All sin and wrong, Compassion which forgives
To the uttermost, and Justice whose clear eyes
Through lapse and failure look to the intent,
And judge our frailty by the life we meant.
VOYAGE OF THE JETTIE
The picturesquely situated Wayside Inn at West Ossipee, N. H., is now in ashes; and to its former guests these somewhat careless rhymes may be a not unwelcome reminder of pleasant summers and autumns on the banks of the Bearcamp and Chocorua. To the author himself they have a special interest from the fact that they were written, or improvised, under the eye and for the amusement of a beloved invalid friend, whose last earthly sunsets faded from the mountain ranges of Ossipee and Sandwich.
A shallow stream, from fountains
Deep 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 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 Bearcamp water
Comes 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 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 State’s graceful daughter.
Then a singer, richly gifted,
Her charmëd 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 o’er 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 giant’s 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 rasty 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,—
