John Greenleaf Whittier
Funeral Tree of the Sokokis
Around Sebago’s lonely lake
There lingers not a breeze to break
The mirror which its waters make.
The solemn pines along its shore,
The firs which hang its gray rocks o’er,
Are painted on its glassy floor.
The sun looks o’er, with hazy eye,
The snowy mountain-tops which lie
Piled coldly up against the sky.
Dazzling and white! save where the bleak,
Wild winds have bared some splintering peak,
Or snow-slide left its dusky streak.
Yet green are Saco’s banks below,
And belts of spruce and cedar show,
Dark fringing round those cones of snow.
The earth hath felt the breath of spring,
Though yet on her deliverer’s wing
The lingering frosts of winter cling.
Fresh grasses fringe the meadow-brooks,
And mildly from its sunny nooks
The blue eye of the violet looks.
And odors from the springing grass,
The sweet birch and the sassafras,
Upon the scarce-felt breezes pass.
Her tokens of renewing care
Hath Nature scattered everywhere,
In bud and flower, and warmer air.
But in their hour of bitterness,
What reek the broken Sokokis,
Beside their slaughtered chief, of this?
The turf’s red stain is yet undried,
Scarce have the death-shot echoes died
Along Sebago’s wooded side;
And silent now the hunters stand,
Grouped darkly, where a swell of land
Slopes upward from the lake’s white sand.
Fire and the axe have swept it bare,
Save one lone beech, unclosing there
Its light leaves in the vernal air.
With grave, cold looks, all sternly mute,
They break the damp turf at its foot,
And bare its coiled and twisted root.
They heave the stubborn trunk aside,
The firm roots from the earth divide,–
The rent beneath yawns dark and wide.
And there the fallen chief is laid,
In tasselled garb of skins arrayed,
And girded with his wampum-braid.
The silver cross he loved is pressed
Beneath the heavy arms, which rest
Upon his scarred and naked breast.
‘T is done: the roots are backward sent,
The beechen-tree stands up unbent,
The Indian’s fitting monument!
When of that sleeper’s broken race
Their green and pleasant dwelling-place,
Which knew them once, retains no trace;
Oh, long may sunset’s light be shed
As now upon that beech’s head,
A green memorial of the dead!
There shall his fitting requiem be,
In northern winds, that, cold and free,
Howl nightly in that funeral tree.
To their wild wail the waves which break
Forever round that lonely lake
A solemn undertone shall make!
And who shall deem the spot unblest,
Where Nature’s younger children rest,
Lulled on their sorrowing mother’s breast?
Deem ye that mother loveth less
These bronzed forms of the wilderness
She foldeth in her long caress?
As sweet o’er them her wild-flowers blow,
As if with fairer hair and brow
The blue-eyed Saxon slept below.
What though the places of their rest
No priestly knee hath ever pressed,–
No funeral rite nor prayer hath blessed?
What though the bigot’s ban be there,
And thoughts of wailing and despair,
And cursing in the place of prayer.
Yet Heaven hath angels watching round
The Indian’s lowliest forest-mound,–
And they have made it holy ground.
There ceases man’s frail judgment; all
His powerless bolts of cursing fall
Unheeded on that grassy pall.
O peeled and hunted and reviled,
Sleep on, dark tenant of the wild!
Great Nature owns her simple child!
And Nature’s God, to whom alone
The secret of the heart is known,–
The hidden language traced thereon;
Who from its many cumberings
Of form and creed, and outward things,
To light the naked spirit brings;
Not with our partial eye shall scan,
Not with our pride and scorn shall ban,
The spirit of our brother man!
Polan, chief of the Sokokis Indians of the country between Agamenticus and Casco Bay, was killed at Windham on Sebago Lake in the spring of 1756. After the whites had retired, the surviving Indians “swayed” or bent down a young tree until its roots were upturned, placed the body of their chief beneath it, then released the tree, which, in springing back to its old position, covered the grave. The Sokokis were early converts to the Catholic faith. Most of them, prior to the year 1756, had removed to the French settlements on the St. Francois.
John Greenleaf Whittier
St. John. 1647
‘To the winds give our banner!
Bear homeward again!’
Cried the Lord of Acadia,
Cried Charles of Estienne;
From the prow of his shallop
He gazed, as the sun,
From its bed in the ocean,
Streamed up the St. John.
