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,

Until, at last, beneath its bridge,

We heard the Bearcamp flowing,
And saw across the maple lawn
The welcome home-lights glowing.

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;

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If more and more we found the troth

And culture's charm and labor's strength

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Of fact and fancy plighted,

In rural homes united,

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

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MABEL MARTIN.

[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 subjects by Whittier and by Hawthorne.]

PART I.

THE RIVER VALLEY.

ACROSS the level table-land,

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

The seasons' rainfalls. On its brink
The over-leaning harebells swing;
With roots half bare the pine-trees cling;

And, through the shadow looking west,
You see the wavering river flow
Along a vale, that far below

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Holds to the sun, the sheltering hills
And glimmering water-line between,
Broad fields of corn and meadows green,

And fruit-bent orchards grouped around
The low brown roofs and painted eaves,
And chimney-tops half hid in leaves.

No warmer valley hides behind

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Yon wind-scourged sand-dunes, cold and bleak; 20 No fairer river comes to seek

The wave-sung welcome of the sea,
Or mark the northmost border line
Of sun-loved growths of nut and vine.

Here, ground-fast in their native fields,
Untempted by the city's gain,
The quiet farmer folk remain

Who bear the pleasant name of Friends,
And keep their fathers' gentle ways
And simple speech of Bible days;

In whose neat homesteads woman holds
With modest ease her equal place,
And wears upon her tranquil face

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,

You mark a cellar, vine o'errun,

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,

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And witched and plagued the country-side, 50 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,

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

Rise black against the sinking sun,
My idyl of its days of old,
The valley's legend, shall be told.

PART II.

THE HUSKING.

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

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 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!

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;

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