Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.

Occasional Poems

Our River

For a Summer Festival at “The Laurels” on the Merrimac

Jean Pierre Brissot, the famous leader of the Girondist party in the French Revolution, when a young man travelled extensively in the United States. He visited the valley of the Merrimac, and speaks in terms of admiration of the view from Moulton’s hill opposite Amesbury. The “Laurel Party” so called, was composed of ladies and gentlemen in the lower valley of the Merrimac, and invited friends and guests in other sections of the country. Its thoroughly enjoyable annual festivals were held in the early summer on the pine-shaded, laurel-blossomed slopes of the Newbury side of the river opposite Pleasant Valley in Amesbury. The several poems called out by these gatherings are here printed in sequence.

ONCE more on yonder laurelled height

The summer flowers have budded;

Once more with summer’s golden light

The vales of home are flooded;

And once more, by the grace of Him

Of every good the Giver,

We sing upon its wooded rim

The praises of our river:

Its pines above, its waves below,

The west-wind down it blowing,

As fair as when the young Brissot

Beheld it seaward flowing,—

And bore its memory o’er the deep,

To soothe a martyr’s sadness,

And fresco, in his troubled sleep,

His prison-walls with gladness.

We know the world is rich with streams

Renowned in song and story,

Whose music murmurs through our dreams

Of human love and glory:

We know that Arno’s banks are fair,

And Rhine has castled shadows,

And, poet-tuned, the Doon and Ayr

Go singing down their meadows.

But while, unpictured and unsung

By painter or by poet,

Our river waits the tuneful tongue

And cunning hand to show it,—

We only know the fond skies lean

Above it, warm with blessing,

And the sweet soul of our Undine

Awakes to our caressing.

No fickle sun-god holds the flocks

That graze its shores in keeping;

No icy kiss of Dian mocks

The youth beside it sleeping:

Our Christian river loveth most

The beautiful and human;

The heathen streams of Naiads boast,

But ours of man and woman.

The miner in his cabin hears

The ripple we are hearing;

It whispers soft to homesick ears

Around the settler’s clearing:

In Sacramento’s vales of corn,

Or Santee’s bloom of cotton,

Our river by its valley-born

Was never yet forgotten.

The drum rolls loud, the bugle fills

The summer air with clangor;

The war-storm shakes the solid hills

Beneath its tread of anger;

Young eyes that last year smiled in ours

Now point the rifle’s barrel,

And hands then stained with fruits and flowers

Bear redder stains of quarrel.

But blue skies smile, and flowers bloom on,

And rivers still keep flowing,

The dear God still his rain and sun

On good and ill bestowing.

His pine-trees whisper, “Trust and wait!”

His flowers are prophesying

That all we dread of change or fate

His love is underlying.

And thou, O Mountain-born!—no more

We ask the wise Allotter

Than for the firmness of thy shore,

The calmness of thy water,

The cheerful lights that overlay

Thy rugged slopes with beauty,

To match our spirits to our day

And make a joy of duty.

1861.