Narrative Poems, part 5, Among Hill etc | Page 7

back: "O master dear,
We are but men misled;
And
thou hast sought a city here
To find a grave instead."
"As God shall will! what matters where
A true man's cross may stand,

So Heaven be o'er it here as there
In pleasant Norman land?
"These woods, perchance, no secret hide
Of lordly tower and hall;

Yon river in its wanderings wide
Has washed no city wall;

"Yet mirrored in the sullen stream
The holy stars are given
Is
Norembega, then, a dream
Whose waking is in Heaven?
"No builded wonder of these lands
My weary eyes shall see;
A city
never made with hands
Alone awaiteth me--
"'Urbs Syon mystica;' I see
Its mansions passing fair,
'/Condita
caelo/;' let me be,
Dear Lord, a dweller there!"
Above the dying exile hung
The vision of the bard,
As faltered on
his failing tongue
The song of good Bernard.
The henchman dug at dawn a grave
Beneath the hemlocks brown,

And to the desert's keeping gave
The lord of fief and town.
Years after, when the Sieur Champlain
Sailed up the unknown stream,

And Norembega proved again
A shadow and a dream,
He found the Norman's nameless grave
Within the hemlock's shade,

And, stretching wide its arms to save,
The sign that God had made,
The cross-boughed tree that marked the spot
And made it holy
ground
He needs the earthly city not
Who hath the heavenly found.

1869.
MIRIAM.
TO FREDERICK A. P. BARNARD.
THE years are many since, in youth and hope,
Under the Charter Oak,
our horoscope
We drew thick-studded with all favoring stars.
Now,
with gray beards, and faces seamed with scars
From life's hard battle,
meeting once again,
We smile, half sadly, over dreams so vain;

Knowing, at last, that it is not in man
Who walketh to direct his steps,
or plan
His permanent house of life. Alike we loved
The muses'

haunts, and all our fancies moved
To measures of old song. How
since that day
Our feet have parted from the path that lay
So fair
before us! Rich, from lifelong search
Of truth, within thy Academic
porch
Thou sittest now, lord of a realm of fact,
Thy servitors the
sciences exact;
Still listening with thy hand on Nature's keys,
To
hear the Samian's spheral harmonies
And rhythm of law. I called
from dream and song,
Thank God! so early to a strife so long,
That,
ere it closed, the black, abundant hair
Of boyhood rested silver-sown
and spare
On manhood's temples, now at sunset-chime
Tread with
fond feet the path of morning time.
And if perchance too late I linger
where
The flowers have ceased to blow, and trees are bare,
Thou,
wiser in thy choice, wilt scarcely blame
The friend who shields his
folly with thy name.
AMESBURY, 10th mo., 1870.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
One Sabbath day my friend and I
After the meeting, quietly
Passed
from the crowded village lanes,
White with dry dust for lack of rains,

And climbed the neighboring slope, with feet
Slackened and heavy
from the heat,
Although the day was wellnigh done,
And the low
angle of the sun
Along the naked hillside cast
Our shadows as of
giants vast.
We reached, at length, the topmost swell,
Whence,
either way, the green turf fell
In terraces of nature down
To
fruit-hung orchards, and the town
With white, pretenceless houses,
tall
Church-steeples, and, o'ershadowing all,
Huge mills whose
windows had the look
Of eager eyes that ill could brook
The
Sabbath rest. We traced the track
Of the sea-seeking river back,


Glistening for miles above its mouth,
Through the long valley to the
south,
And, looking eastward, cool to view,
Stretched the
illimitable blue
Of ocean, from its curved coast-line;
Sombred and
still, the warm sunshine
Filled with pale gold-dust all the reach
Of
slumberous woods from hill to beach,--
Slanted on walls of thronged
retreats
From city toil and dusty streets,
On grassy bluff, and dune

of sand,
And rocky islands miles from land;
Touched the
far-glancing sails, and showed
White lines of foam where long waves
flowed
Dumb in the distance. In the north,
Dim through their misty
hair, looked forth
The space-dwarfed mountains to the sea,
From
mystery to mystery!
So, sitting on that green hill-slope,
We talked of human life, its hope

And fear, and unsolved doubts, and what
It might have been, and
yet was not.
And, when at last the evening air
Grew sweeter for the
bells of prayer
Ringing in steeples far below,
We watched the
people churchward go,
Each to his place, as if thereon
The true
shekinah only shone;
And my friend queried how it came
To pass
that they who owned the same
Great Master still could not agree
To
worship Him in company.
Then, broadening in his thought, he ran

Over the whole vast field of man,--
The varying forms of faith and
creed
That somehow served the holders' need;
In which,
unquestioned, undenied,
Uncounted millions lived and died;
The
bibles of the ancient folk,
Through which the heart of nations spoke;

The old moralities which lent
To home its sweetness and content,

And rendered possible to bear
The life of peoples everywhere

And asked if we, who boast of light,
Claim not a too exclusive right

To truths which must for all be meant,
Like rain and sunshine
freely sent.
In bondage to the letter still,
We give it power to cramp
and kill,--
To tax God's fulness with a scheme
Narrower than Peter's
house-top dream,
His wisdom