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Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl

There, too, our elder sister plied Her evening task the stand beside; A full, rich nature, free to trust, Truthful and almost sternly just, Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act, And make her generous thought a fact, Keeping with many a light disguise The secret of self-sacrifice. O heart sore-tried! thou hast the best That Heaven itself could give thee,—rest, Rest from all bitter thoughts and things! How many a poor one's blessing went With thee beneath the low green tent Whose curtain never outward swings! As one who held herself a part Of all she saw, and let her heart Against the household bosom lean, Upon the motley-braided mat Our youngest and our dearest sat, Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes, Now bathed in the unfading green And holy peace of Paradise. Oh, looking from some heavenly hill, Or from the shade of saintly palms, Or silver reach of river calms, Do those large eyes behold me still? With me one little year ago:— The chill weight of the winter snow For months upon her grave has lain; And now, when summer south-winds blow And brier and harebell bloom again, I tread the pleasant paths we trod, I see the violet-sprinkled sod Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak The hillside flowers she loved to seek, Yet following me where'er I went With dark eyes full of love's content. The birds are glad; the brier-rose fills The air with sweetness; all the hills Stretch green to June's unclouded sky; But still I wait with ear and eye For something gone which should be nigh, A loss in all familiar things, In flower that blooms, and bird that sings. And yet, dear heart' remembering thee, Am I not richer than of old? Safe in thy immortality, What change can reach the wealth I hold? What chance can mar the pearl and gold Thy love hath left in trust with me? And while in life's late afternoon, Where cool and long the shadows grow, I walk to meet the night that soon Shall shape and shadow overflow, I cannot feel that thou art far, Since near at need the angels are; And when the sunset gates unbar, Shall I not see thee waiting stand, And, white against the evening star, The welcome of thy beckoning hand? Brisk wielder of the birch and rule, The master of the district school Held at the fire his favored place, Its warm glow lit a laughing face Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce appeared The uncertain prophecy of beard. He teased the mitten-blinded cat, Played cross-pins on my uncle's hat, Sang songs, and told us what befalls In classic Dartmouth's college halls. Born the wild Northern hills among, From whence his yeoman father wrung By patient toil subsistence scant, Not competence and yet not want, He early gained the power to pay His cheerful, self-reliant way; Could doff at ease his scholar's gown To peddle wares from town to town; Or through the long vacation's reach In lonely lowland districts teach, Where all the droll experience found At stranger hearths in boarding round, The moonlit skater's keen delight, The sleigh-drive through the frosty night, The rustic party, with its rough Accompaniment of blind-man's-buff, And whirling plate, and forfeits paid, His winter task a pastime made. Happy the snow-locked homes wherein He tuned his merry violin, Or played the athlete in the barn, Or held the good dame's winding-yarn, Or mirth-provoking versions told Of classic legends rare and old, Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome Had all the commonplace of home, And little seemed at best the odds 'Twixt Yankee pedlers and old gods; Where Pindus-born Arachthus took The guise of any grist-mill brook, And dread Olympus at his will Became a huckleberry hill. A careless boy that night be seemed; But at his desk he had the look And air of one who wisely schemed, And hostage from the future took In trained thought and lore of book. Large-brained, clear-eyed, of such as he Shall Freedom's young apostles be, Who, following in War's bloody trail, Shall every lingering wrong assail; All chains from limb and spirit strike, Uplift the black and white alike; Scatter before their swift advance The darkness and the ignorance, The pride, the lust, the squalid sloth, Which nurtured Treason's monstrous growth, Made murder pastime, and the hell Of prison-torture possible; The cruel lie of caste refute, Old forms remould, and substitute For Slavery's lash the freeman's will, For blind routine, wise-handed skill; A school-house plant on every hill, Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thence The quick wires of intelligence; Till North and South together brought Shall own the same electric thought, In peace a common flag salute, And, side by side in labor's free And unresentful rivalry, Harvest the fields wherein they fought. Another guest that winter night Flashed back from lustrous eyes the light. Unmarked by time, and yet not young, The honeyed music of her tongue And words of meekness scarcely told A nature passionate and bold, Strong, self-concentred, spurning guide, Its milder features dwarfed beside Her unbent will's majestic pride. She sat among us, at the best, A not unfeared, half-welcome guest, Rebuking with her cultured phrase Our homeliness of words and ways. A certain pard-like, treacherous grace Swayed the lithe limbs and dropped the lash, Lent the white teeth their dazzling flash; And under low brows, black with night, Rayed out at times a dangerous light; The sharp heat-lightnings of her face Presaging ill to him whom Fate Condemned to share her love or hate. A woman tropical, intense In thought and act, in soul and sense, She blended in a like degree The vixen and the devotee, Revealing with each freak or feint The temper of Petruchio's Kate, The raptures of Siena's saint. Her tapering hand and rounded wrist Had facile power to form a fist; The warm, dark languish of her eyes Was never safe from wrath's surprise. Brows saintly calm and lips devout Knew every change of scowl and pout; And the sweet voice had notes more high And shrill for social battle-cry. Since then what old cathedral town Has missed her pilgrim staff and gown, What convent-gate has held its lock Against the challenge of her knock! Through Smyrna's plague-hushed thoroughfares, Up sea-set Malta's rocky stairs, Gray olive slopes of hills that hem Thy tombs and shrines, Jerusalem, Or startling on her desert throne The crazy Queen of Lebanon s With claims fantastic as her own, Her tireless feet have held their way; And still, unrestful, bowed, and gray, She watches under Eastern skies, With hope each day renewed and fresh, The Lord's quick coming in the flesh, Whereof she dreams and prophesies! Where'er her troubled path may be, The Lord's sweet pity with her go! The outward wayward life we see, The hidden springs we may not know. Nor is it given us to discern What threads the fatal sisters spun, Through what