THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS.

FROM the green Amesbury hill which bears the name

Of that half mythic ancestor of mine

Who trod its slopes two hundred years ago,

Down the long valley of the Merrimac,

Midway between me and the river's mouth,

I see thy home, set like an eagle's nest

Among Deer Island's immemorial pines,

Crowning the crag on which the sunset breaks

Its last red arrow. Many a tale and song,

Which thou bast told or sung, I call to mind,

Softening with silvery mist the woods and hills,

The out-thrust headlands and inreaching bays

Of our northeastern coast-line, trending where

The Gulf, midsummer, feels the chill blockade

Of icebergs stranded at its northern gate.

To thee the echoes of the Island Sound

Answer not vainly, nor in vain the moan

Of the South Breaker prophesying storm.

And thou hast listened, like myself, to men

Sea-periled oft where Anticosti lies

Like a fell spider in its web of fog,

Or where the Grand Bank shallows with the wrecks

Of sunken fishers, and to whom strange isles

And frost-rimmed bays and trading stations seem

Familiar as Great Neck and Kettle Cove,

Nubble and Boon, the common names of home.

So let me offer thee this lay of mine,

Simple and homely, lacking much thy play

Of color and of fancy. If its theme

And treatment seem to thee befitting youth

Rather than age, let this be my excuse

It has beguiled some heavy hours and called

Some pleasant memories up; and, better still,

Occasion lent me for a kindly word

To one who is my neighbor and my friend.