<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=420574" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Mogg Megone - Part III.</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ah! weary Priest! - with pale hands pressed<br>On thy throbbing brow of pain,<br>Baffled in thy life-long quest,<br>Overworn with toiling vain,<br>How ill thy troubled musings fit<br>The holy quiet of a breast<br>With the Dove of Peace at rest,<br>Sweetly brooding over it.<br>Thoughts are thine which have no part<br>With the meek and pure of heart,<br>Undisturbed by outward things,<br>Resting in the heavenly shade,<br>By the overspreading wings<br>Of the Blessed Spirit made.<br>Thoughts of strife and hate and wrong <br>Sweep thy heated brain along,<br>Fading hopes for whose success<br>It were sin to breathe a prayer; -<br>Schemes which Heaven may never bless, -<br>Fears which darken to despair.<br>Hoary priest! thy dream is done<br>Of a hundred red tribes won<br>To the pale of Holy Church; <br>And the heretic o'erthrown,<br>And his name no longer known, <br>And thy weary brethren turning, <br>Joyful from their years of mourning, <br>'Twixt the altar and the porch.<br>Hark! what sudden sound is heard<br>In the wood and in the sky,<br>Shriller than the scream of bird, -<br>Than the trumpet's clang more high!<br>Every wolf-cave of the hills, -<br>Forest arch and mountain gorge,<br>Rock and dell, and river verge, -<br>With an answering echo thrills.<br>Well does the Jesuit know that cry<br>Which summons the Norridgewock to die,<br>And tells that the foe of his flock is nigh.<br>He listens, and hears the rangers come, <br>With loud hurrah, and jar of drum,<br>And hurrying feet (for the chase is hot),<br>And the short, sharp sound of rifle shot,<br>And taunt and menace, - answered well<br>By the Indians' mocking cry and yell, -<br>The bark of dogs, - the squaw's mad scream, -<br>The dash of paddles along the stream, -<br>The whistle of shot as it cuts the leaves <br>Of the maples around the church's caves, -<br>And the gride of hatchets fiercely thrown, <br>On wigwam-log and tree and stone.<br>Black with the grim of paint and dust, <br>Spotted and streaked with human gore,<br>A grim and naked head is thrust<br>Within the chapel-door.<br>'Ha - Bomazeen! - In God's name say,<br>What mean these sounds of bloody fray?'<br>Silent, the Indian points his hand<br>To where across the echoing glen<br>Sweep Harmon's dreaded ranger-hand,<br>And Moulton with his men.<br>'Where are thy warriors, Bomazeen?<br>Where are De Rouville and Castine,<br>And where the braves of Sawga's queen?'<br>'Let my father find the winter snow<br>Which the sun drank up long moons ago!<br>Under the falls of Tacconock, <br>The wolves are eating the Norridgewock;<br>Castine with his wives lies closely hid<br>Like a fox in the woods of Pemaquid!<br>On Sawga's banks the man of war<br>Sits in his wigwam like a squaw, -<br>Squando has fled, and Mogg Megone, <br>Struck by the knife of Sagamore John, <br>Lies stiff and stark and cold as a stone.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Fearfully over the Jesuit's face,<br>Of a thousand thoughts, trace after trace,<br>Like swift cloud-shadows, each other chase.<br>One instant, his fingers grasp his knife, <br>For a last vain struffle for cherished life, -<br>The next, he hurls the blade away,<br>And kneels at his altar's foot to pray;<br>Over his beads his fingers stray,<br>And he kisses the cross, and calls aloud<br>On the Virgin and her Son;<br>For terrible thoughts his memory crowd<br>Of evil seen and done, -<br>Of scalps brought home by his savage flock<br>From Casco and Sawga and Sagadahock<br>In the Church's service won. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">No shrift the gloomy savage brooks,<br>As scowling on the priest he looks:<br>'Cowesass - cowesass - tawhich wessaseen?<br>Let my father look upon Bomazeen, -<br>My father's heart is the heart of a squaw,<br>But mine is so hard that it does not thaw;<br>Let my father ask his God to make<br>A dance and a feast for a great sagamore,<br>When he paddles across the western lake,<br>With his dogs and his squaws to the spirit's shore.<br>'Cowesass - cowesass - tawhich wessaseen?<br>Let my father die like Bomazeen!