ancestral years has run The sorrow with the woman born, What forged her cruel chain of moods, What set her feet in solitudes, And held the love within her mute, What mingled madness in the blood, A life-long discord and annoy, Water of tears with oil of joy, And hid within the folded bud Perversities of flower and fruit. It is not ours to separate The tangled skein of will and fate, To show what metes and bounds should stand Upon the soul's debatable land, And between choice and Providence Divide the circle of events; But lie who knows our frame is just, Merciful and compassionate, And full of sweet assurances And hope for all the language is, That He remembereth we are dust! At last the great logs, crumbling low, Sent out a dull and duller glow, The bull's-eye watch that hung in view, Ticking its weary circuit through, Pointed with mutely warning sign Its black hand to the hour of nine. That sign the pleasant circle broke My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke, Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray, And laid it tenderly away, Then roused himself to safely cover The dull red brands with ashes over. And while, with care, our mother laid The work aside, her steps she stayed One moment, seeking to express Her grateful sense of happiness For food and shelter, warmth and health, And love's contentment more than wealth, With simple wishes (not the weak, Vain prayers which no fulfilment seek, But such as warm the generous heart, O'er-prompt to do with Heaven its part) That none might lack, that bitter night, For bread and clothing, warmth and light. Within our beds awhile we heard The wind that round the gables roared, With now and then a ruder shock, Which made our very bedsteads rock. We heard the loosened clapboards tost, The board-nails snapping in the frost; And on us, through the unplastered wall, Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall. But sleep stole on, as sleep will do When hearts are light and life is new; Faint and more faint the murmurs grew, Till in the summer-land of dreams They softened to the sound of streams, Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars, And lapsing waves on quiet shores. Next morn we wakened with the shout Of merry voices high and clear; And saw the teamsters drawing near To break the drifted highways out. Down the long hillside treading slow We saw the half-buried oxen' go, Shaking the snow from heads uptost, Their straining nostrils white with frost. Before our door the straggling train Drew up, an added team to gain. The elders threshed their hands a-cold, Passed, with the cider-mug, their jokes From lip to lip; the younger folks Down the loose snow-banks, wrestling, rolled, Then toiled again the cavalcade O'er windy hill, through clogged ravine, And woodland paths that wound between Low drooping pine-boughs winter-weighed. From every barn a team afoot, At every house a new recruit, Where, drawn by Nature's subtlest law Haply the watchful young men saw Sweet doorway pictures of the curls And curious eyes of merry girls, Lifting their hands in mock defence Against the snow-ball's compliments, And reading in each missive tost The charm with Eden never lost. We heard once more the sleigh-bells' sound; And, following where the teamsters led, The wise old Doctor went his round, Just pausing at our door to say, In the brief autocratic way Of one who, prompt at Duty's call, Was free to urge her claim on all, That some poor neighbor sick abed At night our mother's aid would need. For, one in generous thought and deed, What mattered in the sufferer's sight The Quaker matron's inward light, The Doctor's mail of Calvin's creed? All hearts confess the saints elect Who, twain in faith, in love agree, And melt not in an acid sect The Christian pearl of charity! So days went on: a week had passed Since the great world was heard from last. The Almanac we studied o'er, Read and reread our little store, Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score; One harmless novel, mostly hid From younger eyes, a book forbid, And poetry, (or good or bad, A single book was all we had,) Where Ellwood's meek, drab-skirted Muse, A stranger to the heathen Nine, Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine, The wars of David and the Jews. At last the floundering carrier bore The village paper to our door. Lo! broadening outward as we read, To warmer zones the horizon spread; In panoramic length unrolled We saw the marvels that it told. Before us passed the painted Creeks, And daft McGregor on his raids In Costa Rica's everglades. And up Taygetos winding slow Rode Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks, A Turk's head at each saddle-bow Welcome to us its week-old news, Its corner for the rustic Muse, Its monthly gauge of snow and rain, Its record, mingling in a breath The wedding bell and dirge of death; Jest, anecdote, and love-lorn tale, The latest culprit sent to jail; Its hue and cry of stolen and lost, Its vendue sales and goods at cost, And traffic calling loud for gain. We felt the stir of hall and street, The pulse of life that round us beat; The chill embargo of the snow Was melted in the genial glow; Wide swung again our ice-locked door, And all the world was ours once more! Clasp, Angel of the backward look And folded wings of ashen gray And voice of echoes far away, The brazen covers of thy book; The weird palimpsest old and vast, Wherein thou hid'st the spectral past; Where, closely mingling, pale and glow The characters of joy and woe; The monographs of outlived years, Or smile-illumed or dim with tears, Green hills of life that slope to death, And haunts of home, whose vistaed trees Shade off to mournful cypresses With the white amaranths underneath. Even while I look, I can but heed The restless sands' incessant fall, Importunate hours that hours succeed, Each clamorous with its own sharp need, And duty keeping pace with all. Shut down and clasp the heavy lids; I hear again the voice that bids The dreamer leave his dream midway For larger hopes and graver fears Life greatens in these later years, The century's aloe flowers to-day! Yet, haply, in some lull of life, Some Truce of God which breaks its strife, The worldling's eyes shall gather dew, Dreaming in throngful city ways Of winter joys his boyhood knew; And dear and early friends—the few Who yet remain—shall pause to view These Flemish pictures of old days; Sit with me by the homestead hearth, And stretch the hands of memory forth To warm them at the wood-fire's blaze! And thanks untraced to lips unknown Shall greet me like the odors blown From unseen meadows newly mown, Or lilies floating in some pond, Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond; The traveller owns the grateful sense Of sweetness near, he knows not whence, And, pausing, takes with forehead bare The benediction of the air. 1866. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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