A stone’s throw from Whittier’s grave still stands the house of “Goodman Macey,” the hero of the poem, “The Exiles,” which tells his story. The haunted house in the poem, “The New Wife and the Old,” is still pointed out in Hampton, although recently it has been removed to another site, restored and inhabited by other than ghosts. “Margaret Smith’s Journal,” in his prose writings, takes the reader through the woods of Newbury giving many a picturesque incident of the life of the times—and many a touching one. “The Double-Headed Snake” is a legend of Newbury; “The Bridal of Pennacook” sketches the upper portions of the Merrimac; “The Swan Song of Parson Avery” sends its singer from the Newbury shores out beyond the bar and into the great ocean. In his songs the poet carries us along the Salisbury shore of the river to the Chain Bridge which crosses it at Deer Island, the home of Mrs. Harriet Prescott Spofford, his contemporary, herself novelist and poet; thence up the Newbury shore to that poem of streamlets, the Artichoke, which slipping beneath the overhanging boughs of trees that all but meet across it, goes through the old mill race—Curson’s Mill—to join the Merrimac.
Beyond the woods and the two rivers lies the ocean. “The Tent on the Beach” describes the long stretch of Salisbury before its invasion, first by shanties and then by hotels and casinos and cottages, transformed its picturesque solitudes. But nothing can make less magnificent the long roll of the incoming surf along its six miles of almost unbroken reach of sands.
In one of his letters Whittier says:
“The country about here never looked so beautiful as now. We went to Salisbury pine woods yesterday after meeting. I never saw such perfect and glorious effects of light and shadow—such perfection of green earth and blue sky—such grottoes and labyrinths of verdure, barred at the entrance by solid beams of sunlight, like golden gates. At such times I wish I were a painter.”
In this same letter the poet gives a touch of home life. “We had a pleasant visit from Lucy Larcom last week,” he writes. “Brother Frank was here on sixth day on his way from Boston—will be back tomorrow or next day. We have had the famous Moncure Conway here. He came over last week with the Cursons.”
“The Cursons” were two interesting sisters of fine New England ancestry. The sisters with their mother lived at Curson’s Mills where the fairy Artichoke flows to meet the Merrimac. It was to these sisters Whittier’s “Lines after a Summer’s Day’s Excursion” were written:
“Thanks for your graceful oars, which broke
The morning dreams of Artichoke
Along his wooded shore!