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In vain shall we call on the souls gone | So sang the Children of the Leaves beside

before,

Mat wonck kunna-monee!·

us no more !

The broad, dark river's coldly flowing tide,

They hear Now low, now harsh, with sob-like

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pause and swell,

On the high wind their voices rose and fell. Nature's wild music, sounds of wind

swept trees,

The scream of birds, the wailing of the breeze,

The roar of waters, steady, deep, and

strong,

Mingled and murmured in that farewell song.

LEGENDARY.

THE MERRIMACK.

["The Indians speak of a beautiful river, far to the south, which they call Merrimack " SIEUR DE MONTS: 1604.]

STREAM of my fathers! sweetly still
The sunset rays thy valley fill;
Poured slantwise down the long defile,
Wave, wood, and spire beneath them
smile.

I see the winding Powow fold
The green hill in its belt of gold,
And following down its wavy line,
Its sparkling waters blend with thine.
There's not a tree upon thy side,
Nor rock, which thy returning tide
As yet hath left abrupt and stark
Above thy evening water-mark;
No calm cove with its rocky hem,
No isle whose emerald swells begem
Thy broad, smooth current; not a sail
Bowed to the freshening ocean gale;
No small boat with its busy oars,
Nor gray wall sloping to thy shores;
Nor farm-house with its maple shade,
Or rigid poplar colonnade,
But lies distinct and full in sight,
Beneath this gush of sunset light.
Centuries ago, that harbor-bar,
Stretching its length of foam afar,
And Salisbury's beach of shining sand,
And yonder island's wave-smoothed
strand,

Saw the adventurer's tiny sail,

Flit, stooping from the eastern gal; 2
And o'er these woods and waters broke
The cheer from Britain's hearts of oak,
As brightly on the voyager's eye,
Weary of forest, sea, and sky,
Breaking the dull continuous wood,
The Merrimack rolled down his flood;
Mingling that clear pellucid brook,
Which channels vast Agioochook
When spring-time's sun and shower un-
lock

The frozen fountains of the rock,
And more abundant waters given
From that pure lake, "The Smile of
Heaven,"
Tributes from vale and mountain-side, -
With ocean's dark, eternal tide!

"' 28

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THE NORSEMEN.

The Moslem chain his limbs around,
Wreathed o'er with silk that iron chain,
Soothed with her smiles his hours of
pain,

And fondly to her youthful slave
A dearer gift than freedom gave.

But look! the yellow light no more Streams down on wave and verdant shore ;

And clearly on the calm air swells
The twilight voice of distant bells.
From Ocean's bosom, white and thin,
The mists come slowly rolling in;
Hills, woods, the river's rocky rim,
Amidst the sea-like vapor swim,
While yonder lonely coast-light, set
Within its wave-washed minaret,
Half quenched, a beamless star and pale,
Shines dimly through its cloudy veil!

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Heard in his dreams thy river's sound
Of murmuring on its pebbly bound,
The unforgotten swell and roar
Of waves on thy familiar shore ;
And saw, amidst the curtained gloom
And quiet of his lonely room,
Thy sunset scenes before him pass;
As, in Agrippa's magic glass,
The loved and lost arose to view,
Remembered groves in greenness grew,
Bathed still in childhood's morning
dew,

Along whose bowers of beauty swept
Whatever Memory's mourners wept,
Sweet faces, which the charnel kept,
Young, gentle eyes, which long had
slept;

And while the gazer leaned to trace,
More near, some dear familiar face,
He wept to find the vision flown,
A phantom and a dream alone!

THE NORSEMEN.80

27

GIFT from the cold and silent Past!
A relic to the present cast;
Left on the ever-changing strand
Of shifting and unstable sand,
Which wastes beneath the steady chime
And beating of the waves of Time!
Who from its bed of primal rock
First wrenched thy dark, unshapely
block?

Whose hand, of curious skill untaught,
Thy rude and savage outline wrought?

The waters of my native stream
Are glancing in the sun's warm beam :
From sail-urged keel and flashing oar
The circles widen to its shore :
And cultured field and peopled town
Slope to its willowed margin down.
Yet, while this morning breeze is bringing
The home-life sound of school-bells ring.
ing,

And rolling wheel, and rapid jar
Of the fire-winged and steedless car,
And voices from the wayside near
Come quick and blended on my ear,
A spell is in this old gray stone,
My thoughts are with the Past alone!

A change!—The steepled town no more
Stretches along the sail-thronged shore:
Like palace-domes in sunset's cloud,
Fade sun-gilt spire and mansion proud :
Spectrally rising where they stood,

I see the old, primeval wood:
Dark, shadow-like, on either hand
I see its solemn waste expand:

It climbs the green and cultured hill,
It arches o'er the valley's rill;
And leans from cliff and crag, to throw
Its wild arms o'er the stream below.
Unchanged, alone, the same bright river
Flows on, as it will flow forever!
I listen, and I hear the low
Soft ripple where its waters go;
I hear behind the panther's cry,
The wild-bird's scream goes thrilling by,
And shyly on the river's brink
The deer is stooping down to drink.
But hark!

from wood and rock flung

back, What sound comes up the Merrimack ? What sea-worn barks are those which

throw

The light spray from each rushing prow

Have they not in the North Sea's blast
Bowed to the waves the straining mast?
Their frozen sails the low, pale sun
Of Thule's night has shone upon;
Flapped by the sea-wind's gusty sweep
Round icy drift, and headland steep.
Wild Jutland's wives and Lochlin's
daughters

Have watched them fading o'er the waters,
Lessening through driving mist and spray,
Like white-winged sea-birds on their way!

