BEAVER BROOK1 HUSHED with broad sunlight lies the hill, Warm noon brims full the valley's cup, Its busy, never-ceasing burr. Climbing the loose-piled wall that hems The road along the mill-pond's brink, 10 From 'neath the arching barberry-stems, My footstep scares the shy chewink. Beneath a bony buttonwood The mill's red door lets forth the din; The whitened miller, dust-imbued, Flits past the square of dark within. No mountain torrent's strength is here; And gently waits the miller's will. Swift slips Undine along the race 20 1 The little mill stands in a valley between one of the spurs of Wellington Hill and the main summit, just on the edge of Waltham. It is surely one of the loveliest spots in the world. It is one of my lions, and if you will make me a visit this spring I will take you up to hear it roar, and I will show you the oaks' - the largest, I fancy, left in the country. (LOWELL, in a letter of January 5, 1849. Quoted by permission of Messrs. Harper and Brothers.) The poem was originally called 'The Mill.' THE FIRST SNOW-FALL1 Had been heaping field and highway Every pine and fir and hemlock Wore ermine too dear for an earl, 1 See The Changeling' and 'She came and went.' In sending this poem to the Standard Lowell wrote: Print that as if you loved it. Let not a comma be blundered. Especially I fear they will put gleaming for gloaming in the first line unless you look to it. May you never have the key which shall unlock the whole meaning of the poem to you!' (Lowell's Letters, Harper and Brothers, letter of December 22, 1849.) |