From the dim world of dreams
Fraught with shadows and gleams
We entreat you and beckon and call.
Heed and harken you well,
Lend your hearts to our spell,
Let the soul of the Past hold you thrall.
Radiant, mystical, free
Unseen spirits were we
As we guarded the Manse long ago;
Moving soft through each room
In the twilight's gray gloom
While the fire on the hearth flickered low.
Hope and joy—these we brought;
Peace and fair dreams we wrought
For the Manse whose bright hearth was our goal.
Oh, then harken you well!
Lend your hearts to our spell,
Let the tide of the years backward roll.
[PROLOGUE]
(Spoken by the Muse of Hawthorne)
Ye who have known the great Enchanter's art,
Whose magic fired your brain and stirred your heart,
Whose touch, more potent than King Midas' gold,
Wrought Tales of Tanglewood and Tales Twice Told,
Whose Marble Faun and Mosses from the Manse
Still hold the lasting colors of Romance;
Who built 'for you the Hall of Fantasy
Through whose bright portals you might pass and see
Hester and Miriam and Goodman Brown
And Pyncheron, who dwelt in Salem Town—
Malvin and Endicott and Ethan Brand,
John Inglefield and that old crone whose hand
Was lent to fashioning Scarecrows built of straw—
All these through the Enchanter's eyes you saw,
Strange folk who trod the bleak New England shores,
Tithingmen, Sachems, Witches, Sagamores,
Puritans, Soldiers, Scholars, Quaker maids,
Royalists splendid in their rich brocades!
To-day the past has opened wide her door,
Scenes long since gone return to us once more,
Touched with the alchemy of history's gold.
First, ancient Salem, as it was, behold
In the grim days when "Witchcraft!" was the cry,
When folk declared that they saw witches fly
On devil's broomsticks straight across the moon,
While the wind piped by night a witch's tune;
When, e'en by day, intrepid witch-wives spoke,
Then vanished upward through the chimney smoke!
The Witches' Wood—this our first scene will show,
And all that once transpired there long ago.
Our second scene will picture Merrymount
Where lived gay royalists who took no count
Of Puritanic manners, and who sang
And laughed till all the woods about them rang
With outlaw merriment. These you will see
Engaged in maypole dance and minstrelsy,
While Puritans with grave and somber mien
Condemn such light-foot revels on the green!
These have you known on Hawthorne's living page.