"Her presence lends its warmth and health

To all who come before it.

395 If woman lost us Eden, such

400

405

410

As she alone restore it.

"For larger life and wiser aims
The farmer is her debtor;
Who holds to his another's heart
Must needs be worse or better.

66 Through her his civic service shows
A purer-toned ambition;

No double consciousness divides
The man and politician.

"In party's doubtful ways he trusts
Her instincts to determine;
At the loud polls, the thought of her
Recalls Christ's Mountain Sermon.

"He owns her logic of the heart,
And wisdom of unreason,

Supplying, while he doubts and weighs,
The needed word in season.

"He sees with pride her richer thought,
Her fancy's freer ranges;

415 And love thus deepened to respect
Is proof against all changes.

420

"And if she walks at ease in ways

His feet are slow to travel,

And if she reads with cultured eyes

What his may scarce unravel,

"Still clearer, for her keener sight
Of beauty and of wonder,
He learns the meaning of the hills
He dwelt from childhood under.

425 "And higher, warmed with summer lights, Or winter-crowned and hoary,

430

The ridged horizon lifts for him
Its inner veils of glory.

"He has his own free, bookless lore,
The lessons nature taught him,
The wisdom which the woods and hills
And toiling men have brought him:

"The steady force of will whereby Her flexile grace seems sweeter; 435 The sturdy counterpoise which makes Her woman's life completer:

440

445

"A latent fire of soul which lacks
No breath of love to fan it;

And wit, that, like his native brooks,
Plays over solid granite.

"How dwarfed against his manliness
She sees the poor pretension,
The wants, the aims, the follies, born
Of fashion and convention!

"How life behind its accidents

Stands strong and self-sustaining,

The human fact transcending all

The losing and the gaining.

450

"And so, in grateful interchange

Of teacher and of hearer,

Their lives their true distinctness keep
While daily drawing nearer.

"And if the husband or the wife

In home's strong light discovers 455 Such slight defaults as failed to meet The blinded eyes of lovers,

460

66

'Why need we care to ask? - who dreams Without their thorns of roses,

Or wonders that the truest steel

The readiest spark discloses?

"For still in mutual sufferance lies

The secret of true living:

Love scarce is love that never knows
The sweetness of forgiving.

465"We send the Squire to General Court, He takes his young wife thither;

470

No prouder man election day

Rides through the sweet June weather.

"He sees with eyes of manly trust

All hearts to her inclining;

Not less for him his household light
That others share its shining."

Thus, while my hostess spake, there grew
Before me, warmer tinted

475 And outlined with a tenderer grace,
The picture that she hinted.

480

The sunset smouldered as we drove
Beneath the deep hill-shadows.
Below us wreaths of white fog walked
Like ghosts the haunted meadows.

Sounding the summer night, the stars
Dropped down their golden plummets ;
The pale arc of the Northern lights
Rose o'er the mountain summits,

485 Until, at last, beneath its bridge,
We heard the Bearcamp flowing,
And saw across the mapled lawn
The welcome home-lights glowing;-

490

And, musing on the tale I heard,
'T were well, thought I, if often
To rugged farm-life came the gift
To harmonize and soften;-

If more and more we found the troth
Of fact and fancy plighted,

495 And culture's charm and labor's strength In rural homes united,

500

The simple life, the homely hearth,
With beauty's sphere surrounding,
And blessing toil where toil abounds
With graces more abounding.

[THIS poem was published in 1875, but it had already appeared in an earlier version in 1860 under the title of The Witch's Daughter, in Home Ballads and other Poems. Mabel Martin is in the same measure as The Witch's Daughter, and many of the verses are the same, but the poet has taken the first draft as a sketch, filled it out, adding verses here and there, altering lines and making an introduction, so that the new version is a third longer than the old. The reader will find it interesting to compare the two poems. The scene is laid on the Merrimack, as Deer Island and Hawkswood near

Newburyport intimate. A fruitful comparison might be drawn between the treatment of such sub jects by Whittier and by Hawthorne.]

5

PART I.

THE RIVER VALLEY.

ACROSS the level tableland,
A grassy, rarely trodden way,
With thinnest skirt of birchen spray

And stunted growth of cedar, leads
To where you see the dull plain fall

Sheer off, steep-slanted, ploughed by all