O’er the blue western waters
That shallop had passed,
Where the mists of Penobscot
Clung damp on her mast.
St. Saviour had looked
On the heretic sail,
As the songs of the Huguenot
Rose on the gale.
The pale, ghostly fathers
Remembered her well,
And had cursed her while passing,
With taper and bell;
But the men of Monhegan,
Of Papists abhorred,
Had welcomed and feasted
The heretic Lord.
They had loaded his shallop
With dun-fish and ball,
With stores for his larder,
And steel for his wall.
Pemaquid, from her bastions
And turrets of stone,
Had welcomed his coming
With banner and gun.
And the prayers of the elders
Had followed his way,
As homeward he glided,
Down Pentecost Bay.
Oh, well sped La Tour
For, in peril and pain,
His lady kept watch,
For his coming again.
O’er the Isle of the Pheasant
The morning sun shone,
On the plane-trees which shaded
The shores of St. John.
‘Now, why from yon battlements
Speaks not my love!
Why waves there no banner
My fortress above?’
Dark and wild, from his deck
St. Estienne gazed about,
On fire-wasted dwellings,
And silent redoubt;
From the low, shattered walls
Which the flame had o’errun,
There floated no banner,
There thundered no gun!
But beneath the low arch
Of its doorway there stood
A pale priest of Rome,
In his cloak and his hood.
With the bound of a lion,
La Tour sprang to land,
On the throat of the Papist
He fastened his hand.
‘Speak, son of the Woman
Of scarlet and sin!
What wolf has been prowling
My castle within?’
From the grasp of the soldier
The Jesuit broke,
Half in scorn, half in sorrow,
He smiled as he spoke:
‘No wolf, Lord of Estienne,
Has ravaged thy hall,
But thy red-handed rival,
With fire, steel, and ball!
On an errand of mercy
I hitherward came,
While the walls of thy castle
Yet spouted with flame.
’Pentagoet’s dark vessels
Were moored in the bay,
Grim sea-lions, roaring
Aloud for their prey.’
‘But what of my lady?’
Cried Charles of Estienne.
‘On the shot-crumbled turret
Thy lady was seen:
’Half-veiled in the smoke-cloud,
Her hand grasped thy pennon,
While her dark tresses swayed
In the hot breath of cannon!
But woe to the heretic,
Evermore woe!
When the son of the church
And the cross is his foe!
‘In the track of the shell,
In the path of the ball,
Pentagoet swept over
The breach of the wall!
Steel to steel, gun to gun,
One moment,-and then
Alone stood the victor,
Alone with his men!
’Of its sturdy defenders,
Thy lady alone
Saw the cross-blazoned banner
Float over St. John.’
‘Let the dastard look to it!’
Cried fiery Estienne,
‘Were D’Aulnay King Louis,
I’d free her again!’
‘Alas for thy lady!
No service from thee
Is needed by her
Whom the Lord hath set free;
Nine days, in stern silence,
Her thraldom she bore,
But the tenth morning came,
And Death opened her door!’
As if suddenly smitten
La Tour staggered back;
His hand grasped his sword-hilt,
His forehead grew black.
He sprang on the deck
Of his shallop again.
‘We cruise now for vengeance!
Give way!’ cried Estienne.
‘Massachusetts shall hear
Of the Huguenot’s wrong,
And from island and creekside
Her fishers shall throng!
Pentagoet shall rue
What his Papists have done,
When his palisades echo
The Puritan’s gun!’
Oh, the loveliest of heavens
Hung tenderly o’er him,
There were waves in the sunshine,
And green isles before him:
But a pale hand was beckoning
The Huguenot on;
And in blackness and ashes
Behind was St. John!
John Greenleaf Whittier
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 an autmn 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,—
Rude plays to Celt and Cimbri known,
The charms and riddles that beguiled
On Oxus’ banks the young world’s child,—
That primal picture-speech wherein
Have youth and maid the story told,
So new in each, so dateless old,
Recalling pastoral Ruth in her
Who waited, blushing and demure,
The red-ear’s kiss of forfeiture.
But still the sweetest voice was mute
That river-valley ever heard
From lips 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 condescend
To own the Witch-wife’s child a friend.
The seasons scarce had gone their round,
Since curious thousands thronged to see
Her mother at the gallows-tree;
And mocked the prison-palsied limbs
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.
