The Tent on the Beach | Page 4

out at morning never?Sailed back again into Hampton River.
O mower, lean on thy bended snath,?Look from the meadows green and low?The wind of the sea is a waft of death,?The waves are singing a song of woe!?By silent river, by moaning sea,?Long and vain shall thy watching be?Never again shall the sweet voice call,?Never the white hand rise and fall!
O Rivermouth Rocks, how sad a sight?Ye saw in the light of breaking day?Dead faces looking up cold and white?From sand and seaweed where they lay.?The mad old witch-wife wailed and wept,?And cursed the tide as it backward crept?"Crawl back, crawl back, blue water-snake?Leave your dead for the hearts that break!"
Solemn it was in that old day?In Hampton town and its log-built church,?Where side by side the coffins lay?And the mourners stood in aisle and porch.?In the singing-seats young eyes were dim,?The voices faltered that raised the hymn,?And Father Dalton, grave and stern,?Sobbed through his prayer and wept in turn.
But his ancient colleague did not pray;?Under the weight of his fourscore years?He stood apart with the iron-gray?Of his strong brows knitted to hide his tears;?And a fair-faced woman of doubtful fame,?Linking her own with his honored name,?Subtle as sin, at his side withstood?The felt reproach of her neighborhood.
Apart with them, like them forbid,?Old Goody Cole looked drearily round,?As, two by two, with their faces hid,?The mourners walked to the burying-ground.?She let the staff from her clasped hands fall?"Lord, forgive us! we're sinners all!"?And the voice of the old man answered her?"Amen!" said Father Bachiler.
So, as I sat upon Appledore?In the calm of a closing summer day,?And the broken lines of Hampton shore?In purple mist of cloudland lay,?The Rivermouth Rocks their story told;?And waves aglow with sunset gold,?Rising and breaking in steady chime,?Beat the rhythm and kept the time.
And the sunset paled, and warmed once more?With a softer, tenderer after-glow;?In the east was moon-rise, with boats off-shore?And sails in the distance drifting slow.?The beacon glimmered from Portsmouth bar,?The White Isle kindled its great red star;?And life and death in my old-time lay?Mingled in peace like the night and day!
. . . . .
"Well!" said the Man of Books, "your story?Is really not ill told in verse.?As the Celt said of purgatory,?One might go farther and fare worse."?The Reader smiled; and once again?With steadier voice took up his strain,?While the fair singer from the neighboring tent?Drew near, and at his side a graceful listener bent.?1864.
THE GRAVE BY THE LAKE
At the mouth of the Melvin River, which empties into Moulton-Bay in Lake Winnipesaukee, is a great mound. The Ossipee Indians had their home in the neighborhood of the bay, which is plentifully stocked with fish, and many relics of their occupation have been found.
Where the Great Lake's sunny smiles?Dimple round its hundred isles,?And the mountain's granite ledge?Cleaves the water like a wedge,?Ringed about with smooth, gray stones,?Rest the giant's mighty bones.
Close beside, in shade and gleam,?Laughs and ripples Melvin stream;?Melvin water, mountain-born,?All fair flowers its banks adorn;?All the woodland's voices meet,?Mingling with its murmurs sweet.
Over lowlands forest-grown,?Over waters island-strown,?Over silver-sanded beach,?Leaf-locked bay and misty reach,?Melvin stream and burial-heap,?Watch and ward the mountains keep.
Who that Titan cromlech fills??Forest-kaiser, lord o' the hills??Knight who on the birchen tree?Carved his savage heraldry??Priest o' the pine-wood temples dim,?Prophet, sage, or wizard grim?
Rugged type of primal man,?Grim utilitarian,?Loving woods for hunt and prowl,?Lake and hill for fish and fowl,?As the brown bear blind and dull?To the grand and beautiful:
Not for him the lesson drawn?From the mountains smit with dawn,?Star-rise, moon-rise, flowers of May,?Sunset's purple bloom of day,--?Took his life no hue from thence,?Poor amid such affluence?
Haply unto hill and tree?All too near akin was he?Unto him who stands afar?Nature's marvels greatest are;?Who the mountain purple seeks?Must not climb the higher peaks.
Yet who knows in winter tramp,?Or the midnight of the camp,?What revealings faint and far,?Stealing down from moon and star,?Kindled in that human clod?Thought of destiny and God?
Stateliest forest patriarch,?Grand in robes of skin and bark,?What sepulchral mysteries,?What weird funeral-rites, were his??What sharp wail, what drear lament,?Back scared wolf and eagle sent?
Now, whate'er he may have been,?Low he lies as other men;?On his mound the partridge drums,?There the noisy blue-jay comes;?Rank nor name nor pomp has he?In the grave's democracy.
Part thy blue lips, Northern lake!?Moss-grown rocks, your silence break!?Tell the tale, thou ancient tree!?Thou, too, slide-worn Ossipee!?Speak, and tell us how and when?Lived and died this king of men!
Wordless moans the ancient pine;?Lake and mountain give no sign;?Vain to trace this ring of stones;?Vain the search of crumbling bones?Deepest of all mysteries,?And the saddest, silence is.
Nameless, noteless, clay with clay?Mingles slowly day by day;?But somewhere, for good or ill,?That dark soul is living still;?Somewhere yet that atom's force?Moves the light-poised universe.
Strange that on his burial-sod?Harebells bloom, and golden-rod,?While the soul's dark horoscope?Holds no starry sign of hope!?Is the Unseen