The Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1877-1885, 1882-05-20
NEW POEM By WHITTIER
The Bay Of Seven Islands.

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The Bay Of Seven Islands.
The skipper sailed out Of the harbor mouth.
leaving the apple-bioom of the South
For the ice of the Eastern seas,
In MS fishing schooner Breeze.
Hanasome and brave and young was be,
And the maidens of Newbury sighed to see
His lessening white sails fall
Under the seas blue wall.
Thro' the Northern Gulf and the misty screen,
ST. Paul 8 and Blanc Sablon,
The little breeze sailed on.
Backward and forward along the shore
Oh wild and desolate Labrador.
And found at last her way
To the Seven Islands Bay.
The little hamlet, nesting below
Great hills white with lingering snow,
With It's fin-roofed chapale stood
Half hid in the dwarf spruce wood;
Green-turfed, fiower-sown, the last outpost,
OF Sumner upon the dreary coast
with Its gardens small and spare,
Sad In the frosty air.
Hard by where the skipper's schooner lay,
"A hsnerman cottage looked away
Over isle and bay, and behind,
On mountains dim-defined.
and there twin sisters, fair and young,
Laughed with their stranger guest, and sung
In their native tongue the lays
OF the old Provencaldays
Alike were they, save the faint outline
OF a scare ON Suzettes forehead fine:
And both, ii SO befeIi,
Both were pleasant TO look upon,
But the heart of the skipper clave 70 me;
Tho less by his eye than heart
He knew the twain apart.
Despite of alien race and creed,
Well did his wooing of Marguerite speed:
Ana the mothers wrath was vain
As the sisters jealous pain.
The shrill-tongued mistress her house forbade.
And solemn warning was sternly said
By the back-robed priest whose word,
As law the hamlet heard.
But half by voice and half by signs,
On the green-b banked Merrimac,
Wait, watch, till come back.
-, And when you see, from my mast head.
The signal fly of a kerchief red,
Ny boat on the shore shall wait:
Come. when the night is late.'
Ahi weighed with childhood's haunts and
fri ends,
And all that the home sky overbends,
To turn the trembling scale2
sowy uncIasped 4 9e arg pshs ted hands
One TO the cottage hearth,
And one to his sailors berth.
What was it the parting lovers hearda
Nor leaf, nor ripple, nor wing of bird,
But listeners stealthy tread
On the rock-moss, crisp and dead.
He weighed his anchor, and fished once more
BY the back coast-line of Labrador;
And by love and the north wind driven.
Sailed back to the Islands Seven.
In the sunsets glow the sisters twain
Said Suzette, Mother dear,
The heretic's sail is here"
ys,r Marg9,srife, to y your room and hide;
While Suzette, i'll at ease,
Watched the red sigh of the Breeze.
At midnight down TO the waiting skiff
She stole in the shadow of the cliff;
And out of the bays mouth ran
The schooner with maid and man.
And all night long, on restless bed.
Her prayers to the Virgin Marguerite said;
Ara7 zrrf14 NElx Howe % rnaTrr
Waiting for her in vain
But when she saw thro' the misty pane
The morning break on sea of rain,
Could even her love avail =
To follow his vanished sail?
Meantime the Breeze, with favoring wind,
And heard from an unseen shore
The falls of Manitou roar.
On the morrow's morn, in the thick, graz
They sat on the reeling deck together,
Lover and counterfeit,
OF hapless Marguerite.
He smoothed away her jet-black hair,
What was it his fond eyes met?
The scar of the false Suzettei
FfercIy he shouted: "Bear away
East by north for Seven Isles Bayi"
The maiden wept and prayed,
But the ship her helm obeyed.
TheV heard the bell of the chapel sound.
And the chant of the dying sung
In the harsh, wild Indian tongue.
A feeling of mystery change and awe
Was in all they heard and all they saw;
SDelI-bound the hamlet lay
In the hush of its lonely bay.
And when they came to the cottage door,
The mother rose up from her weeping sore,
And with angry gestures met
The scared look of Suzette-
Here is your daughter the skipper said:
"GiYe me the one love instead"
But the woman Sternly spake;
's3o, see if the dead wiz wakef
He looked. Her sweet face still and white
And strange in the MONDAY taper light,
She lay on her little bed,
With the cross at her feet and head.
In passion of grief the strong man bent
Down to her face, and kissing it, went
Back to the waiting Breeze,
Back to the mournful seas.
Never again to the MerTimac
And Newbury's homes that bark came back,
Whether her fate she met
On the shores of CarraQuette.
But even yet at Seven Isles Bay
Is told the ghostly tale,
Of weird, unspoken san.
In the pale, sad light of the Northern day,
Seen by the blankeled MontagnaiS,
Orsquaw, in her small kyack,
Crossing the spectre's track
On the deck a maiden rings her hands,
Her likeness kneels on the gray coast sands;
One in her wild despair,
And one in the trance of prayer.
She fits before no earthly blast,
W 18th the red sign fluttering from her mast.
Over the solemn seas.
The ghost of the schooner Breeze!
John g. Whittier in the February Atlantic
Monthly.