Semi-weekly standard. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1853-18??, 1855-10-20
From Putnam s Magazine for October.
THE WILEY HOUSE.
A BALLAD OF THE WHrTE HILLs.


At eve no cattle gather round,
No neighbor now, with dnt of hoof,
Prints his glad visit on the ground.
A happy home it was of yore:
At morn the hocks went nibbling by,
And Farmer Wiley, at his door,
Oft made their reckoning with his eye.
Where yon rank alder trees have sprung,
And birches cluster, thick and tall,
Once the stout apple overhung,
With his red gifts, the orchard wall.
Right fond and pleasant, in their ways
The gentle Wiley people were,
knew them in those peaceful days,
And Mary-eyery one knew her.
Two summers now had scared the hills,
Two years of little rain dew;
High up the courses of the rills
The wild-rose and the raspberry grew:
The mountain sides were cracked and dry,
And frequent assures ON the plain,
Like mouths, gaped open to the sky
AS though the parched earth prayed for rain.
One sultry August afternoon,
Old Wiley looking toward the west,
Said" We shall hear the thunder soon:
Oh! if it bring US rain, tits best,"
And even with his word, smell
Of sprinked fields passed through the air
And from u single cloud there fell
few large drops-the rain was there.
Ere set of sun thunder-stroke
Gave signal t. the floods to rise:
Then the great seal of heaven was broke
Then burst the gates that barred the skies!
While from the west the clouds rolled on,
And from the nor'west gathered fast;
Gwen have enough of rain anon,'
Said Willey-"lf this deluge last"
For all the cliffs that stand sublime
Around, like solemn priests appeared,
Gray Druids of the olden time
Each with his white and streaming beard.
Till in one sheet of seething foam
The mingling torrents joined their might;
But in the Wileys' quiet home
Was naught but silence and Good night"
For soon they went to their repose,
And in their BEDS all safe and warm,
Saw not how fast the waters rose,
Heard not the growing of the storm.
But Just before the stroke of ten,
Old Wiley looked into the night,
And called upon his two hired men,
And woke his wife, who struck light;
Though her hand trembIed as she heard
The horses whinnving in the stall,
And" children !" was the only word,
That woman from her lips let fall.
"Mcther!'' the frighted infants cried,
What is it !? has whrlwind comet"
Wildly the weeping neither eyed
Each little darling, but was dumb.
A sound as though mighty gale
Some forest from its hold had riven,
Mixed with rafting noise like hail,
God art thou raining rocks from heaven?
flash! oh Christ! the lightning showed
The mountain moving from his seat!
Out! out into the slippery road!
Into the wet with naked feet!
No time for d-ess-for life! for life!
No time for any word but this:
The father grasped his boys-hs wife
Snatched her young babe-but not to kiss.
And Mary with the younger girl,
Barefoot aud shivering in their smocks,
Sped forth amid that angry whirl
Of rushing waves and wheming rocks.
For down the mountains crumbling side,
Full half the mountain from on high
Came sinking, like the SHOWS that slide
From the great Alps about July.
And with it wen the Iordly ash,
And with it went the kingly pine,
Ceder and oak amid the crash;
Dropped down like clippings of the vine.
Two rivers rushed-the one that broke
His wonted bounds and drowned the land,
And one that strealned with dust and smoke,
A flood of earth, of stones and sand.
Then for a time the vale was dry
The soil had swallowed up the wave;
Till one star looking from the sky,
A signal to the tempest gave:
The clouds withdrew, the storm was DER,
Bright Adebaran burned again;
The buried river rose once more,
And foamed along his gravelly glenn.
At morn the men of Conway felt
Some dreadful thing had CHANGED that night,
And those by Breton woods who dwet
Observed the mountains altered height.
Old Crawford and the Fabyan lad
Came down from Amonoosuck then,
And passed the Notch-ah strange and sad
1t was to see the ravaged glen.
But having toiled for miles, in doubt,
With many risk of limb and neck,
They saw and hailed with joyful shout
The Wiley House amid the wreck.
That avalanche of stones and sand
Remembering mercy in its wrath,
Had parted, and on either hand,
Pursued the ruin of it's path
And there upon its pleasant slope,
The cottage, like sunny isle,
That wakes the shipwrecked seaman's hope,
Amid that horror seemed to smile.
And still upon the lawn before, -.
The peaceful sheep were nibbling nigh;
But Farmer Wiley at his door
Stood not to count them with his eye.
And in the dwelling-O despair!
The silent room the vacant bed!
The children's little shoes were there
But whittier were the children fled !?
That day O womans head all gashed
Its long hair streaming in the flow,
Went DER the dam, and then was dashed
Among the whirlpoos down below.
And farther down, by Saco side,
They found the nlangled form of four,
Held in eddy of the tide;
But Mary. she was seen no more.
Yet never to this mournfu vale 49,
Shall any maid, in summer time,
Come without thinking of the tale
now have told you in my rhyme.
And when the Wiley House is gone,
And it's last rafter is decayed,
Its history may yet live on
In this your ballad that made. - -
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