Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.
Heartbreak Hill
By Celia Thaxter (18351894)I
Rises a hill which the people call
Heartbreak Hill, and its history
Is an old, old legend, known to all.
Told by all peoples in every clime,
Still to be told till the ages fail,
And there comes a pause in the march of Time.
Of an Indian maiden, lithe and young;
And she saw him over the sea depart,
While sweet in her ear his promise rung;
“I ’ll come back, sweetheart; keep your faith!”
She said, “I will watch while the moons go by”:
Her love was stronger than life or death.
Her watch from the hill-top rugged and steep;
Slowly the empty moments crept
While she studied the changing face of the deep,
That crossed the ocean within her ken;
Might not her lover be walking the deck,
Surely and swiftly returning again?
In the northeast distance far and gray,
And on the horizon’s uttermost rim
The low rock heap of Boone Island lay.
Stretched sea and land in the blinding light,
Till evening fell, and her vigil ceased,
And many a hearth-glow lit the night,
Fast growing wild as her hope went out.
Hateful seemed earth, and the hollow skies,
Like her own heart, empty of aught but doubt.
With the sun above, with the sea afar,—
No change in her fixed and wistful gaze
From the morning-red to the evening star!
The calms that smiled, and the storms that rolled,
The bells from the town beneath, that rang
Through the summer’s heat and the winter’s cold!
The soaring gull’s wild boding cry,
She was weary of all; there was no delight
In heaven or earth, and she longed to die.
With delicate beauty skies and seas?
But the sweet, sad sunset splendors faint
Made her soul sick with memories:
In the distant east, where shadows grew,
Till the twilight shrouded it, cold and pale,
And the tide of her anguish rose anew.
She sat, with hardly motion or breath.
She wept no tears and she made no moan,
But her love was stronger than life or death.
She watched from the hill-top her life away.
And the townsfolk christened it Heartbreak Hill,
And it bears the name to this very day.