Pale priest! What proud and lofty dreams, What keen desires, what cherished schemes, What hopes, that time may not recall, The fiery-souled Castine? 17 | With a gesture of horror, he spurns the form That writhes at his feet like a trodden worm. Ever thus the spirit must, Guilty in the sight of Heaven, With a keener woe be riven, For its weak and sinful trust In the strength of human dust; And its anguish thrill afresh, For each vain reliance given To the failing arm of flesh. PART III. Ан, weary Priest!—with pale hands pressed On thy throbbing brow of pain, Baffled in thy life-long quest, Overworn with toiling vain, How ill thy troubled musings fit The holy quiet of a breast With the Dove of Peace at rest, Thoughts are thine which have no part Of the Blessed Spirit made. It were sin to breathe a prayer ;– Schemes which Heaven may never bless, Fears which darken to despair. Hoary priest! thy dream is done Of a hundred red tribes won To the pale of Holy Church; And the heretic o'erthrown, And his name no longer known, And thy weary brethren turning, Joyful from their years of mourning, 'Twixt the altar and the porch. Hark! what sudden sound is heard In the wood and in the sky, Shriller than the scream of bird, Than the trumpet's clang more high! Every wolf-cave of the hills, Forest arch and mountain gorge, Rock and dell, and river verge, With an answering echo thrills. Well does the Jesuit know that cry, A grim and naked head is thrust - Within the chapel-door. "Ha-Bomazeen! In God's name say, What mean these sounds of bloody fray?" Silent, the Indian points his hand To where across the echoing glen The wolves are eating the Norridgewock; Fearfully over the Jesuit's face, Of a thousand thoughts, trace after trace, Like swift cloud-shadows, each other chase. One instant, his fingers grasp his knife, For a last vain struggle for cherished life, The next, he hurls the blade away, And kneels at his altar's foot to pray; Over his beads his fingers stray, And he kisses the cross, and calls aloud .On the Virgin and her Son; For terrible thoughts his memory crowd Of evil seen and done, 13 Of scalps brought home by his savage flock From Casco and Sawga and Sagadahock In the Church's service won. No shrift the gloomy savage brooks, Let my father look upon Bomazeen, A dance and a feast for a great saga more, When he paddles across the western lake, With his dogs and his squaws to the spirit's shore. "Cowesass-cowesass-tawhich wessa seen? Let my father die like Bomazeen ! " Through the chapel's narrow doors, And through each window in the walls, Round the priest and warrior pours The deadly shower of English balls. Low on his cross the Jesuit falls; While at his side the Norridgewock, With failing breath, essays to mock And menace yet the hated foe, Shakes his scalp-trophies to and fro Exultingly before their eyes, Till, cleft and torn by shot and blow, Defiant still, he dies. Quenching, with reckless hand in blood, And flowing with its crystal river, Through the gun-smoke wreathing white, From the world of light and breath, Wretched girl! one eye alone Even when a brother's blood, 'Tis springtime on ti e eastern hills! Like torrents gush the summer rills; Through winter's moss and dry dead leaves The bladed grass revives and lives, The southwest wind is warmly blowing, Are with it on its errands going. A band is marching through the wood A wanderer from the shores of France. In the harsh outlines of his face His step is firm, his eye is keen, No purpose now of strife and blood Of chivalry have gone. Within the earth the bones of those Who perished in that fearful day, When Norridgewock became the prey Of all unsparing foes. Sadly and still, dark thoughts between, THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK. Of coming vengeance mused Castine, For firm defence or swift attack; 15 And the aged priest stood up to bless And the birchen boats of the Nor- Tethered to tree and stump and rock, Close at her feet the river rushes; And sweetly through the hazel-bushes The robin's mellow music gushes; God save her! will she sleep alway? Castine hath bent him over the sleeper: Wake, daughter, wake!"-but 66 THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK." 1848. WE had been wandering for many days | Silent with wonder, where the mountain Through the rough northern country. We had seen The sunset, with its bars of purple cloud, Like a new heaven, shine upward from the lake Of Winnepiseogee; and had felt The sunrise breezes, midst the leafy isles Which stoop their summer beauty to the lips Of the bright waters. We had checked our steeds, wall Is piled to heaven; and, through the narrow rift Of the vast rocks, against whose rugged feet Beats the mad torrent with perpetual roar, Where noonday is as twilight, and the wind Comes burdened with the everlasting moan Of forests and of far-off waterfalls, We had looked upward where the sum- | Life's sunniest side, and with a heart to crags O'er-roofing the vast portal of the land Beyond the wall of mountains. We had passed The high source of the Saco; and bewildered In the dwarf spruce-belts of the Crystal Hills, Had heard above us, like a voice in the cloud, The horn of Fabyan sounding; and atop Of old Agioochook had seen the mountains Piled to the northward, shagged with wood, and thick As meadow mole-hills, - the far sea of Casco, A white gleam on the horizon of the east ; Fair lakes, embosomed in the woods and hills; Moosehillock's mountain range, and Kearsarge Lifting his Titan forehead to the sun! And we had rested underneath the oaks Shadowing the bank, whose grassy spires are shaken By the perpetual beating of the falls tracked The winding Pemigewasset, overhung By beechen shadows, whitening down its rocks, Or lazily gliding through its intervals, From waving rye-fields sending up the gleam Of sunlit waters. We had seen the moon Rising behind Umbagog's eastern pines, Like a great Indian camp-fire; and its beams At midnight spanning with a bridge of silver The Merrimack by Uncanoonuc's falls. Glorified by the sunset; and his daughter A delicate flower on whom had blown too long Those evil winds, which, sweeping from the ice And winnowing the fogs of Labrador, Shed their cold blight round Massachusetts Bay, With the same breath which stirs Spring's opening leaves There were five souls of us whom trav- And lifts her half-formed flower-bell on el's chance its stem, Poisoning our seaside atmosphere. It chanced That as we turned upon our homeward way, A drear northeastern storm came howling up The valley of the Saco; and that girl |