For she whose speech was always truth's pure gold Heard, not unpleased, its simple legends told, And loved with us the beautiful and old. I. THE RIVER VALLEY. Across the level tableland, A grassy, rarely trodden way, With thinnest skirt of birchen spray And stunted growth of cedar, leads To where you see the dull plain fall Sheer off, steep-slanted, ploughed by all The seasons' rainfalls. On its brink The over-leaning harebells swing, With roots half bare the pine-trees cling; And, through the shadow looking west, You see the wavering river flow Along a vale, that far below Holds to the sun, the sheltering hills And glimmering water-line between, Broad fields of corn and meadows green, And fruit-bent orchards grouped around The low brown roofs and painted eaves, And chimney-tops half hid in leaves. No warmer valley hides behind Yon wind-scourged sand-dunes, cold and bleak; No fairer river comes to seek The wave-sung welcome of the sea, Or mark the northmost border line Of sun-loved growths of nut and vine. Here, ground-fast in their native fields, Untempted by the city's gain, The quiet farmer folk remain Who bear the pleasant name of Friends, And keep their fathers' gentle ways And simple speech of Bible days; In whose neat homesteads woman holds With modest ease her equal place, And wears upon her tranquil face The look of one who, merging not Her self-hood in another's will, Is love's and duty's handmaid still. Pass with me down the path that winds Through birches to the open land, Where, close upon the river strand You mark a cellar, vine o'errun, Above whose wall of loosened stones The sumach lifts its reddening cones, And the black nightshade's berries shine, And broad, unsightly burdocks fold The household ruin, century-old. Here, in the dim colonial time Of sterner lives and gloomier faith, A woman lived, tradition saith, Who wrought her neighbors foul annoy, And witched and plagued the country-side, Till at the hangman's hand she died. Sit with me while the westering day Falls slantwise down the quiet vale, And, haply ere yon loitering sail, That rounds the upper headland, falls Below Deer Island's pines, or sees Behind it Hawkswood's belt of trees Rise black against the sinking sun, My idyl of its days of old, The valley's legend, shall be told. II. THE HUSKING. It was the pleasant harvest-time, When cellar-bins are closely stowed, And garrets bend beneath their load, And the old swallow-haunted barns,-- Brown-gabled, long, and full of seams Through which the rooted sunlight streams,