FROM the green Amesbury hill which bears the name Of that half mythic ancestor of mine Who trod its slopes two hundred years ago, Down the long valley of the Merrimac, Midway between me and the river's mouth, I see thy home, set like an eagle's nest Among Deer Island's immemorial pines, Crowning the crag on which the sunset breaks Its last red arrow. Many a tale and song, Which thou bast told or sung, I call to mind, Softening with silvery mist the woods and hills, The out-thrust headlands and inreaching bays Of our northeastern coast-line, trending where The Gulf, midsummer, feels the chill blockade Of icebergs stranded at its northern gate. To thee the echoes of the Island Sound Answer not vainly, nor in vain the moan Of the South Breaker prophesying storm. And thou hast listened, like myself, to men Sea-periled oft where Anticosti lies Like a fell spider in its web of fog, Or where the Grand Bank shallows with the wrecks Of sunken fishers, and to whom strange isles And frost-rimmed bays and trading stations seem Familiar as Great Neck and Kettle Cove, Nubble and Boon, the common names of home. So let me offer thee this lay of mine, Simple and homely, lacking much thy play Of color and of fancy. If its theme And treatment seem to thee befitting youth Rather than age, let this be my excuse It has beguiled some heavy hours and called Some pleasant memories up; and, better still, Occasion lent me for a kindly word To one who is my neighbor and my friend. 1883. . . . . . . . . . . The skipper sailed out of the harbor mouth, Leaving the apple-bloom of the South For the ice of the Eastern seas, In his fishing schooner Breeze. Handsome and brave and young was he, And the maids of Newbury sighed to see His lessening white sail fall Under the sea's blue wall. Through the Northern Gulf and the misty screen Of the isles of Mingan and Madeleine, St. Paul's and Blanc Sablon, The little Breeze sailed on, Backward and forward, along the shore Of lorn and desolate Labrador, And found at last her way To the Seven Islands Bay. The little hamlet, nestling below Great hills white with lingering snow, With its tin-roofed chapel stood Half hid in the dwarf spruce wood; Green-turfed, flower-sown, the last outpost Of summer upon the dreary coast, With its gardens small and spare, Sad in the frosty air. Hard by where the skipper's schooner lay, A fisherman's cottage looked away Over isle and bay, and behind On mountains dim-defined. And there twin sisters, fair and young, Laughed with their stranger guest, and sung In their native tongue the lays Of the old Provencal days.