  I IT lies among the greenest hills New England’s depths can show; About their base the river fills And empties as the distant mills Control its ebb and flow: It had a quick life of its own, But that was long ago. Two centuries have rolled away Since a small, hardy band Turned their sad faces from the bay, The dim sky-line where England lay, And boldly marched inland. Before them lay the wilderness, Behind them lay the strand. Bravely they plunged into the waste By white foot never trod; Bravely and busily they traced The village boundaries, and placed Their ploughs in virgin sod; Built huts, and then a meeting-house Where man might worship God. The huts gave place to houses white; The axe-affrighted woods Shrank back to left, shrank back to right; The valleys laughed with harvest light; The river’s vagrant moods Were curbed by clattering wheels, which shook The once green solitudes. And years flowed on, and life flowed by. The hills were named and known. The young looked out with eager eye From the “old” village; by and by They stole forth one by one, Leaving the old folks in their homes To labor on alone. And one by one the old folks died, Each in his lonely way. The doors which once stood open wide, To let a busy human tide Sweep in and out all day, Were closed; the unseeing windows stared Just as a blind man may. The mills, abandoned, ceased to whir; The unchecked river ran Its old-time courses, merrier, And glad in spirit, as it were, For its escape from man, Teased the dumb wheels, and mocked and played As only a river can. Looking to-day across the space, Beyond the flower-fringed track Which once was road, the eye can trace The outlines of a cellar-place, A half-burned chimney-back: They mark the ruins of a home Now empty, cold, and black. And here and there an old dame stands Some farm-house window nigh, Or, dark against the pasture-lands, A ploughman old, with trembling hands, Checks his team suddenly, And turns a gray head to the road To watch the passer-by. Above the empty village lies One thickly peopled spot, Where gray stones in gray silence rise, And tell to sunset and sunrise Of past lives that are not,— The lives that fought and strove and toiled And builded. And for what? ’Tis Nature’s law in everything. The river seeks the sea; But not one droplet wandering Goes ever back to feed the spring. Such things are and must be. The gone is gone, the lost is lost, Fled irrevocably. Deserted by your own, Your spended lifelike mountain rill Has gone to swell the tide and fill Some sea unseen, unknown. Let this brave thought your comfort be, As thus you die alone. |
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