With not unglad surprise I see my life-work through your partial eyes; Assured, in giving to my home-taught songs A higher value than of right belongs, You do but read between the written lines The finer grace of unfulfilled designs.
AT EVENTIDE.
Poor and inadequate the shadow-play Of gain and loss, of waking and of dream, Against life's solemn background needs must seem At this late hour.

Yet, not unthankfully, I call to mind the fountains by the way, The breath of flowers, the bird-song on the spray, Dear friends, sweet human loves, the joy of giving And of receiving, the great boon of living In grand historic years when Liberty Had need of word and work, quick sympathies For all who fail and suffer, song's relief, Nature's uncloying loveliness; and chief, The kind restraining hand of Providence, The inward witness, the assuring sense Of an Eternal Good which overlies The sorrow of the world, Love which outlives All sin and wrong, Compassion which forgives To the uttermost, and Justice whose clear eyes Through lapse and failure look to the intent, And judge our frailty by the life we meant.
1878.
VOYAGE OF THE JETTIE.
The picturesquely situated Wayside Inn at West Ossipee, N.H., is now in ashes; and to its former guests these somewhat careless rhymes may be a not unwelcome reminder of pleasant summers and autumns on the banks of the Bearcamp and Chocorua.

To the author himself they have a special interest from the fact that they were written, or improvised, under the eye and for the amusement of a beloved invalid friend whose last earthly sunsets faded from the mountain ranges of Ossipee and Sandwich.
A shallow stream, from fountains Deep in the Sandwich mountains, Ran lake ward Bearcamp River; And, between its flood-torn shores, Sped by sail or urged by oars No keel had vexed it ever.
Alone the dead trees yielding To the dull axe Time is wielding, The shy mink and the otter, And golden leaves and red, By countless autumns shed, Had floated down its water.
From the gray rocks of Cape Ann, Came a skilled seafaring man, With his dory, to the right place; Over hill and plain he brought her, Where the boatless Beareamp water Comes winding down from White-Face.
Quoth the skipper: "Ere she floats forth; I'm sure my pretty boat's worth, At least, a name as pretty." On her painted side he wrote it, And the flag that o'er her floated Bore aloft the name of Jettie.
On a radiant morn of summer, Elder guest and latest comer Saw her wed the Bearcamp water; Heard the name the skipper gave her, And the answer to the favor From the Bay State's graceful daughter.
Then, a singer, richly gifted, Her charmed voice uplifted; And the wood-thrush and song-sparrow Listened, dumb with envious pain, To the clear and sweet refrain Whose notes they could not borrow.
Then the skipper plied his oar, And from off the shelving shore, Glided out the strange explorer; Floating on, she knew not whither,-- The tawny sands beneath her, The great hills watching o'er her.
On, where the stream flows quiet As the meadows' margins by it, Or widens out to borrow a New life from that wild water, The mountain giant's daughter, The pine-besung Chocorua.
Or, mid the tangling cumber And pack of mountain lumber That spring floods downward force, Over sunken snag, and bar Where the grating shallows are, The good boat held her course.
Under the pine-dark highlands, Around the vine-hung islands, She ploughed her crooked furrow And her rippling and her lurches Scared the river eels and perches, And the musk-rat in his burrow.
Every sober clam below her, Every sage and grave pearl-grower, Shut his rusty valves the tighter; Crow called to crow complaining, And old tortoises sat craning Their leathern necks to sight her.
So, to where the still lake glasses The misty mountain masses Rising dim and distant northward, And, with faint-drawn shadow pictures, Low shores, and dead pine spectres, Blends the skyward and the earthward, On she glided, overladen, With merry man and maiden Sending back their song and laughter,-- While, perchance, a phantom crew, In a ghostly birch canoe, Paddled dumb and swiftly after! And the bear on Ossipee Climbed the topmost crag to see The strange thing drifting under; And, through the haze of August, Passaconaway and Paugus Looked down in sleepy wonder.
All the pines that o'er her hung In mimic sea-tones sung The song familiar to her; And the maples leaned to screen her, And the meadow-grass seemed greener, And the breeze more soft to woo her.
The lone stream mystery-haunted, To her the freedom granted To scan its every feature, Till new and old were blended, And round them both extended The loving arms of Nature.
