THE COUNTESS. TO E. W. I KNOW not, Time and Space so intervene, and pains. I could not paint the scenery of my song, Mindless of one who looked thereon so long; Who, night and day, on duty's lonely round, the sound he tough old boatman, half amphibious grown; The muttering witch-wife of the gossip's tale, And the loud straggler levying his black-mail, Old customs, habits, superstitions, fears, All that lies buried under fifty years. To thee, as is most fit, I bring my lay, And, grateful, own the debt I cannot pay. Over the wooded northern ridge, Between its houses brown, The street comes straggling down. Of gable, roof, and porch, The sharp horn of the church. To meet, in ebb and flow, For sloop and gundelow. With salt sea-scents along its shores The heavy hay-boats crawl, In lazy rise and fall. Along the gray abutment's wall The idle shad-net dries; Sits smoking with closed eyes. Of waves that chafe and gnaw; You start, -a skipper's horn is blown To raise the creaking draw. At times a blacksmith's anvil sounds With slow and sluggard beat, Or stage-coach on its dusty rounds Wakes up the staring street. A place for idle eyes and ears, À cobwebbed nook of dreams; Left by the stream whose waves are years The stranded village seems. And there, like other moss and rust, The native dweller clings, And keeps, in uninquiring trust, The old, dull round of things. The fisher drops his patient lines, The farmer sows his grain, Instead of railroad-train. Go where, along the tangled steep That slopes against the west, The hamlet's buried idlers sleep In still profounder rest. Throw back the locust's flowery plume, The birch's pale-green scarf, And break the web of brier and bloom From name and epitaph. A simple muster-roll of death, Of pomp and romance shorn, Has cheapened and outworn. Yet pause by one low mound, and part Upon its headstone traced. Of fourscore years can say Who sleeps with common clay. An exile from the Gascon land Found refuge here and rest, Its fairest and its best. He knelt with her on Sabbath morn, He worshipped through her eyes, Stole in her faith's surprise. Her simple daily life he saw By homeliest duties tried, Of fitness justified. For her his rank aside he laid ; He took the hue and tone , and made To harvest-field or dance The nameless grace of France. VOL. I. 23 And she who taught him love not less From him she loved in turn Caught in her sweet unconsciousness What love is quick to learn. Each grew to each in pleased accord, Nor knew the gazing town Or he to her looked down. How sweet, when summer's day was o'er, His violin's mirth and wail, The walk on pleasant Newbury's shore, The river's moonlit sail ! Ah ! life is brief, though love be long; The altar and the bier, Were both in one short year! Her rest is quiet on the hill, Beneath the locust's bloom ; Far off her lover sleeps as still Within his scutcheoned tomb. The Gascon lord, the village maid, In death still clasp their hands; The love that levels rank and grade Unites their severed lands. What matter whose the hill-side grave, Or whose the blazoned stone ? Forever to her western wave Shall whisper blue Garonne ! O Love !-so hallowing every soil That gives thy sweet flower room, Wherever, nursed by ease or toil, The human heart takes bloom! |