John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.
Narrative and Legendary PoemsAmong the Hills
F
And vexed the vales with raining,
And all the woods were sad with mist,
And all the brooks complaining.
The mountain veils asunder,
And swept the valleys clean before
The besom of the thunder.
Good morrow to the cotter;
And once again Chocorua’s horn
Of shadow pierced the water.
Once more the sunshine wearing,
Stooped, tracing on that silver shield
His grim armorial bearing.
The peaks had winter’s keenness;
And, close on autumn’s frost, the vales
Had more than June’s fresh greenness.
With golden lights were checkered,
Once more rejoicing leaves in wind
And sunshine danced and flickered.
Atoning for its sadness
Had borrowed every season’s charm
To end its days in gladness.
Of shadow and of shining,
Through which, my hostess at my side,
I drove in day’s declining.
The river’s whitening shallows,
By homesteads old, with wide-flung barns
Swept through and through by swallows;
And larches climbing darkly
The mountain slopes, and, over all,
The great peaks rising starkly.
With gaps of brightness riven,—
How through each pass and hollow streamed
The purpling lights of heaven,—
From far celestial fountains,—
The great sun flaming through the rifts
Beyond the wall of mountains!
Brought down the pasture’s treasure,
And in the barn the rhythmic flails
Beat out a harvest measure.
The crow his tree-mates calling:
The shadows lengthening down the slopes
About our feet were falling.
In broken lines of splendor,
Touched the gray rocks and made the green
Of the shorn grass more tender.
Their arch of leaves just tinted
With yellow warmth, the golden glow
Of coming autumn hinted.
And smiled on porch and trellis,
The fair democracy of flowers
That equals cot and palace.
’Twixt chidings and caresses,
A human flower of childhood shook
The sunshine from her tresses.
Of fancy and of shrewdness,
Where taste had wound its arms of vines
Round thrift’s uncomely rudeness.
Shook hands, and called to Mary:
Bare-armed, as Juno might, she came,
White-aproned from her dairy.
Of womanly completeness;
A music as of household songs
Was in her voice of sweetness.
But something more and better,
The secret charm eluding art,
Its spirit, not its letter;—
Of culture or appliance,—
The warmth of genial courtesy,
The calm of self-reliance.
How dared our hostess utter
The paltry errand of her need
To buy her fresh-churned butter?
Her goodly store disclosing,
Full tenderly the golden balls
With practised hands disposing.
We watched the changeful glory
Of sunset, on our homeward way,
I heard her simple story.
Plashed through my friend’s narration:
Her rustic patois of the hills
Lost in my free translation.
Our hills in middle summer,
She came, when June’s first roses blow,
To greet the early comer.
The city’s fair, pale daughter,
To drink the wine of mountain air
Beside the Bearcamp Water.
That watch our homesteads over;
On cheek and lip, from summer fields,
She caught the bloom of clover.
From cool Chocorua stealing:
There ’s iron in our Northern winds;
Our pines are trees of healing.
That skirt the mowing-meadow,
And watched the gentle west-wind weave
The grass with shine and shadow.
To share her grateful screening,
With forehead bared, the farmer stood,
Upon his pitchfork leaning.
Had nothing mean or common,—
Strong, manly, true, the tenderness
And pride beloved of woman.
The country air had brought her,
And, laughing, said: ‘You lack a wife,
Your mother lacks a daughter.
You do not need a lady:
Be sure among these brown old homes
Is some one waiting ready,—
And cheerful heart for treasure,
Who never played with ivory keys,
Or danced the polka’s measure.’
He set his white teeth tightly.
‘’T is well,’ he said, ‘for one like you
To choose for me so lightly.
I take no note of sweetness:
I tell you love has naught to do
With meetness or unmeetness.
No leave of pride or fashion
When silken zone or homespun frock
It stirs with throbs of passion.
Your winning graces hither
As free as if from cradle-time
We two had played together.
Your cheek of sundown’s blushes,
A motion as of waving grain,
A music as of thrushes.
