NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
AND REMINDER 
Vol. XIV 
Manchester, Mass., Friday, May 12 No. 19 
What Lucy Larcom Has Said of the North Shore in 
Her Poems 
By LILLIAN McCANN 
‘‘Cape Ann has her own poets, nightingales 
Warbling among her roses, rarely heard, 
Except by those who woke that minstrelsy. 
Cool coves, 
That open to blue breadths of sea; lost roads, 
- Wandering, bewildered, past forsaken homes, 
House and inhabitant forgotten now, 
And grass-grown cellar-hollows their sole sign; 
Strange rocking-stones a-tilt for centuries; 
White lily-ponds and dark magnolia-beds; 
Sands that give music to your footstep; pines 
Hoarse with forever answering the sea’s moan,— 
These will awaken to poetic life 
In hearts of unborn minstrels,’’ 
HE North Shore owes a debt of gratitude to the many 
poets who have sung of its beauties and charm and to 
our own Lucy Larcom, in particular, for the beautiful 
poems in her collection, “Wild Roses of Cape Ann.” 
These poems brought much praise from her contempor- 
aries. Dr. Holmes said that “she was as true a product 
of our Essex County soil as the bayberry.” Longfellow 
wrote saying: “I have always liked your poetry, and 
now I like it more than ever.’ 
The collection includes all her poems of her home 
surroundings and legends of her beloved Cape Ann Side, 
as the whole region was known in the early days. 
The summer visitor to the Cape who believes that 
“a rose is sweet, no matter where it grows” can appre- 
ciate her lines when she says: 
‘But our wild roses, flavored with the sea, 
And colored by the salt winds and much sun 
To healthiest intensity of bloom,— 
We think the world has none so beautiful. 
Even from his serious height, the Puritan 
Stooped to their fragance, “and recorded them,’ 
The poem “The Lady Arbella” is one of the sweet- 
est. In this she relates the story of Lady Arbella’s com- 
ing to this country with her husband on the fleet of ships 
brought over by Governor Winthrop; their anchoring 
over the Sabbath just off the Beverly shore, then called 
Bass-River-Side. 
‘And the wild rose is sweeter on Bass-River-Side 
For breathing where once breathed the sweet 
English bride.’’ 
Again she says: “Dear and gracious spirit! The 
memory of her brief sojourn here has left New England 
more truly consecrated ground. Sweetest of womanly 
pioneers! It is as if an angel in passing on to heaven 
just touched with her wings this rough coast of ours 
The Lady Arbella died within three months after her 
arrival in this new country. 
The lover of the delightful North S$ 
appreciate these lines: 
shore roads may 
‘When the coast-country, from Bass River east 
To Agawam, was known as Cape-Ann-Side, 
Up from the ferry ran one winding road 
Through pleasant Beverly, past Wenham Lake, 
Losing itself in the Chebacco woods 
Among a hidden chain of gem-like ponds: 
A cow-path, so the ancient gossips say, 
Branching upon the left through Ryal-Side, 
To Salem Village; and upon the right, 
Skirting the seashore down through Jeffrey’s Creek 
And the magnolia-swamp, to Sandy Bay, 
And Pigeon “Cove, and sheltered Annisquam, 
Thanks to the zig-zag pioneering kine 
For picturesque roads, impossible to spoil 
By leveling or by straightening! ’’ 
Other lines especially interesting are: 
‘“And yet the Ocean weds the shore, sometimes, 
Ww ith perfect interchange of light and joy; 
Tjt es = ~™* -sueh are the. blue. sea 
And the bright coast that meets within the curves 
You follow, loitering around Kettle Cove 
And Eagle Head, and past the Singing Sands, 
And by the sea-fringed Farms of Beverly. 
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 
Beauty must still have contrast; yonder, see 
Two tawny islands, floundering like whales 
As near land as they dare—The Miseries— 
The Great and Little Misery, made two 
By a swift strait the cattle ford at ebb, 
Ruminating as they wade: mere lumps of earth; 
The least one takes the sea’s brunt-buttresses 
And bastions worn by the besieging East.’’ 
Her descriptions of the ancestral home at Beverly 
Farms is interesting. 
‘“A sunny, sea-blown cottage-nook was that,— 
My father’s home, his grandsire’s father’s home,— 
Set where, as from a shoulder, her green cloak 
The land trails to the ocean, and begins 
The reach of Cape-Ann-Side. Upon the hills 
The apple-trees met the descending pines; 
Sweet-brier and garden-roses intertwined; 
Nature and cultivation joined their hands 
To make a home-like place; so buttercups 
And daisies, dropped with English grass-seed, grew 
Among strange blooms of the aboriginal woods, 
And cheered the Pilgrim women with a thought 
Of dear haunts left behind; 
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 
A sunny, sea-blown nook, it gathered in 
All strays and waifs: loose drifts of slavery, 
Stranded in pitiful helplessness, dead weight 
Upon their master’s hands; * * * not one 
Who needed food or shelter turned aside. 
Many came from this ancestral home. 
‘fA line of stalwart boys and vigorous girls, 
Whose hands were there sole fortune, character 
And trust in God their sole inheritance.’’ 
In her earlier poems is found one on the light-houses 
on Baker’s Island. She calls them 
‘Two white angels of the sea, 
Guiding wave-worn wanderers home! 
Sentinels of hope are ye, 
Drenched with sleet, and dashed with foam, 
Standing there in lineliness, 
Fireside joys for men to keep; 
Through the midnight slumberless 
That the quiet shore may sleep!’?’ 
One of the earlier poems that young people may en- 
joy on account of the good story it contains touching 
upon witchcraft days begins: 
‘“You may ride in an hour or two, 
if you will, 
From Halibut Point to Beacon Hill, 
