There's quiet in the deep :-
Above, let tides and tempests rave,
And earth-born whirlwinds wake the wave;
Above, let care and fear contend,
With sin and sorrow to the end :
Here, far beneath the tainted foam,
That frets above our peaceful home,
We dream in joy, and wake in love,
Nor know the rage that yells above.
There's quiet in the deep.
THE DEAD LEAVES STREW THE FOREST-WALK.
THE dead leaves strew the forest-walk,
And withered are the pale wild-flowers;
The frost hangs blackening on the stalk,
The dew-drops fall in frozen showers.
Gone are the spring's green, sprouting bowers,
Gone summer's rich and mantling vines,
And autumn, with her yellow hours,
On hill and plain no longer shines.
I learned a clear and wild-toned note,
That rose and swelled from yonder tree-
A gay bird, with too sweet a throat,
There perched, and raised her song for me.
The winter comes, and where is she?
Away where summer wings will rove,
Where buds are fresh, and every tree
Is vocal with the notes of love.
Too mild the breath of southern sky,
Too fresh the flower that blushes there;
The northern breeze that rustles by,
Finds leaves too green, and buds too fair;
No forest-tree stands stript and bare,
No stream beneath the ice is dead,
No mountain-top, with sleety hair,
Bends o'er the snows its reverend head.
Go there with all the birds,-and seek
A happier clime, with livelier flight;
Kiss, with the sun, the evening's cheek;
And leave me lonely with the night.
I'll gaze upon the cold north light,
And mark where all its glories shone-
See-that it all is fair and bright,
Feel that it all is cold and gone!
'Tis a sweet stream; and so, 'tis truc, are all That, undisturbed, save by the harmless brawl Of mimic rapid or slight waterfall,
By mossy bank, and darkly waving wood,
By rock, that since the deluge, fixed has stood,
Showing to sun and moon their crisping flood
By night and day.
But yet there's something in its humble rank,
Something in its pure wave and sloping bank,
Where the deer sported, and the young fawn drank
With unscared look;
There's much in its wild history, that teems
With all that's superstitious, and that seems
To match our fancy and eke out our dreams,
In that small brook.
• This river enters into the Connecticut at East Haddam.
Havoc has been upon its peaceful plain,
And blood has dropt there, like the drops of rain
The corn grows o'er the still graves of the slain;
And many a quiver,
Filled from the reeds that grew on yonder hill,
Has spent itself in carnage. Now 'tis still,
And whistling ploughboys oft their runlets fill
From Salmon river.
Here, say old men, the Indian Magi made
Their spells by moonlight; or beneath the shade
That shrouds sequestered rock, or dark'ning glade,
Or tangled dell.
Here Philip came, and Miantonimo,
And asked about their fortunes long ago,
As Saul to Endor, that her witch might show
Old Samuel.
And here the black fox roved, that howled and shook
His thick tail to the hunters, by the brook
Where they pursued their game, and him mistook
For earthly fox;
Thinking to shoot him like a shaggy bear,
And his soft peltry, stripped and dressed, to wear,
Or lay a trap, and from his quiet lair
Such are the tales they tell. 'Tis hard to rhyme
About a little and unnoticed stream,
That few have heard of; but it is a theme
And one day I may tune my rye-straw reed,
And whistle to the note of many a deed
Done on this river, which, if there be need,
I'll try to prove.
DEPARTURE OF THE PIONEER.
FAR away from the hill-side, the lake, and the hamlet,
The rock and the brook, and yon meadow so gay;
From the foot-path, that winds by the side of the streamlet;
From his hut, and the grave of his friend far away;
He is gone where the footsteps of man never ventured,
Where the glooms of the wild tangled forest are centred,
Where no beam of the sun or the sweet moon has entered,
No blood-hound has roused up the deer with his bay.
He has left the green valley for paths where the bison
Roams through the prairies, or leaps o'er the flood;
Where the snake in the swamp sucks the deadliest poison,
And the cat of the mountains keeps watch for its food.
But the leaf shall be greener, the sky shall be purer,
The eyes shall be clearer, the rifle be surer,
And stronger the arm of the fearless endurer,
That trusts nought but Heaven in his way through the wood.
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