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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=420564" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Mabel Martin</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">A HARVEST IDYL.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">PROEM.<br>I CALL the old time back: I bring my lay<br>in tender memory of the summer day<br>When, where our native river lapsed away,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We dreamed it over, while the thrushes made<br>Songs of their own, and the great pine-trees laid<br>On warm noonlights the masses of their shade.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And she was with us, living o'er again<br>Her life in ours, despite of years and pain,--<br>The Autumn's brightness after latter rain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Beautiful in her holy peace as one<br>Who stands, at evening, when the work is done,<br>Glorified in the setting of the sun!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Her memory makes our common landscape seem<br>Fairer than any of which painters dream;<br>Lights the brown hills and sings in every stream;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For she whose speech was always truth's pure gold<br>Heard, not unpleased, its simple legends told,<br>And loved with us the beautiful and old.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>I. THE RIVER VALLEY.<br>Across the level tableland,<br>A grassy, rarely trodden way,<br>With thinnest skirt of birchen spray</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And stunted growth of cedar, leads<br>To where you see the dull plain fall<br>Sheer off, steep-slanted, ploughed by all</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The seasons' rainfalls. On its brink<br>The over-leaning harebells swing,<br>With roots half bare the pine-trees cling;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And, through the shadow looking west,<br>You see the wavering river flow<br>Along a vale, that far below</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Holds to the sun, the sheltering hills<br>And glimmering water-line between,<br>Broad fields of corn and meadows green,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And fruit-bent orchards grouped around<br>The low brown roofs and painted eaves,<br>And chimney-tops half hid in leaves.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">No warmer valley hides behind<br>Yon wind-scourged sand-dunes, cold and bleak;<br>No fairer river comes to seek</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The wave-sung welcome of the sea,<br>Or mark the northmost border line<br>Of sun-loved growths of nut and vine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Here, ground-fast in their native fields,<br>Untempted by the city's gain,<br>The quiet farmer folk remain</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Who bear the pleasant name of Friends,<br>And keep their fathers' gentle ways<br>And simple speech of Bible days;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In whose neat homesteads woman holds<br>With modest ease her equal place,<br>And wears upon her tranquil face</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The look of one who, merging not<br>Her self-hood in another's will,<br>Is love's and duty's handmaid still.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Pass with me down the path that winds<br>Through birches to the open land,<br>Where, close upon the river strand</div><div style="margin:10px 0">You mark a cellar, vine o'errun,<br>Above whose wall of loosened stones<br>The sumach lifts its reddening cones,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the black nightshade's berries shine,<br>And broad, unsightly burdocks fold<br>The household ruin, century-old.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Here, in the dim colonial time<br>Of sterner lives and gloomier faith,<br>A woman lived, tradition saith,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Who wrought her neighbors foul annoy,<br>And witched and plagued the country-side,<br>Till at the hangman's hand she died.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Sit with me while the westering day<br>Falls slantwise down the quiet vale,<br>And, haply ere yon loitering sail,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That rounds the upper headland, falls<br>Below Deer Island's pines, or sees<br>Behind it Hawkswood's belt of trees</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Rise black against the sinking sun,<br>My idyl of its days of old,<br>The valley's legend, shall be told.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>II. THE HUSKING.<br>It was the pleasant harvest-time,<br>When cellar-bins are closely stowed,<br>And garrets bend beneath their load,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the old swallow-haunted barns,--<br>Brown-gabled, long, and full of seams<br>Through which the rooted sunlight streams,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And winds blow freshly in, to shake<br>The red plumes of the roosted cocks,<br>And the loose hay-mow's scented locks,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Are filled with summer's ripened stores,<br>Its odorous grass and barley sheaves,<br>From their low scaffolds to their eaves.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">On Esek Harden's oaken floor,<br>With many an autumn threshing worn,<br>Lay the heaped ears of unhusked corn.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And thither came young men and maids,<br>Beneath a moon that, large and low,<br>Lit that sweet eve of long ago.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They took their places; some by chance,<br>And others by a merry voice<br>Or sweet smile guided to their choice.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">How pleasantly the rising moon,<br>Between the shadow of the mows,<br>Looked on them through the great elm-boughs!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">On sturdy boyhood, sun-embrowned,<br>On girlhood with its solid curves<br>Of healthful strength and painless nerves!