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Through the chapel's narrow doors,<br>And through each window in the walls,<br>Bound the priest and warrior pours<br>The deadly shower of English balls. <br>Low on his cross the Jesuit falls;<br>While at his side the Norridgewock,<br>With failing breath, essays to mock <br>And menace yet the hated foe, -<br>Shakes his scalp-trophies to and fro<br>Exultingly before their eyes, -<br>Till, cleft and torn by shot and blow, <br>Defiant still, he dies.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'So fare all eaters of the frog!<br>Death to the Babylonish dog!<br>Down with the beast of Rome!'<br>With shouts like these, around the dead,<br>Unconscious on his bloody bed,<br>The rangers crowding come.<br>Brave men! the dead priest cannot hear<br>The unfeeling taunt, - the brutal jeer; -<br>Spurn - for he sees ye not - in wrath,<br>The symbol of your Saviour's death;<br>Tear from his death-grasp, in your zeal, <br>And trample, as a thing accursed,<br>The cross he cherished in the dust:<br>The dead man cannot feel!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Brutal alike in deed and word,<br>With callous heart and hand of strife,<br>How like a fiend may man be made,<br>Plying the foul and monstrous trade <br>Whose harvest-field is human life,<br>Whose sickle is the reeking sword!<br>Quenching, with reckless hand in blood,<br>Sparks kindled by the breath of God; <br>Urging the deathless soul, unshriven,<br>Of open guilt of secret sin,<br>Before the bar of that pure Heaven<br>The holy only enter in!<br>O, by the widow's sore distress,<br>The orphan's wailing wretchedness,<br>By Virtue struggling in the accursed<br>Embraces of polluting Lust,<br>By the fell discord of the Pit, <br>And the painted souls that people it, <br>And by the blessed peace which fills<br>The Paradise of God forever,<br>Resting on all its holy hills,<br>And flowing with its crystal river, -<br>Let Christian hands no longer bear<br>In triumph on his crimson car<br>The foul and idol god of war;<br>No more the purple wreaths prepare<br>To bind amid his snaky hair; <br>Nor Christian bards his glories tell,<br>Nor Christian tongues his praises swell.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Through the gun-smoke wreathing white,<br>Glimpses on the soldiers' sight<br>A thing of human shape I ween,<br>For a moment only seen,<br>With its loose hair backward streaming,<br>And its eyeballs madly gleaming,<br>Shrieking, like a soul in pain,<br>From the world of light and breath,<br>Hurrying to its place again,<br>Spectre-like it vanisheth!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Wretched girl! one eye alone<br>Notes the way which thou hast gone.<br>That great Eye, which slumbers never,<br>Watching o'er a lost world ever,<br>Tracks thee over vale and mountain,<br>By the gushing forest-fountain,<br>Plucking from the vine its fruit, <br>Searching for the ground-nut's root,<br>Peering in the she-wolf's den,<br>Wading through the marshy fen,<br>Where the sluggish water-snake<br>Basks beside the sunny brake,<br>Coiling in his slimy bed,<br>Smooth and cold against thy tread, -<br>Purposeless, thy mazy way<br>Threading through the lingering day.<br>And at night securely sleeping<br>Where the dogwood's dews are weeping!<br>Still, though the earth and man discard thee,<br>Doth thy Heavenly Father guard thee.<br>He who spared the guilty Cain, <br>Even when a brother's blood,<br>Crying in the ear of God,<br>Gave the earth its primal stain, -<br>He whose mercy ever liveth,<br>Who repenting guilt forgiveth,<br>And the broken heart receiveth, -<br>Wanderer of the wilderness, <br>Haunted, guilty, crazed, and wild,<br>He regardeth thy distress,<br>And careth for his sinful child!<br>*<br>'Tis springtime on the eastern hills!<br>Like torrents gush the summer rills;<br>Through winter's moss and dry dead leaves<br>The bladed grass revives and lives,<br>Pushes the mouldering waste away,<br>And glimpses to the April day.<br>In kindly shower and sunshine bud<br>The branches of the dull gray wood;<br>Out from its sunned and sheltered nooks<br>The blue eye of the violet looks;<br>The southwest wind is warmly blowing,<br>And odors from the springing grass,<br>The pine-tree and the sassafras,<br>Are with it on its errands going.