NOWHERE fairer, sweeter, rarer,
Does the golden-looked fruit-bearer
Through his painted woodlands stray,
Than where hillside oaks and beeches
Overlook the long, blue reaches,
Silver coves and pebbled beaches,
And green isles of Casco Bay;
Nowhere day, for delay,
With a tenderer look beseeches,
“Let me with my charmed earth stay.”
On the grainlands of the mainlands
Stands the serried corn like train-bands,
Plume and pennon rustling gay;
Out at sea, the islands wooded,
Silver birches, golden-hooded,
Set with maples, crimson-blooded,
White sea-foam and sand-hills gray,
Stretch away, far away.
Dim and dreamy, over-brooded
By the hazy autumn day.
Gayly chattering to the clattering
Of the brown nuts downward pattering,
Leap the squirrels, red and gray.
On the grass-land, on the fallow,
Drop the apples, red and yellow;
Drop the russet pears and mellow,
Drop the red leaves all the day,
And away, swift away,
Sun and cloud, o’er hill and hollow
Chasing, weave their web of play.
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)
3 Responses
Lovely
Ah reggler people, 'bout as common as common sense.
Did my heart good, that did.
We all live in hope that a world like that actually exists……….somewhere.
Thank you.
The "reggler people" are the ones who are invisible to most of us, but so very important in our lives. They can show the scars, wounds and missing fingers as lesson to us summer folk; their institutional wisdom of the ways of the world we often refuse to credit and acknowledge. Us summer folk could not bring in a
well, empty our septic tanks, rebuild the dock after the winter, clean the pine needles off the cabin roof and shingle it. They are the town fire chief who also is the forest warden; the stone mason also maintains the stone wall around the cemetery graveyard; the waitress at the clam shack grows the flowers for local weddings and funerals.
I remember two "reggler people" who built the summer cottage camp by a Maine lake. Fred and Jane bought the acres of lakefront and forest
off Rt. 302, between Bridgton and Freyburg after
WW2, and selectively cut trees, built a gravel road down a steep hill from their farm,and created cabins,docks,beaches and even boats…In one
cold winter, a tree Fred was bringing down crushed his leg. He somehow crawled through the cold to get help. Over the years they raised 2 sons and built 14 rustic cottages that a mideastern potentate would envy. Generations of families happily returned, year after year to swim, fish and pick blueberries and climb into the fire lookout tower… Fred had a fiddle, Jane played the accordion at the Friday square dance on the main beach….Fred collected garbage twice a week, and we kids rode the dump truck to the dump uphill,surrounded by swill, screaming with the delight as he raised and lowered the dump body.
Those two "regglers" saved the best lot for themselves, to build in their retirement. As they have now passed, that beautiful cabin is rented out
by the family. I know it has the most scenic vista
up the lake toward mountains of Maine and New Hampshire…Fred's hunting license and proof of
bagging a moose in the hunting season of 1949
are among some things displayed in that home.
Thank you, you "regglers" for your gifts. You deserve all of the happiness in the video Sippy
has linked to. When we get to be hard to take,
take heart in the rear window of a workman's
pickup truck on Cape Cod…."I am not on your
vacation"
swill to hang on to the dump