Toward that end all
women who long to help, yet see no outlook, may work, and with its full
recognition will come the day for which we wait--a day whose faint dawn
even now flushes the east and gives promise, dim yet sure, of the
slowly-nearing light, holding even when most clouded the certainty of
Purer manners, nobler laws.
--HELEN CAMPBELL.
DELECTATIO PISCATORIA.
THE UPPER KENNEBEC.
From the great mere set round with sunbright mountains
Full born the river leaps,
Dashing the crystal of a thousand fountains
Down its romantic steeps.
'Tis now a torrent whose untamed endeavor
Is eager for the sea,
Angry that rock or reef should hinder ever
Its frantic liberty.
Then, for a space, a lake and river blended,
It sleeps with tranquil breast,
As if its haste and rage at last were ended,
And all it sought was rest.
In spicy woodpaths by its rapids straying,
I hear, with lingering feet,
Its liquid organ and the treetops playing
Te Deums strangely sweet.
I break the covert: pictured far emerges
On the enraptured sight
The arrowy flow, green isles, a cascade's surges,
Foam-flaked in rosy light,
Still pools, and purples of the sleepy sedges,
The skyward forest-wall,
Old sorrowing pines and hazy mountain-ledges,
And soft blue over all.
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