Narrative and Legendary Poems: Among the Hills and Others
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John Greenleaf Whittier >> Narrative and Legendary Poems: Among the Hills and Others
THE SISTERS.
ANNIE and Rhoda, sisters twain,
Woke in the night to the sound of rain,
The rush of wind, the ramp and roar
Of great waves climbing a rocky shore.
Annie rose up in her bed-gown white,
And looked out into the storm and night.
"Hush, and hearken!" she cried in fear,
"Hearest thou nothing, sister dear?"
"I hear the sea, and the plash of rain,
And roar of the northeast hurricane.
"Get thee back to the bed so warm,
No good comes of watching a storm.
"What is it to thee, I fain would know,
That waves are roaring and wild winds blow?
"No lover of thine's afloat to miss
The harbor-lights on a night like this."
"But I heard a voice cry out my name,
Up from the sea on the wind it came.
"Twice and thrice have I heard it call,
And the voice is the voice of Estwick Hall!"
On her pillow the sister tossed her head.
"Hall of the Heron is safe," she said.
"In the tautest schooner that ever swam
He rides at anchor in Anisquam.
"And, if in peril from swamping sea
Or lee shore rocks, would he call on thee?"
But the girl heard only the wind and tide,
And wringing her small white hands she cried,
"O sister Rhoda, there's something wrong;
I hear it again, so loud and long.
"'Annie! Annie!' I hear it call,
And the voice is the voice of Estwick Hall!"
Up sprang the elder, with eyes aflame,
"Thou liest! He never would call thy name!
"If he did, I would pray the wind and sea
To keep him forever from thee and me!"
Then out of the sea blew a dreadful blast;
Like the cry of a dying man it passed.
The young girl hushed on her lips a groan,
But through her tears a strange light shone,--
The solemn joy of her heart's release
To own and cherish its love in peace.
"Dearest!" she whispered, under breath,
"Life was a lie, but true is death.
"The love I hid from myself away
Shall crown me now in the light of day.
"My ears shall never to wooer list,
Never by lover my lips be kissed.
"Sacred to thee am I henceforth,
Thou in heaven and I on earth!"
She came and stood by her sister's bed
"Hall of the Heron is dead!" she said.
"The wind and the waves their work have done,
We shall see him no more beneath the sun.
"Little will reek that heart of thine,
It loved him not with a love like mine.
"I, for his sake, were he but here,
Could hem and 'broider thy bridal gear,
"Though hands should tremble and eyes be wet,
And stitch for stitch in my heart be set.
"But now my soul with his soul I wed;
Thine the living, and mine the dead!"
1871.
MARGUERITE.
MASSACHUSETTS BAY, 1760.
Upwards of one thousand of the Acadian peasants forcibly taken from
their homes on the Gaspereau and Basin of Minas were assigned to the
several towns of the Massachusetts colony, the children being bound by
the authorities to service or labor.
THE robins sang in the orchard, the buds into
blossoms grew;
Little of human sorrow the buds and the robins
knew!
Sick, in an alien household, the poor French
neutral lay;
Into her lonesome garret fell the light of the April
day,
Through the dusty window, curtained by the spider's
warp and woof,
On the loose-laid floor of hemlock, on oaken ribs
of roof,
The bedquilt's faded patchwork, the teacups on the
stand,
The wheel with flaxen tangle, as it dropped from
her sick hand.
What to her was the song of the robin, or warm
morning light,
As she lay in the trance of the dying, heedless of
sound or sight?
Done was the work of her bands, she had eaten her
bitter bread;
The world of the alien people lay behind her dim
and dead.
But her soul went back to its child-time; she saw
the sun o'erflow
With gold the Basin of Minas, and set over
Gaspereau;
The low, bare flats at ebb-tide, the rush of the sea
at flood,
Through inlet and creek and river, from dike to
upland wood;
The gulls in the red of morning, the fish-hawk's
rise and fall,
The drift of the fog in moonshine, over the dark
coast-wall.
She saw the face of her mother, she heard the song
she sang;
And far off, faintly, slowly, the bell for vespers
rang.
By her bed the hard-faced mistress sat, smoothing
the wrinkled sheet,
Peering into the face, so helpless, and feeling the
ice-cold feet.
With a vague remorse atoning for her greed and
long abuse,
By care no longer heeded and pity too late for use.
Up the stairs of the garret softly the son of the
mistress stepped,
Leaned over the head-board, covering his face with
his hands, and wept.
Outspake the mother, who watched him sharply,
with brow a-frown
"What! love you the Papist, the beggar, the
charge of the town?"
Be she Papist or beggar who lies here, I know
and God knows
I love her, and fain would go with her wherever
she goes!
"O mother! that sweet face came pleading, for
love so athirst.
You saw but the town-charge; I knew her God's
angel at first."
Shaking her gray head, the mistress hushed down
a bitter cry;
And awed by the silence and shadow of death
drawing nigh,
She murmured a psalm of the Bible; but closer
the young girl pressed,
With the last of her life in her fingers, the cross
to her breast.
"My son, come away," cried the mother, her voice
cruel grown.
"She is joined to her idols, like Ephraim; let her
alone!"
But he knelt with his hand on her forehead, his
lips to her ear,
And he called back the soul that was passing
"Marguerite, do you hear?"
She paused on the threshold of Heaven; love, pity,
surprise,
Wistful, tender, lit up for an instant the cloud of
her eyes.
With his heart on his lips he kissed her, but never
her cheek grew red,
And the words the living long for he spake in the
ear of the dead.
And the robins sang in the orchard, where buds to
blossoms grew;
Of the folded hands and the still face never the
robins knew!
1871.
THE ROBIN.
MY old Welsh neighbor over the way
Crept slowly out in the sun of spring,
Pushed from her ears the locks of gray,
And listened to hear the robin sing.
Her grandson, playing at marbles, stopped,
And, cruel in sport as boys will be,
Tossed a stone at the bird, who hopped
From bough to bough in the apple-tree.
"Nay!" said the grandmother; "have you not heard,
My poor, bad boy! of the fiery pit,
And how, drop by drop, this merciful bird
Carries the water that quenches it?
"He brings cool dew in his little bill,
And lets it fall on the souls of sin
You can see the mark on his red breast still
Of fires that scorch as he drops it in.
"My poor Bron rhuddyn! my breast-burned bird,
Singing so sweetly from limb to limb,
Very dear to the heart of Our Lord
Is he who pities the lost like Him!"
"Amen!" I said to the beautiful myth;
"Sing, bird of God, in my heart as well:
Each good thought is a drop wherewith
To cool and lessen the fires of hell.
"Prayers of love like rain-drops fall,
Tears of pity are cooling dew,
And dear to the heart of Our Lord are all
Who suffer like Him in the good they do! "
1871.