Narrative Poems, part 7, Bay of Seven Islands

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
0. START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, BAY OF
SEVEN ISLANDS, ETC. ***
This eBook was produced by David Widger [[email protected]
]
NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY
POEMS
B Y
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.