Narrative and Legendary Poems, Complete






V. THE NEW HOME.

     A wild and broken landscape, spiked with firs,
     Roughening the bleak horizon's northern edge;
     Steep, cavernous hillsides, where black hemlock
     spurs
     And sharp, gray splinters of the wind-swept
     ledge
     Pierced the thin-glazed ice, or bristling rose,
     Where the cold rim of the sky sunk down upon
     the snows.

     And eastward cold, wide marshes stretched away,
     Dull, dreary flats without a bush or tree,
     O'er-crossed by icy creeks, where twice a day
     Gurgled the waters of the moon-struck sea;
     And faint with distance came the stifled roar,
     The melancholy lapse of waves on that low shore.

     No cheerful village with its mingling smokes,
     No laugh of children wrestling in the snow,
     No camp-fire blazing through the hillside oaks,
     No fishers kneeling on the ice below;
     Yet midst all desolate things of sound and view,
     Through the long winter moons smiled dark-eyed
     Weetamoo.

     Her heart had found a home; and freshly all
     Its beautiful affections overgrew
     Their rugged prop. As o'er some granite wall
     Soft vine-leaves open to the moistening dew
     And warm bright sun, the love of that young wife
     Found on a hard cold breast the dew and warmth
     of life.

     The steep, bleak hills, the melancholy shore,
     The long, dead level of the marsh between,
     A coloring of unreal beauty wore
     Through the soft golden mist of young love seen.
     For o'er those hills and from that dreary plain,
     Nightly she welcomed home her hunter chief again.

     No warmth of heart, no passionate burst of feeling,
     Repaid her welcoming smile and parting kiss,
     No fond and playful dalliance half concealing,
     Under the guise of mirth, its tenderness;

     But, in their stead, the warrior's settled pride,
     And vanity's pleased smile with homage satisfied.

     Enough for Weetamoo, that she alone
     Sat on his mat and slumbered at his side;
     That he whose fame to her young ear had flown
     Now looked upon her proudly as his bride;
     That he whose name the Mohawk trembling heard
     Vouchsafed to her at times a kindly look or word.

     For she had learned the maxims of her race,
     Which teach the woman to become a slave,
     And feel herself the pardonless disgrace
     Of love's fond weakness in the wise and brave,—
     The scandal and the shame which they incur,
     Who give to woman all which man requires of her.

     So passed the winter moons. The sun at last
     Broke link by link the frost chain of the rills,
     And the warm breathings of the southwest passed
     Over the hoar rime of the Saugus hills;
     The gray and desolate marsh grew green once more,
     And the birch-tree's tremulous shade fell round the
     Sachem's door.

     Then from far Pennacook swift runners came,
     With gift and greeting for the Saugus chief;
     Beseeching him in the great Sachem's name,
     That, with the coming of the flower and leaf,
     The song of birds, the warm breeze and the rain,
     Young Weetamoo might greet her lonely sire again.

     And Winnepurkit called his chiefs together,
     And a grave council in his wigwam met,
     Solemn and brief in words, considering whether
     The rigid rules of forest etiquette
     Permitted Weetamoo once more to look
     Upon her father's face and green-banked
     Pennacook.

     With interludes of pipe-smoke and strong water,
     The forest sages pondered, and at length,
     Concluded in a body to escort her
     Up to her father's home of pride and strength,
     Impressing thus on Pennacook a sense
     Of Winnepurkit's power and regal consequence.

     So through old woods which Aukeetamit's hand,
     A soft and many-shaded greenness lent,
     Over high breezy hills, and meadow land
     Yellow with flowers, the wild procession went,
     Till, rolling down its wooded banks between,
     A broad, clear, mountain stream, the Merrimac
     was seen.

     The hunter leaning on his bow undrawn,
     The fisher lounging on the pebbled shores,
     Squaws in the clearing dropping the seed-corn,
     Young children peering through the wigwam doors,
     Saw with delight, surrounded by her train
     Of painted Saugus braves, their Weetamoo again.

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