Narrative Poems, part 4, Mable Martin etc | Page 5

of my boyhood told;
And the shadows and
shapes of early days
Flit dimly by in the veiling haze,
With

measured movement and rhythmic chime
Weaving like shuttles my
web of rhyme.
I think of the old man wise and good
Who once on
yon misty hillsides stood,
(A poet who never measured rhyme,
A
seer unknown to his dull-eared time,)
And, propped on his staff of
age, looked down,
With his boyhood's love, on his native town,

Where, written, as if on its hills and plains,
His burden of prophecy
yet remains,
For the voices of wood, and wave, and wind
To read in
the ear of the musing mind:--
"As long as Plum Island, to guard the coast
As God appointed, shall
keep its post;
As long as a salmon shall haunt the deep
Of
Merrimac River, or sturgeon leap;
As long as pickerel swift and slim,

Or red-backed perch, in Crane Pond swim;
As long as the annual
sea-fowl know
Their time to come and their time to go;
As long as
cattle shall roam at will
The green, grass meadows by Turkey Hill;

As long as sheep shall look from the side
Of Oldtown Hill on
marishes wide,
And Parker River, and salt-sea tide;
As long as a
wandering pigeon shall search
The fields below from his white-oak
perch,
When the barley-harvest is ripe and shorn,
And the dry husks
fall from the standing corn;
As long as Nature shall not grow old,

Nor drop her work from her doting hold,
And her care for the Indian
corn forget,
And the yellow rows in pairs to set;--
So long shall
Christians here be born,
Grow up and ripen as God's sweet corn!--

By the beak of bird, by the breath of frost,
Shall never a holy ear be
lost,
But, husked by Death in the Planter's sight,
Be sown again in
the fields of light!"
The Island still is purple with plums,
Up the river the salmon comes,

The sturgeon leaps, and the wild-fowl feeds
On hillside berries and
marish seeds,--
All the beautiful signs remain,
From spring-time
sowing to autumn rain
The good man's vision returns again!
And let
us hope, as well we can,
That the Silent Angel who garners man

May find some grain as of old lie found
In the human cornfield ripe

and sound,
And the Lord of the Harvest deign to own
The precious
seed by the fathers sown!
1859.
THE RED RIPER VOYAGEUR.
OUT and in the river is winding
The links of its long, red chain,

Through belts of dusky pine-land
And gusty leagues of plain.
Only, at times, a smoke-wreath
With the drifting cloud-rack joins,--

The smoke of the hunting-lodges
Of the wild Assiniboins.
Drearily blows the north-wind
From the land of ice and snow;
The
eyes that look are weary,
And heavy the hands that row.
And with one foot on the water,
And one upon the shore,
The
Angel of Shadow gives warning
That day shall be no more.
Is it the clang of wild-geese?
Is it the Indian's yell,
That lends to the
voice of the north-wind
The tones of a far-off bell?
The voyageur smiles as he listens
To the sound that grows apace;

Well he knows the vesper ringing
Of the bells of St. Boniface.
The bells of the Roman Mission,
That call from their turrets twain,

To the boatman on the river,
To the hunter on the plain!
Even so in our mortal journey
The bitter north-winds blow,
And
thus upon life's Red River
Our hearts, as oarsmen, row.
And when the Angel of Shadow
Rests his feet on wave and shore,

And our eyes grow dim with watching
And our hearts faint at the oar,
Happy is he who heareth
The signal of his release
In the bells of the
Holy City,
The chimes of eternal peace!
1859
THE PREACHER.

George Whitefield, the celebrated preacher, died at Newburyport in
1770, and was buried under the church which has since borne his name.
ITS windows flashing to the sky,
Beneath a thousand roofs of brown,

Far down the vale, my friend and I
Beheld the old and quiet town;

The ghostly sails that out at sea
Flapped their white wings of
mystery;
The beaches glimmering in the sun,
And the low wooded
capes that run
Into the sea-mist north and south;
The sand-bluffs at
the river's mouth;
The swinging chain-bridge, and, afar,
The
foam-line of the harbor-bar.
Over the woods and meadow-lands
A crimson-tinted shadow lay,

Of clouds through which the setting day
Flung a slant glory far away.

It glittered on the wet sea-sands,
It flamed upon the city's panes,

Smote the white sails of ships that wore
Outward or in, and glided
o'er
The steeples with their veering vanes!
Awhile my friend with rapid search
O'erran the landscape. "Yonder
spire
Over gray roofs, a shaft of fire;
What is it, pray?"--"The
Whitefield Church!
Walled about by its basement stones,
There rest
the marvellous prophet's bones."
Then as our homeward way we
walked,
Of the great preacher's life we talked;
And through the
mystery of our theme
The outward glory seemed to stream,
And
Nature's self interpreted
The doubtful record of the dead;
And every
level beam that smote
The sails upon the dark afloat
A symbol of
the light became,
Which touched the shadows of our blame,
With
tongues of Pentecostal flame.
Over the roofs of the pioneers
Gathers the moss of a hundred years;

On man and his works has passed the