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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=420650" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Bay Of Seven Islands</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">FROM the green Amesbury hill which bears the name<br>Of that half mythic ancestor of mine<br>Who trod its slopes two hundred years ago,<br>Down the long valley of the Merrimac,<br>Midway between me and the river's mouth,<br>I see thy home, set like an eagle's nest<br>Among Deer Island's immemorial pines,<br>Crowning the crag on which the sunset breaks<br>Its last red arrow. Many a tale and song,<br>Which thou bast told or sung, I call to mind,<br>Softening with silvery mist the woods and hills,<br>The out-thrust headlands and inreaching bays<br>Of our northeastern coast-line, trending where<br>The Gulf, midsummer, feels the chill blockade<br>Of icebergs stranded at its northern gate.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">To thee the echoes of the Island Sound<br>Answer not vainly, nor in vain the moan<br>Of the South Breaker prophesying storm.<br>And thou hast listened, like myself, to men<br>Sea-periled oft where Anticosti lies<br>Like a fell spider in its web of fog,<br>Or where the Grand Bank shallows with the wrecks<br>Of sunken fishers, and to whom strange isles<br>And frost-rimmed bays and trading stations seem<br>Familiar as Great Neck and Kettle Cove,<br>Nubble and Boon, the common names of home.<br>So let me offer thee this lay of mine,<br>Simple and homely, lacking much thy play<br>Of color and of fancy. If its theme<br>And treatment seem to thee befitting youth<br>Rather than age, let this be my excuse<br>It has beguiled some heavy hours and called<br>Some pleasant memories up; and, better still,<br>Occasion lent me for a kindly word<br>To one who is my neighbor and my friend.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">. . . . . . . . . .</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The skipper sailed out of the harbor mouth,<br>Leaving the apple-bloom of the South<br>For the ice of the Eastern seas,<br>In his fishing schooner Breeze.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Handsome and brave and young was he,<br>And the maids of Newbury sighed to see<br>His lessening white sail fall<br>Under the sea's blue wall.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Through the Northern Gulf and the misty screen<br>Of the isles of Mingan and Madeleine,<br>St. Paul's and Blanc Sablon,<br>The little Breeze sailed on,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Backward and forward, along the shore<br>Of lorn and desolate Labrador,<br>And found at last her way<br>To the Seven Islands Bay.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The little hamlet, nestling below<br>Great hills white with lingering snow,<br>With its tin-roofed chapel stood<br>Half hid in the dwarf spruce wood;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Green-turfed, flower-sown, the last outpost<br>Of summer upon the dreary coast,<br>With its gardens small and spare,<br>Sad in the frosty air.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Hard by where the skipper's schooner lay,<br>A fisherman's cottage looked away<br>Over isle and bay, and. behind<br>On mountains dim-defined.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And there twin sisters, fair and young,<br>Laughed with their stranger guest, and sung<br>In their native tongue the lays<br>Of the old Provencal days.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Alike were they, save the faint outline<br>Of a scar on Suzette's forehead fine;<br>And both, it so befell,<br>Loved the heretic stranger well.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Both were pleasant to look upon,<br>But the heart of the skipper clave to one;<br>Though less by his eye than heart<br>He knew the twain apart.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Despite of alien race and creed,<br>Well did his wooing of Marguerite speed;<br>And the mother's wrath was vain<br>As the sister's jealous pain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The shrill-tongued mistress her house forbade,<br>And solemn warning was sternly said<br>By the black-robed priest, whose word<br>As law the hamlet heard.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But half by voice and half by signs<br>The skipper said, 'A warm sun shines<br>On the green-banked Merrimac;<br>Wait, watch, till I come back.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'And when you see, from my mast head,<br>The signal fly of a kerchief red,<br>My boat on the shore shall wait;<br>Come, when the night is late.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ah! weighed with childhood's haunts and friends,<br>And all that the home sky overbends,<br>Did ever young love fail<br>To turn the trembling scale?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Under the night, on the wet sea sands,<br>Slowly unclasped their plighted hands<br>One to the cottage hearth,<br>And one to his sailor's berth.