The Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier

I CALL the old time back: I bring these lays
To thee, in memory of the summer days
When, by our native streams and forest ways,

We dreamed them over; while the rivulets made Songs of their own, and the great pine-trees laid On warm noon-lights the masses of their shade.

And she was with us, living o'er again
Her life in ours, despite of years and pain,-
The autumn's brightness after latter rain.

Beautiful in her holy peace as one

Who stands, at evening, when the work is done,
Glorified in the setting of the sun!

Her memory makes our common landscape seem
Fairer than any of which painters dream,

Lights the brown hills and sings in every stream;

For she whose speech was always truth's pure gold
Heard, not unpleased, its simple legends told,
And loved with us the beautiful and old.

HOME BALLADS.

THE WITCH'S DAUGHTER.

IT 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

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

On Esek Harden's oaken floor,

With many anautumn 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!

On sturdy boyhood sun-embrowned,
On girlhood with its solid curves
Of healthful strength and painless

nerves!

And jests went round, and laughs that made

The house-dog answer with his howl, And kept astir the barn-yard fowl;

And quaint old songs their fathers sung, In Derby dales and Yorkshire moors, Ere Norman William trod their

shores;

And tales, whose merry license shook
The fat sides of the Saxon thane,
Forgetful of the hovering Dane !

But still the sweetest voice was mute
That river-valley ever heard
From lip of maid or throat of bird;

For Mabel Martin sat apart,
And let the hay-mow's shadow fall
Upon the loveliest face of all.

She sat apart, as one forbid,
Who knew that none would conde-
scend

To own the Witch-wife's child a friend.

The seasons scarce had gone their round, Since curious thousands thronged to

see

Her mother on the gallows-tree;

And mocked the palsied limbs of age,
That faltered on the fatal stairs,
And wan lip trembling with its
prayers!

Few questioned of the sorrowing child,
Or, when they saw the mother die,
Dreamed of the daughter's agony.

Now let the merriest tales be told,

And let the sweetest songs be sung
That ever made the old heart young!

For now the lost has found a home; And a lone hearth shall brighter burn,

As all the household joys return!

O, pleasantly the harvest-moon,
Between the shadow of the mows,
Looked on them through the great
elm-boughs!

On Mabel's curls of golden hair,
On Esek's shaggy strength it fell;
And the wind whispered, "It is well!"

THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN.

FROM the hills of home forth looking, far beneath the tent-like span
Of the sky, I see the white gleam of the headland of Cape Ann.
Well I know its coves and beaches to the ebb-tide glimmering down,
And the white-walled hamlet children of its ancient fishing-town.

Long has passed the summer morning, and its memory waxes old,
When along yon breezy headlands with a pleasant friend I strolled.
Ah! the autumn sun is shining, and the ocean wind blows cool,
And the golden-rod and aster bloom around thy grave, Rantoul !

With the memory of that morning by the summer sea I blend
A wild and wondrous story, by the younger Mather penned,

In that quaint Magnalia Christi, with all strange and marvellous things,
Heaped up huge and undigested, like the chaos Ovid sings.

Dear to me these far, faint glimpses of the dual life of old,

Inward, grand with awe and reverence; outward, mean and coarse and cold;
Gleams of mystic beauty playing over dull and vulgar clay,
Golden-threaded fancies weaving in a web of hodden gray.

The great eventful Present hides the Past: but through the din
Of its loud life hints and echoes from the life behind steal in ;
And the lore of home and fireside, and the legendary rhyme,
Make the task of duty lighter which the true man owes his time.

So, with something of the feeling which the Covenanter knew,

When with pious chisel wandering Scotland's moorland graveyards through,
From the graves of old traditions I part the blackberry-vines,
Wipe the moss from off the headstones, and retouch the faded lines.

Where the sea-waves back and forward, hoarse with rolling pebbles, ran,
The garrison-house stood watching on the gray rocks of Cape Ann;
On its windy site uplifting gabled roof and palisade,

And rough walls of unhewn timber with the moonlight overlaid.

On his slow round walked the sentry, south and eastward looking forth O'er a rude and broken coast-line, white with breakers stretching north, Wood and rock and gleaming sand-drift, jagged capes, with bush and tree, Leaning inland from the smiting of the wild and gusty sea.

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The Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier, Issue 640