I inscribed this poem to Dr. Elias Weld of Haverhill, Massachusetts, to whose kindness I was much indebted in my boyhood. He was the one cultivated man in the neighborhood. His small but well-chosen library was placed at my disposal. He is the “wise old doctor” of Snow-Bound. Count Francois de Vipart with his cousin Joseph Rochemont de Poyen came to the United States in the early part of the present century. They took up their residence at Rocks Village on the Merrimac, where they both married. The wife of Count Vipart was Mary Ingalls, who as my father remembered her was a very lovely young girl. Her wedding dress, as described by a lady still living, was “pink satin with an overdress of white lace, and white satin slippers.” She died in less than a year after her marriage. Her husband returned to his native country. He lies buried in the family tomb of the Viparts at Bordeaux.

You catch a glimpse, through birch and pine,
    Of gable, roof, and porch,
The tavern with its swinging sign,
    The sharp horn of the church.

The river’s steel-blue crescent curves
    To meet, in ebb and flow,
The single broken wharf that serves
    For sloop and gundelow.

With salt sea-scents along its shores
    The heavy hay-boats crawl,
The long antennae of their oars
    In lazy rise and fall.

Along the gray abutment’s wall
    The idle shad-net dries;
The toll-man in his cobbler’s stall
    Sits smoking with closed eyes.

You hear the pier’s low undertone
    Of waves that chafe and gnaw;
You start,—a skipper’s horn is blown
    To raise the creaking draw.

At times a blacksmith’s anvil sounds
    With slow and sluggard beat,
Or stage-coach on its dusty rounds
    Wakes up the staring street.

A place for idle eyes and ears,
    A cobwebbed nook of dreams;
Left by the stream whose waves are years
    The stranded village seems.

And there, like other moss and rust,
    The native dweller clings,
And keeps, in uninquiring trust,
    The old, dull round of things.

The fisher drops his patient lines,
    The farmer sows his grain,
Content to hear the murmuring pines
    Instead of railroad-train.

Go where, along the tangled steep
    That slopes against the west,
The hamlet’s buried idlers sleep
    In still profounder rest.

Throw back the locust’s flowery plume,
    The birch’s pale-green scarf,
And break the web of brier and bloom
    From name and epitaph.

A simple muster-roll of death,
    Of pomp and romance shorn,
The dry, old names that common breath
    Has cheapened and outworn.

Yet pause by one low mound, and part
    The wild vines o’er it laced,
And read the words by rustic art
    Upon its headstone traced.

Haply yon white-haired villager
    Of fourscore years can say
What means the noble name of her
    Who sleeps with common clay.

An exile from the Gascon land
    Found refuge here and rest,
And loved, of all the village band,
    Its fairest and its best.

He knelt with her on Sabbath morns,
    He worshipped through her eyes,
And on the pride that doubts and scorns
    Stole in her faith’s surprise.

Her simple daily life he saw
    By homeliest duties tried,
In all things by an untaught law
    Of fitness justified.

For her his rank aside he laid;
    He took the hue and tone
Of lowly life and toil, and made
    Her simple ways his own.

Yet still, in gay and careless ease,
    To harvest-field or dance
He brought the gentle courtesies,
    The nameless grace of France.

And she who taught him love not less
    From him she loved in turn
Caught in her sweet unconsciousness
    What love is quick to learn.

Each grew to each in pleased accord,
    Nor knew the gazing town
If she looked upward to her lord
    Or he to her looked down.

How sweet, when summer’s day was o’er,
    His violin’s mirth and wail,
The walk on pleasant Newbury’s shore,
    The river’s moonlit sail!

Ah! life is brief, though love be long;
    The altar and the bier,
The burial hymn and bridal song,
    Were both in one short year!

Her rest is quiet on the hill,
    Beneath the locust’s bloom:
Far off her lover sleeps as still
    Within his scutcheoned tomb.

The Gascon lord, the village maid,
    In death still clasp their hands;
The love that levels rank and grade
    Unites their severed lands.

What matter whose the hillside grave,
    Or whose the blazoned stone?
Forever to her western wave
    Shall whisper blue Garonne!

O Love!—so hallowing every soil
    That gives thy sweet flower room,
Wherever, nursed by ease or toil,
    The human heart takes bloom!—

Plant of lost Eden, from the sod
    Of sinful earth unriven,
White blossom of the trees of God
    Dropped down to us from heaven!—

This tangled waste of mound and stone
    Is holy for thy sake;
A sweetness which is all thy own
    Breathes out from fern and brake.

And while ancestral pride shall twine
    The Gascon’s tomb with flowers,
Fall sweetly here, O song of mine,
    With summer’s bloom and showers!

And let the lines that severed seem
    Unite again in thee,
As western wave and Gallic stream
    Are mingled in one sea!