Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/93

Rh There a comrade heard him praying, in the pause of wave and wind: “All my own have gone before me, and I linger just behind; Not for life I ask, but only for the rest Thy ransomed find!

“In this night of death I challenge the promise of Thy word!— Let me see the great salvation of which mine ears have heard!— Let me pass from hence forgiven, through the grace of Christ, our Lord!

“In the baptism of these waters wash white my every sin, And let me follow up to Thee my household and my kin! Open the sea-gate of Thy heaven, and let me enter in!”

When the Christian sings his death-song, all the listening heavens draw near, And the angels, leaning over the walls of crystal, hear How the notes so faint and broken swell to music in God’s ear.

The ear of God was open to His servant’s last request; As the strong wave swept him downward the sweet hymn upward pressed, And the soul of Father Avery went, singing, to its rest.

There was wailing on the mainland, from the rocks of Marblehead; In the stricken church of Newbury the notes of prayer were read; And long, by board and hearthstone, the living mourned the dead.

And still the fishers outbound, or scudding from the squall, With grave and reverent faces, the ancient tale recall, When they see the white waves breaking on the Rock of Avery’s Fall!

away in the twilight time Of every people, in every clime, Dragons and griffins and monsters dire, Born of water, and air, and fire, Or nursed, like the Python, in the mud And ooze of the old Deucalion flood, Crawl and wriggle and foam with rage, Through dusk tradition and ballad age. So from the childhood of Newbury town And its time of fable the tale comes down Of a terror which haunted bush and brake, The Amphisbæna, the Double Snake!

Thou who makest the tale thy mirth, Consider that strip of Christian earth On the desolate shore of a sailless sea, Full of terror and mystery, Half redeemed from the evil hold Of the wood so dreary, and dark, and old, Which drank with its lips of leaves the dew When Time was young, and the world was new, And wove its shadows with sun and moon, Ere the stones of Cheops were squared and hewn. Think of the sea’s dread monotone, Of the mournful wail from the pine-wood blown, Of the strange, vast splendors that lit the North, Of the troubled throes of the quaking earth, And the dismal tales the Indian told, Till the settler’s heart at his hearth grew cold, And he shrank from the tawny wizard boasts, And the hovering shadows seemed full of ghosts, And above, below, and on every side, The fear of his creed seemed verified;— And think, if his lot were now thine own, To grope with terrors nor named nor known, How laxer muscle and weaker nerve And a feebler faith thy need might serve; And own to thyself the wonder more That the snake had two heads, and not a score!

Whether he lurked in the Oldtown fen Or the gray earth-flax of the Devil’s Den, Or swam in the wooded Artichoke,