They went up to their homes that day,
As men and Christians justified
God willed it, and the wretch had died!
Dear God and Father of us all,
Forgive our faith in cruel lies,—
Forgive the blindness that denies!
Forgive thy creature when he takes,
For the all-perfect love Thou art,
Some grim creation of his heart.
Cast down our idols, overturn
Our bloody altars; let us see
Thyself in Thy humanity!
Poor Mabel from her mother’s grave
Crept to her desolate hearth-stone,
And wrestled with her fate alone;
With love, and anger, and despair,
The phantoms of disordered sense,
The awful doubts of Providence!
The school-boys jeered her as they passed,
And, when she sought the house of prayer,
Her mother’s curse pursued her there.
And still o’er many a neighboring door
She saw the horseshoe’s curved charm,
To guard against her mother’s harm; —
That mother, poor, and sick, and lame,
Who daily, by the old arm-chair,
Folded her withered hands in prayer; —
Who turned, in Salem’s dreary jail,
Her worn old Bible o’er and o’er,
When her dim eyes could read no more!
Sore tried and pained, the poor girl kept
Her faith, and trusted that her way,
So dark, would somewhere meet the day.
And still her weary wheel went round
Day after day, with no relief
Small leisure have the poor for grief.
So in the shadow Mabel sits;
Untouched by mirth she sees and hears,
Her smile is sadder than her tears.
But cruel eyes have found her out,
And cruel lips repeat her name,
And taunt her with her mother’s shame.
She answered not with railing words,
But drew her apron o’er her face,
And, sobbing, glided from the place.
And only pausing at the door,
Her sad eyes met the troubled gaze
Of one who, in her better days,
Had been her warm and steady friend,
Ere yet her mother’s doom had made
Even Esek Harden half afraid.
He felt that mute appeal of tears,
And, starting, with an angry frown,
Hushed all the wicked murmurs down.
“Good neighbors mine,” he sternly said,
“This passes harmless mirth or jest;
I brook no insult to my guest.
“She is indeed her mother’s child;
But God’s sweet pity ministers
Unto no whiter soul than hers.
“Let Goody Martin rest in peace;
I never knew her harm a fly,
And witch or not, God knows — not I.
“I know who swore her life away;
And as God lives, I’d not condemn
An Indian dog on word of them.”
The broadest lands in all the town,
The skill to guide, the power to awe,
Were Harden’s; and his word was law.
None dared withstand him to his face,
But one sly maiden spake aside
“The little witch is evil-eyed!
“Her mother only killed a cow,
Or witched a churn or dairy-pan;
But she, forsooth, must charm a man!”
Poor Mabel, in her lonely home,
Sat by the window’s narrow pane,
White in the moonlight’s silver rain.
The river, on its pebbled rim,
Made music such as childhood knew;
The door-yard tree was whispered through
By voices such as childhood’s ear
Had heard in moonlights long ago;
And through the willow-boughs below.
She saw the rippled waters shine;
Beyond, in waves of shade and light,
The hills rolled off into the night.
She saw and heard, but over all
A sense of some transforming spell,
The shadow of her sick heart fell.
And still across the wooded space
The harvest lights of Harden shone,
And song and jest and laugh went on.
And he, so gentle, true, and strong,
Of men the bravest and the best,
Had he, too, scorned her with the rest?
She strove to drown her sense of wrong,
And, in her old and simple way,
To teach her bitter heart to pray.
Poor child! the prayer, begun in faith,
Grew to a low, despairing cry
Of utter misery: “Let me die!
“Oh! take me from the scornful eyes,
And hide me where the cruel speech
And mocking finger may not reach!
“I dare not breathe my mother’s name
A daughter’s right I dare not crave
To weep above her unblest grave!
“Let me not live until my heart,
With few to pity, and with none
To love me, hardens into stone.
“O God! have mercy on Thy child,
Whose faith in Thee grows weak and small,
And take me ere I lose it all!”
A shadow on the moonlight fell,
And murmuring wind and wave became
A voice whose burden was her name.
Had then God heard her? Had He sent
His angel down? In flesh and blood,
Before her Esek Harden stood!
He laid his hand upon her arm
“Dear Mabel, this no more shall be;
Who scoffs at you must scoff at me.
