OPPOSITE THE OLD SHORE ROAD
The Old World bended low beneath a load
Of bigotry and superstitions dark,
When Liberty, amid the tottering thrones
Of despots born, with gladness filled the homes
Of men, e'en the Eternal City bade
Her gates imperial open wide; and, like
A cloud the darkness lifted from the land.
Then Freedom's gentle, buoyant spirit, like
The Magi's wand, extended far across
The sea, and thereupon the gloomy flood
Was parted wide asunder, and revealed
A glorious paradise for Freedom's sons.
Columbia, beneath thy banner's stars,
The mind of man in rare luxuriance blooms,
Unfolding one by one the attributes
Of deity. In vision we foresee
The perfect man. In form the image of
His Maker, God. In toleration filled
With charity for all. In Reason's Ways
Profound. In thought, he mounts the throne of power
And sways the world. He tries frolic Nature's grasp
To lure her secrets still untold till we,
Amazed at his bold course, recoil abashed.
- Willis Boughton.
CHAPTER XI
THE OLD SHORE ROAD AND THE PILGRIM SPIRIT
The breaking waves dashed high
On a stern and rock bound coast,
And the woods against the stormy sky
Their giant branches tossed.
"Thus sang Felicia Hemans in the early years of the last
century, and anyone who has sailed in by White Horse beach and
'Hither Manomet' when one of those fierce gales that winter
brings to this section of the coast sends great billows
thundering up against the cliff and churns all the sea into
froth and foam, will readily see how truthful this singer has
portrayed the scene he has beheld. True, you will not find
granite ledges, which follow the coast almost continuously
farther north, as at Scituate, Nahant, Rockport, and farther on;
but it is rock-bound, nevertheless, with great heaps of
boulders, thickly sown, of various shapes and sizes, with a
sombre gray color that makes them appear inexpressibly stern
even on a bland summer day."
The most picturesque of all the highways leading from Boston to
Plymouth is the South Shore road, passing through Milton,
Quincy, Hingham, Scituate, Cohasset, Marshfield, and Duxbury,
for one of the chief delights of this route is the frequent
glimpses of the sea, whose jagged, rocky coast Nature has
softened until we only feel that it is rock bound. When the day
is clear how the sunshine dusts the water with purplish bloom,
mellowing its hard, cold tint of greenish blue. Here one seems
to feel the spirit, the mystery of the ocean, and a voice at
once grand and irresistible calls from those walls of siren-
haunted rocks until he is among them, listening to the music of
the waves as they come rolling against their rugged sides. Then
one never tires of gazing at the beautiful homes so charmingly
embowered amidst their grand old trees and spacious grounds
adorned with many flowers, in brilliant masses of various
colors. Thus no time is lost by the ardent admirer of the
beauties of land and sea, and the ever-varied and changing
scenes allow just that variety which the most prosaic person
cannot help enjoying.
We shall always remember this road as a sort of traveler's
paradise. It is an almost ideal shore road, indeed one of the
finest that New England can boast, and one really regrets it is
not longer. How many times we have gone over it since that first
journey! "Memory and imagination are true yoke-fellows, and
between them they are always preparing some new and greater
pleasure as we allow them the opportunity."
Many have been the times since those memorable days spent on the
old Shore Road; that memory of them gave for a moment a pleasure
more real than any we had experienced while strolling at will
along that scenic highway. Sometimes seemingly imaginary
delights are far from being imaginary. We can see the lovely
stretches of beach this moment and hear the breakers booming
among the granite boulders - yes, and the grating of the pebbles
that are being ground to shifting sand to form the beach.
Then, too, who can ever forget the exhilarating effect of a dip
in those waves? The great unfailing attraction of the place,
then as now, is the ocean, forever an emblem of unrest,
changeable in its unchangeableness. To our minds the ocean seems
alive. We could sooner believe in sirens and water-nymphs than
in many existences that are commonly spoken of as much more
certain "matters of fact." We could believe in them, we say, but
do not.
Our communings are not with any monster of the unfathomable
deeps of the ocean, but with the spirit of the ocean itself. It
grows somber and sullen under a leaden sky, and its voice has in
it something of that inexpressible sadness heard in the raging
wind among the pines. Then on a calm day in mid-summer how
placid and serene its water appears, wearing on its bosom that
exquisite blue bloom, like the haze that clothes distant
mountains. It scintillates and sparkles like rare jewels in the
sunlight, and ever its dancing waves with silvery crests
proclaim it a thing of life and motion. You might say that it is
dead, yet after all, how many know what life really is? In
certain moods, especially when strolling by the sea, you will
feel measurably sure of being alive yourself; and the longer you
tarry by it the less liable you will be to entertain doubts
about the matter.
On the afternoon of our first journey along this Shore Road the
sky was overcast with low-hung clouds that foreboded rain.
Towhees were calling noisily from wayside thickets; catbirds
sang their self-conscious airs or mewed in derision as we
passed; chickadees were calling their names and occasionally
uttered their pensive minor strains; and far away in a dim-
lighted hemlock grove we heard a new bird song that seemed in
exquisite accord with our own thoughts.