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What was it the parting lovers heard?<br>Nor leaf, nor ripple, nor wing of bird,<br>But a listener's stealthy tread<br>On the rock-moss, crisp and dead.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He weighed his anchor, and fished once more<br>By the black coast-line of Labrador;<br>And by love and the north wind driven,<br>Sailed back to the Islands Seven.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In the sunset's glow the sisters twain<br>Saw the Breeze come sailing in again;<br>Said Suzette, 'Mother dear,<br>The heretic's sail is here.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Go, Marguerite, to your room, and hide;<br>Your door shall be bolted!' the mother cried:<br>While Suzette, ill at ease,<br>Watched the red sign of the Breeze.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">At midnight, down to the waiting skiff<br>She stole in the shadow of the cliff;<br>And out of the Bay's mouth ran<br>The schooner with maid and man.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And all night long, on a restless bed,<br>Her prayers to the Virgin Marguerite said<br>And thought of her lover's pain<br>Waiting for her in vain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Did he pace the sands? Did he pause to hear<br>The sound of her light step drawing near?<br>And, as the slow hours passed,<br>Would he doubt her faith at last?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But when she saw through the misty pane,<br>The morning break on a sea of rain,<br>Could even her love avail<br>To follow his vanished sail?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Meantime the Breeze, with favoring wind,<br>Left the rugged Moisic hills behind,<br>And heard from an unseen shore<br>The falls of Manitou roar.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">On the morrow's morn, in the thick, gray weather<br>They sat on the reeling deck together,<br>Lover and counterfeit,<br>Of hapless Marguerite.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">With a lover's hand, from her forehead fair<br>He smoothed away her jet-black hair.<br>What was it his fond eyes met?<br>The scar of the false Suzette!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Fiercely he shouted: 'Bear away<br>East by north for Seven Isles Bay!'<br>The maiden wept and prayed,<br>But the ship her helm obeyed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Once more the Bay of the Isles they found<br>They heard the bell of the chapel sound,<br>And the chant of the dying sung<br>In the harsh, wild Indian tongue.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A feeling of mystery, change, and awe<br>Was in all they heard and all they saw<br>Spell-bound the hamlet lay<br>In the hush of its lonely bay.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And when they came to the cottage door,<br>The mother rose up from her weeping sore,<br>And with angry gestures met<br>The scared look of Suzette.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Here is your daughter,' the skipper said;<br>'Give me the one I love instead.'<br>But the woman sternly spake;<br>'Go, see if the dead will wake!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He looked. Her sweet face still and white<br>And strange in the noonday taper light,<br>She lay on her little bed,<br>With the cross at her feet and head.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In a passion of grief the strong man bent<br>Down to her face, and, kissing it, went<br>Back to the waiting Breeze,<br>Back to the mournful seas.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Never again to the Merrimac<br>And Newbury's homes that bark came back.<br>Whether her fate she met<br>On the shores of Carraquette,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Miscou, or Tracadie, who can say?<br>But even yet at Seven Isles Bay<br>Is told the ghostly tale<br>Of a weird, unspoken sail,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In the pale, sad light of the Northern day<br>Seen by the blanketed Montagnais,<br>Or squaw, in her small kyack,<br>Crossing the spectre's track.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">On the deck a maiden wrings her hands;<br>Her likeness kneels on the gray coast sands;<br>One in her wild despair,<br>And one in the trance of prayer.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She flits before no earthly blast,<br>The red sign fluttering from her mast,<br>Over the solemn seas,<br>The ghost of the schooner Breeze!</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=420650" data-title="The Bay Of Seven Islands de John Greenleaf Whittier" data-description="FROM the green Amesbury hill which bears the name
Of that half mythic ancestor of mine
Who 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 ne..."></div>
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