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And jests went round, and laughs that made<br>The house-dog answer with his howl,<br>And kept astir the barn-yard fowl;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And quaint old songs their fathers sung<br>In Derby dales and Yorkshire moors,<br>Ere Norman William trod their shores;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And tales, whose merry license shook<br>The fat sides of the Saxon thane,<br>Forgetful of the hovering Dane,--</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Rude plays to Celt and Cimbri known,<br>The charms and riddles that beguiled<br>On Oxus' banks the young world's child,--</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That primal picture-speech wherein<br>Have youth and maid the story told,<br>So new in each, so dateless old,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Recalling pastoral Ruth in her<br>Who waited, blushing and demure,<br>The red-ear's kiss of forfeiture.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But still the sweetest voice was mute<br>That river-valley ever heard<br>From lips of maid or throat of bird;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For Mabel Martin sat apart,<br>And let the hay-mow's shadow fall<br>Upon the loveliest face of all.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She sat apart, as one forbid,<br>Who knew that none would condescend<br>To own the Witch-wife's child a friend.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The seasons scarce had gone their round,<br>Since curious thousands thronged to see<br>Her mother at the gallows-tree;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And mocked the prison-palsied limbs<br>That faltered on the fatal stairs,<br>And wan lip trembling with its prayers!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Few questioned of the sorrowing child,<br>Or, when they saw the mother die;<br>Dreamed of the daughter's agony.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They went up to their homes that day,<br>As men and Christians justified<br>God willed it, and the wretch had died!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Dear God and Father of us all,<br>Forgive our faith in cruel lies,--<br>Forgive the blindness that denies!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Forgive thy creature when he takes,<br>For the all-perfect love Thou art,<br>Some grim creation of his heart.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Cast down our idols, overturn<br>Our bloody altars; let us see<br>Thyself in Thy humanity!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Young Mabel from her mother's grave<br>Crept to her desolate hearth-stone,<br>And wrestled with her fate alone;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">With love, and anger, and despair,<br>The phantoms of disordered sense,<br>The awful doubts of Providence!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Oh, dreary broke the winter days,<br>And dreary fell the winter nights<br>When, one by one, the neighboring lights</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Went out, and human sounds grew still,<br>And all the phantom-peopled dark<br>Closed round her hearth-fire's dying spark.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And summer days were sad and long,<br>And sad the uncompanioned eves,<br>And sadder sunset-tinted leaves,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And Indian Summer's airs of balm;<br>She scarcely felt the soft caress,<br>The beauty died of loneliness!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The school-boys jeered her as they passed,<br>And, when she sought the house of prayer,<br>Her mother's curse pursued her there.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And still o'er many a neighboring door<br>She saw the horseshoe's curved charm,<br>To guard against her mother's harm!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That mother, poor and sick and lame,<br>Who daily, by the old arm-chair,<br>Folded her withered hands in prayer;--</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Who turned, in Salem's dreary jail,<br>Her worn old Bible o'er and o'er,<br>When her dim eyes could read no more!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Sore tried and pained, the poor girl kept<br>Her faith, and trusted that her way,<br>So dark, would somewhere meet the day.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And still her weary wheel went round<br>Day after day, with no relief<br>Small leisure have the poor for grief.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>IV. THE CHAMPION.<br>So in the shadow Mabel sits;<br>Untouched by mirth she sees and hears,<br>Her smile is sadder than her tears.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But cruel eyes have found her out,<br>And cruel lips repeat her name,<br>And taunt her with her mother's shame.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She answered not with railing words,<br>But drew her apron o'er her face,<br>And, sobbing, glided from the place.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And only pausing at the door,<br>Her sad eyes met the troubled gaze<br>Of one who, in her better days,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Had been her warm and steady friend,<br>Ere yet her mother's doom had made<br>Even Esek Harden half afraid.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He felt that mute appeal of tears,<br>And, starting, with an angry frown,<br>Hushed all the wicked murmurs down.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Good neighbors mine,' he sternly said,<br>'This passes harmless mirth or jest;<br>I brook no insult to my guest.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'She is indeed her mother's child;<br>But God's sweet pity ministers<br>Unto no whiter soul than hers.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Let Goody Martin rest in peace;<br>I never knew her harm a fly,<br>And witch or not, God knows--not I.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'I know who swore her life away;<br>And as God lives, I'd not condemn<br>An Indian dog on word of them.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The broadest lands in all the town,<br>The skill to guide, the power to awe,<br>Were Harden's; and his word was law.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">None dared withstand him to his face,<br>But one sly maiden spake aside<br>'The little witch is evil-eyed!