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Goody Cole looked out from her door: The Isles of Shoals were drowned and gone,

Scarcely she saw the Head of the Boar

Toss the foam from tusks of stone. She clasped her hands with a grip of pain, The tear on her cheek was not of rain: 'They are lost,' she muttered, 'boat and crew!

Lord, forgive me! my words were true!' 80

Suddenly seaward swept the squall;

The low sun smote through cloudy rack; The Shoals stood clear in the light, and all The trend of the coast lay hard and black. But far and wide as eye could reach, No life was seen upon wave or beach; The boat that went out at morning never Sailed back again into Hampton River.

O mower, lean on thy bended snath,

Look from the meadows green and low: The wind of the sea is a waft of death,

The waves are singing a song of woe! By silent river, by moaning sea, Long and vain shall thy watching be: Never again shall the sweet voice call, Never the white hand rise and fall!

O Rivermouth Rocks, how sad a sight Ye saw in the light of breaking day! Dead faces looking up cold and white

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From sand and seaweed where they lay. The mad old witch-wife wailed and wept, 101 And cursed the tide as it backward crept: 'Crawl back, crawl back, blue water-snake! Leave your dead for the hearts that break!'

Solemn it was in that old day

In Hampton town and its log-built church, Where side by side the coffins lay

And the mourners stood in aisle and porch.

In the singing-seats young eyes were dim, The voices faltered that raised the hymn, 110 And Father Dalton, grave and stern, Sobbed through his prayer and wept in turn.

But his ancient colleague did not pray;

Under the weight of his fourscore years He stood apart with the iron-gray

Of his strong brows knitted to hide his tears;

And a fair-faced woman of doubtful fame, Linking her own with his honored name,

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Flitting, passing, seen and gone,

1864.

Never reached nor found at rest,
Baffling search, but beckoning on

To the Sunset of the Blest.

1 Whittier wrote to Fields, September 27, 1864: 'I take the liberty of inclosing a little poem of mine which has beguiled some weary hours. I hope thee will like it. How strange it seems not to read it to my sister! If thee have read Schoolcraft thee will remember what he says of the Puck-wud-jinnies, or "Little Vanishers." The legend is very beautiful, and I hope I have done it justice in some sort.'

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1 Written for the celebration of Bryant's seventieth birthday at the Century Club in New York.

2 On hearing the bells ring on the passage of the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. The resolution was adopted by Congress, January 31, 1865. The ratification by the requisite number of States was announced December 18, 1865. (WHITTIER.)

The suggestion came to the poet as he sat in the Friends' Meeting-house in Amesbury, where he was present at the regular Fifth-day meeting. All sat in silence, but on his return to his home, he recited a portion of the poem, not yet committed to paper, to his housemates in the garden room. It wrote itself, or rather sang itself, while the bells rang,' he wrote to Lucy Larcom. (Cambridge Edition of Whittier.) See also Pickard's Life of Whittier, vol. ii, pp. 488-489.

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We prayed for love to loose the chain;
'Tis shorn by battle's axe in twain!

Nor skill nor strength nor zeal of ours
Has mined and heaved the hostile towers;
Not by our hands is turned the key
That sets the sighing captives free.

A redder sea than Egypt's wave
Is piled and parted for the slave;
A darker cloud moves on in light;
A fiercer fire is guide by night!

The praise, O Lord! is thine alone,
In thy own way thy work is done!
Our poor gifts at thy feet we cast,
To whom be glory, first and last!

1865.

THE ETERNAL GOODNESS

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1865.

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As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so Good Spirits, which be Angels of Light, are augmented not only by the Divine light of the Sun, but also by our common VVood Fire: and as the Celestial Fire drives away dark spirits, so also this our Fire of VVood doth the same. COR. AGRIPPA, Occult Philosophy, Book I. ch. v.

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

EMERSON. The Snow Storm.

THE sun that brief December day
Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
And, darkly circled, gave at noon
A sadder light than waning moon.

1 The inmates of the family at the Whittier homestead who are referred to in the poem were my father, mother, my brother and two sisters, and my uncle and aunt, both unmarried. In addition, there was the district school-master, who boarded with us. The 'not unfeared, half-welcome guest' was Harriet Livermore, daughter of Judge Livermore, of New Hampshire, a young woman of fine natural ability, enthusiastic, eccentric, with slight control over her violent temper, which sometimes made her religious profession doubtful. She was equally ready to exhort in school-house prayer-meetings and dance in a Washington ball-room, while her father was a member of Congress. She early embraced the doctrine of the Second Advent, and felt it her duty to proclaim the Lord's speedy coming. With this message she crossed the Atlantic and spent the greater part of a long life in travelling over Europe and Asia. She lived some time with Lady Hester Stanhope, a woman as fantastic and mentally strained as herself, on the slope of Mt. Lebanon, but finally quarrelled with her in regard to two white horses with red marks on their backs which suggested the idea of saddles, on which her titled hostess expected to ride into

Slow tracing down the thickening sky
Its mute and ominous prophecy,
A portent seeming less than threat,
It sank from sight before it set.

Jerusalem with the Lord. A friend of mine found her, when quite an old woman, wandering in Syria with a tribe of Arabs, who with the Oriental notion that madness is inspiration, accepted her as their prophetess and leader. At the time referred to in Snow-Bound' she was boarding at the Rocks Village, about two miles from us.

In my boyhood, in our lonely farm-house, we had scanty sources of information; few books and only a small weekly newspaper. Our only annual was the Almanac. Under such circumstances story-telling was a necessary resource in the long winter evenings. My father when a young man had traversed the wilderness to Canada, and could tell us of his adventures with Indians and wild beasts, and of his sojourn in the French villages. My uncle was ready with his record of hunting and fishing and, it must be confessed, with stories, which he at least half believed, of witchcraft and apparitions. My mother, who was born in the Indianhaunted region of Somersworth, New Hampshire, between Dover and Portsmouth, told us of the inroads of the savages, and the narrow escape of her ancestors. She described strange people who lived on the Piscataqua and Cocheco, among whom was Bantam the sorcerer. I have in my possession the wizard's 'conjuring book,' which he solemnly opened when consulted. It is a copy of Cornelius Agrippa's Magic, printed in 1651, dedicated to Dr. Robert Child, who, like Michael Scott, had learned

the art of glammorie In Padua beyond the sea,

and who is famous in the annals of Massachusetts, where he was at one time a resident, as the first man who dared petition the General Court for liberty of conscience. The full title of the book is Three Books of Occult Philosophy, by Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Knight, Doctor of both Laws, Counsellor to Cæsar's Sacred Majesty and Judge of Prerogative Court. (WHITTIER.)

See also Pickard's Life of Whittier, vol. i, pp. 27-36, and vol. ii, pp. 494-500; and Whittier-Land, pp. 12, 24, 39, 74.

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