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222
A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)
·
Lucy Larcom
106
"There's
a
fierce
gray
bird
with
a
bending
beak,"
that
the
boys
loved
so
dearly
to
"declaim;"
and
another
poem
by
this
last
author,
which
we
all
liked
to
read,
partly
from
a
childish
love
of
the
tragic,
and
partly
for
its
graphic
description
of
an
avalanche's
movement:--
"Slowly
it
came
in
its
mountain
wrath,
And
the
forests
vanished
before
its
path;
And
the
rude
cliffs
bowed;
and
the
waters
fled,--
And
the
valley
of
life
was
the
tomb
of
the
dead."
In
reading
this,
"Swiss
Minstrel's
Lament
over
the
Ruins
of
Goldau,"
I
first
felt
my
imagination
thrilled
with
the
terrible
beauty
of
the
mountains--a
terror
and
a
sublimity
which
attracted
my
thoughts
far
more
than
it
awed
them.
But
the
poem
in
which
they
burst
upon
me
as
real
presences,
unseen,
yet
known
in
their
remote
splendor
as
kingly
friends
before
whom
I
could
bow,
yet
with
whom
I
could
aspire,--for
something
like
this
I
think
mountains
must
always
be
to
those
who
truly
love
them,--was
Coleridge's
"Mont
Blanc
before
Sunrise,"
in
this
same
"First
Class
Book."
I
believe
that
poetry
really
first
took
possession
of
me
in
that
poem,
so
that
afterwards
I
could
not
easily
mistake
the
genuineness
of
its
ring,
though
my
ear
might
not
be
sufficiently
trained
to
catch
its
subtler
harmonies.
This
great
mountain
poem
struck
some
hidden
key-note
in
my
nature,
and
I
knew
thenceforth
something
of
what
it
was
to
live
in
poetry,
and
to
have
it
live
in
me.
Of
course
I
did
not
consider
my
own
foolish
little
versifying
poetry.
The
child
of
eight
or
nine
years
regarded
her
rhymes
as
only
one
among
her
many
games
and
pastimes.
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