"AT NORRIDGEWOCK" BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

I had started worrying I wouldn't find a poem for this year's Great Genealogy Poetry Challenge when I found this poem in an anthology edited by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.There are three
reasons why this is perfect for my entry:

One, it's written by my distant cousin, John Greenleaf Whittier.

Two, it's about Norridgewock, Maine where three generations  of my Laughton family ancestors (all three of them named John Laughton) lived in the 18th century.

And three, it's about Fall.  


Here it is:

AT NORRIDGEWOCK.
by John Greenleaf Whittier

T' is morning over Norridgewock, —
  On tree and wigwam, wave and rock.
Bathed in the autumnal sunshine, stirred
At intervals by breeze and bird,
And wearing all the hues which glow
In heaven's own pure and perfect bow,
   That glorious picture of the air,
Which summer's light-robed angel forms
On the dark ground of fading storms,
  With pencil dipped in sunbeams there,—
And, stretching out, on either hand,
O'er all that wide and unshorn land,
Till, weary of its gorgeousncss,
The aching and the dazzled eye
Rests, gladdened, on the calm blue sky, —
   Slumbers the mighty wilderness!
The oak, upon the windy hill,
   Its dark green burthen upward heaves;
The hemlock broods above its rill.
Its cone-like foliage darker still,
   Against the birch's graceful stem,
And the rough walnut-bough receives
The suu upon its crowded leaves,
   Each colored like a topaz gem;
   And the tall maple wears with them
 The coronal, which autumn gives,
  The brief, bright sign of ruin near,
  The hectic of a dying year!-pp143-144

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed., Poems of Places: America Vol.II   Houghton, Mifflin And Company, Boston, Ma. 1851