The garden rose may richly bloom
In cultured soil and genial air,
To cloud the light of Fashion's room
Or droop in Beauty's midnight hair,
In lonelier grace, to sun and dew
The sweet-briar on the hill-side shows
Its single leaf and fainter hue,
Untrained and wildly free, yet still a sister rose!
Thus o'er the heart of Weetamoo
Their mingling shades of joy and ill
The instincts of her nature threw,-
The savage was a woman still.
'Midst outlines dim of maiden schemes,
Heart-colored auguries of life,
Rose on the ground of her young dreams
The light of a new home-the lover and the wife!
COOL and dark fell the Autumn night
But the Bashaba's wigwam glowed with light,
For down from its roof by green withes hung
Flaring and smoking the pine-knots swung.
And along the river great wood fires
Shot into the night their long red spires,
Showing behind the tall, dark wood
Flashing before on the sweeping flood.
In the changeful wind, with shimmer and shade,
Now high, now low, that fire-light played,
On tree-leaves wet with evening dews
On gliding water and still canoes.
The trapper that night on Turee's brook,
And the weary fisher on Contoocook,
Saw over the marshes and through the pine,
And down on the river the dance-lights shine.
For the Saugus Sachem had come to woo
The Bashaba's daughter Weetamoo,
And lay at her father's feet that night
His softest furs and wampum white.
From the Crystal Hills to the far South East
The river Sagamores came to the feast;
And chiefs whose homes the sea-winds shook.
Sat down on the mats of Pennacook.
They came from Sunapee's shore of rock,
From the snowy sources of Snooganock,
And from rough Coos whose thick woods shake
Their pine-cones in Umbagog lake.
From Ammonoosuck's mountain pass
Wild as his home came Chepewass;
And the Keenomps of the hills which throw
Their shade on the Smile of Manito.
With pipes of peace and bows unstrung,
Glowing with paint came old and young,
In wampum and furs and feathers arrayed
To the dance and feast the Bashaba made.
Bird of the air and beast of the field,
All which the woods and waters yield,
On dishes of birch and hemlock piled
Garnished and graced that banquet wild.
Steaks of the brown bear fat and large
From the rocky slopes of the Kearsarge;
Delicate trout from Babboosuck brook,
And salmon spear'd in the Contoocook;
Squirrels which fed where nuts fell thick
In the gravelly bed of the Otternic,
And small wild hens in reed-snares caught
From the banks of Sondagardee brought;
Pike and perch from the Suncook taken,
Nuts from the trees of the Black Hills shaken,
Cranberries picked in the Squamscot bog
And grapes from the vines of Piscataquog :
And, drawn from that great stone vase which stands
In the river scooped by a spirit's hands,*
In white parched pile, or thick suppawn,
Stood the birchen dishes of smoking corn.
Thus bird of the air and beast of the field,
All which the woods and the waters yield,
Furnished in that olden day
The bridal feast of the Bashaba.
And merrily when that feast was done
On the fire-lit green the dance begun,
With the squaws' shrill stave, and deeper hum
Of old men beating the Indian drum.
Painted and plumed, with scalp locks flowing,
And red arms tossing and black eyes glowing,
Now in the light and now in the shade
Around the fires the dancers played.
The step was quicker, the song more shrill,
And the beat of the small drums louder still,
Whenever within the circle drew
The Saugus Sachem and Weetamoo.
The moons of forty winters had shed
Their snow upon that chieftain's head,
And toil and care, and battle's chance,
Had seamed his hard dark countenance.
A fawn beside the bison grim-
Why turns the bride's fond eye on him,
In whose cold look is naught beside
The triumph of a sullen pride ?
There are rocks in the River at the Falls of Amoskeag, in the cavities of which
tradition says the Indians formerly stored and concealed their corn.
Ask why the graceful grape entwines
The rough oak with her arm of vines;
And why the grey rock's rugged cheek
The soft lips of the mosses seek:
Why, with wise instinct, Nature seems
To harmonize her wide extremes,
Linking the stronger with the weak
The haughty with the soft and meek!
A WILD and broken landscape, spiked with firs,
Roughening the bleak horizon's northern edge,
Steep, cavernous hill-sides, where black hemlock spurs
And sharp, grey splinters of the wind-swept ledge
Pierced the thin-glazed ice, or bristling rose,
Where the cold rim of the sky sunk down upon the snows.
And eastward cold, wide marshes stretched away,
Dull, dreary flats without a bush or tree,
O'er-crossed by icy creeks, where twice a day
Gurgled the waters of the moon-struck sea;
And faint with distance came the stifled roar,
The melancholy lapse of waves on that low shore.
No cheerful village with its mingling smokes,
No laugh of children wrestling in the snow,
No camp-fire blazing through the hill-side oaks,
No fishers kneeling on the ice below;
Yet midst all desolate things of sound and view,
Through the long winter moons smiled dark-eyed Weetamoo.
Her heart had found a home; and freshly all
Its beautiful affections overgrew
Their rugged prop. As o'er some granite wall
Soft vine leaves open to the moistening dew,
And warm bright sun, the love of that young wife,
Found on a hard cold breast the dew and warmth of life.
