Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/56

24  At midnight spanning with a bridge of silver The Merrimac by Uncanoonuc’s falls.

There were five souls of us whom travel’s chance Had thrown together in these wild north hills: A city lawyer, for a month escaping From his dull office, where the weary eye Saw only hot brick walls and close thronged streets; Briefless as yet, but with an eye to see Life’s sunniest side, and with a heart to take Its chances all as godsends; and his brother, Pale from long pulpit studies, yet retaining The warmth and freshness of a genial heart, Whose mirror of the beautiful and true, In Man and Nature, was as yet undimmed By dust of theologic strife, or breath Of sect, or cobwebs of scholastic lore; Like a clear crystal calm of water, taking The hue and image of o’erleaning flowers, Sweet human faces, white clouds of the noon, Slant starlight glimpses through the dewy leaves, And tenderest moonrise. ’T was, in truth, a study, To mark his spirit, alternating between A decent and professional gravity And an irreverent mirthfulness, which often Laughed in the face of his divinity, Plucked off the sacred ephod, quite unshrined The oracle, and for the pattern priest Left us the man. A shrewd, sagacious merchant, To whom the soiled sheet found in Crawford’s inn, Giving the latest news of city stocks And sales of cotton, had a deeper meaning Than the great presence of the awful mountains Glorified by the sunset; and his daughter, A delicate flower on whom had blown too long Those evil winds, which, sweeping from the ice And winnowing the fogs of Labrador, Shed their cold blight round Massachusetts Bay, With the same breath which stirs Spring’s opening leaves And lifts her half-formed flower-bell on its stem, Poisoning our seaside atmosphere.

It chanced That as we turned upon our homeward way, A drear northeastern storm came howling up The valley of the Saco; and that girl Who had stood with us upon Mount Washington, Her brown locks ruffled by the wind which whirled In gusts around its sharp, cold pinnacle, Who had joined our gay trout-fishing in the streams Which lave that giant’s feet; whose laugh was heard Like a bird’s carol on the sunrise breeze Which swelled our sail amidst the lake’s green islands, Shrank from its harsh, chill breath, and visibly drooped Like a flower in the frost. So, in that quiet inn Which looks from Conway on the mountains piled Heavily against the horizon of the north, Like summer thunder-clouds, we made our home: And while the mist hung over dripping hills, And the cold wind-driven rain-drops all day long Beat their sad music upon roof and pane, We strove to cheer our gentle invalid.

The lawyer in the pauses of the storm Went angling down the Saco, and, returning, Recounted his adventures and mishaps; Gave us the history of his scaly clients, Mingling with ludicrous yet apt citations Of barbarous law Latin, passages From Izaak Walton’s Angler, sweet and fresh As the flower-skirted streams of Staffordshire, Where, under aged trees, the southwest wind Of soft June mornings fanned the thin, white hair Of the sage fisher. And, if truth be told, Our youthful candidate forsook his sermons,