Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

Poems Subjective and Reminiscent

Voyage of the Jettie

The picturesquely situated Wayside Inn at West Ossipee, N. H., is now in ashes; and to its former guests these somewhat careless rhymes may be a not unwelcome reminder of pleasant summers and autumns on the banks of the Bearcamp and Chocorua. To the author himself they have a special interest from the fact that they were written, or improvised, under the eye and for the amusement of a beloved invalid friend whose last earthly sunsets faded from the mountain ranges of Ossipee and Sandwich.

A SHALLOW stream, from fountains

Deep in the Sandwich mountains,

Ran lakeward Bearcamp River;

And, between its flood-torn shores,

Sped by sail or urged by oars

No keel had vexed it ever.

Alone the dead trees yielding

To the dull axe Time is wielding,

The shy mink and the otter,

And golden leaves and red,

By countless autumns shed,

Had floated down its water.

From the gray rocks of Cape Ann,

Came a skilled seafaring man,

With his dory, to the right place;

Over hill and plain he brought her,

Where the boatless Bearcamp water

Comes winding down from White-Face.

Quoth the skipper: “Ere she floats forth,

I ’m sure my pretty boat’s worth,

At least, a name as pretty.”

On her painted side he wrote it,

And the flag that o’er her floated

Bore aloft the name of Jettie.

On a radiant morn of summer,

Elder guest and latest comer

Saw her wed the Bearcamp water;

Heard the name the skipper gave her,

And the answer to the favor

From the Bay State’s graceful daughter.

Then, a singer, richly gifted,

Her charmëd voice uplifted;

And the wood-thrush and song-sparrow

Listened, dumb with envious pain,

To the clear and sweet refrain

Whose notes they could not borrow.

Then the skipper plied his oar,

And from off the shelving shore,

Glided out the strange explorer;

Floating on, she knew not whither,—

The tawny sands beneath her,

The great hills watching o’er her.

On, where the stream flows quiet

As the meadows’ margins by it,

Or widens out to borrow a

New life from that wild water,

The mountain giant’s daughter,

The pine-besung Chocorua.

Or, mid the tangling cumber

And pack of mountain lumber

That spring floods downward force,

Over sunken snag, and bar

Where the grating shallows are,

The good boat held her course.

Under the pine-dark highlands,

Around the vine-hung islands,

She ploughed her crooked furrow;

And her rippling and her lurches

Scared the river eels and perches,

And the musk-rat in his burrow.

Every sober clam below her,

Every sage and grave pearl-grower,

Shut his rusty valves the tighter;

Crow called to crow complaining,

And old tortoises sat craning

Their leathern necks to sight her.

So, to where the still lake glasses

The misty mountain masses

Rising dim and distant northward,

And, with faint-drawn shadow pictures,

Low shores, and dead pine spectres,

Blends the skyward and the earthward,

On she glided, overladen,

With merry man and maiden

Sending back their song and laughter,—

While, perchance, a phantom crew,

In a ghostly birch canoe,

Paddled dumb and swiftly after!

And the bear on Ossipee

Climbed the topmost crag to see

The strange thing drifting under;

And, through the haze of August,

Passaconaway and Paugus

Looked down in sleepy wonder.

All the pines that o’er her hung

In mimic sea-tones sung

The song familiar to her;

And the maples leaned to screen her,

And the meadow-grass seemed greener,

And the breeze more soft to woo her.

The lone stream mystery-haunted,

To her the freedom granted

To scan its every feature,

Till new and old were blended,

And round them both extended

The loving arms of Nature.

Of these hills the little vessel

Henceforth is part and parcel;

And on Bearcamp shall her log

Be kept, as if by George’s

Or Grand Menàn, the surges

Tossed her skipper through the fog.

And I, who, half in sadness,

Recall the morning gladness

Of life, at evening time,

By chance, onlooking idly,

Apart from all so widely,

Have set her voyage to rhyme.

Dies now the gay persistence

Of song and laugh, in distance;

Alone with me remaining

The stream, the quiet meadow,

The hills in shine and shadow,

The sombre pines complaining.

And, musing here, I dream

Of voyagers on a stream

From whence is no returning,

Under sealëd orders going,

Looking forward little knowing,

Looking back with idle yearning.

And I pray that every venture

The port of peace may enter,

That, safe from snag and fall

And siren-haunted islet,

And rock, the Unseen Pilot

May guide us one and all.

1880.