Narrative Poems, part 5, Among Hill etc | Page 4

hair-swung cradle straining,?Looked down to see love's miracle,--?The giving that is gaining.
"And so the farmer found a wife,?His mother found a daughter?There looks no happier home than hers?On pleasant Bearcamp Water.
"Flowers spring to blossom where she walks?The careful ways of duty;?Our hard, stiff lines of life with her?Are flowing curves of beauty.
"Our homes are cheerier for her sake,?Our door-yards brighter blooming,?And all about the social air?Is sweeter for her coming.
"Unspoken homilies of peace?Her daily life is preaching;?The still refreshment of the dew?Is her unconscious teaching.
"And never tenderer hand than hers?Unknits the brow of ailing;?Her garments to the sick man's ear?Have music in their trailing.
"And when, in pleasant harvest moons,?The youthful huskers gather,?Or sleigh-drives on the mountain ways?Defy the winter weather,--
"In sugar-camps, when south and warm?The winds of March are blowing,?And sweetly from its thawing veins?The maple's blood is flowing,--
"In summer, where some lilied pond?Its virgin zone is baring,?Or where the ruddy autumn fire?Lights up the apple-paring,--
"The coarseness of a ruder time?Her finer mirth displaces,?A subtler sense of pleasure fills?Each rustic sport she graces.
"Her presence lends its warmth and health?To all who come before it.?If woman lost us Eden, such?As she alone restore it.
"For larger life and wiser aims?The farmer is her debtor;?Who holds to his another's heart?Must needs be worse or better.
"Through her his civic service shows?A purer-toned ambition;?No double consciousness divides?The man and politician.
"In party's doubtful ways he trusts?Her instincts to determine;?At the loud polls, the thought of her?Recalls Christ's Mountain Sermon.
"He owns her logic of the heart,?And wisdom of unreason,?Supplying, while he doubts and weighs,?The needed word in season.
"He sees with pride her richer thought,?Her fancy's freer ranges;?And love thus deepened to respect?Is proof against all changes.
"And if she walks at ease in ways?His feet are slow to travel,?And if she reads with cultured eyes?What his may scarce unravel,
"Still clearer, for her keener sight?Of beauty and of wonder,?He learns the meaning of the hills?He dwelt from childhood under.
"And higher, warmed with summer lights,?Or winter-crowned and hoary,?The ridged horizon lifts for him?Its inner veils of glory.
"He has his own free, bookless lore,?The lessons nature taught him,?The wisdom which the woods and hills?And toiling men have brought him:
"The steady force of will whereby?Her flexile grace seems sweeter;?The sturdy counterpoise which makes?Her woman's life completer.
"A latent fire of soul which lacks?No breath of love to fan it;?And wit, that, like his native brooks,?Plays over solid granite.
"How dwarfed against his manliness?She sees the poor pretension,?The wants, the aims, the follies, born?Of fashion and convention.
"How life behind its accidents?Stands strong and self-sustaining,?The human fact transcending all?The losing and the gaining.
"And so in grateful interchange?Of teacher and of hearer,?Their lives their true distinctness keep?While daily drawing nearer.
"And if the husband or the wife?In home's strong light discovers?Such slight defaults as failed to meet?The blinded eyes of lovers,
"Why need we care to ask?--who dreams?Without their thorns of roses,?Or wonders that the truest steel?The readiest spark discloses?
"For still in mutual sufferance lies?The secret of true living;?Love scarce is love that never knows?The sweetness of forgiving.
"We send the Squire to General Court,?He takes his young wife thither;?No prouder man election day?Rides through the sweet June weather.
"He sees with eyes of manly trust?All hearts to her inclining;?Not less for him his household light?That others share its shining."
Thus, while my hostess spake, there grew?Before me, warmer tinted?And outlined with a tenderer grace,?The picture that she hinted.
The sunset smouldered as we drove?Beneath the deep hill-shadows.?Below us wreaths of white fog walked?Like ghosts the haunted meadows.
Sounding the summer night, the stars?Dropped down their golden plummets;?The pale arc of the Northern lights?Rose o'er the mountain summits,
Until, at last, beneath its bridge,?We heard the Bearcamp flowing,?And saw across the mapled lawn?The welcome home lights glowing.
And, musing on the tale I heard,?'T were well, thought I, if often?To rugged farm-life came the gift?To harmonize and soften;
If more and more we found the troth?Of fact and fancy plighted,?And culture's charm and labor's strength?In rural homes united,--
The simple life, the homely hearth,?With beauty's sphere surrounding,?And blessing toil where toil abounds?With graces more abounding.?1868.
THE DOLE OF JARL THORKELL.
THE land was pale with famine?And racked with fever-pain;?The frozen fiords were fishless,?The earth withheld her grain.
Men saw the boding Fylgja?Before them come and go,?And, through their dreams, the Urdarmoon?From west to east sailed slow.
Jarl Thorkell of Thevera?At Yule-time made his vow;?On Rykdal's holy Doom-stone?He slew to Frey his cow.
To bounteous Frey he slew her;?To Skuld, the younger Norn,?Who watches over birth and death,?He gave her calf unborn.
And his little gold-haired daughter?Took up the sprinkling-rod,?And smeared with blood the temple?And the wide lips of the god.
Hoarse below, the winter water?Ground its ice-blocks o'er and o'er;?Jets of foam, like ghosts of dead waves,?Rose and fell along the shore.
The red torch of the Jokul,?Aloft in icy space,?Shone down on the bloody Horg-stones?And the statue's carven face.
And closer round and grimmer?Beneath its baleful