The doubt, the trouble, and the cloud, were brought,
‘T was at the thought,
That cruel circumstance two souls must sever,
Whom God, he surely felt, would else have join’d for ever.
Uneasy now became perforce
The inevitable intercourse,
Too grateful heretofore:
Each in the other could descry
The tone constrain’d, the alter’d eye.
They knew that each to each could seem
No longer as of yore;
And yet, Avhile thus estranged, I deem,
Each loved the other more.
Her’s was perhaps the saddest heart;
His the more forced and painful part:
A sense of proper maiden pride
To her the needful strength supplied.
Then first perhaps the Virgin thought
How large a dower of love and faithfulness
Her gentle spirit could have brought
A kindred heart to bless;
Herself then first she understood
With what capacities endued;
Then first, by undeserved neglect
Roused to a consciousness of self-respect,
Felt she was not more willing to be won
Than worthy to be woo’d.
Had they from such disturbant thoughts been free,
It had been sure for them
A gladsome sight to see
The Indian children, with what glee
They breathed their native air of liberty.
Food to the weary man with toil forespent
Not more refreshment brings,
Than did the forest breeze upon its wings
To these true younglings of the wilderness:
A happy sight, a sight of hearts content!
For blithe were they
As swallows, wheeling in the summer sky
At close of day;
As insects, when on high
Their mazy dance they thread
In myriads overhead,
Where sunbeams through the thinner foliage gleam,
Or spin in rapid circles as they play,
Where winds are still,
Upon the surface of the unrippled stream:
Yea, gamesome in their innocence were they
As lambs in fragrant pasture, at their will
The udder when to press
They run, for hunger less
Than joy, and very love and wantonness.
Nor less contentment had it brought
To see what change benevolence had wrought
In the wild Indian mother, whom they first
Had seen, her spirit strong
Madden’d by violence of wrong,
For vengeance in her inmost soul,
With natural but with ferine rage, athirst.
That soul unhoped-for kindness had subdued:
Her looks, and words, and actions, now combined,
Express’d, in that composure of the mind
Which uneffaceable sorrow had left behind,
A lively ever-watchful gratitude.
Oliver seem’d to her a creature
Less of this earth than of celestial nature;
And Annabel as well
Had won from her a love like veneration;
(So goodness on the grateful heart can gain;)
Though charms of European tint and feature
No beauty to an Indian eye convey,
Regarded with disdain,
As if they were the original stamp and stain
Of an inferior clay,
Proved in some earlier, inexpert creation,
And then, for degradation,
When the red man was fashion’d, put away.
Pamya was troubled now, for she had seen
Their alter’d mien:
Some change there was, she knew not what, nor why,
Some infelicity;
Which yet she might descry
Rose not from wrath nor alienated will;
For in their converse still
The tones were such as meet
The ear of love, and still
The smiles they interchanged, though sad, were sweet:
Yet plainly she could tell, all was not well.
They too could read in her observant eye
Its apprehension and its sympathy:
And surely she, had but her speech been free,
Had prest, how earnestly! for explanation,
And sought to bring about
The full and perfect reconciliation
Dearly desired by both, she did not doubt.
Their hearts were merciful and meek she knew.
And could not to each other but be true:
But on her tongue the curse of Babel hung,
And when the eager wish her breast was swelling,
Eye-speaking thoughts were all she could impart,
Intelligibly telling
The deep indwelling yearnings of the heart.
Four days they travell’d through the endless wood.
Measuring their journey still to reach at eve
Some settler’s home, and sure of their receiving
Such hospitality, sincere, though rude,
As men who felt no want, and had no vice
Of chilling avarice,
In their plain kindness found a joy in giving.
The fifth morn rose, and with the morn rose they.
That they might reach that day
Their journey’s end; and through the forest wide
Did they their weary way
Hold on from early dawn till eventide;
But ere the light of eve
Began to fade, their guide,
Accustomed to descry
With instantaneous eye
The slightest trace of man, a smoke espied,
Staining a little space of open sky:
“Yon is the place we seek!” he said; nor knew
What a cold feeling, at the words, ran through
The veins of Annabel, and Newman too.
X.
OH, what a happy meeting had been here,
Willoby thought, in anguish, when he prest
His daughter to his widow’d breast;
If that dear hope which served so long to cheer
His patient labours in the wilderness
Had wholly been fulfill’d, as now in part;
After so many storms and troubles past,
Here had the faithful partner of his heart
Rejoiced to reach the quiet port at last.
APPENDIX TO OLIVER NEWMAN.
The following sketch of the story intended to be worked out in this poem is, with the exception of those passages otherwise appropriated by references, drawn from very brief and sometimes contradictory notes in Mr. Southey’s handwriting.
In the published letters from Mr. Southey to Mr. W. Taylor of Norwich, there is a passage, written in Jan. 1811, which records the earliest germ of this poem in his mind.
