Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/63

Rh 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 Aukeetamit’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 Merrimac was seen.

The hunter leaning on his bow undrawn,
 * The fisher 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 sea-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 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 the 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.”