Whittiers Complete Poems, vol 1 | Page 7

of fox, nor rabbit's bound,?Nor stir of wings, nor waters flowing,?Nor leaves in midnight breezes blowing.
Was that the tread of many feet,?Which downward from the hillside beat??What forms were those which darkly stood?Just on the margin of the wood?--?Charred tree-stumps in the moonlight dim,?Or paling rude, or leafless limb??No,--through the trees fierce eyeballs glowed,?Dark human forms in moonshine showed,?Wild from their native wilderness,?With painted limbs and battle-dress.
A yell the dead might wake to hear?Swelled on the night air, far and clear;?Then smote the Indian tomahawk?On crashing door and shattering lock;
Then rang the rifle-shot, and then?The shrill death-scream of stricken men,--?Sank the red axe in woman's brain,?And childhood's cry arose in vain.?Bursting through roof and window came,?Red, fast, and fierce, the kindled flame,?And blended fire and moonlight glared?On still dead men and scalp-knives bared.
The morning sun looked brightly through?The river willows, wet with dew.?No sound of combat filled the air,?No shout was heard, nor gunshot there;?Yet still the thick and sullen smoke?From smouldering ruins slowly broke;?And on the greensward many a stain,?And, here and there, the mangled slain,?Told how that midnight bolt had sped?Pentucket, on thy fated head.
Even now the villager can tell?Where Rolfe beside his hearthstone fell,?Still show the door of wasting oak,?Through which the fatal death-shot broke,?And point the curious stranger where?De Rouville's corse lay grim and bare;?Whose hideous head, in death still feared,?Bore not a trace of hair or beard;?And still, within the churchyard ground,?Heaves darkly up the ancient mound,?Whose grass-grown surface overlies?The victims of that sacrifice.?1838.
THE NORSEMEN.
In the early part of the present century, a fragment of a statue, rudely chiselled from dark gray stone, was found in the town of Bradford, on the Merrimac. Its origin must be left entirely to conjecture. The fact that the ancient Northmen visited the north-east coast of North America and probably New England, some centuries before the discovery of the western world by Columbus, is very generally admitted.
GIFT from the cold and silent Past!?A relic to the present cast,?Left on the ever-changing strand?Of shifting and unstable sand,?Which wastes beneath the steady chime?And beating of the waves of Time!?Who from its bed of primal rock?First wrenched thy dark, unshapely block??Whose hand, of curious skill untaught,?Thy rude and savage outline wrought?
The waters of my native stream?Are glancing in the sun's warm beam;?From sail-urged keel and flashing oar?The circles widen to its shore;?And cultured field and peopled town?Slope to its willowed margin down.?Yet, while this morning breeze is bringing?The home-life sound of school-bells ringing,?And rolling wheel, and rapid jar?Of the fire-winged and steedless car,?And voices from the wayside near?Come quick and blended on my ear,--?A spell is in this old gray stone,?My thoughts are with the Past alone!
A change!--The steepled town no more?Stretches along the sail-thronged shore;?Like palace-domes in sunset's cloud,?Fade sun-gilt spire and mansion proud?Spectrally rising where they stood,?I see the old, primeval wood;?Dark, shadow-like, on either hand?I see its solemn waste expand;?It climbs the green and cultured hill,?It arches o'er the valley's rill,?And leans from cliff and crag to throw?Its wild arms o'er the stream below.?Unchanged, alone, the same bright river?Flows on, as it will flow forever?I listen, and I hear the low?Soft ripple where its waters go;?I hear behind the panther's cry,?The wild-bird's scream goes thrilling by,?And shyly on the river's brink?The deer is stooping down to drink.
But hark!--from wood and rock flung back,?What sound comes up the Merrimac??What sea-worn barks are those which throw?The light spray from each rushing prow??Have they not in the North Sea's blast?Bowed to the waves the straining mast??Their frozen sails the low, pale sun?Of Thule's night has shone upon;?Flapped by the sea-wind's gusty sweep?Round icy drift, and headland steep.?Wild Jutland's wives and Lochlin's daughters?Have watched them fading o'er the waters,?Lessening through driving mist and spray,?Like white-winged sea-birds on their way!
Onward they glide,--and now I view?Their iron-armed and stalwart crew;?Joy glistens in each wild blue eye,?Turned to green earth and summer sky.?Each broad, seamed breast has cast aside?Its cumbering vest of shaggy hide;?Bared to the sun and soft warm air,?Streams back the Norsemen's yellow hair.?I see the gleam of axe and spear,?The sound of smitten shields I hear,?Keeping a harsh and fitting time?To Saga's chant, and Runic rhyme;?Such lays as Zetland's Scald has sung,?His gray and naked isles among;?Or muttered low at midnight hour?Round Odin's mossy stone of power.?The wolf beneath the Arctic moon?Has answered to that startling rune;?The Gael has heard its stormy swell,?The light Frank knows its summons well;?Iona's sable-stoled Culdee?Has heard it sounding o'er the sea,?And swept, with hoary beard and hair,?His altar's foot in trembling prayer.
'T is past,--the 'wildering vision dies?In darkness on my dreaming eyes?The forest vanishes in air,?Hill-slope and vale lie starkly bare;?I hear the common tread of men,?And hum of work-day life again;
The mystic relic seems alone?A broken mass of common stone;?And if it be the chiselled limb?Of