Narrative Poems, part 2, Bridal of Pennacook

Project Gutenberg EBook, The Bridal of Pennacook, by Whittier From
Volume I., The Works of Whittier: Narrative and Legendary Poems #6
in our series by John Greenleaf Whittier
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Title: Narrative and Legendary Poems: The Bridal of Pennacook
From Volume I., The Works of Whittier
Author: John Greenleaf Whittier
Release Date: Dec, 2005 [EBook #9561]
[Yes, we are more than one
year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on October 2,
2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII
0. START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE BRIDAL
OF PENNACOOK ***
This eBook was produced by David Widger [[email protected]
]
NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY
POEMS
B Y
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK
I. THE MERRIMAC
II. THE BASHABA
III. THE
DAUGHTER
IV. THE WEDDING
V. THE NEW HOME
VI.
AT PENNACOOK
VII. THE DEPARTURE
VIII. SONG OF
INDIAN WOMEN
THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK.
Winnepurkit, otherwise called George, Sachem of Saugus, married a
daughter of Passaconaway, the great Pennacook chieftain, in 1662. The
wedding took place at Pennacook (now Concord, N. H.), and the
ceremonies closed with a great feast. According to the usages of the
chiefs, Passaconaway ordered a select number of his men to accompany
the newly-married couple to the dwelling of the husband, where in turn
there was another great feast. Some time after, the wife of Winnepurkit
expressing a desire to visit her father's house was permitted to go,
accompanied by a brave escort of her husband's chief men. But when
she wished to return, her father sent a messenger to Saugus, informing
her husband, and asking him to come and take her away. He returned
for answer that he had escorted his wife to her father's house in a style
that became a chief, and that now if she wished to return, her father
must send her back, in the same way. This Passaconaway refused to do,
and it is said that here terminated the connection of his daughter with
the Saugus chief.--Vide MORTON'S New Canaan.

WE had been wandering for many days
Through the rough northern
country. We had seen
The sunset, with its bars of purple cloud,

Like a new heaven, shine upward from the lake
Of Winnepiseogee;
and had felt
The sunrise breezes, midst the leafy isles
Which stoop
their summer beauty to the lips
Of the bright waters. We had checked
our steeds,
Silent with wonder, where the mountain wall
Is piled to
heaven; and, through the narrow rift
Of the vast rocks, against whose
rugged feet
Beats the mad torrent with perpetual roar,
Where
noonday is as twilight, and the wind
Comes burdened with the
everlasting moan
Of forests and of far-off waterfalls,
We had
looked upward where the summer sky,
Tasselled with clouds
light-woven by the sun,
Sprung its blue arch above the abutting crags

O'er-roofing the vast portal of the land
Beyond the wall of
mountains. We had passed
The high source of the Saco; and
bewildered
In the dwarf spruce-belts of the Crystal Hills,
Had heard
above us, like a voice in the cloud,
The horn of Fabyan sounding; and
atop
Of old Agioochook had seen the mountains'
Piled to the
northward, shagged with wood, and thick
As meadow mole-hills,--the
far sea of Casco,
A white gleam on the horizon of the east;
Fair
lakes, embosomed in the woods and hills;
Moosehillock's mountain
range, and Kearsarge
Lifting his granite forehead to the sun!
And we had rested underneath the oaks
Shadowing the bank, whose
grassy spires are shaken
By the perpetual beating of the falls
Of the
wild Ammonoosuc. We had tracked
The winding Pemigewasset,
overhung
By beechen shadows, whitening down its rocks,
Or lazily
gliding through its intervals,
From waving rye-fields sending up the
gleam
Of sunlit waters. We had seen the moon

Rising behind
Umbagog's eastern pines,
Like a great Indian camp-fire; and its
beams
At midnight spanning with a bridge