The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 — John Shaqi
The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6Various
History
The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6
Various
Massachusetts -- Periodicals; New England -- Periodicals
Describing her flight, he tells us that she sent Lancelot
"Back to his land, but she to Almesbury
Fled all night long by glimmering waste and weald."
There Arthur sees her for the last time and mourns over her before he
goes forth to his last battle with Modred.
On the whole, it is not strange, considering its associations, and
moreover the fact that this town in Massachusetts is the only Amesbury
in America while so many other names are duplicated, that the people of
Amesbury are not willing to merge the name of their town into that of
the elder sister, even when those parts called in each "the Mills" are
so closely united in interests and in appearance that no stranger could
recognize them as two towns. It is only the Powow that makes the
dividing line here. Blocks of offices and stores on both sides of the
street, among them the post-office, common to both towns, hide the
narrow stream at that point, and further up and down the towering walls
of the factories make it unobserved. It is not here that one sees the
Powow. But there is, or a little time ago there was, a place not far off
from this main street where the river is still harassed, yet as it slips
past in its silent toil with a few trees hanging low on the right, it
has a fascination in spite of its prosaic surroundings; it takes
naturally to picturesqueness and freedom.
One of Whittier's early poems speaks of an Indian re-visiting the stream
that his forefathers loved, and standing on Powow Hill, where the chiefs
of the Naumkeaks, and of the other tribes held their powows. Here for a
moment, says the poem, a gleam of gladness came to him as he stooped to
drink of the fountain and seated himself under an oak.
"Far behind was Ocean striving
With his chains of sand;
Southward, sunny glimpses giving
'Twixt the swells of land,
Of its calm and silvery track
Rolled the tranquil Merrimack."
The Indian's feeling about "These bare hills, this conquered river," was
not strange. But to us it naturally occurs that we are more likely to
wake up with our scalps on our heads, instead of sleeping our last
sleep, while they dangle at a red man's girdle. Yet the very state of
warfare that at that time existed between the races showed that in the
settlers themselves was an element of savagery not yet eliminated. For
in all this fierce strife of the tomahawk and the gun, the Quaker
ancestors of the poet Whittier who met the Indians, armed only with
kindness and the high courage of their peaceful convictions, were
treated by the red men as friends and superiors. In the raids of general
devastation they were unmolested. Their descendant has a natural right
to express the pathos of the Indian's lot.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account