Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889
Stanzas from “Fryeburg”
By Henry Bernard Carpenter (1840–1890)T
O ye strong hills, bear witness to my verse,
Thou “Maledetto,” mountain of the curse,
Chocorua, blasted by thy chief, and thou,
Kearsarge, slope-shouldered monarch of this vale,
Who gavest thy conquering name to that swift sail
Which caught in Gallic seas the rebel bark,
And downward drove the Alabama’s pride
To deep sea-sleep in Cherbourg’s ravening tide,
What time faint Commerce watched a nation’s ark
Sinking with shattered side.
’T
When, in that temple reared of old to Truth,
He rose, in the bronze bloom of blood-bright youth,
To speak what he respake when death was nigh.
Strongly he stood, Olympian-framed, with front
Like some carved crag where sleeps the lightning’s brunt,
Black, thunderous brows, and thunderous deep-toned speech
Like Pericles, of whom the people said
That when he spake it thundered; round him spread
The calm of summer nights when the stars teach
In silence overhead.