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our need is just,)?That somehow, somewhere, meet we must.
[Illustration]?Alas for him who never sees?The stars shine through his cypress-trees!?Who, hopeless, lays his dead away,?Nor looks to see the breaking day?Across the mournful marbles play!?Who hath not learned, in hours of faith,?The truth to flesh and sense unknown,?That Life is ever lord of Death,?And Love can never lose its own!
We sped the time with stories old,?Wrought puzzles out, and riddles told,?Or stammered from our school-book lore?"The Chief of Gambia's golden shore."?How often since, when all the land?Was clay in Slavery's shaping hand,?As if a trumpet called, I've heard?Dame Mercy Warren's rousing word:?"_Does not the voice of reason cry,?Claim the first right which Nature gave,?From the red scourge of bondage fly,?Nor deign to live a burdened slave!_"?Our father rode again his ride?On Memphremagog's wooded side;
[Illustration]?Sat down again to moose and samp?In trapper's hut and Indian camp;?Lived o'er the old idyllic ease?Beneath St. Fran?ois' hemlock-trees;?Again for him the moonlight shone?On Norman cap and bodiced zone;?Again he heard the violin play?Which led the village dance away,?And mingled in its merry whirl?The grandam and the laughing girl.?Or, nearer home, our steps he led?Where Salisbury's level marshes spread
[Illustration]?Mile-wide as flies the laden bee;?Where merry mowers, hale and strong,?Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths along?The low green prairies of the sea.?We shared the fishing off Boar's Head,?And round the rocky Isles of Shoals?The hake-broil on the drift-wood coals;?The chowder on the sand-beach made,?Dipped by the hungry, steaming hot,?With spoons of clam-shell from the pot.
[Illustration]?We heard the tales of witchcraft old,?And dream and sign and marvel told?To sleepy listeners as they lay?Stretched idly on the salted hay,?Adrift along the winding shores,
[Illustration]?When favoring breezes deigned to blow?The square sail of the gundalow,?And idle lay the useless oars.
Our mother, while she turned her wheel?Or run the new-knit stocking-heel,?Told how the Indian hordes came down?At midnight on Cochecho town,?And how her own great-uncle bore?His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore.?Recalling, in her fitting phrase,?So rich and picturesque and free,?(The common unrhymed poetry?Of simple life and country ways,)?The story of her early days,--?She made us welcome to her home;?Old hearths grew wide to give us room;?We stole with her a frightened look?At the gray wizard's conjuring-book,?The fame whereof went far and wide?Through all the simple country side;?We heard the hawks at twilight play,?The boat-horn on Piscataqua,?The loon's weird laughter far away;
[Illustration]?We fished her little trout-brook, knew?What flowers in wood and meadow grew,?What sunny hillsides autumn-brown?She climbed to shake the ripe nuts down,?Saw where in sheltered cove and bay?The ducks' black squadron anchored lay,?And heard the wild-geese calling loud?Beneath the gray November cloud.
Then, haply, with a look more grave,?And soberer tone, some tale she gave?From painful Sewell's ancient tome,?Beloved in every Quaker home,?Of faith fire-winged by martyrdom,?Or Chalkley's Journal, old and quaint,--?Gentlest of skippers, rare sea-saint!--?Who, when the dreary calms prevailed,?And water-butt and bread-cask failed,?And cruel, hungry eyes pursued?His portly presence mad for food,?With dark hints muttered under breath?Of casting lots for life or death,?Offered, if Heaven withheld supplies,?To be himself the sacrifice.?Then, suddenly, as if to save?The good man from his living grave?A ripple on the water grew,?A school of porpoise flashed in view.?"Take, eat," he said, "and be content;?These fishes in my stead are sent?By Him who gave the tangled ram?To spare the child of Abraham."
[Illustration]?Our uncle, innocent of books,?Was rich in lore of fields and brooks,?The ancient teachers never dumb?Of Nature's unhoused lyceum.?In moons and tides and weather wise,?He read the clouds as prophecies,?And foul or fair could well divine,?By many an occult hint and sign,?Holding the cunning-warded keys,?To all the woodcraft mysteries;?Himself to Nature's heart so near?That all her voices in his ear?Of beast or bird had meanings clear,?Like Apollonius of old,?Who knew the tales the sparrows told,?Or Hermes, who interpreted?What the sage cranes of Nilus said;?A simple, guileless, childlike man,?Content to live where life began;?Strong only on his native grounds,?The little world of sights and sounds?Whose girdle was the parish bounds,?Whereof his fondly partial pride?The common features magnified,?As Surrey hills to mountains grew?In White of Selborne's loving view,--?He told how teal and loon he shot,
[Illustration]?And how the eagle's eggs he got,?The feats on pond and river done,?The prodigies of rod and gun;?Till, warming with the tales he told,?Forgotten was the outside cold,?The bitter wind unheeded blew,?From ripening corn the pigeons flew,
[Illustration]?The partridge drummed i' the wood, the mink?Went fishing down the river-brink;?In fields with bean or clover gay,?The woodchuck, like a hermit gray,?Peered from the doorway of his cell;?The muskrat plied the mason's trade,?And tier by tier his mud-walls laid;?And from the shagbark overhead?The grizzled squirrel dropped his shell.
Next, the dear aunt, whose smile of cheer?And voice in dreams I see and hear,--?The sweetest woman ever Fate?Perverse denied a household mate,?Who, lonely, homeless, not the less?Found peace in love's unselfishness,?And welcome wheresoe'er she went,?A calm and gracious element,?Whose presence seemed