Whittiers Complete Poems, vol 1 | Page 4

wall,?To hear it and to die!?Onward it rolled; while oft its driver stayed,?And hoarsely clamored, "Ho! bring out your dead."
It paused beside the burial-place;?"Toss in your load!" and it was done.?With quick hand and averted face,?Hastily to the grave's embrace?They cast them, one by one,?Stranger and friend, the evil and the just,?Together trodden in the churchyard dust.
And thou, young martyr! thou wast there;?No white-robed sisters round thee trod,?Nor holy hymn, nor funeral prayer?Rose through the damp and noisome air,?Giving thee to thy God;?Nor flower, nor cross, nor hallowed taper gave?Grace to the dead, and beauty to the grave!
Yet, gentle sufferer! there shall be,?In every heart of kindly feeling,?A rite as holy paid to thee?As if beneath the convent-tree?Thy sisterhood were kneeling,?At vesper hours, like sorrowing angels, keeping?Their tearful watch around thy place of sleeping.
For thou wast one in whom the light?Of Heaven's own love was kindled well;?Enduring with a martyr's might,?Through weary day and wakeful night,?Far more than words may tell?Gentle, and meek, and lowly, and unknown,?Thy mercies measured by thy God alone!
Where manly hearts were failing, where?The throngful street grew foul with death,?O high-souled martyr! thou wast there,?Inhaling, from the loathsome air,?Poison with every breath.?Yet shrinking not from offices of dread?For the wrung dying, and the unconscious dead.
And, where the sickly taper shed?Its light through vapors, damp, confined,?Hushed as a seraph's fell thy tread,?A new Electra by the bed?Of suffering human-kind!?Pointing the spirit, in its dark dismay,?To that pure hope which fadeth not away.
Innocent teacher of the high?And holy mysteries of Heaven!?How turned to thee each glazing eye,?In mute and awful sympathy,?As thy low prayers were given;?And the o'er-hovering Spoiler wore, the while,?An angel's features, a deliverer's smile!
A blessed task! and worthy one?Who, turning from the world, as thou,?Before life's pathway had begun?To leave its spring-time flower and sun,?Had sealed her early vow;?Giving to God her beauty and her youth,?Her pure affections and her guileless truth.
Earth may not claim thee. Nothing here?Could be for thee a meet reward;?Thine is a treasure far more dear?Eye hath not seen it, nor the ear?Of living mortal heard?The joys prepared, the promised bliss above,?The holy presence of Eternal Love!
Sleep on in peace. The earth has not?A nobler name than thine shall be.?The deeds by martial manhood wrought,?The lofty energies of thought,?The fire of poesy,?These have but frail and fading honors; thine?Shall Time unto Eternity consign.
Yea, and when thrones shall crumble down,?And human pride and grandeur fall,?The herald's line of long renown,?The mitre and the kingly crown,--?Perishing glories all!?The pure devotion of thy generous heart?Shall live in Heaven, of which it was a part.?1833.
EXTRACT FROM "A NEW ENGLAND LEGEND."?(Originally a part of the author's Moll Pitcher.)
How has New England's romance fled,?Even as a vision of the morning!?Its rites foredone, its guardians dead,?Its priestesses, bereft of dread,?Waking the veriest urchin's scorning!?Gone like the Indian wizard's yell?And fire-dance round the magic rock,?Forgotten like the Druid's spell?At moonrise by his holy oak!?No more along the shadowy glen?Glide the dim ghosts of murdered men;?No more the unquiet churchyard dead?Glimpse upward from their turfy bed,?Startling the traveller, late and lone;?As, on some night of starless weather,?They silently commune together,?Each sitting on his own head-stone?The roofless house, decayed, deserted,?Its living tenants all departed,?No longer rings with midnight revel?Of witch, or ghost, or goblin evil;?No pale blue flame sends out its flashes?Through creviced roof and shattered sashes!?The witch-grass round the hazel spring?May sharply to the night-air sing,?But there no more shall withered hags?Refresh at ease their broomstick nags,?Or taste those hazel-shadowed waters?As beverage meet for Satan's daughters;?No more their mimic tones be heard,?The mew of cat, the chirp of bird,?Shrill blending with the hoarser laughter?Of the fell demon following after!?The cautious goodman nails no more?A horseshoe on his outer door,?Lest some unseemly hag should fit?To his own mouth her bridle-bit;?The goodwife's churn no more refuses?Its wonted culinary uses?Until, with heated needle burned,?The witch has to her place returned!?Our witches are no longer old?And wrinkled beldames, Satan-sold,?But young and gay and laughing creatures,?With the heart's sunshine on their features;?Their sorcery--the light which dances?Where the raised lid unveils its glances;?Or that low-breathed and gentle tone,?The music of Love's twilight hours,?Soft, dream-like, as a fairy's moan?Above her nightly closing flowers,?Sweeter than that which sighed of yore?Along the charmed Ausonian shore!?Even she, our own weird heroine,?Sole Pythoness of ancient Lynn,'?Sleeps calmly where the living laid her;?And the wide realm of sorcery,?Left by its latest mistress free,?Hath found no gray and skilled invader.?So--perished Albion's "glammarye,"?With him in Melrose Abbey sleeping,?His charmed torch beside his knee,?That even the dead himself might see?The magic scroll within his keeping.?And now our modern Yankee sees?Nor omens, spells, nor mysteries;?And naught above, below, around,?Of life or death, of sight or sound,?Whate'er its nature, form, or look,?Excites his terror or surprise,?All seeming to his knowing eyes?Familiar as his "catechise,"?Or "Webster's Spelling-Book."?1833.
THE DEMON