The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1855-10-11
THE WILEY HOUSE.
A BALLAD OF THE WHITE UILLs

anu near tdic Il nave 10 tell.
You see that cottage in the glen,
Yon desolate, forsaken she'd
Whose mouidering threshold, now and thea,
Osiy a few stray travellers tread.
No smoke is curling from its root,
AT eve no cattle gather round;
No neighbor now, with dint of hoof
Prints his glad visit on the ground
happy home il was of yore
AT morn the focks went nibbling by,
And Farmer Wiley, al his door,
on 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-every one knew her.
Two summers now had scared the hills,
Two years of little rain or 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 iii bring us rain, It's blestn
And even with his word smell
Of sprinkled fields passed through the air,
And from single cloud there fell
few large drops-the rain was there.
Ere set of sun, a thunder-stroke
Gave signal TO the floods 10 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;
"Well have enough Of rain anon"
Said Wiley, if this deluge lastr
For all these cliffs that stand sublime
Around, like solemn priests appeared,
Gray druds 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 " illeys' quiet home
Was naught but silence and Good night"
For soon they went TO their repose,
And in their beds, all safe and wsrm
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 wifi, who siruck a hight
The horses wnnnyIng IN uau,
And " children! A" was the only word
That woman from her lips let fall.
"Mother!" the frighted infants cried,
"What is it, has a whirlwind GOMEZ"
Wildly the weeping mother eyed
Each little darling, but was dumb.
sound! as though a mighty gale
Some forest from its hold had riven,
Mixed with a rafting noise like hail;
God, art thou raining rocks from heaven?
The mountain moving from his seat!
Out! out into the slippery road!
Into the wet, with naked feet,
No time for dress-for life for life!
No time for any word but this
The father grasped his boys-his wife
Snatched her young babe, but not TO kiss.
And Mary with the younger girl
Barefoot and shivering in their smocks,
Sped forth amid that angry whirl
brushing waves and whelmng rocks
For down the mountains oTumblng side,
Full half the mountain from on high
Came sinking, like the SHOWS that slide
From the great Alps about July.
And with il went the lordly ash,
And with it went the kingly pine;
Cedar 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 s,reamed with dust and smoke,
food of earth, and stones, and sand.
Then for 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 Aldebaran burned again;
The buried river rose once more,
And fosmed along his gravelly glen.
~.
AT morn the men of Conway felt
Some dreadful thing had CHANGED that night,
And those by Breton woods who dwelt
Observed the mountains altered height.
Old Crawford and tho Fsbyan lad
Came down from Amonoosuck then,
And passed the No,ch--ah. strange and sad
II was to see the ravaged glen.
But having toiled for miles, in doubt,
With many q risk of limb and neck,
They saw, and hailed with joyful shout,
The Wiley House amid the wreck.
That avalanche of stones aud sand,
Remembering mercy in it's wrath
Had parted, and on either hand
Pursued the ruin of its path.
And there, upon its pleasant slope,
Inc cOldkc, ike u SUNNY Isle
That wakes the shipwrecked sesmsn'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 ant bed
The chilaren's little shoes were there
But whittier were the children fedl
That day womsn's head, all gsshed,
Its long hair sure aiming in the flow,
Went DER the dam, and then was dashed
Among the whirlpools down below.
And farther down, by Saco side,
They found the msngled forms OF four,
Held in an eddy Of the tide;
But Mary, she was seen no more.
Yet never to this mournful vale
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,
Aid its last rafter is decayed,
Its history may yet live on,
In this your ballad that made.
RItndm's NoRthls