"The scenery of the lower valley of the Merrimac is not bold or remarkably picturesque, but there is a great charm in the panorama of its soft green intervales: its white steeples rising over thick clusters of elms and maples, its neat villages on the slopes of gracefully rounded hills, dark belts of woodland, and blossoming or fruited orchards, which would almost justify the words of one who formerly sojourned on its banks, that the Merrimac is the fairest river this side of Paradise. Thoreau has immortalized it in his 'Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.' The late Caleb Cushing, who was not by nature inclined to sentiment and enthusiasm, used to grow eloquent and poetical when he spoke of his native river. Brissot, the leader of the Girondists in the French Revolution, and Louis Philippe, who were familiar with its scenery, remembered it with pleasure. Anne Bradstreet, the wife of Governor Bradstreet, one of the earliest writers of verse in New England, sang of it at her home on its banks at Andover; and the lovely mistress of Deer Island, who sees on one hand the rising moon lean above the low sea horizon of the east, and on the other the sunset reddening the track of the winding river, has made it the theme and scene of her prose and verse."
HAVERHILL ACADEMY
The visitor who approaches Whittier-Land by the way of Haverhill will find in that city many places of interest in connection with the poet's early life, and referred to in his poems. The Academy for which he wrote the ode sung at its dedication in 1827, when he was a lad of nineteen, and before he had other than district school training, is now the manual training school of the city, and may be found, little changed except by accretion, on Winter Street, near the city hall. As this ode does not appear in any of his collected works, and is certainly creditable as a juvenile production, it is given here. It was sung to the air of "Pillar of Glory:"—
Hail, Star of Science! Come forth in thy splendor,
Illumine these walls—let them evermore be
A shrine where thy votaries offerings may tender,
Hallowed by genius, and sacred to thee.
Warmed by thy genial glow,
Here let thy laurels grow
Greenly for those who rejoice at thy name.
Here let thy spirit rest,
Thrilling the ardent breast,
Rousing the soul with thy promise of fame.
Companion of Freedom! The light of her story,
Wherever her voice at thine altar is known
There shall no cloud of oppression come o'er thee,
No envious tyrant thy splendor disown.
Sons of the proud and free
Joyous shall cherish thee,
Long as their banners in triumph shall wave;
And from its peerless height
Ne'er shall thy orb of light
Sink, but to set upon Liberty's grave.
Smile then upon us; on hearts that have never
Bowed down 'neath oppression's unhallowed control.
Spirit of Science! O, crown our endeavor;
Here shed thy beams on the night of the soul;
Then shall thy sons entwine,
Here for thy sacred shrine,
Wreaths that shall flourish through ages to come,
Bright in thy temple seen,
Robed in immortal green,
Fadeless memorials of genius shall bloom.
Haverhill, although but three miles wide, is ten miles long, and includes many a fertile farm out of sight of city spires, and out of sound of city streets. As Whittier says in the poem "Haverhill:"—