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Her mother only killed a cow,<br>Or witched a churn or dairy-pan;<br>But she, forsooth, must charm a man!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>V. IN THE SHADOW.<br>Poor Mabel, homeward turning, passed<br>The nameless terrors of the wood,<br>And saw, as if a ghost pursued,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Her shadow gliding in the moon;<br>The soft breath of the west-wind gave<br>A chill as from her mother's grave.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">How dreary seemed the silent house!<br>Wide in the moonbeams' ghastly glare<br>Its windows had a dead man's stare!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And, like a gaunt and spectral hand,<br>The tremulous shadow of a birch<br>Reached out and touched the door's low porch,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">As if to lift its latch; hard by,<br>A sudden warning call she beard,<br>The night-cry of a boding bird.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She leaned against the door; her face,<br>So fair, so young, so full of pain,<br>White in the moonlight's silver rain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The river, on its pebbled rim,<br>Made music such as childhood knew;<br>The door-yard tree was whispered through</div><div style="margin:10px 0">By voices such as childhood's ear<br>Had heard in moonlights long ago;<br>And through the willow-boughs below.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She saw the rippled waters shine;<br>Beyond, in waves of shade and light,<br>The hills rolled off into the night.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She saw and heard, but over all<br>A sense of some transforming spell,<br>The shadow of her sick heart fell.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And still across the wooded space<br>The harvest lights of Harden shone,<br>And song and jest and laugh went on.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And he, so gentle, true, and strong,<br>Of men the bravest and the best,<br>Had he, too, scorned her with the rest?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She strove to drown her sense of wrong,<br>And, in her old and simple way,<br>To teach her bitter heart to pray.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Poor child! the prayer, begun in faith,<br>Grew to a low, despairing cry<br>Of utter misery: 'Let me die!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Oh! take me from the scornful eyes,<br>And hide me where the cruel speech<br>And mocking finger may not reach!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'I dare not breathe my mother's name<br>A daughter's right I dare not crave<br>To weep above her unblest grave!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Let me not live until my heart,<br>With few to pity, and with none<br>To love me, hardens into stone.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'O God! have mercy on Thy child,<br>Whose faith in Thee grows weak and small,<br>And take me ere I lose it all!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A shadow on the moonlight fell,<br>And murmuring wind and wave became<br>A voice whose burden was her name.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>VI. THE BETROTHAL.<br>Had then God heard her? Had He sent<br>His angel down? In flesh and blood,<br>Before her Esek Harden stood!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He laid his hand upon her arm<br>'Dear Mabel, this no more shall be;<br>Who scoffs at you must scoff at me.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'You know rough Esek Harden well;<br>And if he seems no suitor gay,<br>And if his hair is touched with gray,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'The maiden grown shall never find<br>His heart less warm than when she smiled,<br>Upon his knees, a little child!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Her tears of grief were tears of joy,<br>As, folded in his strong embrace,<br>She looked in Esek Harden's face.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'O truest friend of all'' she said,<br>'God bless you for your kindly thought,<br>And make me worthy of my lot!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He led her forth, and, blent in one,<br>Beside their happy pathway ran<br>The shadows of the maid and man.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He led her through his dewy fields,<br>To where the swinging lanterns glowed,<br>And through the doors the huskers showed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Good friends and neighbors!' Esek said,<br>'I'm weary of this lonely life;<br>In Mabel see my chosen wife!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'She greets you kindly, one and all;<br>The past is past, and all offence<br>Falls harmless from her innocence.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Henceforth she stands no more alone;<br>You know what Esek Harden is;--<br>He brooks no wrong to him or his.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Now let the merriest tales be told,<br>And let the sweetest songs be sung<br>That ever made the old heart young!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'For now the lost has found a home;<br>And a lone hearth shall brighter burn,<br>As all the household joys return!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Oh, pleasantly the harvest-moon,<br>Between the shadow of the mows,<br>Looked on them through the great elm--boughs!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">On Mabel's curls of golden hair,<br>On Esek's shaggy strength it fell;<br>And the wind whispered, 'It is well!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=John+Greenleaf+Whittier">John Greenleaf Whittier</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=420564" data-title="Mabel Martin de John Greenleaf Whittier" data-description="A HARVEST IDYL.

PROEM.
I CALL the old time back: I bring my lay
in tender memory of the summer day
When, where our native river lapsed away,

We dreamed it over, while the thrushes made
Songs of their own, and the great pine-trees laid
On warm no..."></div>
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