The Tent on the Beach

䭌Project Gutenberg EBook, Tent on the Beach and Others?Part 4, From Volume IV., The Works of Whittier: Personal Poems #29 in our series by John Greenleaf Whittier
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the header without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**EBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers*****
Title: The Tent on the Beach and Others
Part 4, From Volume IV., The Works of Whittier: Personal Poems
Author: John Greenleaf Whittier
Release Date: December 2005 [EBook #9584]?[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]?[This file was first posted on October 18, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
? START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, TENT ON THE BEACH, PART 4 ***
This eBook was produced by David Widger [[email protected] ]
THE TENT ON THE BEACH
BY
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
CONTENTS:
THE TENT ON THE BEACH.
PRELUDE?THE TENT ON THE BEACH?THE WRECK OF RIVERMOUTH?THE GRAVE BY THE LAKE?THE BROTHER OF MERCY?THE CHANGELING?THE MAIDS OF ATTITASH?KALLUNDBORG CHURCH?THE CABLE HYMN?THE DEAD SHIP OF HARPSWELL?THE PALATINE?ABRAHAM DAVENPORT?THE WORSHIP OF NATURE
THE TENT ON THE BEACH
It can scarcely be necessary to name as the two companions whom I reckoned with myself in this poetical picnic, Fields the lettered magnate, and Taylor the free cosmopolite. The long line of sandy beach which defines almost the whole of the New Hampshire sea-coast is especially marked near its southern extremity, by the salt-meadows of Hampton. The Hampton River winds through these meadows, and the reader may, if he choose, imagine my tent pitched near its mouth, where also was the scene of the _Wreck of Rivermouth_. The green bluff to the northward is Great Boar's Head; southward is the Merrimac, with Newburyport lifting its steeples above brown roofs and green trees on banks.
I would not sin, in this half-playful strain,--?Too light perhaps for serious years, though born?Of the enforced leisure of slow pain,--?Against the pure ideal which has drawn?My feet to follow its far-shining gleam.?A simple plot is mine: legends and runes?Of credulous days, old fancies that have lain?Silent, from boyhood taking voice again,?Warmed into life once more, even as the tunes?That, frozen in the fabled hunting-horn,?Thawed into sound:--a winter fireside dream?Of dawns and-sunsets by the summer sea,?Whose sands are traversed by a silent throng?Of voyagers from that vaster mystery?Of which it is an emblem;--and the dear?Memory of one who might have tuned my song?To sweeter music by her delicate ear.
When heats as of a tropic clime?Burned all our inland valleys through,?Three friends, the guests of summer time,?Pitched their white tent where sea-winds blew.?Behind them, marshes, seamed and crossed?With narrow creeks, and flower-embossed,?Stretched to the dark oak wood, whose leafy arms?Screened from the stormy East the pleasant inland farms.
At full of tide their bolder shore?Of sun-bleached sand the waters beat;?At ebb, a smooth and glistening floor?They touched with light, receding feet.?Northward a 'green bluff broke the chain?Of sand-hills; southward stretched a plain?Of salt grass, with a river winding down,?Sail-whitened, and beyond the steeples of the town,
Whence sometimes, when the wind was light?And dull the thunder of the beach,?They heard the bells of morn and night?Swing, miles away, their silver speech.?Above low scarp and turf-grown wall?They saw the fort-flag rise and fall;?And, the first star to signal twilight's hour,?The lamp-fire glimmer down from the tall light-house tower.
They rested there, escaped awhile?From cares that wear the life away,?To eat the lotus of the Nile?And drink the poppies of Cathay,--?To fling their loads of custom down,?Like drift-weed, on the sand-slopes brown,?And in the sea waves drown the restless pack?Of duties, claims, and needs that barked upon their track.
One, with his beard scarce silvered, bore?A ready credence in his looks,?A lettered magnate, lording o'er?An ever-widening realm of books.?In him brain-currents, near and far,?Converged as in a Leyden jar;?The old, dead authors thronged him round about,?And Elzevir's gray ghosts from leathern graves looked out.
He knew each living pundit well,?Could weigh the gifts of him or her,?And well the market value tell?Of poet and philosopher.?But if he lost, the scenes behind,?Somewhat of reverence vague and blind,?Finding the actors human at the best,?No readier lips than his the good he saw confessed.
His boyhood fancies not outgrown,?He loved himself the singer's art;?Tenderly, gently, by his own?He knew and judged an author's heart.?No