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

exceeding;
I
fling my heart into your lap
Without a word of pleading.'
"She looked up in his face of pain
So archly, yet so tender
'And if I
lend you mine,' she said,
'Will you forgive the lender?
"'Nor frock nor tan can hide the man;
And see you not, my farmer,


How weak and fond a woman waits
Behind this silken armor?
"'I love you: on that love alone,
And not my worth, presuming,
Will
you not trust for summer fruit
The tree in May-day blooming?'
"Alone the hangbird overhead,
His 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