Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/85

Rh A wild and wondrous story, by the younger Mather penned, In that quaint Magnalia Christi, with all strange and marvellous things, Heaped up huge and undigested, like the chaos Ovid sings.

Dear to me these far, faint glimpses of the dual life of old, Inward, grand with awe and reverence; outward, mean and coarse and cold; Gleams of mystic beauty playing over dull and vulgar clay, Golden-threaded fancies weaving in a web of hodden gray.

The great eventful Present hides the Past; but through the din Of its loud life hints and echoes from the life behind steal in; And the lore of home and fireside, and the legendary rhyme, Make the task of duty lighter which the true man owes his time.

So, with something of the feeling which the Covenanter knew, When with pious chisel wandering Scotland’s moorland graveyards through, From the graves of old traditions I part the blackberry-vines, Wipe the moss from off the headstones, and retouch the faded lines.

Where the sea-waves back and forward, hoarse with rolling pebbles, ran, The garrison-house stood watching on the gray rocks of Cape Ann; On its windy site uplifting gabled roof and palisade, And rough walls of unhewn timber with the moonlight overlaid.

On his slow round walked the sentry, south and eastward looking forth O’er a rude and broken coast-line, white with breakers stretching north,— Wood and rock and gleaming sand-drift, jagged capes, with bush and tree, Leaning inland from the smiting of the wild and gusty sea.

Before the deep-mouthed chimney, dimly lit by dying brands, Twenty soldiers sat and waited, with their muskets in their hands; On the rough-hewn oaken table the venison haunch was shared, And the pewter tankard circled slowly round from beard to beard.

Long they sat and talked together,—talked of wizards Satan-sold; Of all ghostly sights and noises,—signs and wonders manifold; Of the spectre-ship of Salem, with the dead men in her shrouds, Sailing sheer above the water, in the loom of morning clouds;

Of the marvellous valley hidden in the depths of Gloucester woods, Full of plants that love the summer,—blooms of warmer latitudes; Where the Arctic birch is braided by the tropic’s flowery vines, And the white magnolia-blossoms star the twilight of the pines!

But their voices sank yet lower, sank to husky tones of fear, As they spake of present tokens of the powers of evil near;— Of a spectral host, defying stroke of steel and aim of gun; Never yet was ball to slay them in the mould of mortals run!

Thrice, with plumes and flowing scalp-locks, from the midnight wood they came,— Thrice around the block-house marching, met, unharmed, its volleyed flame; Then, with mocking laugh and gesture, sunk in earth or lost in air, All the ghostly wonder vanished, and the moonlit sands lay bare.

Midnight came; from out the forest moved a dusky mass that soon Grew to warriors, plumed and painted, grimly marching in the moon. “Ghosts or witches,” said the captain, “thus I foil the Evil One!” And he rammed a silver button, from his doublet, down his gun.