Schemes which Heaven may never bless,—
Fears which darken to despair.
Hoary priest! thy dream is done
Of a hundred red tribes won
To the pale of Holy Church;
And the heretic o’erthrown,
And his name no longer known,
And thy weary brethren turning,
Joyful from their years of mourning
’Twixt the altar and the porch.
Hark! what sudden sound is heard
In the wood and in the sky,
Shriller than the scream of bird,
Than the trumpet’s clang more high!
Every wolf-cave of the hills,
Forest arch and mountain gorge,
Rock and dell, and river verge,
With an answering echo thrills.
Well does the Jesuit know that cry,
Which summons the Norridgewock to die,
And tells that the foe of his flock is nigh.
He listens, and hears the rangers come,
With loud hurrah, and jar of drum,
And hurrying feet (for the chase is hot),
And the short, sharp sound of rifle shot,
And taunt and menace,—answered well
By the Indians’ mocking cry and yell,—
The bark of dogs,—the squaw’s mad scream,
The dash of paddles along the stream,
The whistle of shot as it cuts the leaves
Of the maples around the church’s eaves,
And the gride of hatchets fiercely thrown,
On wigwam-log and tree and stone.
Black with the grime of paint and dust,
Spotted and streaked with human gore,
A grim and naked head is thrust
Within the chapel-door.
“Ha—Bomazeen! In God’s name say,
What mean these sounds of bloody fray?”
Silent, the Indian points his hand
To where across the echoing glen
Sweep Harmon’s dreaded ranger-band,
And Moulton with his men.
“Where are thy warriors, Bomazeen?
Where are De Rouville and Castine,
And where the braves of Sawga’s queen?”
“Let my father find the winter snow
Which the sun drank up long moons ago!
Under the falls of Tacconock,
The wolves are eating the Norridgewock;
Castine with his wives lies closely hid
Like a fox in the woods of Pemaquid!
On Sawga’s banks the man of war
Sits in his wigwam like a squaw;
Squando has fled, and Mogg Megone,
Struck by the knife of Sagamore John,
Lies stiff and stark and cold as a stone.”
Of a thousand thoughts, trace after trace,
Like swift cloud-shadows, each other chase.
One instant, his fingers grasp his knife,
For a last vain struggle for cherished life,—
The next, he hurls the blade away,
And kneels at his altar’s foot to pray;
Over his beads his fingers stray,
And he kisses the cross, and calls aloud
On the Virgin and her Son;
For terrible thoughts his memory crowd
Of evil seen and done,
Of scalps brought home by his savage flock
From Casco and Sawga and Sagadahock
In the Church’s service won.
As scowling on the priest he looks:
“Cowesass—cowesass—tawhich wessa seen?
Let my father look upon Bomazeen,—
My father’s heart is the heart of a squaw,
But mine is so hard that it does not thaw;
Let my father ask his God to make
A dance and a feast for a great sagamore,
When he paddles across the western lake,
With his dogs and his squaws to the spirit’s shore.
Cowesass—cowesass—tawhich wessa seen?
Let my father die like Bomazeen!”
And through each window in the walls,
Round the priest and warrior pours
The deadly shower of English balls.
Low on his cross the Jesuit falls;
While at his side the Norridgewock,
With failing breath, essays to mock
And menace yet the hated foe,
Shakes his scalp-trophies to and fro
Exultingly before their eyes,
Till, cleft and torn by shot and blow,
Defiant still, he dies.
Death to the Babylonish dog!
Down with the beast of Rome!”
With shouts like these, around the dead,
Unconscious on his bloody bed,
The rangers crowding come.
Brave men! the dead priest cannot hear
The unfeeling taunt,—the brutal jeer;
Spurn—for he sees ye not—in wrath,
The symbol of your Saviour’s death;
Tear from his death-grasp, in your zeal,
And trample, as a thing accursed,
The cross he cherished in the dust:
The dead man cannot feel!
With callous heart and hand of strife,
How like a fiend may man be made,
Plying the foul and monstrous trade
Whose harvest-field is human life,
Whose sickle is the reeking sword!
Quenching, with reckless hand in blood,
Sparks kindled by the breath of God;
Urging the deathless soul, unshriven,
Of open guilt or secret sin,
Before the bar of that pure Heaven
The holy only enter in!
Oh, by the widow’s sore distress,
The orphan’s wailing wretchedness,
By Virtue struggling in the accursed
Embraces of polluting Lust,
By the fell discord of the Pit,
And the pained souls that people it,
And by the blessed peace which fills
The Paradise of God forever,
Resting on all its holy hills,
And flowing with its crystal river,—
Let Christian hands no longer bear
In triumph on his crimson car
The foul and idol god of war;
No more the purple wreaths prepare
To bind amid his snaky hair;
Nor Christian bards his glories tell,
Nor Christian tongues his praises swell.
