Narrative and Legendary Poems, Complete

I. THE MERRIMAC.

     O child of that white-crested mountain whose
     springs
     Gush forth in the shade of the cliff-eagle's
     wings,
     Down whose slopes to the lowlands thy wild waters
     shine,
     Leaping gray walls of rock, flashing through the
     dwarf pine;
     From that cloud-curtained cradle so cold and so
     lone,
     From the arms of that wintry-locked mother of
     stone,
     By hills hung with forests, through vales wide and
     free,
     Thy mountain-born brightness glanced down to the
     sea.

     No bridge arched thy waters save that where the
     trees
     Stretched their long arms above thee and kissed in
     the breeze:
     No sound save the lapse of the waves on thy
     shores,
     The plunging of otters, the light dip of oars.

     Green-tufted, oak-shaded, by Amoskeag's fall
     Thy twin Uncanoonucs rose stately and tall,
     Thy Nashua meadows lay green and unshorn,
     And the hills of Pentucket were tasselled with
     corn.
     But thy Pennacook valley was fairer than these,
     And greener its grasses and taller its trees,
     Ere the sound of an axe in the forest had rung,
     Or the mower his scythe in the meadows had
     swung.

     In their sheltered repose looking out from the
     wood
     The bark-builded wigwams of Pennacook stood;
     There glided the corn-dance, the council-fire shone,
     And against the red war-post the hatchet was
     thrown.

     There the old smoked in silence their pipes, and
     the young
     To the pike and the white-perch their baited lines
     flung;
     There the boy shaped his arrows, and there the
     shy maid
     Wove her many-hued baskets and bright wampum
     braid.

     O Stream of the Mountains! if answer of thine
     Could rise from thy waters to question of mine,
     Methinks through the din of thy thronged banks
     a moan
     Of sorrow would swell for the days which have
     gone.

     Not for thee the dull jar of the loom and the wheel,
     The gliding of shuttles, the ringing of steel;
     But that old voice of waters, of bird and of breeze,
     The dip of the wild-fowl, the rustling of trees.