Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/121

Rh “And higher, warmed with summer lights,
 * Or winter-crowned and hoary,

The ridged horizon lifts for him
 * Its inner veils of glory.

“He has his own free, bookless lore,
 * The lessons nature taught him,

The wisdom which the woods and hills
 * And toiling men have brought him:

“The steady force of will whereby
 * Her flexile grace seems sweeter;

The sturdy counterpoise which makes
 * Her woman’s life completer;

“A latent fire of soul which lacks
 * No breath of love to fan it;

And wit, that, like his native brooks,
 * Plays over solid granite.

“How dwarfed against his manliness
 * She sees the poor pretension,

The wants, the aims, the follies, born
 * Of fashion and convention!

“How life behind its accidents
 * Stands strong and self-sustaining,

The human fact transcending all
 * The losing and the gaining.

“And so in grateful interchange
 * Of teacher and of hearer,

Their lives their true distinctness keep
 * While daily drawing nearer.

“And if the husband or the wife
 * In home’s strong light discovers

Such slight defaults as failed to meet
 * The blinded eyes of lovers,

“Why need we care to ask?—who dreams
 * Without their thorns of roses,

Or wonders that the truest steel
 * The readiest spark discloses?

“For still in mutual sufferance lies
 * The secret of true living;

Love scarce is love that never knows
 * The sweetness of forgiving.

“We send the Squire to General Court,
 * He takes his young wife thither;

No prouder man election day
 * Rides through the sweet June weather.

“He sees with eyes of manly trust
 * All hearts to her inclining;

Not less for him his household light
 * That others share its shining.”

Thus, while my hostess spake, there grew
 * Before me, warmer tinted

And outlined with a tenderer grace,
 * The picture that she hinted.

The sunset smouldered as we drove
 * Beneath the deep hill-shadows.

Below us wreaths of white fog walked
 * Like ghosts the haunted meadows.

Sounding the summer night, the stars
 * Dropped down their golden plummets;

The pale arc of the Northern lights
 * Rose o’er the mountain summits.

Until, at last, beneath its bridge,
 * We heard the Bearcamp flowing,

And saw across the mapled lawn
 * The welcome home-lights glowing.

And, musing on the tale I heard,
 * ’T were well, thought I, if often

To rugged farm-life came the gift
 * To harmonize and soften;

If more and more we found the troth
 * Of fact and fancy plighted,

And culture’s charm and labor’s strength
 * In rural homes united,—

The simple life, the homely hearth,
 * With beauty’s sphere surrounding,

And blessing toil where toil abounds
 * With graces more abounding.

land was pale with famine
 * And racked with fever-pain;

The frozen fiords were fishless,
 * The earth withheld her grain.

Men saw the boding Fylgja
 * Before them come and go,

And, through their dreams, the Urdarmoon
 * From west to east sailed slow!

Jarl Thorkell of Thevera
 * At Yule-time made his vow;