Whittiers Complete Poems, vol 1 | Page 6

the grate,
And hung a
wig to my parlor wall
Once worn by a learned Judge, they say,
At
Salem court in the witchcraft day!
"Conjuro te, sceleratissime,
Abire ad tuum locum!"--still
Like a
visible nightmare he sits by me,--
The exorcism has lost its skill;

And I hear again in my haunted room
The husky wheeze and the
dolorous hum!
Ah! commend me to Mary Magdalen
With her sevenfold plagues, to
the wandering Jew,
To the terrors which haunted Orestes when
The

furies his midnight curtains drew,
But charm him off, ye who charm
him can,
That reading demon, that fat old man!
1835.
THE FOUNTAIN.
On the declivity of a hill in Salisbury, Essex County, is a fountain of
clear water, gushing from the very roots of a venerable oak. It is about
two miles from the junction of the Powow River with the Merrimac.
TRAVELLER! on thy journey toiling
By the swift Powow,
With
the summer sunshine falling
On thy heated brow,
Listen, while all
else is still,
To the brooklet from the hill.
Wild and sweet the flowers are blowing
By that streamlet's side,

And a greener verdure showing
Where its waters glide,
Down the
hill-slope murmuring on,
Over root and mossy stone.
Where yon oak his broad arms flingeth
O'er the sloping hill,

Beautiful and freshly springeth
That soft-flowing rill,
Through its
dark roots wreathed and bare,
Gushing up to sun and air.
Brighter waters sparkled never
In that magic well,
Of whose gift of
life forever
Ancient legends tell,
In the lonely desert wasted,
And
by mortal lip untasted.
Waters which the proud Castilian
Sought with longing eyes,

Underneath the bright pavilion
Of the Indian skies,
Where his forest
pathway lay
Through the blooms of Florida.
Years ago a lonely stranger,
With the dusky brow
Of the outcast
forest-ranger,
Crossed the swift Powow,
And betook him to the rill

And the oak upon the hill.
O'er his face of moody sadness
For an instant shone
Something like
a gleam of gladness,
As he stooped him down
To the fountain's

grassy side,
And his eager thirst supplied.
With the oak its shadow throwing
O'er his mossy seat,
And the cool,
sweet waters flowing
Softly at his feet,
Closely by the fountain's
rim
That lone Indian seated him.
Autumn's earliest frost had given
To the woods below
Hues of
beauty, such as heaven
Lendeth to its bow;
And the soft breeze
from the west
Scarcely broke their dreamy rest.
Far behind was Ocean striving
With his chains of sand;
Southward,
sunny glimpses giving,
'Twixt the swells of land,
Of its calm and
silvery track,
Rolled the tranquil Merrimac.
Over village, wood, and meadow
Gazed that stranger man,
Sadly,
till the twilight shadow
Over all things ran,
Save where spire and
westward pane
Flashed the sunset back again.
Gazing thus upon the dwelling
Of his warrior sires,
Where no
lingering trace was telling
Of their wigwam fires,
Who the gloomy
thoughts might know
Of that wandering child of woe?
Naked lay, in sunshine glowing,
Hills that once had stood
Down
their sides the shadows throwing
Of a mighty wood,
Where the deer
his covert kept,
And the eagle's pinion swept!
Where the birch canoe had glided
Down the swift Powow,
Dark
and gloomy bridges strided
Those clear waters now;
And where
once the beaver swam,
Jarred the wheel and frowned the dam.
For the wood-bird's merry singing,
And the hunter's cheer,
Iron
clang and hammer's ringing

Smote upon his ear;
And the thick and
sullen smoke
From the blackened forges broke.
Could it be his fathers ever
Loved to linger here?
These bare hills,

this conquered river,--
Could they hold them dear,
With their native
loveliness
Tamed and tortured into this?
Sadly, as the shades of even
Gathered o'er the hill,
While the
western half of heaven
Blushed with sunset still,
From the
fountain's mossy seat
Turned the Indian's weary feet.
Year on year hath flown forever,
But he came no more
To the
hillside on the river
Where he came before.
But the villager can tell

Of that strange man's visit well.
And the merry children, laden
With their fruits or flowers,
Roving
boy and laughing maiden,
In their school-day hours,
Love the
simple tale to tell
Of the Indian and his well.
1837
PENTUCKET.
The village of Haverhill, on the Merrimac, called by the Indians
Pentucket, was for nearly seventeen years a frontier town, and during
thirty years endured all the horrors of savage warfare. In the year 1708,
a combined body of French and Indians, under the command of De
Chaillons, and Hertel de Rouville, the famous and bloody sacker of
Deerfield, made an attack upon the village, which at that time contained
only thirty houses. Sixteen of the villagers were massacred, and a still
larger number made prisoners. About thirty of the enemy also fell,
among them Hertel de Rouville. The minister of the place, Benjamin
Rolfe, was killed by a shot through his own door. In a paper entitled
The Border War of 1708, published in my collection of Recreations and
Miscellanies, I have given a prose narrative of the surprise of Haverhill.
How sweetly on the wood-girt town
The mellow light of sunset shone!

Each small, bright lake, whose waters still
Mirror the forest and the
hill,
Reflected from its waveless breast
The beauty of a cloudless
west,
Glorious as if a glimpse were given
Within the western gates
of heaven,
Left, by the spirit of the star
Of sunset's holy hour, ajar!

Beside