Voyage Of The Jettie

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;     Im sure my pretty boats worth,     At least, a name as pretty.     On her painted side he wrote it,     And the flag that oer 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 States 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 oer 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 giants 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 oer 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 Georges     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.