“In reviewing Holmes’s American Annals, I pointed out Philip’s war as the proper subject for an Anglo-American Iliad. I have now fallen in love with it myself, and am brooding over it with the full intention of falling to work as soon as Pelayo is completed. The main interest will fix upon Goffe the regicide, for whom I invent a Quaker son a new character you will allow for heroic poetry. This Oliver Goffe, however, is to be the hero.” The poem itself is in the first draught called Oliver Goffe.
The facts relating to those regicides whose fate is alluded to in the poem are as follow: “ When the restoration appeared inevitable, Colonel Goffe, with his father-in-law, Colonel Whalley, seeing that their life was in danger, left the kingdom, and arrived in America on the 27th of July, 1660. For some time they resided at Cambridge, four miles from Boston, attending public service, and being received with respect and hospitality by the inhabitants. But when the Act of Indemnity, out of which they were expressly excepted,
arrived at Boston, in November, the magistrates withdrew their protection, and Whalley and Goffe retired to Newhaven. Here they were forced to conceal themselves, and eventually to fly to a retirement, called Hatchet’s Harbour, in the woods, where they remained two nights, till a cave in the side of a hill was prepared to conceal them. To this hill they gave the name of Providence, and remained some weeks in their hiding-place, sleeping, when the weather was tempestuous, in a house near it. They behaved with great honour to their friends: and when Mr. Davenport, the minister of Newhaven, was suspected by the magistrates of concealing them, they went publicly to the deputy-governor of Newhaven to offer themselves up; but he refused to take any notice of them, suffering them to return again to the woods. The pursuit of them afterwards relaxing, they remained two years in a house near Milford, where they frequently prayed and preached at private meetings in their chamber; till the king’s commissioners coming to Boston, they were again driven to their cave in the woods. Here some Indians discovered their beds, which obliged them to seek a fresh refuge; and they went to Hadley, 100 miles distant, where they were received by Mr. Russell, the minister, and remained as long as they lived, very few persons knowing who they were. Whalley’s death took place about 1679. They confessed that their lives were “miserable, and constant burdens to them especially when their fanatical hopes of some divine vengeance on Charles II. and his advisers were perpetually disappointed. The fidelity and affection of Goffe’s wife to her husband were remarkably displayed in her letters.”
While they were at Hadley the Indian war broke out, which was particularly disastrous in that part of the colony.
“The following story has been traditionally conveyed down among the inhabitants of Hadley. In the course of Philip’s war, which involved almost all the Indian tribes in New England, and amongst them those in the neighbourhood of this town, the inhabitants thought it proper to observe the 1st of September, 1675, as a day of fasting and prayer.
While they were in the church, and employed in their worship, they were surprised by a band of savages. The people instantly betook themselves to their arms, which, according to the custom of the times, they had carried with them to the church, and, rushing out of the house, attacked their invaders.
The panic under which they began the conflict was, however, so great, and their number was so disproportioned to that of their enemies, that they fought doubtfully at first, and in a short time began evidently to give way. At this time an ancient man, with hoary locks, of a most venerable and dignified aspect, and in a dress widely differing from that of the inhabitants, appeared suddenly at their head, and with a firm voice, and an example of undaunted resolution, reanimated their spirits — led them again to the conflict — and totally routed the savages. When the battle was ended, the stranger suddenly disappeared; and no person knew whence he had come, or whither he had gone. The relief was so timely, so sudden, so unexpected, and so providential; the appearance and the retreat of him who furnished it were so unaccountable, his person was so dignified and commanding, his resolution so superior, and his interference so decisive, that the inhabitants without any uncommon exertion of credulity, readily believed him to be an angel sent by Heaven for their preservation. Nor was this opinion seriously controverted until it -was discovered, several years afterwards, that Goffe and Whalley had been lodged in the house of Mr. Russell.
Then it was known that their deliverer was Goffe, Whalley having become superannuated some time before the event took place.” The latter part of Goffe’s life seems not to be known with certainty. Dwight says, immediately before the passage above quoted, “After Whalley’s death, Goffe quitted Hadley, went into Connecticut, and afterwards, according to tradition, to the neighbourhood of New York. Here he is said to have lived some time, and, the better to disguise himself, to have carried vegetables at times to market. It is said that having been discovered here, he retired secretly to the colony of Rhode Island, and there lived with a son of Whalley during the remainder of his life.”
Goffe’s was a divided family — one of his brothers being a clergyman of the Church of England, while another was become a Roman Catholic priest. To this division allusion is made in Leverett’s conversation with Oliver. Of the other persons introduced, the following are historical: Leverett the governor, who succeeded Bellingham, in 1673; he had been a Cromwellian, and is sobered into a rational Conformist; he knew where the regicides were, and connived at their concealment, as he is represented doing in the poem: and Randolph, of whom the people of New England said “that he went up and down to devour them.” Also the names of the Indian chieftains, and the general account of the war, are matter of history.
