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Volume 3 (1858-1859) (592 pages)
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Page: of 592
302 TIUTCHINGS’ CALIFORNIA MAGAZINE.
On hearing of this, Miles is indignant at
what he considers his friend’s treachery,
and departs in anger, at the head of an
expediticn against the hostile Indians.
Alden prepares to. return to England in
the May Flower, but is withheld by Priscilla’s earnest entreaties. Their courtship continues; news arrives that Miles
is slain; then,
“Even as rivulets twain, from distant and separate
sources,
Seeing each other afar, as they leap from the rocks,
and pursuing
Each one its devious path, but drawing nearer and
nearer,
Rush together at last, at their trysting-place in the
‘orest 5
So these lives that had run thus far in separate
channels,
Coming in sight of each other, then severing and
flowing asunder,
Parted by barriers strong, but drawing nearer and
nearer,
Rushed together at last, and one was lost in the
other.”
The wedding takes place; Standish suddenly appears, atones for his anger to
Alden, and declares his approval of the
marriage, for
‘No man can gather cherries in Kent at the season
of Christmas !’’
And the poem terminates with the bridal
procession,
Miles Standish is the true soldier of
theday. His demeanor, his impetuosity,
his overbearing dictation, his bluntness,
his contemptuous hatred to the Indians,
eyen his dry humor, belong to his age
and time. Not less correctly depicted is
the gentle scribe, Alden, constraining all
natural feelings, looking upon their indulgence as sinful, and, with the fanaticism of the age, classing his innocent
affection with David’s wild passion for
Bathsheba. The modest Priscilla, likewise, full of shy playfulness,
“‘ Making the humble house, and the modest apparel
of homespun,
Beautiful with her beauty, and rich with the wealth
of her being,” —
curbing her love as none but a Puritan
maiden would, yet honestly declaring
and discussing it as none but a Puritan
maiden could,—the gruff captain of the
May Flower,
‘ Taking each by the hand, as if he we. e grasping a
tiller,—
Glad to begone from a land of sand and sickness and
sorrow, .
Short allowance of victual, and plenty of nothing but
Gospel !””
the venerable Elder,—
“ Only one of them old, the hill that was nearest to
Heaven,
Covered with snow, but erect, the excellent Elder of
Plymouth,”—
the Indian messenger,—
* The glistening savage,
Bearing the serpent’s skin, and seeming himself like
a serpent,
Winding his sinuous way in the dark to the deptha of
the forest,”—
all form so complete a picture of the
time, that one would think the poet had
lived in that day, and now, like the Seven
Sleepers, had awakened to tell to the
present generation the manners of the
past.
. One especial characteristic of Longfellow’s poetry is its power of touching
the feelings. His heart, as evinced in
his poems, like the “beating drum,” to
which he has himself compared it, knows
and sounds the call, to which, from regiment to regiment, from tent to tent, in
the vast camp of human existence, other
hearts send forth the answering signal.
Vitality is likewise a marked characteristic of this poet. His characters all
live and move before us. He is a great
“ word-painter.” Witness Hiawatha’s
wooing, the death-bed of Minnehaha,
the arrival of the ship and landing of
the priest. What painting could bring
those scenes and characters more vividly
before us, than the words of the poet have
done? And what painting could echo
the sweet welcome of the birds, the rabbits, the sun, the moon, as the wedded
pair seek their homes,—the plaintive
wail of old Nokomis, or the farewells of
the sea, the wind, the forest trees, and
the screaming heron, as Hiawatha’s canoe
fades on the horizon?
This is also especially evident in the
poem before us. The home of Miles
Standish, its furniture, the shelf of books,
and amongst them,
“ Prominent there, distinguished alike for bulk and
for binding,