The Tent on the Beach

Project Gutenberg EBook, Tent on the Beach and Others
Part 4, From
Volume IV., The Works of Whittier: Personal Poems #29 in our series
by John Greenleaf Whittier
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Title: The Tent on the Beach and Others
Part 4, From Volume IV., The Works of Whittier: Personal Poems
Author: John Greenleaf Whittier
Release Date: December 2005 [EBook #9584]
[Yes, we are more
than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on
October 18, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII
0. START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, TENT ON
THE BEACH, PART 4 ***
This eBook was produced by David Widger [[email protected]
]
THE TENT ON THE BEACH
BY
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
CONTENTS:
THE TENT ON THE BEACH.
PRELUDE
THE TENT ON THE BEACH
THE WRECK OF
RIVERMOUTH
THE GRAVE BY THE LAKE
THE
BROTHER OF MERCY
THE CHANGELING
THE MAIDS
OF ATTITASH
KALLUNDBORG CHURCH
THE CABLE
HYMN
THE DEAD SHIP OF HARPSWELL
THE PALATINE

ABRAHAM DAVENPORT
THE WORSHIP OF NATURE
THE TENT ON THE BEACH
It can scarcely be necessary to name as the two companions whom I
reckoned with myself in this poetical picnic, Fields the lettered
magnate, and Taylor the free cosmopolite. The long line of sandy beach
which defines almost the whole of the New Hampshire sea-coast is
especially marked near its southern extremity, by the salt-meadows of
Hampton. The Hampton River winds through these meadows, and the
reader may, if he choose, imagine my tent pitched near its mouth,
where also was the scene of the _Wreck of Rivermouth_. The green
bluff to the northward is Great Boar's Head; southward is the Merrimac,
with Newburyport lifting its steeples above brown roofs and green trees
on banks.

I would not sin, in this half-playful strain,--
Too light perhaps for
serious years, though born
Of the enforced leisure of slow pain,--

Against the pure ideal which has drawn
My feet to follow its
far-shining gleam.
A simple plot is mine: legends and runes
Of
credulous days, old fancies that have lain
Silent, from boyhood taking
voice again,
Warmed into life once more, even as the tunes
That,
frozen in the fabled hunting-horn,
Thawed into sound:--a winter
fireside dream
Of dawns and-sunsets by the summer sea,
Whose
sands are traversed by a silent throng
Of voyagers from that vaster
mystery
Of which it is an emblem;--and the dear
Memory of one
who might have tuned my song
To sweeter music by her delicate ear.
When heats as of a tropic clime
Burned all our inland valleys through,

Three friends, the guests of summer time,
Pitched their white tent
where sea-winds blew.
Behind them, marshes, seamed and crossed

With narrow creeks, and flower-embossed,
Stretched to the dark oak
wood, whose leafy arms
Screened from the stormy East the pleasant
inland farms.
At full of tide their bolder shore
Of sun-bleached sand the waters beat;

At ebb, a smooth and glistening floor
They touched with light,
receding feet.
Northward a 'green bluff broke the chain
Of
sand-hills; southward stretched a plain
Of salt grass, with a river
winding down,
Sail-whitened, and beyond the steeples of the town,
Whence sometimes, when the wind was light
And dull the thunder of
the beach,
They heard the bells of morn and night
Swing, miles
away, their silver speech.
Above low scarp and turf-grown wall

They saw the fort-flag rise and fall;
And, the first star to signal
twilight's hour,
The lamp-fire glimmer down from the tall light-house
tower.
They rested there, escaped awhile
From cares that wear the life away,


To eat the lotus of the Nile
And drink the poppies of Cathay,--


To fling their loads of custom down,
Like drift-weed, on the
sand-slopes brown,
And in the sea waves drown the restless pack

Of duties, claims, and needs that barked upon their track.
One, with his beard scarce silvered, bore
A ready credence in his
looks,
A lettered magnate, lording o'er
An ever-widening realm of
books.
In him brain-currents, near and far,
Converged as in a
Leyden jar;
The old, dead authors thronged him round about,
And
Elzevir's gray ghosts from leathern graves looked out.
He knew each living pundit well,
Could weigh the gifts of him or her,

And well the market value tell
Of poet and philosopher.
But if he
lost, the scenes behind,
Somewhat of reverence vague and blind,

Finding the actors human at the best,
No