“You know rough Esek Harden well;
And if he seems no suitor gay,
And if his hair is touched with gray,
“The maiden grown shall never find
His heart less warm than when she smiled,
Upon his knees, a little child!”
Her tears of grief were tears of joy,
As, folded in his strong embrace,
She looked in Esek Harden’s face.
“O truest friend of all'” she said,
“God bless you for your kindly thought,
And make me worthy of my lot!”
He led her through his dewy fields,
To where the swinging lanterns glowed,
And through the doors the huskers showed.
“Good friends and neighbors!” Esek said,
“I’m weary of this lonely life;
In Mabel see my chosen wife!
“She greets you kindly, one and all;
The past is past, and all offence
Falls harmless from her innocence.
“Henceforth she stands no more alone;
You know what Esek Harden is: —
He brooks no wrong to him or his.”
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!
Oh, 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!”
This is typed according to the Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier, Home Ballads 1860 section, pub. 1892
John Greenleaf Whittier
Spring Pageant
A sound as if from bells of silver,
Or elfin cymbals smitten clear,
Through the frost-pictured panes I hear.
A brightness which outshines the morning,
A splendor brooking no delay,
Beckons and tempts my feet away.
I leave the trodden village highway
For virgin snow-paths glimmering through
A jewelled elm-tree avenue;
Where, keen against the walls of sapphire,
The gleaming tree-bolls, ice-embossed,
Hold up their chandeliers of frost.
I tread in Orient halls enchanted,
I dream the Saga’s dream of caves
Gem-lit beneath the North Sea waves!
I walk the land of Eldorado,
I touch its mimic garden bowers,
Its silver leaves and diamond flowers!
The flora of the mystic mine-world
Around me lifts on crystal stems
The petals of its clustered gems!
What miracle of weird transforming
In this wild work of frost and light,
This glimpse of glory infinite!
This foregleam of the Holy City
Like that to him of Patmos given,
The white bride coming down from heaven!
How flash the ranked and mail-clad alders,
Through what sharp-glancing spears of reeds
The brook its muffled water leads!
Yon maple, like the bush of Horeb,
Burns unconsumed: a white, cold fire
Rays out from every grassy spire.
Each slender rush and spike of mullein,
Low laurel shrub and drooping fern,
Transfigured, blaze where’er I turn.
How yonder Ethiopian hemlock
Crowned with his glistening circlet stands!
What jewels light his swarthy hands!
Here, where the forest opens southward,
Between its hospitable pines,
As through a door, the warm sun shines.
The jewels loosen on the branches,
And lightly, as the soft winds blow,
Fall, tinkling, on the ice below.
And through the clashing of their cymbals
I hear the old familiar fall
Of water down the rocky wall,
Where, from its wintry prison breaking,
In dark and silence hidden long,
The brook repeats its summer song.
One instant flashing in the sunshine,
Keen as a sabre from its sheath,
Then lost again the ice beneath.
I hear the rabbit lightly leaping,
The foolish screaming of the jay,
The chopper’s axe-stroke far away;
The clamor of some neighboring barn-yard,
The lazy cock’s belated crow,
Or cattle-tramp in crispy snow.
And, as in some enchanted forest
The lost knight hears his comrades sing,
And, near at hand, their bridles ring,–
So welcome I these sounds and voices,
These airs from far-off summer blown,
This life that leaves me not alone.
For the white glory overawes me;
The crystal terror of the seer
Of Chebar’s vision blinds me here.
Rebuke me not, O sapphire heaven!
Thou stainless earth, lay not on me,
Thy keen reproach of purity,
If, in this August presence-chamber,
I sigh for summer’s leaf-green gloom
And warm airs thick with odorous bloom!
Let the strange frost-work sink and crumble,
And let the loosened tree-boughs swing,
Till all their bells of silver ring.
Shine warmly down, thou sun of noontime,
On this chill pageant, melt and move
The winter’s frozen heart with love.
And, soft and low, thou wind south-blowing,
Breathe through a veil of tenderest haze
Thy prophecy of summer days.
Come with thy green relief of promise,
And to this dead, cold splendor bring
The living jewels of the spring!
*
coffeedude65
Drogo
growing togehter
johnperryonline
Annie O'Dell
noellanatavano
Gary M
Tenuous Soap
Jessica Bowen
SCOD Public Blog 