35

The look of one who, merging not
Her self-hood in another's will,
Is love's and duty's handmaid still.

Pass with me down the path that winds
Through birches to the open land,
Where, close upon the river strand

40 You mark a cellar, vine-o'errun,

45

50

Above whose wall of loosened stones
The sumach lifts its reddening cones,

And the black nightshade's berries shine,
And broad, unsightly burdocks fold
The household ruin, century-old.

Here, in the dim colonial time

Of sterner lives and gloomier faith,
A woman lived, tradition saith,

Who wrought her neighbors foul annoy,
And witched and plagued the country-side,
Till at the hangman's hand she died.

Sit with me while the westering day
Falls slantwise down the quiet vale,
And, haply, ere yon loitering sail,

55 That round the upper headland falls Below Deer Island's pines, or sees Behind it Hawkswood's belt of trees

60

Rise black against the sinking sun,
My idyl of its days of old,

The valley's legend shall be told.

65

PART II.

THE HUSKING.

1r was the pleasant harvest-time,
When cellar-bins are closely stowed,
And garrets bend beneath their load,

And the old swallow-haunted barns,
Brown-gabled, long, and full of seams
Through which the moted sunlight streams,

And winds blow freshly in, to shake
The red plumes of the roosted cocks,
And the loose hay-mow's scented locks,

70 Are filled with summer's ripened stores, Its odorous grass and barley sheaves, From their low scaffolds to their eaves.

75

Во

On Esek Harden's oaken floor,

With many an autumn threshing worn,
Lay the heaped ears of unhusked corn.

And thither came young men and maids,
Beneath a moon that, large and low,
Lit that sweet eve of long ago.

They took their places; some by chance,
And others by a merry voice

Or sweet smile guided to their choice.

How pleasantly the rising moon,

Between the shadow of the mows,

Looked on them through the great elm-boughs