With a stifled cry of horror straight she turned away her head; With a sad and bitter feeling looked she back upon her dead; But she heard the youth's low moaning, and his struggling breath of pain, And she raised the cooling water to his parching lips again. Whispered low the dying soldier, pressed her hand and faintly smiled; Was that pitying face his mother's? did she watch beside her child? All his stranger words with meaning her woman's heart supplied; With her kiss upon his forehead, 'Mother!' murmured he, and died! Spake the mournful Mexic woman, as she laid him with her dead, And turned to soothe the living, and bind the wounds which bled. Look forth once more, Ximena! Like a cloud before the wind Rolls the battle down the mountains, leaving blood and death behind; Ah! they plead in vain for mercy; in the dust the wounded strive; Hide your faces, holy angels! O thou Christ of God, forgive!' Sink, O Night, among thy mountains! let the cool, gray shadows fall; Dying brothers, fighting demons, drop thy curtain over all! Through the thickening winter twilight, wide apart the battle rolled, In the sheath the sabre rested, and the cannon's lips grew cold. 60 But the noble Mexic women still their holy task pursued, Through that long, dark night of sorrow, worn and faint and lacking food. Over weak and suffering brothers, with a tender care they hung, And the dying foeman blessed them in a strange and Northern tongue. Not wholly lost, O Father! is this evil world of ours; Upward, through its blood and ashes, spring afresh the Eden flowers; From its smoking hell of battle, Love and THE HUSKERS 1847 It was late in mild October, and the long autumnal rain Had left the summer harvest-fields all green with grass again; The first sharp frosts had fallen, leaving all the woodlands gay With the hues of summer's rainbow, or the meadow-flowers of May. And lo! as through the western pines, on meadow, stream, and pond, Flamed the red radiance of a sky, set all afire beyond, Slowly o'er the eastern sea-bluffs a milder glory shone, And the sunset and the moonrise were mingled into one! As thus into the quiet night the twilight lapsed away, And deeper in the brightening moon the tranquil shadows lay; From many a brown old farm-house, and hamlet without name, Their milking and their home-tasks done, the merry huskers came. 40 1 The 'Lake of the Hills' is Lake Winnipesaukee. One of Whittier's favorite resorts was West Ossipee, at the foot of the Ossipee Mountains, just northeast of the lake. See Pickard's Whittier-Land, pp. 109-115; his Life of Whittier, vol. ii, p. 669; and Whittier's Among the Hills' and 'Summer by the Lakeside.' 2 Mt. Chocorua, north of West Ossipee, the most picturesque, though by no means the highest, of the mountains of New England. Its cone is formed of a peculiar reddish stone known as Chocorua granite.' For the legend of the Indian chief from whom it was named, see Thomas Starr King's The White Hills, or Sweetser's White Mountains, p. 341. See also Whittier's 'How They Climbed Chocorua' in Whittier-Land, pp. 111-114. One of Longfellow's early poems, 'Jeckoyva,' had the Indian chief Chocorua for its hero. 3 The name Winnipesaukee is popularly thought to mean The Smile of the Great Spirit.' Students of the Indian languages, however, agree that its real meaning is Beautiful Water in a High Place.' |