Of these hills the little vessel Henceforth is part and parcel; And on Bearcamp shall her log Be kept, as if by George's Or Grand Menan, the surges Tossed her skipper through the fog.
And I, who, half in sadness, Recall the morning gladness Of life, at evening time, By chance, onlooking idly, Apart from all so widely, Have set her voyage to rhyme.
Dies now the gay persistence Of song and laugh, in distance; Alone with me remaining The stream, the quiet meadow, The hills in shine and shadow, The sombre pines complaining.
And, musing here, I dream Of voyagers on a stream From whence is no returning, Under sealed orders going, Looking forward little knowing, Looking back with idle yearning.
And I pray that every venture The port of peace may enter, That, safe from snag and fall And siren-haunted islet, And rock, the Unseen Pilot May guide us one and all.
1880.
MY TRUST.
A picture memory brings to me I look across the years and see Myself beside my mother's knee.
I feel her gentle hand restrain My selfish moods, and know again A child's blind sense of wrong and pain.
But wiser now, a man gray grown, My childhood's needs are better known, My mother's chastening love I own.
Gray grown, but in our Father's sight A child still groping for the light To read His works and ways aright.
I wait, in His good time to see That as my mother dealt with me So with His children dealeth He.
I bow myself beneath His hand That pain itself was wisely planned I feel, and partly understand.
The joy that comes in sorrow's guise, The sweet pains of self-sacrifice, I would not have them otherwise.
And what were life and death if sin Knew not the dread rebuke within, The pang of merciful discipline?
Not with thy proud despair of old, Crowned stoic of Rome's noblest mould! Pleasure and pain alike I hold.
I suffer with no vain pretence Of triumph over flesh and sense, Yet trust the grievous providence, How dark soe'er it seems, may tend, By ways I cannot comprehend, To some unguessed benignant end; That every loss and lapse may gain The clear-aired heights by steps of pain, And never cross is borne in vain.
1880.
A NAME Addressed to my grand-nephew, Greenleaf Whittier Pickard.

Jonathan Greenleaf, in A Genealogy of the Greenleaf Family, says briefly: "From all that can be gathered, it is believed that the ancestors of the Greenleaf family were Huguenots, who left France on account of their religious principles some time in the course of the sixteenth century, and settled in England.

The name was probably translated from the French Feuillevert." The name the Gallic exile bore, St.Malo! from thy ancient mart, Became upon our Western shore Greenleaf for Feuillevert.
A name to hear in soft accord Of leaves by light winds overrun, Or read, upon the greening sward Of May, in shade and sun.
The name my infant ear first heard Breathed softly with a mother's kiss; His mother's own, no tenderer word My father spake than this.
No child have I to bear it on; Be thou its keeper; let it take From gifts well used and duty done New beauty for thy sake.
The fair ideals that outran My halting footsteps seek and find-- The flawless symmetry of man, The poise of heart and mind.
Stand firmly where I felt the sway Of every wing that fancy flew, See clearly where I groped my way, Nor real from seeming knew.
And wisely choose, and bravely hold Thy faith unswerved by cross or crown, Like the stout Huguenot of old Whose name to thee comes down.
As Marot's songs made glad the heart Of that lone exile, haply mine May in life's heavy hours impart Some strength and hope to thine.
Yet when did Age transfer to Youth The hard-gained lessons of its day?
Each lip must learn the taste of truth, Each foot must feel its way.
We cannot hold the hands of choice That touch or shun life's fateful keys; The whisper of the inward voice Is more than homilies.
Dear boy! for whom the flowers are born, Stars shine, and happy song-birds sing, What can my evening give to morn, My winter to thy spring! A life not void of pure intent, With small desert of praise or blame, The love I felt, the good I meant, I leave thee with my name.
1880.
GREETING.
Originally prefixed to the volume, The King's Missive and other Poems.
I spread a scanty board too late; The old-time guests for whom I wait Come few and slow, methinks, to-day.
Ah! who could hear my messages Across the dim unsounded seas On which so many have sailed away! Come, then, old friends, who linger yet, And let us meet, as we have met, Once more beneath this low sunshine; And grateful for the good we 've known, The riddles solved, the ills outgrown, Shake bands upon the border line.
