Narrative and Legendary Poems: the Bridal of Pennacook - From Volume I., the Works of Whittier
Whittier, John Greenleaf, 1807-1892
English
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Below is a summary of Narrative and Legendary Poems: the Bridal of Pennacook - From Volume I., the Works of Whittier
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NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY
POEMS
BY
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK
I. THE MERRIMAC
II. THE BASHABA
III. THE DAUGHTER
IV. THE WEDDING
V. THE NEW HOME
VI. AT PENNACOOK
VII. THE DEPARTURE
VIII. SONG OF INDIAN WOMEN
THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK.
Winnepurkit, otherwise called George, Sachem of Saugus, married a
daughter of Passaconaway, the great Pennacook chieftain, in 1662. The
wedding took place at Pennacook (now Concord, N. H.), and the ceremonies
closed with a great feast. According to the usages of the chiefs,
Passaconaway ordered a select number of his men to accompany the
newly-married couple to the dwelling of the husband, where in turn there
was another great feast. Some time after, the wife of Winnepurkit
expressing a desire to visit her father's house was permitted to go,
accompanied by a brave escort of her husband's chief men. But when she
wished to return, her father sent a messenger to Saugus, informing her
husband, and asking him to come and take her away. He returned for
answer that he had escorted his wife to her father's house in a style
that became a chief, and that now if she wished to return, her father
must send her back, in the same way. This Passaconaway refused to do,
and it is said that here terminated the connection of his daughter with
the Saugus chief.--Vide MORTON'S New Canaan.
WE had been wandering for many days
Through the rough northern country. We had seen
The sunset, with its bars of purple cloud,
Like a new heaven, shine upward from the lake
Of Winnepiseogee; and had felt
The sunrise breezes, midst the leafy isles
Which stoop their summer beauty to the lips
Of the bright waters. We had checked our steeds,
Silent with wonder, where the mountain wall
Is piled to heaven; and, through the narrow rift
Of the vast rocks, against whose rugged feet
Beats the mad torrent with perpetual roar,
Where noonday is as twilight, and the wind
Comes burdened with the everlasting moan
Of forests and of far-off waterfalls,
We had looked upward where the summer sky,
Tasselled with clouds light-woven by the sun,
Sprung its blue arch above the abutting crags
O'er-roofing the vast portal of the land
Beyond the wall of mountains. We had passed
The high source of the Saco; and bewildered
In the dwarf spruce-belts of the Crystal Hills,
Had heard above us, like a voice in the cloud,
The horn of Fabyan sounding; and atop
Of old Agioochook had seen the mountains'
Piled to the northward, shagged with wood, and thick
As meadow mole-hills,--the far sea of Casco,
A white gleam on the horizon of the east;
Fair lakes, embosomed in the woods and hills;
Moosehillock's mountain range, and Kearsarge
Lifting his granite forehead to the sun!
And we had rested underneath the oaks
Shadowing the bank, whose grassy spires are shaken
By the perpetual beating of the falls
Of the wild Ammonoosuc. We had tracked
The winding Pemigewasset, overhung
By beechen shadows, whitening down its rocks,
Or lazily gliding through its intervals,
From waving rye-fields sending up the gleam
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