Read and reread our little store
Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score; One harmless novel, mostly hid From younger eyes, a book forbid, And poetry (or good or bad,
A single book was all we had,)
Where Ellwood's meek, drab-skirted Muse, A stranger to the heathen Nine, Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine, The wars of David and the Jews. At last the floundering carrier bore The village paper to our door. Lo! broadening outward as we read, To warmer zones the horizon spread; In panoramic length unrolled We saw the marvel that it told. Before us passed the painted Creeks, And daft McGregor on his raids In Costa Rica's everglades. And up Taygetos winding slow Rode Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks, A Turk's head at each saddle bow! Welcome to us its week-old news, Its corner for the rustic Muse,
Its monthly gauge of snow and rain, Its record, mingling in a breath The wedding knell and dirge of death: Jest, anecdote, and love-lorn tale, The latest culprit sent to jail; Its hue and cry of stolen and lost, Its vendue sales and goods at cost, And traffic calling loud for gain.
We felt the stir of hall and street, The pulse of life that round us beat; The chill embargo of the snow
Was melted in the genial glow;
Wide swung again our ice-locked door, And all the world was ours once more!
Clasp, Angel of the backward look And folded wings of ashen gray And voice of echoes far away, The brazen covers of thy book; The weird palimpsest old and vast, Wherein thou hid'st the spectral past; Where, closely mingling, pale and glow The characters of joy and woe; The monographs of outlived years, Or smile-illumed or dim with tears,
Green hills of life that slope to death, And haunts of home, whose vistaed trees Shade off to mournful cypresses
With the white amaranths underneath. Even while I look, I can but heed The restless sands' incessant fall, Importunate hours that hours succeed, Each clamorous with its own sharp need, And duty keeping pace with all. Shut down and clasp the heavy lids; I hear again the voice that bids The dreamer leave his dream midway For larger hopes and graver fears: Life greatens in these later years, The century's aloe flowers to-day!
Yet, haply, in some lull of life,
Some Truce of God which breaks its strife, The worldling's eyes shall gather dew, Dreaming in throngful city ways Of winter joys his boyhood knew; And dear and early friends — the few Who yet remain — shall pause to view These Flemish pictures of old days; Sit with me by the homestead hearth, And stretch the hands of memory forth To warm them at the wood-fire's blaze! And thanks untraced to lips unknown Shall greet me like the odors blown From unseen meadows newly mown, Or lilies floating in some pond, Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond; The traveller owns the grateful sense Of sweetness near, he knows not whence, And, pausing, takes with forehead bare The benediction of the air.
- John Greenleaf Whittier
THE PRISONER OF CHILLON: A FABLE
Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind! Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art, For there thy habitation is the heart
The heart which love of thee alone can bind;
And when thy sons to fetters are consigned
To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom,
Their country conquers with their martyrdom, And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind. Chillon! thy prison is a holy place,
And thy sad floor an altar —
Until his very steps have left a trace
Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod, By Bonnivard! - May none those marks efface! For they appeal from tyranny to God.
gray, but not with years,
Nor grew it white
In a single night,
As men's have grown from sudden fears. My limbs are bowed, though not with toil, But rusted with a vile repose,
For they have been a dungeon's spoil, And mine has been the fate of those To whom the goodly earth and air Are banned, and barred - forbidden fare; But this was for my father's faith I suffered chains and courted death; That father perished at the stake For tenets he would not forsake; And for the same his lineal race In darkness found a dwelling-place. We were seven - who now are one, Six in youth, and one in age, Finished as they had begun,
Proud of Persecution's rage; One in fire, and two in field,
Their belief with blood have sealed:
Dying as their father died, For the God their foes denied; Three were in a dungeon cast,
Of whom this wreck is left the last.
There are seven pillars of Gothic mould, In Chillon's dungeons deep and old, There are seven columns massy and gray, Dim with a dull imprisoned ray,
A sunbeam which hath lost its way, And through the crevice and the cleft Of the thick wall is fallen and left: Creeping o'er the floor so damp, Like a marsh's meteor lamp: And in each pillar there is a ring,
And in each ring there is a chain; That iron is a cankering thing,
For in these limbs its teeth remain, With marks that will not wear away, Till I have done with this new day, Which now is painful to these eyes, Which have not seen the sun so rise For years I cannot count them o'e I lost their long and heavy score When my last brother drooped and died, And I lay living by his side.
They chained us each to a column stone, And we were three-yet, each alone; We could not move a single pace,
We could not see each other's face,
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