With now and then a ruder shock, They softened to the sound of streams, Next morn we wakened with the shout 630 Of merry voices high and clear; And saw the teamsters drawing near 635 Shaking the snow from heads uptost, 640 645 Their straining nostrils white with frost. Down the loose snow-banks, wrestling, rolled, O'er windy hill, through clogged ravine, At every house a new recruit, Where, drawn by Nature's subtlest law, 650 Haply the watchful young men saw We heard once more the sleigh-bells' sound; 660 Just pausing at our door to say, Of one who, prompt at Duty's call, That some poor neighbor sick abed The Christian pearl of charity! So days went on: a week had passed 675 Since the great world was heard from last. The Almanac we studied o'er, Read and reread our little store Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score; 680 From younger eyes, a book forbid, 659. The wise old Doctor was Dr. Weld of Haverhill, an able man, who died at the age of ninety-six. 685 And poetry, (or good or bad, A single book was all we had,) Where Ellwood's meek, drab-skirted Muse, Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine, 695 700 Its corner for the rustic Muse, 683. Thomas Ellwood, one of the Society of Friends, a contemporary and friend of Milton, and the suggestor of Paradise Regained, wrote an epic poem in five books, called Davideis, the life of King David of Israel. He wrote the book, we are told, for his own diversion, so it was not necessary that others should be diverted by it. Ellwood's autobiography, a quaint and delightful book, has recently been issued in Howells's series of Choice Autobiography. 693. Referring to the removal of the Creek Indians from Georgia to beyond the Mississippi. 694. In 1822 Sir Gregor McGregor, a Scotchman, began an ineffectual attempt to establish a colony in Costa Rica. 697. Taygetus is a mountain on the Gulf of Messenia in Greece, and near by is the district of Maina, noted for its robbers and pirates. It was from these mountaineers that Ypsiianti, a Greek patriot, drew his cavalry in the struggle with Turkey, which resulted in the independence of Greece. Its monthly gauge of snow and rain, The wedding knell and dirge of death; 705 The latest culprit sent to jail; Its hue and cry of stolen and lost, Was melted in the genial glow; Wide swung again our ice-locked door, 715 Clasp, Angel of the backward look 725 730 Green hills of life that slope to death, And haunts of home, whose vistaed trees Shade off to mournful cypresses With the white amaranths underneath. Even while I look, I can but heed The restless sands' incessant fall, Importunate hours that hours succeed, Each clamorous with its own sharp need, And duty keeping pace with all. Shut down and clasp the heavy lids; 735 I hear again the voice that bids The dreamer leave his dream midway 740 Yet, haply, in some lull of life, Some Truce of God which breaks its strife, 750 755 Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond; Of sweetness near, he knows not whence, 741. The name is drawn from a historic compact in 1040. when the Church forbade the barons to make any attack on each other between sunset on Wednesday and sunrise on the following Monday, or upon any ecclesiastical fast or feast day. It also provided that no man was to molest a laborer working in the fields, or to lay hands on any implement of husbandry, on pain of excommunication. 747. The Flemish school of painting was chiefly occupied with homely interiors. |