The favor, asked too oft before, From your indulgent ears, once more I crave, and, if belated lays To slower, feebler measures move, The silent, sympathy of love To me is dearer now than praise.
And ye, O younger friends, for whom My hearth and heart keep open room, Come smiling through the shadows long, Be with me while the sun goes down, And with your cheerful voices drown The minor of my even-song.
For, equal through the day and night, The wise Eternal oversight And love and power and righteous will Remain: the law of destiny The best for each and all must be, And life its promise shall fulfil.
1881.
AN AUTOGRAPH.
I write my name as one, On sands by waves o'errun Or winter's frosted pane, Traces a record vain.
Oblivion's blankness claims Wiser and better names, And well my own may pass As from the strand or glass.
Wash on, O waves of time! Melt, noons, the frosty rime! Welcome the shadow vast, The silence that shall last.
When I and all who know And love me vanish so, What harm to them or me Will the lost memory be?
If any words of mine, Through right of life divine, Remain, what matters it Whose hand the message writ?
Why should the "crowner's quest" Sit on my worst or best?
Why should the showman claim The poor ghost of my name?
Yet, as when dies a sound Its spectre lingers round, Haply my spent life will Leave some faint echo still.
A whisper giving breath Of praise or blame to death, Soothing or saddening such As loved the living much.
Therefore with yearnings vain And fond I still would fain A kindly judgment seek, A tender thought bespeak.
And, while my words are read, Let this at least be said "Whate'er his life's defeatures, He loved his fellow-creatures.
"If, of the Law's stone table, To hold he scarce was able The first great precept fast, He kept for man the last.
"Through mortal lapse and dulness What lacks the Eternal Fulness, If still our weakness can Love Him in loving man?
"Age brought him no despairing Of the world's future faring; In human nature still He found more good than ill.
"To all who dumbly suffered, His tongue and pen he offered; His life was not his own, Nor lived for self alone.
"Hater of din and riot He lived in days unquiet; And, lover of all beauty, Trod the hard ways of duty.
"He meant no wrong to any He sought the good of many, Yet knew both sin and folly,-- May God forgive him wholly!" 1882.
ABRAM MORRISON.
'Midst the men and things which will Haunt an old man's memory still, Drollest, quaintest of them all, With a boy's laugh I recall Good old Abram Morrison.
When the Grist and Rolling Mill Ground and rumbled by Po Hill, And the old red school-house stood Midway in the Powow's flood, Here dwelt Abram Morrison.
From the Beach to far beyond Bear-Hill, Lion's Mouth and Pond, Marvellous to our tough old stock, Chips o' the Anglo-Saxon block, Seemed the Celtic Morrison.
Mudknock, Balmawhistle, all Only knew the Yankee drawl, Never brogue was heard till when, Foremost of his countrymen, Hither came Friend Morrison; Yankee born, of alien blood, Kin of his had well withstood Pope and King with pike and ball Under Derry's leaguered wall, As became the Morrisons.
Wandering down from Nutfield woods With his household and his goods, Never was it clearly told How within our quiet fold Came to be a Morrison.
Once a soldier, blame him not That the Quaker he forgot, When, to think of battles won, And the red-coats on the run, Laughed aloud Friend Morrison.
From gray Lewis over sea Bore his sires their family tree, On the rugged boughs of it Grafting Irish mirth and wit, And the brogue of Morrison.
Half a genius, quick to plan, Blundering like an Irishman, But with canny shrewdness lent By his far-off Scotch descent, Such was Abram Morrison.
Back and forth to daily meals, Rode his cherished pig on wheels, And to all who came to see "Aisier for the pig an' me, Sure it is," said Morrison.
Simple-hearted, boy o'er-grown, With a humor quite his own, Of our sober-stepping ways, Speech and look and cautious phrase, Slow to learn was Morrison.
Much we loved his stories told Of a country strange and old, Where the fairies danced till dawn, And the goblin Leprecaun Looked, we thought, like Morrison.
Or wild tales of feud and fight, Witch and troll and second sight Whispered still where Stornoway Looks across its stormy bay, Once the home of Morrisons.
First was he to sing the praise Of the Powow's winding ways; And our straggling village took City grandeur to the look Of its poet Morrison.
All his words have perished.