Imagens da página
PDF
ePub

Grasping the bridegroom's hand, he said with emotion, "Forgive me!
I have been angry and hurt, too long have I cherished the feeling;
I have been cruel and hard, but now, thank God! it is ended.
Mine is the same hot blood that leaped in the veins of Hugh Standish,
Sensitive, swift to resent, but as swift in atoning for error.

Never so much as now was Miles Standish the friend of John Alden."
Thereupon answered the bridegroom: "Let all be forgotten between us,
All save the dear, old friendship, and that shall grow older and dearer!"
Then the Captain advanced, and, bowing, saluted Priscilla,
Gravely, and after the manner of old-fashioned gentry in England,
Something of camp and of court, of town and of country, commingled,
Wishing her joy of her wedding, and loudly lauding her husband.
Then he said with a smile: "I should have remembered the adage,
If you would be well served, you must serve yourself; and moreover,
No man can gather cherries in Kent at the season of Christmas!"

Great was the people's amazement, and greater yet their rejoicing, Thus to behold once more the sunburnt face of their Captain,

Whom they had mourned as dead; and they gathered and crowded about him,
Eager to see him and hear him, forgetful of bride and of bridegroom,
Questioning, answering, laughing, and each interrupting the other,

Till the good Captain declared, being quite overpowered and bewildered,
He had rather by far break into an Indian encampment,

Than come again to a wedding to which he had not been invited.

Meanwhile the bridegroom went forth and stood with the bride at the doorway, Breathing the perfumed air of that warm and beautiful morning. Touched with autumnal tints, but lonely and sad in the sunshine,

Lay extended before them the land of toil and privation;

There were the graves of the dead, and the barren waste of the sea-shore,
There the familiar fields, the groves of pine, and the meadows;

But to their eyes transfigured, it seemed as the Garden of Eden,

Filled with the presence of God, whose voice was the sound of the ocean.

Soon was their vision disturbed by the noise and stir of departure,
Friends coming forth from the house, and impatient of longer delaying,
Each with his plan for the day, and the work that was left uncompleted.
Then from a stall near at hand, amid exclamations of wonder,
Alden the thoughtful, the careful, so happy, so proud of Priscilla,
Brought out his snow-white bull, obeying the hand of its master,
Led by a cord that was tied to an iron ring in its nostrils,
Covered with crimson cloth, and a cushion placed for a saddle.

She should not walk, he said, through the dust and heat of the noonday;
Nay, she should ride like a queen, not plod along like a peasant.
Somewhat alarmed at first, but reassured by the others,

Placing her hand on the cushion, her foot in the hand of her husband,

Gayly, with joyous laugh, Priscilla mounted her palfrey.

Nothing is wanting now," he said with a smile, "but the distaff;

Then you would be in truth my queen, my beautiful Bertha !"

Onward the bridal procession now moved to their new habitation,

Happy husband and wife, and friends conversing together.

Pleasantly murmured the brook, as they crossed the ford in the forest,
Pleased with the image that passed, like a dream of love through its bosom,
Tremulous, floating in air, o'er the depths of the azure abysses.
Down through the golden leaves the sun was pouring his splendors,
Gleaming on purple grapes, that, from branches above them suspended,

Mingled their odorous breath with the balm of the pine and the fir-tree,
Wild and sweet as the clusters that grew in the valley of Eschol.

Like a picture it seemed of the primitive, pastoral ages,

Fresh with the youth of the world, and recalling Rebecca and Isaac,

Old and yet ever new, and simple and beautiful always,

Love immortal and young in the endless succession of lovers.

So through the Plymouth woods passed onward the bridal procession.

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

Nor deem the irrevocable Past,
As wholly wasted, wholly vain,

SAINT AUGUSTINE! well hast thou said, If, rising on its wrecks, at last

That of our vices we can frame

A ladder, if we will but tread

Beneath our feet each deed of shame!

[blocks in formation]

All these must first be trampled down Beneath our feet, if we would gain In the bright fields of fair renown

The right of eminent domain.

We have not wings, we cannot soar; But we have feet to scale and climb By slow degrees, by more and more, The cloudy summits of our time.

The mighty pyramids of stone

That wedge-like cleave the desert airs, When nearer seen, and better known, Are but gigantic flights of stairs.

The distant mountains, that uprear
Their solid bastions to the skies,
Are crossed by pathways, that appear
As we to higher levels rise.

The heights by great men reached and

kept

Were not attained by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night.

To something nobler we attain.

THE PHANTOM SHIP.

IN Mather's Magnalia Christi,
Of the old colonial time,
May be found in prose the legend

That is here set down in rhyme.

A ship sailed from New Haven,
And the keen and frosty airs,
That filled her sails at parting,

Were heavy with good men's prayers.

“O Lord! if it be thy pleasure"

Thus prayed the old divine "To bury our friends in the ocean, Take them, for they are thine!

But Master Lamberton muttered, And under his breath said he, This ship is so crank and walty I fear our grave she will be!

And the ships that came from England,
When the winter months were gone,
Brought no tidings of this vessel
Nor of Master Lamberton.

This put the people to praying

That the Lord would let them hear What in his greater wisdom

He had done with friends so dear.

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

A MIST was driving down the British For in the night, unseen, a single warChannel,

The day was just begun,

rior,

In sombre harness mailed,

And through the window-panes, on floor Dreaded of man, and surnamed the De

and panel,

Streamed the red autumn sun.

stroyer,

The rampart wall had scaled.

It glanced on flowing flag and rippling

He

pennon,

passed into the chamber of the sleeper,

And the white sails of ships;

The dark and silent room,

And, from the frowning rampart, the And as he entered, darker grew, and

black cannon

[blocks in formation]

deeper,

The silence and the gloom.

He did not pause to parley or dissemble,
But smote the Warden hoar;

Ah! what a blow! that made all Eng-
land tremble

And groan from shore to shore.

Meanwhile, without, the surly cannon waited,

The sun rose bright o'erhead; Nothing in Nature's aspect intimated That a great man was dead.

[blocks in formation]
« AnteriorContinuar »