Narrative Poems, part 2, Bridal of Pennacook | Page 2

his dull office, where the weary eye?Saw only hot brick walls and close thronged streets;?Briefless as yet, but with an eye to see?Life's sunniest side, and with a heart to take?Its chances all as godsends; and his brother,?Pale from long pulpit studies, yet retaining?The warmth and freshness of a genial heart,?Whose mirror of the beautiful and true,?In Man and Nature, was as yet undimmed?By dust of theologic strife, or breath?Of sect, or cobwebs of scholastic lore;?Like a clear crystal calm of water, taking?The hue and image of o'erleaning flowers,?Sweet human faces, white clouds of the noon,?Slant starlight glimpses through the dewy leaves,?And tenderest moonrise. 'T was, in truth, a study,?To mark his spirit, alternating between?A decent and professional gravity?And an irreverent mirthfulness, which often?Laughed in the face of his divinity,?Plucked off the sacred ephod, quite unshrined?The oracle, and for the pattern priest?Left us the man. A shrewd, sagacious merchant,?To whom the soiled sheet found in Crawford's inn,?Giving the latest news of city stocks?And sales of cotton, had a deeper meaning?Than the great presence of the awful mountains?Glorified by the sunset; and his daughter,?A delicate flower on whom had blown too long?Those evil winds, which, sweeping from the ice?And winnowing the fogs of Labrador,?Shed their cold blight round Massachusetts Bay,?With the same breath which stirs Spring's opening leaves?And lifts her half-formed flower-bell on its stem,?Poisoning our seaside atmosphere.
It chanced that as we turned upon our homeward way,?A drear northeastern storm came howling up?The valley of the Saco; and that girl?Who had stood with us upon Mount Washington,?Her brown locks ruffled by the wind which whirled?In gusts around its sharp, cold pinnacle,?Who had joined our gay trout-fishing in the streams?Which lave that giant's feet; whose laugh was heard?Like a bird's carol on the sunrise breeze?Which swelled our sail amidst the lake's green islands,?Shrank from its harsh, chill breath, and visibly drooped?Like a flower in the frost. So, in that quiet inn?Which looks from Conway on the mountains piled?Heavily against the horizon of the north,?Like summer thunder-clouds, we made our home?And while the mist hung over dripping hills,?And the cold wind-driven rain-drops all day long?Beat their sad music upon roof and pane,?We strove to cheer our gentle invalid.
The lawyer in the pauses of the storm?Went angling down the Saco, and, returning,?Recounted his adventures and mishaps;?Gave us the history of his scaly clients,?Mingling with ludicrous yet apt citations?Of barbarous law Latin, passages?From Izaak Walton's Angler, sweet and fresh?As the flower-skirted streams of Staffordshire,?Where, under aged trees, the southwest wind?Of soft June mornings fanned the thin, white hair?Of the sage fisher. And, if truth be told,?Our youthful candidate forsook his sermons,?His commentaries, articles and creeds,?For the fair page of human loveliness,?The missal of young hearts, whose sacred text?Is music, its illumining, sweet smiles.?He sang the songs she loved; and in his low,?Deep, earnest voice, recited many a page?Of poetry, the holiest, tenderest lines?Of the sad bard of Olney, the sweet songs,?Simple and beautiful as Truth and Nature,?Of him whose whitened locks on Rydal Mount?Are lifted yet by morning breezes blowing?From the green hills, immortal in his lays.?And for myself, obedient to her wish,?I searched our landlord's proffered library,--?A well-thumbed Bunyan, with its nice wood pictures?Of scaly fiends and angels not unlike them;?Watts' unmelodious psalms; Astrology's?Last home, a musty pile of almanacs,?And an old chronicle of border wars?And Indian history. And, as I read?A story of the marriage of the Chief?Of Saugus to the dusky Weetamoo,?Daughter of Passaconaway, who dwelt?In the old time upon the Merrimac,?Our fair one, in the playful exercise?Of her prerogative,--the right divine?Of youth and beauty,--bade us versify?The legend, and with ready pencil sketched?Its plan and outlines, laughingly assigning?To each his part, and barring our excuses?With absolute will. So, like the cavaliers?Whose voices still are heard in the Romance?Of silver-tongued Boccaccio, on the banks?Of Arno, with soft tales of love beguiling?The ear of languid beauty, plague-exiled?From stately Florence, we rehearsed our rhymes?To their fair auditor, and shared by turns?Her kind approval and her playful censure.
It may be that these fragments owe alone?To the fair setting of their circumstances,--?The associations of time, scene, and audience,--?Their place amid the pictures which fill up?The chambers of my memory. Yet I trust?That some, who sigh, while wandering in thought,?Pilgrims of Romance o'er the olden world,?That our broad land,--our sea-like lakes and mountains?Piled to the clouds, our rivers overhung?By forests which have known no other change?For ages than the budding and the fall?Of leaves, our valleys lovelier than those?Which the old poets sang of,--should but figure?On the apocryphal chart of speculation?As pastures, wood-lots, mill-sites, with the privileges,?Rights, and appurtenances, which make up?A Yankee Paradise, unsung, unknown,?To beautiful tradition; even their names,?Whose melody yet lingers like the last?Vibration of the red man's requiem,?Exchanged for syllables significant,?Of cotton-mill and rail-car, will look kindly?Upon this effort to call up the ghost?Of