THE WITCH'S DAUGHTER.

"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.

"Oh, 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 Flls 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!

807

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!"

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 mem ory 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.

THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN.

309

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 threads of romance 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 head-stones, 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.

Before the deep-mouthed chimney, dimly lit by dying brands,

Twenty soldiers sat and waited, with their muskets in their hands;

On the rough-hewn oaken table the venison haunch was shared,

And the pewter tankard circled slowly round from beard to beard.

Long they sat and talked together,-talked of wizards Satan-sold;

Of all ghostly sights and noises,-signs and wonders manifold;

Of the spectre-ship of Salem, with the dead men in her shrouds,

Sailing sheer above the water, in the loom of morning clouds;

Of the marvellous valley hidden in the depths of Gloucester woods,

Full of plants that love the summer,-blooms of warmer latitudes;

Where the Arctic birch is braided by the tropic's flowery vines,

And the white magnolia-blossoms star the twilight of the pines!

But their voices sank yet lower, sank to husky tones of fear,

As they spake of present tokens of the powers of evil near;

THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN.

31

Of a spectre host, defying stroke of steel and aim of gun;

Never yet vs ball to slay them in the mould of mortals run!

Thrice, with plumes and flowing scalp-locks, from the midnight wood they came,—

Thrice around the block-house marching, met, unharmed, its volleyed flame;

Then, with mocking laugh and gesture, sunk in earth or lost in air,

All the gho tly wonder vanished, and the moonlit sand lay bare.

Midnight ca ne; from out the forest moved a dusky mass, that soon

Grew to varriors, plumed and painted, grimly marc ing in the moon.

"Ghosts or witches," said the captain, "thus I foil the Evil One!"

And he ran med a silver button, from his doublet, down his gun.

Once again the spectral horror moved the guarded wall about;

Once again the levelled muskets through the palisades flashed out,

With that deadly aim the squirrel on his tree-top might not shun,

Nor the beach-bird seaward flying with his slant wing to the sun.

Like the idle rain of summer sped the harmless shower of lead.

With a laugh of fierce derision, once again the phantoms fled;

Once again, without a shadow on the sands the moonlight lay,

And the white smoke curling through it drifted slowly down the bay!