Poems (Whitney)/Susanna

by Anne Whitney

  That measure of good that fills its scope:
 The marmot enters the stiffening mould,
 And the worm its dark, sepulchral fold,
  To hide there with its beautiful hope."

Yet Bertha waited on the cliff,
 To catch the gleam of a coming sail,
 And the distant whisper of the gale
  Winging the unforgotten home:—
 And hope at her yearning heart would knock,
 When a sunbeam on a far-off rock
  Married a wreath of wandering foam.

Was it well? you ask—(nay, was it ill?)
 Who sat last year by the old man's hearth,—
 The sun had passed below the earth,
  And the first star locked his western gate—
 When Bertha entered her darkening home,
 And smiling, said: "He does not come,
  But, dearest Father, we still can wait!"

SUSANNA.

Weary Sea,
Spare us your dull monotony!
Up in the noble hill-land are we,
Unto its breezes we trust our fame—
Nothing here is weary or tame.

What jubilant springs these hills have greened—
What silent snows have intervened—
What magical summers over them leaned—
What autumns lighted the sombre wood,
And crimsoned it, as with its own heart's blood!

The wife of Ernest, in yonder hut,
Will tell you how many years have put
Their green on the oak, and dropped the nut,
Since this tall grove of walnut-trees
Shook their young tresses in the breeze.

The mountain-spring sings down this way,
Through night and twilight into day;—
She told me how many inches, the play
Of the frolicsome waters, had spread,
Since first she knew it, the narrow bed.

I said to her, "Mother, 'tis well
In such fixed peace as yours to dwell;
No sad mutation you chronicle;
Nothing is s.table within my range,
But the stern, old principle of change."

She was stooping over her herbs in the grass—
Snake-root, and flag, and sassafras,
Winter-green and—you know—a mass
Of fragrant rubbish,—as the bent mast rears,
She uplifted her eighty years.

She pointed to her hut by the wood—
Sixty years and more it has stood,
Very lowly, you see, and rude—
"Much the same is that windy shell,
As when Ernest and I went there to dwell.

"Young were we both, with little care;
While he went out to hunt the bear,
I kept the hearth or took my share
In the garden—work——ti]l Ernest was given,
And Mary and Jane by gracious Heaven.

"I thought God's singers I should not hear,
Or the locusts in the maples near,
In the hot noontide, for the music dear
Of my roof-tree birds—but God is good,
And where he is, no solitude.

"Our silent Ernest I sought to teach,
When two years old, the birds' glad speech,
The quail, the wren, the cat-bird's screech;
He looked where I pointed and shook his head,
He did not hear the words I said.

"Mary, the next, no soulful sound
E'er heard or uttered; the mole in the ground
Is not more still and fancy-bound
Than she, poor child!—only our Jane
Can hear my words and answer again,

"Jane is married and lives below:
Ernest, the father, under the snow
Was buried ten strong winters ago;
But life since then has not stood still;
I journey on through good and ill.

"Change is the winged child of God;
Lay off, if need, each cherished good,
And thus renew the noble blood;
As nature gently puts away
Her sweetest shows—her Fall—her May.

"But 'tis not always strife or rest,
Not outward worst, or outward best,
Not north, south, east or west,
That wafts its seasons to the soul,
And leads it to the All-Good and Whole.

"Yon singing Pine's majestic crest
Looks now as when I saw it first;
Yet every beam and breath have nursed
Its constant bloom, and to the seer
'Tis other than it was last year."

Filling her apron with her stock
Of herbs, she said, "The mallows and dock
Grow southward; a cleft of the rock
Shelters the blood-root; and fennel sweet
And winter-green you there will meet.

"Here's bitter that will give you health;
There's sweet that takes the life by stealth;
And this I call 'old woman's wealth;'
It soothes the nerves and coaxes sleep;"
And she gave me of it to drink and keep.

See there, "God's Smile!" it almost girds
Our mountain's base—and hark, the birds!
How endless then are His wise words!
'Sunbeams and breaths"—to appear again
In noble lives of women and men!