Plutarch was good, and so was Homer too,
Our Shakespeare's life were rich to live again,
What Plutarch read, that was not good nor true,
Nor Shakespeare's books, unless his books were men
Here while I lie beneath this walnut bough,
What care I for the Greeks or for Troy town,
If juster battles are enacted now
Between the ants upon this hummock's crown?
Bid Homer wait till I the issue learn,
If red or black the gods will favor most,
Or yonder Ajax will the phalanx turn,
Struggling to heave some rock against the host.
Tell Shakespeare to attend some leisure hour,
For now I've business with this drop of dew,
And see you not, the clouds prepare a shower, -
I'll meet him shortly when the sky is blue.
This bed of herd's-grass and wild oats was spread
Last year with nicer skill than monarchs use,
A clover tuft is pillow for my head,
And violets quite overtop my shoes.
And now the cordial clouds have shut all in
And gently swells the wind to say all's well
The scattered drops are falling fast and thin,
Some in the pool, some in the flower-bell.
I am well drenched upon my bed of oats;
But see that globe come rolling down its stem
Now like a lonely planet there it floats,
And now it sinks into my garment's hem.
Drip drip the trees for all the country round,
And richness rare distils from every bough,
The wind alone it is makes every sound,
Shaking down crystals on the leaves below.
For shame the sun will never show himself,
Who could not with his beams e'er melt me so,
My dripping locks, - they would become an elf,
Who in a beaded coat does gayly go.
The Pinnacle is a small wooded hill which rises very abruptly to
the height of about two hundred feet, near the shore at Hooksett
Falls. As Uncannunuc Mountain is perhaps the best point from
which to view the valley of the Merrimack, so this hill affords
the best view of the river itself. I have sat upon its summit, a
precipitous rock only a few rods long, in fairer weather, when
the sun was setting and filling the river valley with a flood of
light. You can see up and down the Merrimack several miles each
way. The broad and straight river, full of light and life, with
its sparkling and foaming falls, the islet which divides the
stream, the village of Hooksett on the shore almost directly
under your feet, so near that you can converse with its
inhabitants or throw a stone into its yards, the woodland lake at
its western base, and the mountains in the north and northeast,
make a scene of rare beauty and completeness, which the traveller
should take pains to behold.
We were hospitably entertained in Concord, New Hampshire, which
we persisted in calling _New_ Concord, as we had been wont, to
distinguish it from our native town, from which we had been told
that it was named and in part originally settled. This would
have been the proper place to conclude our voyage, uniting
Concord with Concord by these meandering rivers, but our boat was
moored some miles below its port.
The richness of the intervals at Penacook, now Concord, New
Hampshire, had been observed by explorers, and, according to the
historian of Haverhill, in the
"year 1726, considerable progress was made in the settlement,
and a road was cut through the wilderness from Haverhill to
Penacook. In the fall of 1727, the first family, that of
Captain Ebenezer Eastman, moved into the place. His team was
driven by Jacob Shute, who was by birth a Frenchman, and he is
said to have been the first person who drove a team through the
wilderness. Soon after, says tradition, one Ayer, a lad of 18,
drove a team consisting of ten yoke of oxen to Penacook, swam
the river, and ploughed a portion of the interval. He is
supposed to have been the first person who ploughed land in
that place. After he had completed his work, he started on his
return at sunrise, drowned a yoke of oxen while recrossing the
river, and arrived at Haverhill about midnight. The crank of
the first saw-mill was manufactured in Haverhill, and carried
to Penacook on a horse."
But we found that the frontiers were not this way any longer.
This generation has come into the world fatally late for some
enterprises. Go where we will on the _surface_ of things, men
have been there before us. We cannot now have the pleasure of
erecting the _last_ house; that was long ago set up in the
suburbs of Astoria City, and our boundaries have literally been
run to the South Sea, according to the old patents. But the
lives of men, though more extended laterally in their range, are
still as shallow as ever. Undoubtedly, as a Western orator said,
"Men generally live over about the same surface; some live long
and narrow, and others live broad and short"; but it is all
superficial living. A worm is as good a traveller as a
grasshopper or a cricket, and a much wiser settler. With all
their activity these do not hop away from drought nor forward to
summer. We do not avoid evil by fleeing before it, but by rising
above or diving below its plane; as the worm escapes drought and
frost by boring a few inches deeper. The frontiers are not east
or west, north or south, but wherever a man _fronts_ a fact,
though that fact be his neighbor, there is an unsettled
wilderness between him and Canada, between him and the setting
sun, or, farther still, between him and _it_. Let him build
himself a log-house with the bark on where he is, _fronting_
^it^, and wage there an Old French war for seven or seventy
years, with Indians and Rangers, or whatever else may come
between him and the reality, and save his scalp if he can.
