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What matter how the night behaved?

What matter how the north-wind raved?

Blow high, blow low, not all its snow

Could quench our hearth-fire’s ruddy glow.

O Time and Change!—with hair as gray

As was my sire’s that winter day,

How strange it seems, with so much gone

Of life and love, to still live on!

Ah, brother! only I and thou

Are left of all that circle now,—

The dear home faces whereupon

That fitful firelight paled and shone.

Henceforward, listen as we will,

The voices of that hearth are still;

Look where we may, the wide earth o’er,

Those lighted faces smile no more.

We tread the paths their feet have worn,

We sit beneath their orchard-trees,

We hear, like them, the hum of bees

And rustle of the bladed corn;

We turn the pages that they read,

Their written words we linger o’er,

But in the sun they cast no shade,

No voice is heard, no sign is made,

No step is on the conscious floor!

Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust,

(Since He who knows our need is just,)

That somehow, somewhere, meet we must.

Alas for him who never sees

The stars shine through his cypress-trees!

Who, hopeless, lays his dead away,

Nor looks to see the breaking day

Across the mournful marbles play!

Who hath not learned, in hours of faith,

The truth to flesh and sense unknown,

That Life is ever lord of Death,

And Love can never lose its own!

We sped the time with stories old,

Wrought puzzles out, and riddles told,

Or stammered from our school-book lore

“The Chief of Gambia’s golden shore.”

How often since, when all the land

Was clay in Slavery’s shaping hand,

As if a trumpet called, I’ve heard

Dame Mercy Warren’s rousing word:

“Does not the voice of reason cry,

Claim the first right which Nature gave,

From the red scourge of bondage fly,

Nor deign to live a burdened slave!”

Our father rode again his ride

On Memphremagog’s wooded side;

Sat down again to moose and samp

In trapper’s hut and Indian camp;

Lived o’er the old idyllic ease

Beneath St. François’ hemlock-trees;

Again for him the moonlight shone

On Norman cap and bodiced zone;

Again he heard the violin play

Which led the village dance away,

And mingled in its merry whirl

The grandam and the laughing girl.

Or, nearer home, our steps he led

Where Salisbury’s level marshes spread

Mile-wide as flies the laden bee;

Where merry mowers, hale and strong,

Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths along

The low green prairies of the sea.

We shared the fishing off Boar’s Head,

And round the rocky Isles of Shoals

The hake-broil on the drift-wood coals;

The chowder on the sand-beach made,

Dipped by the hungry, steaming hot,

With spoons of clam-shell from the pot.

We heard the tales of witchcraft old,

And dream and sign and marvel told

To sleepy listeners as they lay

Stretched idly on the salted hay,

Adrift along the winding shores,

When favoring breezes deigned to blow

The square sail of the gundalow,

And idle lay the useless oars.

Our mother, while she turned her wheel

Or run the new-knit stocking-heel,

Told how the Indian hordes came down

At midnight on Cochecho town,

And how her own great-uncle bore

His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore.

Recalling, in her fitting phrase,

So rich and picturesque and free,

(The common unrhymed poetry

Of simple life and country ways,)

The story of her early days,—

She made us welcome to her home;

Old hearths grew wide to give us room;

We stole with her a frightened look

At the gray wizard’s conjuring-book,

The fame whereof went far and wide

Through all the simple country side;

We heard the hawks at twilight play,

The boat-horn on Piscataqua,

The loon’s weird laughter far away;

We fished her little trout-brook, knew

What flowers in wood and meadow grew,

What sunny hillsides autumn-brown

She climbed to shake the ripe nuts down,

Saw where in sheltered cove and bay

The ducks’ black squadron anchored lay,

And heard the wild-geese calling loud

Beneath the gray November cloud.

Then, haply, with a look more grave,

And soberer tone, some tale she gave

From painful Sewell’s ancient tome,

Beloved in every Quaker home,

Of faith fire-winged by martyrdom,

Or Chalkley’s Journal, old and quaint,—

Gentlest of skippers, rare sea-saint!—

Who, when the dreary calms prevailed,

And water-butt and bread-cask failed,

And cruel, hungry eyes pursued

His portly presence mad for food,

With dark hints muttered under breath

Of casting lots for life or death,

Offered, if Heaven withheld supplies,

To be himself the sacrifice.

Then, suddenly, as if to save

The good man from his living grave

A ripple on the water grew,

A school of porpoise flashed in view.

“Take, eat,” he said, “and be content;

These fishes in my stead are sent

By Him who gave the tangled ram

To spare the child of Abraham.”