Glimpses on the soldiers’ sight
A thing of human shape I ween,
For a moment only seen,
With its loose hair backward streaming,
And its eyeballs madly gleaming,
Shrieking, like a soul in pain,
From the world of light and breath,
Hurrying to its place again,
Spectre-like it vanisheth!
Notes the way which thou hast gone.
That great Eye, which slumbers never,
Watching o’er a lost world ever,
Tracks thee over vale and mountain,
By the gushing forest-fountain,
Plucking from the vine its fruit,
Searching for the ground-nut’s root,
Peering in the she-wolf’s den,
Wading through the marshy fen,
Where the sluggish water-snake
Basks beside the sunny brake,
Coiling in his slimy bed,
Smooth and cold against thy tread;
Purposeless, thy mazy way
Threading through the lingering day.
And at night securely sleeping
Where the dogwood’s dews are weeping!
Still, though earth and man discard thee,
Doth thy Heavenly Father guard thee:
He who spared the guilty Cain,
Even when a brother’s blood,
Crying in the ear of God,
Gave the earth its primal stain;
He whose mercy ever liveth,
Who repenting guilt forgiveth,
And the broken heart receiveth;
Wanderer of the wilderness,
Haunted, guilty, crazed, and wild,
He regardeth thy distress,
And careth for His sinful child!
’T is springtime on the eastern hills!
Like torrents gush the summer rills;
Through winter’s moss and dry dead leaves
The bladed grass revives and lives,
Pushes the mouldering waste away,
For glimpses to the April day.
In kindly shower and sunshine bud
The branches of the dull gray wood;
Out from its sunned and sheltered nooks
The blue eye of the violet looks;
The southwest wind is warmly blowing,
And odors from the springing grass,
The pine-tree and the sassafras,
Are with it on its errands going.
Where rolls the Kennebec his flood;
The warriors of the wilderness,
Painted, and in their battle dress;
And with them one whose bearded cheek,
And white and wrinkled brow, bespeak
A wanderer from the shores of France.
A few long locks of scattering snow
Beneath a battered morion flow,
And from the rivets of the vest
Which girds in steel his ample breast,
The slanted sunbeams glance.
In the harsh outlines of his face
Passion and sin have left their trace;
Yet, save worn brow and thin gray hair,
No signs of weary age are there.
His step is firm, his eye is keen,
Nor years in broil and battle spent,
Nor toil, nor wounds, nor pain have bent
The lordly frame of old Castine.
Urges the hoary veteran on:
The fire of conquest and the mood
Of chivalry have gone.
A mournful task is his,—to lay
Within the earth the bones of those
Who perished in that fearful day,
When Norridgewock became the prey
Of all unsparing foes.
Sadly and still, dark thoughts between,
Of coming vengeance mused Castine,
Of the fallen chieftain Bomazeen,
Who bade for him the Norridgewocks
Dig up their buried tomahawks
For firm defence or swift attack;
And him whose friendship formed the tie
Which held the stern self-exile back
From lapsing into savagery;
Whose garb and tone and kindly glance
Recalled a younger, happier day,
And prompted memory’s fond essay,
To bridge the mighty waste which lay
Between his wild home and that gray,
Tall chateau of his native France,
Whose chapel bell, with far-heard din,
Ushered his birth-hour gayly in,
And counted with its solemn toll
The masses for his father’s soul.
Suddenly bursts the Indian yell;
For now on the very spot they stand
Where the Norridgewocks fighting fell.
No wigwam smoke is curling there;
The very earth is scorched and bare:
And they pause and listen to catch a sound
Of breathing life,—but there comes not one,
Save the fox’s bark and the rabbit’s bound;
But here and there, on the blackened ground,
White bones are glistening in the sun.
And where the house of prayer arose,
And the holy hymn, at daylight’s close,
And the aged priest stood up to bless
The children of the wilderness,
There is naught save ashes sodden and dank;
And the birchen boats of the Norridgewock,
Tethered to tree and stump and rock
Rotting along the river bank!
Leaning against that maple-tree?
The sun upon her face burns hot,
But the fixed eyelid moveth not;
The squirrel’s chirp is shrill and clear
From the dry bough above her ear;
Dashing from rock and root its spray,
Close at her feet the river rushes;
The blackbird’s wing against her brushes,
And sweetly through the hazel-bushes
The robin’s mellow music gushes;
God save her! will she sleep alway?
“Wake, daughter,—wake!” but she stirs no limb:
The eye that looks on him is fixed and dim;
And the sleep she is sleeping shall be no deeper,
Until the angel’s oath is said,
And the final blast of the trump goes forth
To the graves of the sea and the graves of earth.
Ruth Boniton is dead!