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A band is marching through the wood<br>Where rolls the Kennebec his flood, -<br>The warriors of the wilderness,<br>Painted, and in their battle dress;<br>And with them one whose bearded cheek,<br>And white and wrinkled brow, bespeak<br>A wanderer from the shores of France.<br>A few long locks of scattering snow<br>Beneath a battered morion flow,<br>And from the rivets of the best<br>Which girds in steel his ample breast,<br>The slanted sunbeams glance.<br>In the harsh outlines of his face<br>Passion and sin have left their trace;<br>Yet, save worn brow and thin gray hair,<br>No signs of weary age are there.<br>His step is firm, his eye is keen,<br>Nor years in broil and battle spent,<br>Nor toil, nor wounds, no pain have bent<br>The lordly frame of old Castine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">No purpose now of strife and blood<br>Urges the hoary veteran on:<br>The fire of conquest and the mood<br>Of chivalry have gone. <br>A mournful task is his, - to lay <br>Within the earth the bones of those<br>Who perished in that fearful day,<br>When Norridgewock became the prey<br>Of all unsparing foes.<br>Sadly and still, dark thoughts between,<br>Of coming vengeance mused Castine,<br>Of the fallen chieftain Bomazeen,<br>Who bade for him the Norridgewocks <br>Dig up their buried tomahawks<br>For firm defence or swift attack;<br>And him whose friendship formed the tie<br>Which held the stern self-exile back<br>From lapsing into savagery;<br>Whose garb and tone and kindly glance<br>Recalled a younger, happier day,<br>And prompted memory's fond essay,<br>To bridge the mighty waste which lay<br>Between his wild home and that gray,<br>Tall chateau of his native France,<br>Whose chapel bell, with far-heard din,<br>Ushered his birth-hour gayly in,<br>And counted with its solemn toll<br>The masses for his father's soul.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Hark! from the foremost of the band<br>Suddenly bursts the Indian yell;<br>For now on the very spot they stand<br>Where the Norridgewock's fighting fell.<br>No wigwam smoke is curling there;<br>The very earth is scorched and bare:<br>And they pause and listen to catch a sound<br>Of breathing life, - but there comes not one,<br>Save the fox's bark and the rabbit's bound;<br>But here and there, on the blackened ground,<br>White bones are glistening in the sun.<br>And where the house of prayer arose,<br>And the holy hymn, at daylight's close,<br>And the aged priest stood p to bless <br>The children of the wilderness,<br>There is naught save ashes sodden and dank;<br>And the birchen boat of the Norridgewock,<br>Tethered to tree and stump and rock<br>Rotting along the river bank!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Blessed Mary! who is she <br>Leaning against that maple-tree?<br>The sun upon her face burns hot, <br>But the fixed eyelid moveth not; <br>The squirrel's chirp is shrill and clear<br>From the dry bough above her ear;<br>Dashing from rock and root its spray,<br>Close at her feet the river rushes;<br>The blackbird's wing against her brushes,<br>And sweetly through the hazel-bushes<br>The robin's mellow music gushes; -<br>God save her! will she sleep alway?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Castine hath bent him over the sleeper:<br>'Wake, daughter, - wake!' - but she stirs no limb:<br>The eye that looks on him is fixed and dim;<br>And the sleep she is sleeping shall be no deeper,<br>Until the angel's oath is said,<br>And the final blast of the trump goes forth<br>To the graves of the sea and the graves of earth.<br>Ruth Bonython Is Dead!</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> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <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=420574" data-title="Mogg Megone - Part III. de John Greenleaf Whittier" data-description="Ah! weary Priest! - with pale hands pressed On thy throbbing brow of pain, Baffled in thy life-long quest, Overworn with toiling vain, How ill thy troubled musings fit The holy quiet of a breast With the Dove of Peace at rest, Sweetly brooding ove..."></div> </div> </div>

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