Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE MOUNTAIN MAID, by EDNA DEAN PROCTOR


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE MOUNTAIN MAID, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: O the mountain maid, new hampshire!
Last Line: Is the rarest of them all!
Alternate Author Name(s): Dean
Subject(s): Mountains; New Hampshire; Hills; Downs (great Britain)


O THE Mountain Maid, New Hampshire!
Her steps are light and free,
Whether she treads the lofty heights
Or follows the brooks to the sea!
Her eyes are clear as the skies that hang
Over her hills of snow,
And her hair is dark as the densest shade
That falls where the fir-trees grow —
The fir-trees slender and sombre
That climb from the vales below.

Sweet is her voice as the robin's
In a lull of the wind of March
Wooing the shy arbutus
At the roots of the budding larch;
And rich as the ravishing echoes
On still Franconia's lake
When the boatman winds his magic horn
And the tongues of the wood awake,
While the huge Stone-Face forgets to frown
And the hare peeps out of the brake.

The blasts of stormy December
But brighten the bloom on her cheek,
And the snows build her statelier temples
Than to goddess were reared by the Greek.
She welcomes the fervid summer,
And flies to the sounding shore
Where bleak Boar's Head looks seaward,
Set in the billows' roar,
And dreams of her sailors and fishers
Till cool days come once more.

Then how fair is the maiden,
Crowned with the scarlet leaves,
And wrapped in the tender, misty veil
Her Indian Summer weaves! —
While the aster blue, and the goldenrod,
And immortelles, clustering sweet,
From Canada down to the sea have spread
A carpet for her feet;
And the faint witch-hazel buds unfold,
Her latest smile to greet.

She loves the song of the reaper;
The ring of the woodman's steel;
The whir of the glancing shuttle;
The rush of the tireless wheel.
But, if war befalls, her sons she calls
From mill and forge and lea,
And bids them uphold her banner
Till the land from strife is free;
And she hews her oaks into mighty ships
That sweep the foe from the sea.

O the Mountain Maid, New Hampshire!
For beauty and wit and will
I'll pledge her, in draughts from her crystal springs,
Rarest on plain or hill!
New York is a princess in purple
By the gems of her cities crowned;
Illinois with the garland of Ceres
Her tresses of gold has bound,
Queen of the limitless prairies
Whose great sheaves heap the ground;

And out by the vast Pacific,
Their gay young sisters say:
'Ours are the mines of the Indies,
And the treasures of far Cathay';
And the dames of the South walk proudly
Where the fig and the orange fall,
And, hid in the high magnolias,
The mocking thrushes call;
But the Mountain Maid, New Hampshire,
Is the rarest of them all!





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