dead men in her shrouds, Sailing sheer above the water, in the loom of morning clouds;

Of the marvellous valley hidden in the depths of Gloucester woods, Full of plants that love the summer,

blooms of warmer latitudes;

Where the Arctic birch is braided by the tropic's flowery vines, And the white magnolia-blossoms star the twilight of the pines!

But their voices sank yet lower, sank to husky tones of fear,

As they spake of present tokens of the powers of evil near ;

Of a spectral host, defying stroke of steel and aim of gun;

Never yet was ball to slay them in the mould of mortals run!

Thrice, with plumes and flowing scalp; locks, from the midnight wood they came,

Thrice around the block-house marching,

met, unharmed, its volleyed flame; Then, with mocking laugh and gesture, sunk in earth or lost in air, All the ghostly wonder vanished, and the moonlit sands lay bare.

Midnight came; from out the forest

moved a dusky mass that soon Grew to warriors, plumed and painted,

grimly marching in the moon. "Ghosts or witches," said the captain,

"thus I foil the Evil One!' And he rammed a silver button, from

his doublet, down his gun.

Once again the spectral horror moved

the guarded wall about; Once again the levelled muskets through the palisades flashed out, With that deadly aim the squirrel on his

tree-top might not shun, Nor the beach-bird seaward flying with

his slant wing to the sun.

Like the idle rain of summer sped the harmless shower of lead. With a laugh of fierce derision, once again the phantoms fled;

sands the moonlight lay,

And the white smoke curling through it drifted slowly down the bay!

"God preserve us!" said the captain; "never mortal foes were there; They have vanished with their leader, Prince and Power of the air!

Lay aside your useless weapons; skill

and prowess naught avail; They who do the Devil's service wear

their master's coat of mail!"

So the night grew near to cock-crow, when again a warning call Roused the score of weary soldiers watching round the dusky hall : And they looked to flint and priming,

and they longed for break of day; But the captain closed his Bible: "Let

us cease from man, and pray!"

To the men who went before us, all the And their steadfast strength of courage unseen powers seemed near, struck its roots in holy fear. Every hand forsook the musket, every Every stout knee pressed the flag-stones, as the captain led in prayer. Ceased thereat the mystic marching of the spectres round the wall, But a sound abhorred, unearthly, smote the ears and hearts of all, Howls of rage and shrieks of anguish ! Never after mortal man Saw the ghostly leaguers marching round the block-house of Cape Ann.

head was bowed and bare,

So to us who walk in summer through the cool and sea-blown town, From the childhood of its people comes the solemn legend down. Not in vain the ancient fiction, in whose moral lives the youth And the fitness and the freshness of an undecaying truth.

Soon or late to all our dwellings come

the spectres of the mind, Doubts and fears and dread forebodings, In the darkness undefined; Round us throng the grim projections of the heart and of the brain, And our pride of strength is weakness, and the cunning hand is vain.

As from Koordish robber or Syrian Sheik !

O, leave the wretch to his bribes and sins;

Let him rot in the web of lies he spins!
To the saintly soul of the early day,
To the Christian judge, let us turn and

say:

"Praise and thanks for an honest man !

Glory to God for the Puritan !"

I see, far southward, this quiet day,
The hills of Newbury rolling away,
With the many tints of the season gay,
Dreamily blending in autumn mist
Crimson, and gold, and amethyst.
Long and low, with dwarf trees crowned,
Plum Island lies, like a whale aground,
A stone's toss over the narrow sound.
Inland, as far as the eye can go,
The hills curve round like a bended
bow;

A silver arrow from out them sprung,
I see the shine of the Quasycung;
And, round and round, over valley and
hill,

Old roads winding, as old roads will,
Here to a ferry, and there to a mill;
And glimpses of chimneys and gabled

I see it all like a chart unrolled, But my thoughts are full of the past and old,

I hear the tales of my boyhood told; And the shadows and shapes of early days

Flit dimly by in the veiling haze, With measured movement and rhythmic chime

Weaving like shuttles my web of rhyme. I think of the old man wise and good Who once on yon misty hillsides stood, (A poet who never measured rhyme, A seer unknown to his dull-eared time,) And, propped on his staff of age, looked down,

With his boyhood's love, on his native town,

Where, written, as if on its hills and plains,

His burden of prophecy yet remains, For the voices of wood, and wave, and wind

To read in the ear of the musing mind:

"As long as Plum Island, to guard

the coast

As God appointed, shall keep its post;
As long as a salmon shall haunt the deep
Of Merrimack River, or sturgeon leap;
As long as pickerel swift and slim,
Orred-backed perch, in Crane Pond swim;
As long as the annual sea-fowl know
Their time to come and their time to go;
As long as cattle shall roam at will
The green, grass meadows by Turkey Hill;
As long as sheep shall look from the side
Of Oldtown Hill on marishes wide,
And Parker River, and salt-sea tide;
As long as a wandering pigeon shall search
The fields below from his white-oak perch,
When the barley-harvest is ripe and
shorn,

And the dry husks fall from the standing corn;

As long as Nature shall not grow old,
Nor drop her work from her doting hold,
And her care for the Indian corn forget,
And the yellow rows in pairs to set;
So long shall Christians here be born,
Grow up and ripen as God's sweet corn!-
By the beak of bird, by the breath of
frost,

Shall never a holy ear be lost,
But, husked by Death in the Planter's
sight,

Be sown again in the fields of light!"

Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips,
Girls in bloom of cheek and lips,
Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase
Bacchus round some antique vase,
Brief of skirt, with ankles bare,
Loose of kerchief and loose of hair,
With conch-shells blowing and fish-
horns' twang,

Over and over the Mænads sang:
"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd
horrt,

225

Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt

By the women o' Morble'ead!" Small pity for him!- He sailed away From a leaking ship, in Chaleur Bay, Sailed away from a sinking wreck, With his own town's-people on her deck! Lay by lay by !" they called to him. Back he answered, "Sink or swim! Brag of your catch of fish again!' And off he sailed through the fog and rain !

66

Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart

By the women of Marblehead ! Fathoms deep in dark Chaleur That wreck shall lie forevermore. Mother and sister, wife and maid, Looked from the rocks of Marblehead Over the moaning and rainy sea, Looked for the coming that might not be!

What did the winds and the sea-birds say

Of the cruel captain who sailed away?— Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a

cart

By the women of Marblehead !

Through the street, on either side,
Up flew windows, doors swung wide;
Sharp-tongued spinsters, old wives gray,
Treble lent the fish-horn's bray.
Sea-worn grandsires, cripple-bound,
Hulks of old sailors run aground,
Shook head, and fist, and hat, and cane,
And cracked with curses the hoarse re-
frain:

"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,

Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt

By the women o' Morble'ead!"

Sweetly along the Salem road
Bloom of orchard and lilac showed.
Little the wicked skipper knew
Of the fields so green and the sky so
blue.

Riding there in his sorry trim,
Like an Indian idol glum and grim,
Scarcely he seemed the sound to hear
Of voices shouting, far and near:

o'errun,

Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink.

A year has gone, as the tortoise goes,
Heavy and slow;

And the same rose blows, and the same sun glows,

And the same brook sings of a year ago.

There's the same sweet clover-smell in the breeze;

And the June sun warm

Tangles his wings of fire in the trees,
Setting, as then, over Fernside farm.

I mind me how with a lover's care
From my Sunday coat

I brushed off the burrs, and smooth d my hair,

And cooled at the brookside my brow and throat.

Since we parted, a month had passed, –

To love, a year;

Down through the beeches I looked at

last

And down by the brink

For the dead to-day :