There a comrade heard him praying, in the pause of wave and wind:
"All my own have gone before me, and I linger just behind;
Not for life I ask, but only for the rest thy ransomed find!
"In this night of death I challenge the promise of thy word!
Let me see the great salvation of which mine ears have heard!—
Let me pass from hence forgiven, through the grace of Christ, our Lord!
"In the baptism of these waters wash white my every sin,
And let me follow up to thee my household and my kin!
Open the sea-gate of thy heaven, and let me enter
When the Christian, sings his death-song, all the listening heavens draw near,
And the angels, leaning over the walls of crystal, hear How the notes so faint and broken swell to music in God's ear.
The ear of God was open to his servant's last request;
As the strong wave swept him downward the sweet hymn upward pressed,
And the soul of Father Avery went, singing, to its
There was wailing on the mainland, from the rocks of Marblehead;
In the stricken church of Newbury the notes of prayer were read ;
And long, by board and hearth-stone, the living mourned the dead.
And still the fishers outbound, or scudding from the
With grave and reverent faces, the ancient tale
When they see the white waves breaking on the Rock of Avery's Fall!
RAZE these long blocks of brick and stone,
These huge mill-monsters overgrown;
Blot out the humbler piles as well,
Where, moved like living shuttles, dwell
The weaving genii of the bell;
Tear from the wild Cocheco's track
The dams that hold its torrents back;
And let the loud-rejoicing fall
Plunge, roaring, down its rocky wall;
And let the Indian's paddle play
On the unbridged Piscataqua!
Wide over hill and valley spread
Once more the forest, dusk and dread,
With here and there a clearing cut
From the walled shadows round it shut;
Each with its farm-house builded rude,
By English yeoman squared and hewed,
And the grim, flankered block-house bound
With bristling palisades around.
So, haply, shall before thine eyes
The dusty veil of centuries rise,
The old, strange scenery overlay
The tamer pictures of to-day,
While, like the actors in a play,
Pass in their ancient guise along
The figures of my border song:
What time beside Cocheco's flood
The white man and the red man stood,
With words of peace and brotherhood;
When passed the sacred calumet
From lip to lip with fire-draught wet,
And, puffed in scorn, the peace-pipe's smoke
Through the gray beard of Waldron broke,
And Squando's voice, in suppliant plea
For mercy, struck the haughty key
Of one who held, in any fate,
His native pride inviolate!
"Let your ears be opened wide!
He who speaks has never lied.
Waldron of Piscataqua,
Hear what Squando has to say!
"Squando shuts his eyes and sees,
Far off, Saco's hemlock-trees.
In his wigwam, still as stone,
Sits a woman all alone,
"Wampum beads and birchen strands Dropping from her careless hands, Listening ever for the fleet
Patter of a dead child's feet!
"When the moon a year ago
Told the flowers the time to blow,
In that lonely wigwam smiled
Menewee, our little child.
"Ere that moon grew thin and old,
He was lying still and cold;
Sent before us, weak and small,
When the Master did not call!
"On his little grave I lay ;
Three times went and came the day;
Thrice above me blazed the noon,
Thrice upon me wept the moon.
"In the third night-watch I heard,
Far and low, a spirit-bird;
Very mournful, very wild,
bang the totem of my child.
*Menewee, poor Menewee,
Walks a path he cannot see :
Let the white man's wigwam light
With its blaze his steps aright.
All-un'alled, he dares not show
Empty hands to Manito:
Better gifts he cannot bear
Than the scalps his slayers wear.'
"All the while the totem sang,
Lightning blazed and thunder rang;
And a black cloud, reaching high,
Yulled the white moon from the sky.
"I, the medicine-man, whose ear
All that spirits hear can hear,-
1, whose eyes are wide to see
All the things that are to be,-
"Well I knew the dreadful signs
In the whispers of the pines,
In the river roaring loud,
In the mutter of the cloud.
"At the breaking of the day, From the grave I passed away;
Flowers bloomed round me, birds sang glad, But my heart was hot and mad.
"There is rust on Squando's knife,
From the warm, red springs of life;
On the funeral hemlock-trees
Many a scalp the totem sees.
"Blood for blood! But evermore
Squando's heart is sad and sore;
And his poor squaw waits at home
For the feet that never come!
"Waldron of Cocheco, hear!
Squando speaks, who laughs at fear:
Take the captives he has ta'en;
Let the land have peace again!"
As the words died on his tongue,
Wide apart his warriors swung;
Parted, at the sign he gave,
Right and left, like Egypt's wave.
And, like Israel passing free
Through the prophet-charmèd sea,
Captive mother, wife, and child
Through the dusky terror filed.
One alone, a little maid,
Middleway her steps delayed,
Glancing, with quick, troubled sight.
Round about from red to white.
Then his hand the Indian laid
On the little maiden's head,
Lightly from her forehead fair
Smoothing back her yellow hair.
"Gift or favor ask I none; What I have is all my own: Never yet the birds have sung,
Squando hath a beggar's tongue.'
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