Publish the shame of their daily strife,
And, with mad cross-purpose, tug and strain
At either end of the marriage-chain,

The gossips say, with a knowing shake

Of their gray heads, "Look at the Double Snake! One in body and two in will,

The Amphisbæna is living still!"”

THE SWAN SONG OF PARSON AVERY.

WHEN the reaper's task was ended, and the summer wearing late,

Parson Avery sailed from Newbury, with his wife and children eight,

Dropping down the river-harbor in the shallop "Watch and Wait."

Pleasantly lay the clearings in the mellow summer

morn,

With the newly-planted orchards dropping their fruits first-born,

And the homesteads like green islands amid a sea of corn.

Broad meadows reached out seaward the tided creeks between,

And hills rolled wave-like inland, with oaks and walnuts green;

A fairer home, a goodlier land, his eyes had never

seen.

Yet away sailed Parson Avery, away where duty led,

And the voice of God seemed calling, to break the living bread

To the souls of fishers starving on the rocks of Marblehead.

THE SWAN SONG OF PARSON AVERY. 331

All day they sailed: at nightfall the pleasant landbreeze died,

The blackening sky, at midnight, its starry lights denied,

And far and low the thunder of tempest prophesied!

Blotted out were all the coast-lines, gone were rock, and wood, and sand;

Grimly anxious stood the skipper with the rudder in his hand,

And questioned of the darkness what was sea and what was land.

And the preacher heard his dear ones, nestled round him, weeping sore:

"Never heed, my little children! Christ is walking on before

To the pleasant land of heaven, where the sea shall be no more."

All at once the great cloud parted, like a curtain drawn aside,

To let down the torch of lightning on the terror far and wide;

And the thunder and the whirlwind together smote the tide.

There was wailing in the shallop, woman's wail and man's despair,

A crash of breaking timbers on the rocks so sharp and bare,

And, through it all, the murmur of Father Avery's prayer.

From his struggle in the darkness with the wild waves and the blast,

On a rock, where every billow broke above him as it passed,

Alone, of all his household, the man of God was

cast.

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 in !"

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

rest.

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.

THE TRUCE OF PISCATAQUA.

333

And still the fishers outbound, or scudding from the

squal,

With grave and reverent faces, the ancient tale

recall,

When they see the white waves breaking on the Rock of Avery's Fall!

THE TRUCE OF PISCATAQUA.

1675.

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!