Narrative and Legendary Poems, Complete






NOREMBEGA.

Norembega, or Norimbegue, is the name given by early French fishermen and explorers to a fabulous country south of Cape Breton, first discovered by Verrazzani in 1524. It was supposed to have a magnificent city of the same name on a great river, probably the Penobscot. The site of this barbaric city is laid down on a map published at Antwerp in 1570. In 1604 Champlain sailed in search of the Northern Eldorado, twenty-two leagues up the Penobscot from the Isle Haute. He supposed the river to be that of Norembega, but wisely came to the conclusion that those travellers who told of the great city had never seen it. He saw no evidences of anything like civilization, but mentions the finding of a cross, very old and mossy, in the woods.

     THE winding way the serpent takes
     The mystic water took,
     From where, to count its beaded lakes,
     The forest sped its brook.

     A narrow space 'twixt shore and shore,
     For sun or stars to fall,
     While evermore, behind, before,
     Closed in the forest wall.

     The dim wood hiding underneath
     Wan flowers without a name;
     Life tangled with decay and death,
     League after league the same.

     Unbroken over swamp and hill
     The rounding shadow lay,
     Save where the river cut at will
     A pathway to the day.

     Beside that track of air and light,
     Weak as a child unweaned,
     At shut of day a Christian knight
     Upon his henchman leaned.

     The embers of the sunset's fires
     Along the clouds burned down;
     "I see," he said, "the domes and spires
     Of Norembega town."

     "Alack! the domes, O master mine,
     Are golden clouds on high;
     Yon spire is but the branchless pine
     That cuts the evening sky."

     "Oh, hush and hark! What sounds are these
     But chants and holy hymns?"
     "Thou hear'st the breeze that stirs the trees
     Though all their leafy limbs."

     "Is it a chapel bell that fills
     The air with its low tone?"
     "Thou hear'st the tinkle of the rills,
     The insect's vesper drone."

     "The Christ be praised!—He sets for me
     A blessed cross in sight!"
     "Now, nay, 't is but yon blasted tree
     With two gaunt arms outright!"

     "Be it wind so sad or tree so stark,
     It mattereth not, my knave;
     Methinks to funeral hymns I hark,
     The cross is for my grave!

     "My life is sped; I shall not see
     My home-set sails again;
     The sweetest eyes of Normandie
     Shall watch for me in vain.

     "Yet onward still to ear and eye
     The baffling marvel calls;
     I fain would look before I die
     On Norembega's walls.

     "So, haply, it shall be thy part
     At Christian feet to lay
     The mystery of the desert's heart
     My dead hand plucked away.

     "Leave me an hour of rest; go thou
     And look from yonder heights;
     Perchance the valley even now
     Is starred with city lights."

     The henchman climbed the nearest hill,
     He saw nor tower nor town,
     But, through the drear woods, lone and still,
     The river rolling down.

     He heard the stealthy feet of things
     Whose shapes he could not see,
     A flutter as of evil wings,
     The fall of a dead tree.

     The pines stood black against the moon,
     A sword of fire beyond;
     He heard the wolf howl, and the loon
     Laugh from his reedy pond.

     He turned him back: "O master dear,
     We are but men misled;
     And thou hast sought a city here
     To find a grave instead."

     "As God shall will! what matters where
     A true man's cross may stand,
     So Heaven be o'er it here as there
     In pleasant Norman land?

     "These woods, perchance, no secret hide
     Of lordly tower and hall;
     Yon river in its wanderings wide
     Has washed no city wall;

     "Yet mirrored in the sullen stream
     The holy stars are given
     Is Norembega, then, a dream
     Whose waking is in Heaven?

     "No builded wonder of these lands
     My weary eyes shall see;
     A city never made with hands
     Alone awaiteth me—

     "'Urbs Syon mystica;' I see
     Its mansions passing fair,
     'Condita caelo;' let me be,
     Dear Lord, a dweller there!"

     Above the dying exile hung
     The vision of the bard,
     As faltered on his failing tongue
     The song of good Bernard.

     The henchman dug at dawn a grave
     Beneath the hemlocks brown,
     And to the desert's keeping gave
     The lord of fief and town.

     Years after, when the Sieur Champlain
     Sailed up the unknown stream,
     And Norembega proved again
     A shadow and a dream,

     He found the Norman's nameless grave
     Within the hemlock's shade,
     And, stretching wide its arms to save,
     The sign that God had made,

     The cross-boughed tree that marked the spot
     And made it holy ground
     He needs the earthly city not
     Who hath the heavenly found.

     1869.

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