Classic Poem

No vale with purer peace the spirit fills
Than thine, Fryeburg the fair, Fryeburg the free.
Dear are thy men and maidens unto me;
Holy the smokeless altars of thy hills;
Sacred thy wide, moist meadows, where the morn
Delays for very love; divinely born
Those drooping tresses of thy feathery elms,
That lisp of cool delight through dreams of noon;
Gentle thy Saco's tides, that creep and croon,
Lapsing and lingering through hushed forest-realms,
Which love the song-bird's boon.

But neither vale nor hill nor field nor tree
Nor stream nor forest had this day been ours,
Nor would sweet English speech in Fryeburg's bowers
This night be heard across her lake and lea, —
Our seamless flag had been in pieces riven,
Nor had we been, beneath its blue, starred heaven,
A nation one and indivisible, —
Had not two spirits come to range and reign
Here over sand-girt Saco's green domain,
The one with sword, th' other with prophet-spell, —
Webster and Chamberlain.

Two crowns of glory clasp thy calm, chaste brow.
O ye strong hills, bear witness to my verse,
Thou " Maledotto, " mountain of the curse,
Chocorua, blasted by thy chief, and thou,
Kearsarge, slope-shouldered monarch of this vale.
Who gav'st thy conquering name to that swift sail
Which caught in Gallic seas the rebel bark,
And downward drove the Alabama's pride
To deep sea-sleep in Cherbourg's ravening tide,
What time faint Commerce watched a nation's ark
Sinking with shattered side.

Speak, ye historian pine-woods, where ye stand,
And thou bald scalp, like the bald crown of time,
Lifted above thy sylvan sea sublime,
And ye still shores, reaches of golden sand,
Linked like a necklace round your Lovell's lake,
Speak, for ye saw how, when the morning brake,
Brave Chamberlain, and men like Chamberlain,
Like lions turned, where round them in fell scorn
Leaped from their lairs a thousand flushed with morn,
And fought, death-loving, grand in life's disdain,
Till eve's first star was born.

Then fell the peerless, fearless, cheerless chief,
Paugus, between this water and that wood,
Staining the yellow strand with Indian blood,
Death-struck by Chamberlain; and straight in grief
The Indian vanished, and the English came,
And laid on this lone mere their Lovell's name,
Lovell who led them: thus the northern land
From Kearsarge to Katahdin, and the State
Named from the Pine, lay open as a gate
For Saxon steps to reach St. Lawrence strand,
Clear of wild war's debate.

A century, half a hundred years, and seven,
Each like a pilgrim from eternity
With sandals of soft silence creeping by,
Have paced thy streets, and hied them home to heaven,
Sweet Fryeburg, since thy Lovell's battle-day
Wove the pine-wreath which welcomes no decay;
But grandsire Time, who crowns men with both hands,
Giving to him that hath, decreed that thou,
Ere fourscore years, shouldst bind about thy brow
A second wreath, culled from thy meadow-lands
And the elm's peaceful bough.

Then Judgment rose on swift, storm-shadowed wings,
And pitying Man, heart-sick with vain desire,
Sent him new Gods, mist-robed and crowned with fire,
To trace with flame-like hands the doom of kings.
Through the worn world, like throb of morning drum,
Pealed the fierce shout, — the new Gods' reign is come;
And new-risen stars, ablaze round Man's new bride,
Came down to sing at Freedom's marriage feast
When through the listening lands of West and East,
A Daniel rose for judgment on each side
Where the Atlantic ceased.

Twenty rich summers glowed along his veins
When from New Hampshire's high-born hills a youth
Came down, a seeker and a sayer of sooth,
To stand beneath these elms, and shake the reins
That steer the heart of boyhood's fiery prime.
They called him Daniel Webster, and the chime
Measured the sliding hours with smooth, slow stroke,
While he sat registering the deed, and wrought
As though the wide world watched him: swift in thought,
But slow in speech; yet once, when once he spoke,
Then an archangel taught.

'Twas Magna Charta's morning in July,
When, in that temple reared of old to Truth,
He rose, in the bronze bloom of blood-bright youth,
To speak, what he re-spake when death was nigh,
Strongly he stood, Olympian-framed, with front
Like some carved crag where sleeps the lightning's brunt;
Black, thunderous brows, and thunderous deeptoned speech
Like Pericles, of whom the people said,
That, when he spake, it thundered; round him spread
The calm of summer nights when the stars teach
In silence overhead.

Lift up thy head, behold thy citizen,
O Fryeburg! From thy cloistered shades came he, —
Who came like many more who come from thee, —
To teach the cities how the hills make men.
Guard thy unabdicated pastoral throne,
God-kept within thy God-made mountain zone, —
Of Truth, of Love, of Peace, the worshipper;
Keep fresh thy double garland, and hand down
This my last leaf woven in thy Webster's crown,
And leave lean Envy's loathed, unkennelled cur
To bark at his renown.