The spells you weave around me
You cannot at your will undo,
Nor leave me as you found me.
Your life is well without me;
What care you that these hills will close
Like prison-walls about me?
Or daughter for my mother:
Who loves you loses in that love
All power to love another!
With pride your own exceeding;
I fling my heart into your lap
Without a word of pleading.’
So archly, yet so tender:
‘And if I lend you mine,’ she said,
‘Will you forgive the lender?
And see you not, my farmer,
How weak and fond a woman waits
Behind this silken armor?
And not my worth, presuming,
Will you not trust for summer fruit
The tree in May-day blooming?’
His hair-swung cradle straining,
Looked down to see love’s miracle,—
The giving that is gaining.
His mother found a daughter:
There looks no happier home than hers
On pleasant Bearcamp Water.
The careful ways of duty;
Our hard, stiff lines of life with her
Are flowing curves of beauty.
Our door-yards brighter blooming,
And all about the social air
Is sweeter for her coming.
Her daily life is preaching;
The still refreshment of the dew
Is her unconscious teaching.
Unknits the brow of ailing;
Her garments to the sick man’s ear
Have music in their trailing.
The youthful huskers gather,
Or sleigh-drives on the mountain ways
Defy the winter weather,—
The winds of March are blowing,
And sweetly from its thawing veins
The maple’s blood is flowing,—
Its virgin zone is baring,
Or where the ruddy autumn fire
Lights up the apple-paring,—
Her finer mirth displaces,
A subtler sense of pleasure fills
Each rustic sport she graces.
To all who come before it.
If woman lost us Eden, such
As she alone restore it.
The farmer is her debtor;
Who holds to his another’s heart
Must needs be worse or better.
A purer-toned ambition;
No double consciousness divides
The man and politician.
Her instincts to determine;
At the loud polls, the thought of her
Recalls Christ’s Mountain Sermon.
And wisdom of unreason,
Supplying, while he doubts and weighs,
The needed word in season.
Her fancy’s freer ranges;
And love thus deepened to respect
Is proof against all changes.
His feet are slow to travel,
And if she reads with cultured eyes
What his may scarce unravel,
Of beauty and of wonder,
He learns the meaning of the hills
He dwelt from childhood under.
Or winter-crowned and hoary,
The ridged horizon lifts for him
Its inner veils of glory.
The lessons nature taught him,
The wisdom which the woods and hills
And toiling men have brought him:
Her flexile grace seems sweeter;
The sturdy counterpoise which makes
Her woman’s life completer;
No breath of love to fan it;
And wit, that, like his native brooks,
Plays over solid granite.
She sees the poor pretension,
The wants, the aims, the follies, born
Of fashion and convention!
Stands strong and self-sustaining,
The human fact transcending all
The losing and the gaining.
Of teacher and of hearer,
Their lives their true distinctness keep
While daily drawing nearer.
In home’s strong light discovers
Such slight defaults as failed to meet
The blinded eyes of lovers,
Without their thorns of roses,
Or wonders that the truest steel
The readiest spark discloses?
The secret of true living;
Love scarce is love that never knows
The sweetness of forgiving.
He takes his young wife thither;
No prouder man election day
Rides through the sweet June weather.
All hearts to her inclining;
Not less for him his household light
That others share its shining.”
Before me, warmer tinted
And outlined with a tenderer grace,
The picture that she hinted.
Beneath the deep hill-shadows.
Below us wreaths of white fog walked
Like ghosts the haunted meadows.
Dropped down their golden plummets;
The pale arc of the Northern lights
Rose o’er the mountain summits,
We heard the Bearcamp flowing,
And saw across the mapled lawn
The welcome home-lights glowing.
’T were well, thought I, if often
To rugged farm-life came the gift
To harmonize and soften;
Of fact and fancy plighted,
And culture’s charm and labor’s strength
In rural homes united,—
With beauty’s sphere surrounding,
And blessing toil where toil abounds
With graces more abounding.