SNOW-BOUND. Down the loose snow-banks, wrestling, | Lo! broadening outward as we read, rolled, Then toiled again the cavalcade O'er windy hill, through clogged ravine, And woodland paths that wound between Low drooping pine - boughs weighed. winter From every barn a team afoot, We heard once more the sleigh-bells' sound; And, following where the teamsters The wise old Doctor went his round, That some poor neighbor sick abed At night our mother's aid would need. For, one in generous thought and deed, What mattered in the sufferer's sight The Quaker matron's inward light, The Doctor's mail of Calvin's creed? All hearts confess the saints elect Who, twain in faith, in love agree, And melt not in an acid sect The Christian pearl of charity! So days went on a week had passed Since the great world was heard from last. The Almanac we studied o'er, A stranger to the heathen Nine, 293 To warmer zones the horizon spread; Its monthly gauge of snow and rain, And traffic calling loud for gain. Clasp, Angel of the backward look Green hills of life that slope to death, And haunts of home, whose vistaed trees Shade off to mournful cypresses With the white amaranths underneath. Even while I look, I can but heed The restless sands' incessant fall, Importunate hours that hours succeed, Each clamorous with its own sharp need, And duty keeping pace with all. Yet, haply, in some lull of life, THE TENT ON THE BEACH. Above low scarp and turf-grown wall Pleasant it was to roam about 295 The lettered world as he had done, And see the lords of song without Their singing robes and garlands on. With Wordsworth paddle Rydal mere, Taste rugged Elliott's home-brewed beer, And with the ears of Rogers, at fourscore, Hear Garrick's buskined tread and Walpole's wit once more. And one there was, a dreamer born, Too quiet seemed the man to ride To pierce the tumult of the storm? To hold his way against the public frown, The ban of Church and State, the fierce mob's hounding down. For while he wrought with strenuous will The work his hands had found to do, He heard the fitful music still Of winds that out of dream-land blew. The din about him could not drown What the strange voices whispered down ; No shingly monster, hundred-eyed, Stared its gray sand-birds out of reach; Unhoused, save where, at intervals, The white tents showed their canvas walls, Where brief sojourners, in the cool, soft air, Forgot their inland heats, hard toil, and year-long care. Sometimes along the wheel-deep sand A one-horse wagon slowly crawled, Deep laden with a youthful band, Whose look some homestead old recalled; Brother perchance, and sisters twain, And one whose blue eyes told, more plain Than the free language of her rosy lip, Of the still dearer claim of love's relationship. With cheeks of russet-orchard tint, The light laugh of their native rills, The perfume of their garden's mint, The breezy freedom of the hills, They bore, in unrestrained delight, The motto of the Garter's knight, Careless as if from every gazing thing Hid by their innocence, as Gyges by his ring. The clanging sea-fowl came and went, The hunter's gun in the marshes rang; At nightfall from a neighboring tent A flute-voiced woman sweetly sang. Loose-haired, barefooted, hand-inhand, Young girls went tripping down the sand; And youths and maidens, sitting in the moon, Dreamed o'er the old fond dream from which we wake too soon. At times their fishing-lines they plied, Had seen the sea-snake's awful form, And heard the ghosts on Haley's Isle complain, Speak him off shore, and beg a passage to old Spain ! THE WRECK OF RIVERMOUTH. And there, on breezy morns, they saw The fishing-schooners outward run, Their low-bent sails in tack and flaw Turned white or dark to shade and sun. Sometimes, in calms of closing day, They watched the spectral mirage play, Saw low, far islands looming tall and nigh, And ships, with upturned keels, sail like a sea the sky. Sometimes a cloud, with thunder black, Stooped low upon the darkening main, Piercing the waves along its track With the slant javelins of rain. 297 His pale face flushed from eye to beard, With nervous cough his throat he cleared, And, in a voice so tremulous it betrayed The anxious fondness of an author's heart, he read: THE WRECK OF RIVERMOUTH. To dry their fringes of gold-green moss: For there the river comes winding down From salt sea-meadows and uplands brown, And waves on the outer rocks afoam Shout to its waters, "Welcome home !” And fair are the sunny isles in view East of the grisly Head of the Boar, And Agamenticus lifts its blue Disk of a cloud the woodlands o'er; And southerly, when the tide is down, 'Twixt white sea-waves and sand-hills brown, The beach-birds dance and the gray gulls wheel Over a floor of burnished steel. Once, in the old Colonial days, Two hundred years ago and more, A boat sailed down through the winding ways Of Hampton River to that low shore, Full of a goodly company Sailing out on the summer sea, Veering to catch the land-breeze light, With the Boar to left and the Rocks to right. In Hampton meadows, where mowers laid Their scythes to the swaths of salted grass, "Ah, well-a-day! our hay must be made!" A young man sighed, who saw them pass. Loud laughed his fellows to see him stand Whetting his scythe with a listless hand, Hearing a voice in a far-off song, Watching a white hand beckoning long. |