Onward they glide, — and now I view
Their iron-armed and stalwart crew;
Joy glistens in each wild blue eye,
Turned to green earth and summer sky:
Each broad, seamed breast has cast aside
Its cumbering vest of shaggy hide;
Bared to the sun and soft warm air,
Streams back the Norsemen's yellow hair.
I see the gleam of axe and spear,
The sound of smitten shields I hear,
Keeping a harsh and fitting time
To Saga's chant, and Runic rhyme;
Such lays as Zetland's Scald has sung,
His gray and naked isles among;
Or muttered low at midnight hour
Round Odin's mossy stone of power.
The wolf beneath the Arctic moon
Has answered to that startling rune;
The Gael has heard its stormy swell,
The light Frank knows its summons well;
Iona's sable-stoled Culdee

Has heard it sounding o'er the sea,
And swept, with hoary beard and hair,
His altar's foot in trembling prayer!

'Tis past, the 'wildering vision dies
In darkness on my dreaming eyes!
The forest vanishes in air,
Hill-slope and vale lie starkly bare;
I hear the common tread of men,
And hum of work-day life again :
The mystic relic seems alone
A broken mass of common stone;
And if it be the chiselled limb
Of Berserker or idol grim, —
A fragment of Valhalla's Thor,
The stormy Viking's god of War,
Or Praga of the Runic lay,
Or love-awakening Siona,
I know not, for no graven line,
Nor Druid mark, nor Runic sign,
Is left me here, by which to trace
Its name, or origin, or place.
Yet, for this vision of the Past,
This glance upon its darkness cast,

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My spirit bows in gratitude
Before the Giver of all good,
Who fashioned so the human mind,
That, from the waste of Time behind
A simple stone, or mound of earth,
Can summon the departed forth;
Quicken the Past to life again,
The Present lose in what hath been,
And in their primal freshness show
The buried forms of long ago.
As if a portion of that Thought
By which the Eternal will is wrought
Whose impulse fills anew with breath
The frozen solitude of Death,
To mortal mind were sometimes lent,
To mortal musings sometimes sent,
To whisper-even when it seems
But Memory's fantasy of dreams —
Through the mind's waste of woe and
sin,

Of an immortal origin!

CASSANDRA SOUTHWICK.

1658.

To the God of all sure mercies let my blessing rise to-day,

From the scoffer and the cruel He hath plucked the spoil away,

Yea, He who cooled the furnace around the faithful three,

And tamed the Chaldean lions, hath set his handmaid free !

Last night I saw the sunset melt through my prison bars,

Last night across my damp earth-floor fell the pale gleam of stars; In the coldness and the darkness all through the long night-time, My grated casement whitened with autumn's early rime.

Alone, in that dark sorrow, hour after hour crept by;

Star after star looked palely in and sank adown the sky;

No sound amid night's stillness, save that which seemed to be

The dull and heavy beating of the pulses of the sea;

All night I sat unsleeping, for I knew that on the morrow

The ruler and the cruel priest would mock me in my sorrow,

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thought of Paul and Silas, within Philippi's cell,

And how from Peter's sleeping limbs the prison-shackles fell,

Till I seemed to hear the trailing of an angel's robe of white,

And to feel a blessed presence invisible to sight

Bless the Lord for an his mercies !- for the peace and love I felt,

On eyes of merry girlhood, half hid in Like dew of Hermon's holy hill, upon

golden hair.

"Not for thee the hearth-fire brightens,

not for thee kind words are spoken, Not for thee the nuts of Wenham woods

by laughing boys are broken, No first-fruits of the orchard within thy lap are laid,

For thee no flowers of autumn the youthful hunters braid.

"O, weak, deluded maiden ! - by crazy fancies led,

With wild and raving railers an evil path to tread;

To leave a wholesome worship, and teaching pure and sound; And mate with maniac women, lcosehaired and sackcloth bound.

"Mad scoffers of the priesthood, who mock at things divine,

Who rail against the pulpit, and holy bread and wine;

Sore from their cart-tail scourgings, and

from the pillory lame, Rejoicing in their wretchedness, and glorying in their shame.

my spirit melt;

When "Get behind me, Satan!" was the language of my heart, And I felt the Evil Tempter with all his doubts depart.

Slow broke the gray cold morning; again the sunshine fell,

Flecked with the shade of bar and grate within my lonely cell;

The hoar-frost melted on the wall, and upward from the street Came careless laugh and idle word, and tread of passing feet.

At length the heavy bolts fell back, my door was open cast,

And slowly at the sheriff's side, up the long street I passed;

I heard the murmur round me, and felt, but dared not see, How, from every door and window, the people gazed on me.

And doubt and fear fell on me, shame burned upon my cheek, Swam earth and sky around me, my trembling limbs grew weak:

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