_ Early Letters To John S. Dwight
Chapter XXVIII
CONCORD,
Sept. 14, 1845. My dear Friend,--I returned last week from a long and beautiful visit to the mountains, among which I had never been before. I went in the middle of July to Berkshire, and returned home for two or three days to set off for the White Hills, and back again through the length of Berkshire. In all about seven weeks. The garden served us very well. We had weeded so faithfully that weeds did not trouble us, and Burrill stayed in Concord a part of the time I was in New Hampshire.
When I first came towards the mountains it was twilight, and they looked very cold and grim; their outline traced against the sky, and seemingly made of some other material than earth or sky--too dense for the one and too ethereal for the other. But when I came to them in broad day, they had lost their terror, as any other night phantom would have done. When I could scale them with my eye, and stand upon their highest peak, I seemed to have subdued them. But as I retreated, and looked back, they resumed their twilight majesty; and I could not realize I had been so proud among them. Yet, after all, they did not command me as the sea does. The charm of that is not robbed by being in it or upon it. All night and all day its murmur sounds an infinite bass to all that is done and said; and in the night, when you awake, it holds you still in thrall. Like the song of the locust in a summer noon, which fills the air with music and intensifies the heat, so the sound of the sea constantly draws thought and life to its depth and sweetness. Among the hills I was haunted with the vague desire of some corresponding sound. They were like a dumb Apollo, a thunderless Jupiter.
In Berkshire they are less grand than in New Hampshire, but high enough to cease to be hills, and wooded quite to the summit. They give an endless variety to the landscape, and are full everywhere of beautiful places and commanding prospects through the openings. The aspect of the country and the character of the people were so different from the country and people near a city, that it seemed to be more recently created.
Frank Parley is there in Stockbridge, and seems to be very happy. At Williamstown, the northern town in the county, we saw George Wells. He has only changed to become more entirely a collegian, but retains the same cordiality and carelessness that made us love him at Brook Farm. I have so many things to say about my wanderings that I cannot write any more, for I mean to come to Brook Farm and see you some day during the autumn. In the late autumn we are going to New York to pass the winter.
Give my love to Mrs. Ripley and the Archon, and to the two Charleses, and believe me, as always, your friend,
G.W.C.
On the next page I write a little song, which you shall print if you think it worth the space. Nameless and dateless if you please.
AUTUMN SONG
The gold corn in the field
And the asters in the meadow,
And the heavy clouds that yield
To the hills a crown of shadow,
Mark the ending of the Summer,
And the Autumn coming in,
A crimson-eyed new-comer,
Whose voice is cold and thin,
As he whispers to the flowers,
"Lo, all this time is ours."
I remember, long ago,
When the soft June days were wasted,
That the Autumn and the snow
In the after-heats were tasted;
For the sultry August weather
Burned the freshness from the trees,
And the woods and I, together,
Mourned the Winter, that must freeze
The silver singing streams
Which fed our Summer dreams.
Through the yellow afternoon
Rolls the wagon harvest-laden,
And beneath the harvest moon
At the husking sings the maiden;
While without the winds are flowing
Like long aerial waves,
And their scythe-sharp breath is mowing
The flowers upon the graves.
When the husking is all o'er
The maiden sings no more.
To ----
Thy spirit was a flexile harp, whereon
The moonlight fell like delicatest air,
Thro' thee its beauty flowing into tone
Which charmed the silence with a sound as rare.
Thou peaceful maid! the music then I heard,
Whose influence had moulded thy soft eyes
To their deep tone of tenderness: O! bird,
Whose life is fed with thine own melodies. _