John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.
Narrative and Legendary PoemsBirchbrook Mill
A
Beneath its leaning trees;
That low, soft ripple is its own,
That dull roar is the sea’s.
The distant church spire’s tip,
And, ghost-like, on a blank of gray,
The white sail of a ship.
It wanders at its will;
Nor dam nor pond is left to tell
Where once was Birchbrook mill.
Long since a farmer’s fires;
His doorsteps are the stones that ground
The harvest of his sires.
No right of her domain;
She waited, and she brought the old
Wild beauty back again.
Falls on its moist, green sod,
And wakes the violet bloom of spring
And autumn’s golden-rod.
The swallow dips her wings
In the cool spray, and on its banks
The gray song-sparrow sings.
The school-girl shrinks with dread;
The farmer, home-bound from his fields,
Goes by with quickened tread.
Of shadowy stone on stone;
The plashing of a water-wheel
Where wheel there now is none.
Above the clattering mill?
The pawing of an unseen horse,
Who waits his mistress still?
Has sight confirmed the sound;
A wavering birch line marks alone
The vacant pasture ground.
The agony of prayer;
No spectral steed impatient shakes
His white mane on the air.
No tongue has fitly told;
The secret of the dark surmise
The brook and birches hold.
Broods here forevermore?
What ghost his unforgiven sin
Is grinding o’er and o’er?
The actor’s tragic part,
Rehearsals of a mortal life
And unveiled human heart?
That drama of its ill,
And let the scenic curtain fall
On Birchbrook’s haunted mill!