Voyage of the Jettie

A shallow stream, from fountainsDeep in the Sandwich mountains,Ran lakeward 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 yieldingTo 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 Bearcamp waterComes 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 floatedBore aloft the name of Jettie.

On a radiant morn of summer,Elder guest and latest comerSaw her wed the Bearcamp water;Heard the name the skipper gave her,And the answer to the favorFrom the Bay State’s graceful daughter.

Then a singer, richly gifted,Her charmëd voice uplifted;And the wood-thrush and song-sparrowListened, dumb with envious pain,To the clear and sweet refrainWhose 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 quietAs the meadows’ margins by it,Or widens out to borrow aNew life from that wild water,The mountain giant’s daughter,The pine-besung Chocorua.

Or, mid the tangling cumberAnd pack of mountain lumberThat spring floods downward force,Over sunken snag, and barWhere 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 lurchesScared 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 rasty valves the tighter;Crow called to crow complaining,And old tortoises sat craningTheir leathern necks to sight her.

So, to where the still lake glassesThe misty mountain massesRising 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 maidenSending back their song and laughter,—

While, perchance, a phantom crew,In a ghostly birch canoe,Paddled dumb and swiftly after!

And the bear on OssipeeClimbed the topmost crag to seeThe strange thing drifting under;And, through the haze of August,Passaconaway and PaugusLooked down in sleepy wonder.

All the pines that o’er her hungIn mimic sea-tones sungThe 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-hauntedTo her the freedom grantedTo scan its every feature,Till new and old were blended,And round them both extendedThe loving arms of Nature.

Of these hills the little vesselHenceforth is part and parcel;And on Bearcamp shall her logBe kept, as if by GeorgesOr Grand Menan the surgesTossed her skipper through the fog.

And I, who, half in sadness,Recall the morning gladnessOf life, at evening time,By chance, onlooking idly,Apart from all so widely,Have set her voyage to rhyme.

Dies now the gay persistenceOf song and laugh, in distance;Alone with me remainingThe stream, the quiet meadow,The hills in shine and shadow,The sombre pines complaining.

And, musing here, I dreamOf voyagers on a streamFrom whence is no returning,Under sealed orders going,Looking forward little knowing,Looking back with idle yearning.

And I pray that every ventureThe port of peace may enter,That, safe from snag and fallAnd siren-haunted islet,And rock, the Unseen PilotMay guide us one and all.