HAWTHORNE
At night's dread noon he scanned the enchanted glass,
Ay, and himself the warlock's mantle wore,
Nor to the thronging phantoms said Avaunt,
But waved his rod and bade them rise and pass;
Till thus he drew the lineaments of men
Who fought the old colonial battles three,
Who with the lustihood of Nature warred
And made her docile,—then
Wrestled with Terror and with Tyranny,
Twin wardens of the scaffold and the sword.
He drew his native land,
The few and rude plantations of her Past,
Fringed by the beaches of her sounding shore;
Her children, as he drew them, there they stand;
There, too, her Present, with an outline cast
Still from the shape those other centuries wore.
Betimes the orchards and the clover-fields
Change into woods o'ershadowing a host
That winds along the Massachusetts Path;
The sword of Standish shields
The Plymouth band, and where the lewd ones boast
Stern Endicott pours out his godly wrath.
Within the Province House
The ancient governors hold their broidered state,—
Still gleam the lights, the shadows come and go;
Here once again the powdered guests carouse,
The masquerade lasts on, the night is late.
Thrice waves a mist-invoking wand, and lo,
What troubled sights! What summit bald and steep
Where stands a ladder 'gainst the accursed tree?
What dark processions thither slowly climb?
Anon, what lost ones keep
Their midnight tryst with forms that evil be,
Around the witch-fire in the forest grim!
187
