Poems of Nature (Whittier)/Monadnock from Wachuset
II.
MONADNOCK FROM WACHUSET.
I Would I were a painter, for the sakeOf a sweet picture, and of her who led,A fitting guide, with reverential tread,Into that mountain mystery. First, a lakeTinted with sunset; next, the wavy linesOf far receding hills; and yet more far,Monadnock lifting from his night of pinesHis rosy forehead to the evening star.Beside us, purple-zoned Wachuset laidHis head against the West, whose warm light madeHis aureole; and o'er him, sharp and clear, Like a shaft of lightning in mid-launching stayed,A single level cloud-line, shone uponBy the fierce glances of the sunken sun,Menaced the darkness with its golden spear!
So twilight deepened round us. Still and blackThe great woods climbed the mountain at our back;And on their skirts, where yet the lingering dayOn the shorn greenness of the clearing lay,The brown old farmhouse like a bird's-nest hung.With home-life sounds the desert air was stirred:The bleat of sheep along the hill we heard,The bucket plashing in the cool, sweet well,The pasture-bars that clattered as they fell;Dogs barked, fowls fluttered, cattle lowed; the gateOf the barn-yard creaked beneath the merry weightOf sun-brown children, listening, while they swung,The welcome sound of supper-call to hear;And down the shadowy lane, in tinklings clear,The pastoral curfew of the cow-bell rung.Thus soothed and pleased, our backward path we took,Praising the farmer's home. He only spake,Looking into the sunset o'er the lake,Like one to whom the far-off is most near:"Yes, most folks think it has a pleasant look;I love it for my good old mother's sake,Who lived and died here in the peace of God!"The lesson of his words we pondered o'er,As silently we turned the eastern flank Of the mountain, where its shadow deepest sank,Doubling the night along our rugged road:We felt that man was more than his abode,—The inward life than Nature's raiment more;And the warm sky, the sundown-tinted hill,The forest and the lake, seemed dwarfed and dimBefore the saintly soul, whose human willMeekly in the Eternal footsteps trod,Making her homely toil and household waysAn earthly echo of the song of praiseSwelling from angel lips and harps of seraphim.