Dreams and Days | Page 6

shining hope, and praise:?These were the gifts I brought you.?In this world little stays:?I loved you once, but now--?I love you more than ever.
A child with glorious eyes?Here in our arms half sleeping--?So passion wakeful lies;?Then grows to manhood, keeping?Its wistful, young surprise:?I loved you once, but now--?I love you more than ever.
When age's pinching air?Strips summer's rich possession,?And leaves the branches bare,?My secret in confession?Still thus with you I'll share:?I loved you once, but now--?I love you more than ever.
II
THE BRIDE OF WAR
(ARNOLD'S MARCH TO CANADA, 1775)
I
The trumpet, with a giant sound,?Its harsh war-summons wildly sings;?And, bursting forth like mountain-springs,?Poured from the hillside camping-ground,?Each swift battalion shouting flings?Its force in line; where you may see?The men, broad-shouldered, heavily?Sway to the swing of the march; their heads?Dark like the stones in river-beds.
Lightly the autumn breezes?Play with the shining dust-cloud?Rising to the sunset rays?From feet of the moving column.?Soft, as you listen, comes?The echo of iterant drums,?Brought by the breezes light?From the files that follow the road.?A moment their guns have glowed?Sun-smitten: then out of sight?They suddenly sink,?Like men who touch a new grave's brink!
II
So it was the march began,?The march of Morgan's riflemen,?Who like iron held the van?In unhappy Arnold's plan?To win Wolfe's daring fame again.?With them, by her husband's side,?Jemima Warner, nobly free,?Moved more fair than when, a bride,?One year since, she strove to hide?The blush it was a joy to see.
III
O distant, terrible forests of Maine,?With huge trees numberless as the rain?That falls on your lonely lakes!?(It falls and sings through the years, but wakes?No answering echo of joy or pain.)
Your tangled wilderness was tracked?With struggle and sorrow and vengeful act?'Gainst Puritan, pagan, and priest.?Where wolf and panther and serpent ceased,?Man added the horrors your dark maze lacked.
The land was scarred with deeds not good,?Like the fretting of worms on withered wood.?What if its venomous spell?Breathed into Arnold a prompting of Hell,?With slow empoisoning force indued?
IV
As through that dreary realm he went,?Followed a shape of dark portent:--?Pard-like, of furtive eye, with brain?To treason narrowing, Aaron Burr,?Moved loyal-seeming in the train,?Led by the arch-conspirator.?And craven Enos closed the rear,?Whose honor's flame died out in fear.?Not sooner does the dry bough burn?And into fruitless ashes turn,?Than he with whispered, false command?Drew back the hundreds in his hand;?Fled like a shade; and all forsook.
Wherever Arnold bent his look,?Danger and doubt around him hung;?And pale Disaster, shrouded, flung?Black omens in his track, as though?The fingers of a future woe?Already clutched his life, to wring?Some expiation for the thing?That he was yet to do. A chill?Struck helpless many a steadfast will?Within the ranks; the very air?Rang with a thunder-toned despair:?The hills seemed wandering to and fro,?Like lost guides blinded by the snow.
V
Yet faithful still 'mid woe and doubt?One woman's loyal heart--whose pain?Filled it with pure celestial light--?Shone starry-constant like the North,?Or that still radiance beaming forth?From sacred lights in some lone fane.?But he whose ring Jemima wore,?By want and weariness all unstrung,?Though strong and honest of heart and young,?Shrank at the blast that pierced so frore--?Like a huge, invisible bird of prey?Furious launched from Labrador?And the granite cliffs of Saguenay!
Along the bleak Dead River's banks?They forced amain their frozen way;?But ever from the thinning ranks?Shapes of ice would reel and fall,?Human shapes, whose dying prayer?Floated, a mute white mist, in air;?The crowding snow their pall.
Spectre-like Famine drew near;?Her doom-word hummed in his ear:?Ah, weak were woman's hands to reach?And save him from the hellish charms?And wizard motion of those arms!?Yet only noble womanhood?The wife her dauntless part could teach:?She shared with him the last dry food?And thronged with hopefulness her speech,?As when hard by her home the flood?Of rushing Conestoga fills?Its depth afresh from springtide rills!
All, all in vain!?For far behind the invading rout?These two were left alone;?And in the waste their wildest shout?Seemed but a smothered groan.?Like sheeted wanderers from the grave?They moved, and yet seemed not to stir,?As icy gorge and sere-leaf'd grove?Of withered oak and shrouded fir?Were passed, and onward still they strove;?While the loud wind's artillery clave?The air, and furious sleety rain?Swung like a sword above the plain!
VI
They crossed the hills; they came to where?Through an arid gloom the river Chaudiere?Fled like a Maenad with outstreaming hair;?And there the soldier sank, and died.?Death-dumb he fell; yet ere life sped,?Child-like on her knee he laid his head.?She strove to pray; but all words fled?Save those their love had sanctified.
And then her voice rose waveringly?To the notes of a mother's lullaby;?But her song was only "Ah, must thou die?"?And to her his eyes death-still replied.
VII
Dead leaves and stricken boughs?She heaped o'er the fallen form--?Wolf nor hawk nor lawless storm?Him from his rest should rouse;?But first, with solemn vows,?Took rifle, pouch, and horn,?And the belt that he had worn.?Then, onward pressing fast?Through the forest rude and vast,?Hunger-wasted, fever-parch'd,?Many bitter days she marched?With