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.
Again and again the notes came from the forest. How delicious the music was! A perfect song of peace and spiritual tone that told us at once the singer was a thrush—but what thrush? We had heard the song of the hermit among the Berkshire Hills and could never confuse his wonderful hymn with that of another species; yet here was a song possessing the same character of sacredness. It was a restful lullaby like ,the mingled benediction of wood and sea on the tired spirits of weary travelers. It had in it nothing of "pride or passion," but contained the same serene harmony that vagrant breezes draw from the myriad-stringed pines; something of the melodies breathed from the ocean. It proved to be the evening hymn of the veery.
The song of the nightingale, with its trills and phrases, would make harmony seemingly crude if compared to either the hermit or veery thrush, nor would the skylark, famous in poetry and song, bear off the prize were the two birds to be heard alternately. The English blackbird has a very sweet song, which made the weary, homesick heart of the soldier in France rejoice, when he announced that spring was near. Yet if the European traveler complains that our songsters are not brilliant, let him visit our land when the brown thrasher, the bobolink or mocking bird are singing, and he will hear melodies as full of joy and exuberance as any he may have remembered in his native land.