17. Nathan
Nathan had sprung from worthy stock—
Austere, ascetical, but free, Which hewed their way from sea-beat rock Wherever woods and winter be. The pilgrim-keel in storm and stress Had erred, and on a wilderness. But shall the children all be schooled By hap which their forefathers ruled? Those primal settlers put in train
New emigrants which inland bore; From these too, emigrants again Westward pressed further; more bred more; At each remove a goodlier wain, A heart more large, an ampler shore, With legacies of farms behind; Until in years the wagons wind Through parks and pastures of the sun, Warm plains as of Esdraleon: 'Tis nature in her best benign. Wild, wild in symmetry of mould With freckles on her tawny gold, The lily alone looks pantherine—
The libbard-lily. Never broods
The gloom here of grim hemlock woods
Breeding the witcheraft-spell malign; But groves like isles in Grecian seas, Those dotting isles, the Sporades. But who the gracious charm may tell— Long rollings of the vast serene— The prairie in her swimming swell Of undulation. Such glad scene Was won by venturers from far Born under that severer star The landing patriarchs knew. In fine, To Illinois—a turf divine Of promise, how auspicious spread, Ere yet the cities rose thereon— From Saco's mountain wilds were led The sire of Nathan, wife and son; Life's lot to temper so, and shun Mountains whose camp withdrawn was set Above one vale he would forget. After some years their tale had told, He rested; lay forever stilled With sachems and mound-builders old. The son was grown; the farm he tilled; A stripling, but of manful ways, Hardy and frugal, oft he filled The widow's eyes with tears of praise. An only child, with her he kept For her sake part, the Christian way, Though frequent in his bosom crept Precocious doubt unbid. The sway He felt of his grave life, and power Of vast space, from the log-house door Daily beheld. Thrce Indian mounds Against the horizon's level bounds Dim showed across the prairie green Like dwarfed and blunted mimic shapes Of Pyramids at distance seen
From the broad Delta's planted capes
Of vernal grain. In nearer view
With trees he saw them crowned, which drew
From the red sagamores of eld
Entombed within, the vital gum
Which green kept each mausoleum. Hard by, as chanced, he once beheld Bones like sea corals; one bleached skull A vase vined round and beautiful With flowers; felt, with bated breath The floral revelry over death. And other sights his heart had thrilled; Lambs had he known by thunder killed, Innocents—and the type of Christ Betrayed. Had not such things sufficed To touch the young pure heart with awe, Memory's mint could move him more. In prairie twilight, summer's own, The last cow milked, and he alone In barn-yard dreamy by the fence, Contrasted, came a scene immense: The great White Hills, mount flanked by mount, The Saco and Ammonoosuc's fount; Where, in September's equinox Nature hath put such terror on That from his mother man would run—
Our mother, Earth: the founded rocks
Unstable prove: the Slide! the Slide! Again he saw the mountain side Sliced open; yet again he stood Under its shadow, on the spot— Now waste, but once a cultured plot, Though far from village neighborhood— Where, nor by sexton hearsed at even, Somewhere his uncle slept; no mound, Since not a trace of him was found, So whelmed the havoc from the heaven. This reminiscence of dismay, These thoughts unhinged him. On a day