Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/90

58   On the river, full of sunshine,
 * To the lap of greenest vales

Winding down from wooded headlands,
 * Willow-skirted, white with sails.

And he said, the landscape sweeping
 * Slowly with his ungloved hand,

“I have seen no prospect fairer
 * In this goodly Eastern land.”

Then the bugles of his escort
 * Stirred to life the cavalcade:

And that head, so bare and stately,
 * Vanished down the depths of shade.

Ever since, in town and farm-house,
 * Life has had its ebb and flow;

Thrice hath passed the human harvest
 * To its garner green and low.

But the trees the gleeman planted,
 * Through the changes, changeless stand;

As the marble calm of Tadmor
 * Mocks the desert’s shifting sand.

Still the level moon at rising
 * Silvers o’er each stately shaft;

Still beneath them, half in shadow,
 * Singing, glides the pleasure craft;

Still beneath them, arm-enfolded,
 * Love and Youth together stray;

While, as heart to heart beats faster,
 * More and more their feet delay.

Where the ancient cobbler, Keezar,
 * On the open hillside wrought,

Singing, as he drew his stitches,
 * Songs his German masters taught,

Singing, with his gray hair floating
 * Round his rosy ample face,—

Now a thousand Saxon craftsmen
 * Stitch and hammer in his place.

All the pastoral lanes so grassy
 * Now are Traffic’s dusty streets;

From the village, grown a city,
 * Fast the rural grace retreats.

But, still green, and tall, and stately,
 * On the river’s winding shores,

Stand the Occidental plane-trees,
 * Stand Hugh Tallant’s sycamores.

of the misty moorlands,
 * Voice of the glens and hills;

The droning of the torrents,
 * The treble of the rills!

Not the braes of bloom and heather,
 * Nor the mountains dark with rain,

Nor maiden bower, nor border tower,
 * Have heard your sweetest strain!

Dear to the Lowland reaper,
 * And plaided mountaineer,—

To the cottage and the castle
 * The Scottish pipes are dear;—

Sweet sounds the ancient pibroch
 * O’er mountain, loch, and glade;

But the sweetest of all music
 * The pipes at Lucknow played.

Day by day the Indian tiger
 * Louder yelled, and nearer crept;

Round and round the jungle-serpent
 * Near and nearer circles swept.

“Pray for rescue, wives and mothers,—
 * Pray to-day!” the soldier said;

“To-morrow, death ’s between us
 * And the wrong and shame we dread.”

Oh, they listened, looked, and waited,
 * Till their hope became despair;

And the sobs of low bewailing
 * Filled the pauses of their prayer.

Then up spake a Scottish maiden,
 * With her ear unto the ground:

“Dinna ye hear it?—dinna ye hear it?
 * The pipes o’ Havelock sound!”

Hushed the wounded man his groaning;
 * Hushed the wife her little ones;

Alone they heard the drum-roll
 * And the roar of Sepoy guns.

But to sounds of home and childhood
 * The Highland ear was true;—

As her mother’s cradle-crooning
 * The mountain pipes she knew.

Like the march of soundless music
 * Through the vision of the seer,

More of feeling than of hearing,
 * Of the heart than of the ear,

She knew the droning pibroch,