Excerpt
THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS.
The volume in which "The Bay of Seven Islands" was published was dedicated to the late Edwin Percy Whipple, to whom more than to any other person I was indebted for public recognition as one worthy of a place in American literature, at a time when it required a great degree of courage to urge such a claim for a pro-scribed abolitionist. Although younger than I, he had gained the reputation of a brilliant essayist, and was regarded as the highest American authority in criticism. His wit and wisdom enlivened a small literary circle of young men including Thomas Starr King, the eloquent preacher, and Daniel N. Haskell of the Daily Transcript, who gathered about our common friend dames T. Fields at the Old Corner Bookstore. The poem which gave title to the volume I inscribed to my friend and neighbor Harriet Prescott Spofford, whose poems have lent a new interest to our beautiful river-valley.
FROM the green Amesbury hill which bears the nameOf that half mythic ancestor of mineWho trod its slopes two hundred years ago,Down the long valley of the Merrimac,Midway between me and the river's mouth,I see thy home, set like an eagle's nestAmong Deer Island's immemorial pines,Crowning the crag on which the sunset breaksIts last red arrow. Many a tale and song,Which thou bast told or sung, I call to mind,Softening with silvery mist the woods and hills,The out-thrust headlands and inreaching baysOf our northeastern coast-line, trending whereThe Gulf, midsummer, feels the chill blockadeOf icebergs stranded at its northern gate.
To thee the echoes of the Island SoundAnswer not vainly, nor in vain the moanOf the South Breaker prophesying storm.And thou hast listened, like myself, to menSea-periled oft where Anticosti liesLike a fell spider in its web of fog,Or where the Grand Bank shallows with the wrecksOf sunken fishers, and to whom strange islesAnd frost-rimmed bays and trading stations seemFamiliar as Great Neck and Kettle Cove,Nubble and Boon, the common names of home.So let me offer thee this lay of mine,Simple and homely, lacking much thy playOf color and of fancy. If its themeAnd treatment seem to thee befitting youthRather than age, let this be my excuseIt has beguiled some heavy hours and calledSome pleasant memories up; and, better still,Occasion lent me for a kindly wordTo one who is my neighbor and my friend.1883.
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The skipper sailed out of the harbor mouth,Leaving the apple-bloom of the SouthFor the ice of the Eastern seas,In his fishing schooner Breeze.
Handsome and brave and young was he,And the maids of Newbury sighed to seeHis lessening white sail fallUnder the sea's blue wall.
Through the Northern Gulf and the misty screenOf the isles of Mingan and Madeleine,St. Paul's and Blanc Sablon,The little Breeze sailed on,
Backward and forward, along the shoreOf lorn and desolate Labrador,And found at last her wayTo the Seven Islands Bay.
The little hamlet, nestling belowGreat hills white with lingering snow,With its tin-roofed chapel stoodHalf hid in the dwarf spruce wood;
Green-turfed, flower-sown, the last outpostOf summer upon the dreary coast,With its gardens small and spare,Sad in the frosty air....