The steep bleak hills, the melancholy shore,
The long dead level of the marsh between,
A coloring of unreal beauty wore
Through the soft golden mist of young love seen.
For o'er those hills and from that dreary plain,
Nightly she welcomed home her hunter chief again.
No warmth of heart, no passionate burst of feeling,
Repaid her welcoming smile, and parting kiss,
No fond and playful dalliance half concealing,
Under the guise of mirth, its tenderness;
But, in their stead, the warrior's settled pride,
And vanity's pleased smile with homage satisfied.
Enough for Weetamoo, that she alone
Sat on his mat and slumbered at his side;
That he whose fame to her young ear had flown,
Now looked upon her proudly as his bride;
That he whose name the Mohawk trembling heard
Vouchsafed to her at times a kindly look or word.
For she had learned the maxims of her race
Which teach the woman to become a slave,
And feel herself the pardonless disgrace
Of love's fond weakness in the wise and brave-
The scandal and the shame which they incur,
Who give to woman all which man requires of her.
So passed the winter moons. The sun at last
Broke link by link the frost-chain of the rills;
And the warm breathings of the southwest passed
Over the hoar rime of the Saugus hills;
The grey and desolate marsh grew green once more,
And the birch-tree's tremulous shade fell round the Sachem's door.
Then from far Pennacook swift runners came,
With gift and greeting for the Saugus chief;
Beseeching him in the great Sachem's name,
That, with the coming of the flower and leaf,
The song of birds, the warm breeze and the rain,
Young Weetamoo might greet her lonely sire again.
And Winnepurkit called his chiefs together,
And a grave council in his wigwam met,
Solemn and brief in words, considering whether
The rigid rules of forest etiquette
Permitted Weetamoo once more to look,
Upon her father's face and green-banked Pennacook.
With interludes of pipe-smoke and strong water,
The forest sages pondered, and at length,
Concluded in a body to escort her
Up to her father's home of pride and strength,
Impressing thus on Pennacook a sense,
Of Winnepurkit's power and regal consequence.
So through old woods which Aukeeteamit's* hand
A soft and many-shaded greenness lent,
Over high breezy hills and meadow land,
Yellow with flowers, the wild procession went,
Till rolling down its wooded banks between,
A broad, clear, mountain stream, the Merrimack was seen.
The hunter leaning on his bow undrawn—
The fishers lounging on the pebbled shores,
Squaws in the clearing dropping the seed-corn,
Young children peering through the wigwam doors, Saw with delight, surrounded by her train
Of painted Saugus braves, their Weetamoo again.
THE hills are dearest which our childish feet
Have climbed the earliest; and the streams most sweet,
Are ever those at which our young lips drank
Stooped to their waters o'er the grassy bank:
'Midst the cold dreary night-watch, Home's hearth-light Shines round the helmsman plunging through the night; And still, with inward eye, the traveller sees
In close, dark, stranger streets his native trees.
The Spring God. See Roger Williams. Key, &c.
The home-sick dreamer's brow is nightly fanned
By breezes whispering of his native land;
And, on the stranger's dim and dying eye
The soft, sweet pictures of his childhood lie!
Joy then for Weetamoo, to sit once more
A child upon her father's wigwam floor!
Once more with her old fondness to beguile
From his cold eye the strange light of a smile.
The long bright days of Summer swiftly passed,
The dry leaves whirled in Autumn's rising blast,
And evening cloud and whitening sunrise rime
Told of the coming of the winter time.
But vainly looked, the while, young Weetamoo,
Down the dark river for her chief's canoe;
No dusky messenger from Saugus brought,
The grateful tidings which the young wife sought.
At length a runner from her father sent,
To Winnepurkit's sea-cooled wigwam went:
Eagle of Saugus,-in the woods thy dove,
Mourns for the shelter of thy wings of love."
But the dark chief of Saugus turned aside
In the grim anger of hard-hearted pride;
"I bore her as became a chieftain's daughter,
Up to her home beside the gliding water.
"If now no more a mat for her is found
Of all which line her father's wigwam round,
Let Pennacook call out his warrior train
And send her back with wampum gifts again."
The dusky runner turned upon his track,
Bearing the words of Winnepurkit back.
Dog of the Marsh!" cried Pennacook, "no more Shall child of mine sit on his wigwam floor.
"Go-let him seek some meaner squaw to spread
The stolen bear-skin of his beggar's bed:
Son of a fish-hawk!-let him dig his claws
For some vile daughter of the Agawaws,
"Or coward Nipmucks!-may his scalp dry black
In Mohawk smoke, before I send her back.
He shook his clenched hand towards the ocean wave, While hoarse assent his listening council gave.
Alas poor bride !-can thy grim sire impart
His iron hardness to thy woman's heart?
Or cold, self-torturing pride like his atone
For love denied and life's warm beauty flown?
On Autumn's grey and mournful grave, the snow Hung its white wreaths; with stifled voice and low The river crept, by one vast bridge o'ercrossed, Built by the hoar-locked artisan of Frost.
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