Narrative Poems, part 5, Among Hill etc | Page 2

its leaves
Across the curtainless
windows, from whose panes
Fluttered the signal rags of shiftlessness.

Within, the cluttered kitchen-floor, unwashed
(Broom-clean I think
they called it); the best room
Stifling with cellar damp, shut from the
air
In hot midsummer, bookless, pictureless,
Save the inevitable
sampler hung
Over the fireplace, or a mourning piece,
A
green-haired woman, peony-cheeked, beneath
Impossible willows;
the wide-throated hearth
Bristling with faded pine-boughs half
concealing
The piled-up rubbish at the chimney's back;
And, in sad
keeping with all things about them,
Shrill, querulous-women, sour
and sullen men,
Untidy, loveless, old before their time,
With scarce
a human interest save their own
Monotonous round of small
economies,
Or the poor scandal of the neighborhood;
Blind to the
beauty everywhere revealed,
Treading the May-flowers with
regardless feet;
For them the song-sparrow and the bobolink
Sang
not, nor winds made music in the leaves;
For them in vain October's
holocaust
Burned, gold and crimson, over all the hills,
The
sacramental mystery of the woods.
Church-goers, fearful of the
unseen Powers,
But grumbling over pulpit-tax and pew-rent,
Saving,
as shrewd economists, their souls
And winter pork with the least
possible outlay
Of salt and sanctity; in daily life
Showing as little
actual comprehension
Of Christian charity and love and duty,
As if
the Sermon on the Mount had been

Outdated like a last year's
almanac
Rich in broad woodlands and in half-tilled fields,
And yet
so pinched and bare and comfortless,
The veriest straggler limping on
his rounds,
The sun and air his sole inheritance,
Laughed at a
poverty that paid its taxes,
And hugged his rags in self-complacency!
Not such should be the homesteads of a land
Where whoso wisely
wills and acts may dwell
As king and lawgiver, in broad-acred state,


With beauty, art, taste, culture, books, to make
His hour of leisure
richer than a life
Of fourscore to the barons of old time,
Our
yeoman should be equal to his home
Set in the fair, green valleys,
purple walled,
A man to match his mountains, not to creep
Dwarfed
and abased below them. I would fain
In this light way (of which I
needs must own
With the knife-grinder of whom Canning sings,

"Story, God bless you! I have none to tell you!")
Invite the eye to see
and heart to feel
The beauty and the joy within their reach,--
Home,
and home loves, and the beatitudes
Of nature free to all. Haply in
years
That wait to take the places of our own,
Heard where some
breezy balcony looks down
On happy homes, or where the lake in the
moon
Sleeps dreaming of the mountains, fair as Ruth,
In the old
Hebrew pastoral, at the feet
Of Boaz, even this simple lay of mine

May seem the burden of a prophecy,
Finding its late fulfilment in a
change
Slow as the oak's growth, lifting manhood up
Through
broader culture, finer manners, love,
And reverence, to the level of
the hills.
O Golden Age, whose light is of the dawn,
And not of sunset,
forward, not behind,
Flood the new heavens and earth, and with thee
bring
All the old virtues, whatsoever things
Are pure and honest
and of good repute,
But add thereto whatever bard has sung
Or seer
has told of when in trance and dream
They saw the Happy Isles of
prophecy
Let Justice hold her scale, and Truth divide
Between the
right and wrong; but give the heart
The freedom of its fair inheritance;

Let the poor prisoner, cramped and starved so long,
At Nature's
table feast his ear and eye
With joy and wonder; let all harmonies

Of sound, form, color, motion, wait upon

The princely guest, whether
in soft attire
Of leisure clad, or the coarse frock of toil,
And,
lending life to the dead form of faith,
Give human nature reverence
for the sake
Of One who bore it, making it divine
With the ineffable
tenderness of God;
Let common need, the brotherhood of prayer,

The heirship of an unknown destiny,
The unsolved mystery round

about us, make
A man more precious than the gold of Ophir.
Sacred,
inviolate, unto whom all things
Should minister, as outward types and
signs
Of the eternal beauty which fulfils
The one great purpose of
creation, Love,
The sole necessity of Earth and Heaven!
. . . . . . . . . . .
For weeks the clouds had raked the hills
And vexed the vales with
raining,
And all the woods were sad with mist,
And all the brooks
complaining.
At last, a sudden night-storm tore
The mountain veils asunder,
And
swept the valleys clean before
The besom of the thunder.
Through Sandwich notch the west-wind sang
Good morrow to the
cotter;
And once again Chocorua's horn
Of shadow pierced the
water.
Above his broad lake Ossipee,
Once more the sunshine wearing,

Stooped, tracing on that silver shield
His grim armorial bearing.
Clear drawn against the hard blue sky,
The peaks had winter's
keenness;
And, close on autumn's frost, the vales
Had more than
June's fresh greenness.
Again the sodden forest floors
With golden lights were checkered,

Once more rejoicing leaves in wind
And sunshine danced and
flickered.
It was as if the summer's late
Atoning for it's sadness
Had borrowed
every season's charm
To end its days in gladness.
Rivers of gold-mist flowing down
From far celestial fountains,--

The great sun flaming through the rifts
Beyond the wall of
mountains.

We paused at last where home-bound cows
Brought down the
pasture's treasure,
And