Narrative Poems, part 2, Bridal of Pennacook

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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
? START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK ***
This eBook was produced by David Widger [[email protected] ]
NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY
POEMS
BY
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 of silver?The Merrimac by Uncanoonuc's falls.
There were five souls of us whom travel's chance?Had thrown together in these wild north hills?A city lawyer, for a month escaping?From