Over The Old Wooden Bridges No
Traveller Crossed, And Neither The River Nor The Fishes Avoided
To Glide Between The Abutments.
Here was a village not far off behind the woods, Billerica,
settled not long ago, and the children still
Bear the names of
the first settlers in this late "howling wilderness"; yet to all
intents and purposes it is as old as Fernay or as Mantua, an old
gray town where men grow old and sleep already under moss-grown
monuments, - outgrow their usefulness. This is ancient Billerica,
(Villarica?) now in its dotage, named from the English
Billericay, and whose Indian name was Shawshine. I never heard
that it was young. See, is not nature here gone to decay, farms
all run out, meeting-house grown gray and racked with age? If
you would know of its early youth, ask those old gray rocks in
the pasture. It has a bell that sounds sometimes as far as
Concord woods; I have heard that, - ay, hear it now. No wonder
that such a sound startled the dreaming Indian, and frightened
his game, when the first bells were swung on trees, and sounded
through the forest beyond the plantations of the white man. But
to-day I like best the echo amid these cliffs and woods. It is
no feeble imitation, but rather its original, or as if some rural
Orpheus played over the strain again to show how it should sound.
Dong, sounds the brass in the east,
As if to a funeral feast,
But I like that sound the best
Out of the fluttering west.
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