Narrative Poems, part 7, Bay of Seven Islands

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Project Gutenberg EBook, Bay of Seven Islands and Others, by Whittier From Volume I., The Works of Whittier: Narrative and Legendary Poems #11 in our series by John Greenleaf Whittier
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Title: Narrative and Legendary Poems: Bay of Seven Islands and Others
From Volume I., The Works of Whittier
Author: John Greenleaf Whittier
Release Date: Dec, 2005 [EBook #9566]?[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]?[This file was first posted on October 2, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
? START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS, ETC. ***
This eBook was produced by David Widger [[email protected] ]
NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY
POEMS
BY
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
CONTENTS:
THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS
To H P S?THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS
THE WISHING BRIDGE?HOW THE WOMEN WENT FROM DOVER?ST GREGORY'S GUEST?CONTENTS?BIRCHBROOK MILL?THE TWO ELIZABETHS?REQUITAL?THE HOMESTEAD?HOW THE ROBIN CAME?BANISHED FROM MASSACHUSETTS?THE BROWN DWARF OF RUGEN
THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS.
The volume in which "The Bay of Seven Islands" was published was dedicated to the late Edwin Percy Whipple, to whom more than to any other person I was indebted for public recognition as one worthy of a place in American literature, at a time when it required a great degree of courage to urge such a claim for a pro-scribed abolitionist. Although younger than I, he had gained the reputation of a brilliant essayist, and was regarded as the highest American authority in criticism. His wit and wisdom enlivened a small literary circle of young men including Thomas Starr King, the eloquent preacher, and Daniel N. Haskell of the Daily Transcript, who gathered about our common friend dames T. Fields at the Old Corner Bookstore. The poem which gave title to the volume I inscribed to my friend and neighbor Harriet Prescott Spofford, whose poems have lent a new interest to our beautiful river-valley.
FROM the green Amesbury hill which bears the name?Of that half mythic ancestor of mine?Who trod its slopes two hundred years ago,?Down the long valley of the Merrimac,?Midway between me and the river's mouth,?I see thy home, set like an eagle's nest?Among Deer Island's immemorial pines,?Crowning the crag on which the sunset breaks?Its last red arrow. Many a tale and song,?Which thou bast told or sung, I call to mind,?Softening with silvery mist the woods and hills,?The out-thrust headlands and inreaching bays?Of our northeastern coast-line, trending where?The Gulf, midsummer, feels the chill blockade?Of icebergs stranded at its northern gate.
To thee the echoes of the Island Sound?Answer not vainly, nor in vain the moan?Of the South Breaker prophesying storm.?And thou hast listened, like myself, to men?Sea-periled oft where Anticosti lies?Like a fell spider in its web of fog,?Or where the Grand Bank shallows with the wrecks?Of sunken fishers, and to whom strange isles?And frost-rimmed bays and trading stations seem?Familiar as Great Neck and Kettle Cove,?Nubble and Boon, the common names of home.?So let me offer thee this lay of mine,?Simple and homely, lacking much thy play?Of color and of fancy. If its theme?And treatment seem to thee befitting youth?Rather than age, let this be my excuse?It has beguiled some heavy hours and called?Some pleasant memories up; and, better still,?Occasion lent me for a kindly word?To one who is my neighbor and my friend.?1883.
. . . . . . . . . .
The skipper sailed out of the harbor mouth,?Leaving the apple-bloom of the South?For the ice of the Eastern seas,?In his fishing schooner Breeze.
Handsome and brave and young was he,?And the maids of Newbury sighed to see?His lessening white sail fall?Under the sea's blue wall.
Through the Northern Gulf and the misty screen?Of the isles of Mingan and Madeleine,?St. Paul's and Blanc Sablon,?The little Breeze sailed on,
Backward and forward, along the shore?Of lorn and desolate Labrador,?And found