The Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier

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THE DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE.

Think of the sea's dread monotone, Of the mournful wail from the pinewood blown,

Of the strange, vast splendors that lit the North,

Of the troubled throes of the quaking earth,

And the dismal tales the Indian told. Till the settler's heart at his hearth grew cold,

And he shrank from the tawny wizard's boasts,

And the hovering shadows seemed full of ghosts,

And above, below, and on every side, The fear of his creed seemed verified; And think, if his lot were now thine

own,

;

To grope with terrors nor named nor known,

How laxer muscle and weaker nerve And a feebler faith thy need might

serve;

And own to thyself the wonder more 'That the snake had two heads, and not a score !

Whether he lurked in the Oldtown fen

Or the gray earth-flax of the Devil's
Den,

Or swam in the wooded Artichoke,
Or coiled by the Northman's Written
Rock,

Nothing on record is left to show:
Only the fact that he lived, we know,
And left the cast of a double head
In the scaly mask which he yearly shed.
For he carried a head where his tail
should be,

And the two, of course, could never agree,

Butwriggled about with main and might,
Now to the left and now to the right;
Pulling and twisting this way and that,
Neither knew what the other was at.
A snake with two heads, lurking so

near!

Judge of the wonder, guess at the fear! Think what ancient gossips might say, Shaking their heads in their dreary

way,

Between the meetings on Sabbathday!

279

How urchins, searching at day's decline The Common Pasture for sheep or kine,

The terrible double-ganger heard
In leafy rustle or whir of bird!
Think what a zest it gave to the sport,
In berry-time, of the younger sort,
As over pastures blackberry-twined,
Reuben and Dorothy lagged behind,
And closer and closer, for fear of harm,
The maiden clung to her lover's arm;
And how the spark, who was forced to
stay,

By his sweetheart's fears, till the break of day,

Thanked the snake for the fond delay!

THE SWAN SONG OF PARSON AVERY.

WHEN the reaper's task was ended, and the summer wearing late,
Parson Avery sailed from Newbury, with his wife and children eight,
Dropping down the river-harbor in the shallop "Watch and Wait."

Pleasantly lay the clearings in the mellow summer-morn,
With the newly planted orchards dropping their fruits first-born,
And the homesteads like green islands amid a sea of corn.

Broad meadows reached out seaward the tided creeks between,
And hills rolled wave-like inland, with oaks and walnuts green;-
A fairer home, a goodlier land, his eyes had never seen.

Yet away sailed Parson Avery, away where duty led,
And the voice of God seemed calling, to break the living bread
To the souls of fishers starving on the rocks of Marblehead.

All day they sailed: at nightfall the pleasant land-breeze died,
The blackening sky, at midnight, its starry lights denied,
And far and low the thunder of tempest prophesied !

Blotted out were all the coast-lines, gone were rock, and wood, and sand:
Grimly anxious stood the skipper with the rudder in his hand,

And questioned of the darkness what was sea and what was land.

And the preacher heard his dear ones, nestled round him, weeping sore: "Never heed, my little children! Christ is walking on before

To the pleasant land of heaven, where the sea shall be no more."

All at once the great cloud parted, like a curtain drawn aside,
To let down the torch of lightning on the terror far and wide;
And the thunder and the whirlwind together smote the tide.

There was wailing in the shallop, woman's wail and man's despair,
A crash of breaking timbers on the rocks so sharp and bare,
And, through it all, the murmur of Father Avery's prayer.

From his struggle in the darkness with the wild waves and the blast,
On a rock, where every billow broke above him as it passed,
Alone, of all his household, the man of God was cast.

There a comrade heard him praying, in the pause of wave and wind:
"All my own have gone before me, and I linger just behind;
Not for life I ask, but only for the rest thy ransomed find!

"In this night of death I challenge the promise of thy word!-Let me see the great salvation of which mine ears have heard!Let me pass from hence forgiven, through the grace of Christ, our

"In the baptism of these waters wash white my every sin, And let me follow up to thee my household and my kin! Open the sea-gate of thy heaven, and let me enter in!"

Lord!

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