Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/61

Rh 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 Sangus Sachem had come to woo The Bashaba’s daughter Weetamoo, And laid at her father’s feet that night His softest furs and wampum white.

From the Crystal Hills to the far southeast 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 Coös whose thick woods shake Their pine-cones in Umbagog Lake.

From Ammonoosuc’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 the 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 speared 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, Garnished with spoons of shell and horn, 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 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?

Ask why the graceful grape entwines The rough oak with her arm of vines; And why the gray 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;