The hero Oliver himself is therefore a purely imaginary character: he was originally intended to be a Quaker; but it would appear that the author afterwards considered that the noble points of character and of principle intended to be exhibited — viz zeal for the Christian faith, inflexible truth, peacefulness, and endurance — were not exclusively belonging to that sect whose operations and whose sufferings in New England he had been contemplating; and at the same time, that some features of their character were both unmanageable in poetry and distasteful to his own mind. There was also another reason for the alteration, namely, that he found it necessary for his plot, that, at least in one instance, Oliver’s usual mode of conduct should bend to circumstances; and such a compliance would be morally, and therefore poetically, probable in a person swayed only by a reasonable principle, but not so in one governed by an absolute rule of life. The following notes will explain the intended bearing of this character upon the story.
1811. “A son of Goffe, a Quaker, gone after his mother’s death to seek his father. He, by converting one of the principal Sachems, weakens Metacom’s party so materially as to decide the contest; and with that Sachem he retires into the interior. He and his father are discovered, and he will not lift his hand in defence. A party of Indians take them all, he still passive; hence his influence begins with their astonishment.”
“The points on which Oliver’s Quakerism is put to the test are, in not denying his father’s name, and in not lifting a hand to defend him.”
1814. “Oliver must be so far instrumental in terminating the war as to obtain security for his father; and this instrumentality must be effected wholly by means conformable to his peculiar opinions. But those opinions must yield where they are wrong.”
Imperfectly as the latter part of the story can be ascertained, it has been thought better to sketch it out, however rudely, from the author’s hints, than to leave an entire blank.
II. Oliver at Willoby’s House.
They remain awhile at Willoby’s, that Pamya may be their protection. When some Indians appear, she goes out, and finds among a party of Indians one of her own tribe.
After her story, the calumet is smoked, and the door of
Willoby’s house painted with marks indicating that it was under their protection. Then they venture to depart. A sort of half-confidence has first been made to Willoby in consequence of his wife’s letter, and a sort of half-engagement formed. Willoby had known one of the Goffes. His moral reasons for leaving England, — on account of his sons, seeing the character of the times, and that all that we pray in the
Litany to be delivered from, was come upon the country — blindness of heart, pride, vain-glory and hypocrisy, envy, hatred and malice, false doctrine, heresy and schism, sedition, privy conspiracy, and rebellion, &c.
III. The Wounded Indian.
Oliver journeying with Pamya and her children through the forest, finds a wounded Indian, by whom they stay till a party of his countrymen see them. This is the Mohawk, whom Philip had meant to kill, and not scalped, to create a belief that he had been killed by the English. (An historical fact, and represented as not of unfrequent occurrence.) Many hints for forest scenery, which are noted down, would probably belong to this canto. At night Oliver is seen reading by firelight in the wood.
XII. Whatley’
s Body.
The Indians conduct the party to their Sachem: on the way they meet with Whalley’s body being conveyed somewhere for interment. Oliver knows it by a mutilated hand.
Likeness of Whalley to his daughter [Oliver’s mother]; that family character of face, which the infant brings into the world, and into which the countenance settles in old age, when the character which individual pursuits and passions have induced fades away, and the natural lineaments recover their primary cast. The death of Whalley sets Goffe at liberty. They reach the encampment of Indians, and Pamya is restored to her own friends, the Narhagansets.
II. The Affair of Hadley.
A renegade (in one place named Joshua Tift, the English savage and traitor,) being among the Indians, calls Oliver a spy, insults and strikes him. This Oliver endures patiently, making no retaliation. This fellow relates the affair of Hadley, “the most disastrous day that ever befell New England,” and especially the marvellous apparition of one during the conflict, who was really Goffe, Oliver’s father.
III. Reasoning with the Sachems.
The interest of this scene is to turn chiefly upon two points: the effect for good which Oliver’s words have upon an old Indian chief, who has formerly been impressed by Eliot or R. Williams, and who now puts himself under Oliver’s guidance. This man belongs to the tribe of Sakonets, who are probably connected with the Narhaganset stock. It would have been contrary to history to make the Narhaganset chieftain himself influenced at this time by Oliver. The other point is, the peculiar character of Philip, composed of hatred and vindictiveness against the English, united with gloomy forebodings about the issue of the war. These may be some of his words, or rather the more hopeful Canonchet’s:
The forest and the swamp are our allies;
Have we not with these giants of the wood
A sacred immemorial brotherhood?
The land itself will aid her proper children.
XV. Oliver reaches, his Father.
When Oliver mentions the wilderness, Goffe replies, it is not there that he must prepare the way of the Lord, but in the streets of London.
Complete Poetical Works of Robert Southey Page 197