But the noble Mexic women still their holy task pursued, Through that long, dark night of sorrow, worn and faint and lacking food. Over weak and suffering brothers, with a tender care they hung, And the dying foeman blessed them in a strange and Northern tongue. Not wholly lost, O Father! is this evil world of ours; Upward, through its blood and ashes, spring afresh the Eden flowers; From its smoking hell of battle, Love and THE HUSKERS 1847. Ir was late in mild October, and the long autumnal rain Had left the summer harvest-fields all green with grass again; The first sharp frosts had fallen, leaving all the woodlands gay With the hues of summer's rainbow, or the meadow-flowers of May. From spire and barn looked westerly the Swung o'er the heaped-up harvest, from patient weathercocks ; But even the birches on the hill stood mo tionless as rocks. No sound was in the woodlands, save the squirrel's dropping shell, pitchforks in the mow, Shone dimly down the lanterns on the pleasant scene below; The And the yellow leaves among the boughs, And low rustling as they fell. 20 The summer grains were harvested; the stubble-fields lay dry, Where June winds rolled, in light and shade, the pale green waves of rye; But still, on gentle hill-slopes, in valleys fringed with wood, Ungathered, bleaching in the sun, the heavy corn crop stood. Bent low, by autumn's wind and rain, through husks that, dry and sere, Unfolded from their ripened charge, shone out the yellow ear; Beneath, the turnip lay concealed, in many a verdant fold, And glistened in the slanting light the pumpkin's sphere of gold. growing pile of husks behind, the golden ears before, laughing eyes and busy hands and brown cheeks glimmering o'er. 1 The Lake of the Hills' is Lake Winnipesaukee. One of Whittier's favorite resorts was West Ossipee, at the foot of the Ossipee Mountains, just northeast of the lake. Se Pickard's Whittier-Land, pp. 109-115; his Life of Whittier, vol. ii, p. 669; and Whittier's 'Among the Hills' and 'Summer by the Lakeside.' 2 Mt. Chocorua, north of West Ossipee, the most picturesque, though by no means the highest, of the mountains of New England. Its cone is formed of a peculiar reddish stone known as Chocorua granite.' For the legend of the Indian chief from whom it was named, see Thomas Starr King's The White Hills, or Sweetser's White Mountains, p. 341. See also Whittier's How They Climbed Chocorua' in Whittier-Land, pp. 111-114. One of Longfellow's early poems, Jeckoyva,' had the Indian chief Chocorua for its hero. The name Winnipesaukee is popularly thought to mean The Smile of the Great Spirit.' Students of the Indian languages, however, agree that its real meaning is Beautiful Water in a High Place.' |