The Legend of Hartford
by Eleanor O’Rourke Koenig
With overtones to what he said,
This man may he believed:
Go into the Cities and Towns, and there you
shall find many compassed about with the chains
of captivity, and every man bemoaning himself.
Thomas Hooker.
THE LEGEND OF HARTFORD
Their legend of the Seed, a glistening thing,
They planted, even if under a king.
LISTEN, and hear their Legend rise in song;
In homespun, silver now, they flow along
These streets; we see and hear and feel
Them pass, their skirts, their steps, we feel them as one of three
in the light leaves’ quiver;
So do we hear turning still
The wheel of Matthew Allyn’s mill,
As we stand on the bridge over the Little River.
Or, in a rich amazement of the mind,
No wilderness, but a choosing place we find;
As esculent country, waiting to give of its all;
Prolific thrice over the earth; running riot from spring until fall
The medicinal herb, bittersweet, ginseng, angelica, bloodroot;
The large trees loaded with fruit;
Opulent nuts, wild vegetables, artichokes, wild onions, plantain,
wild pease;
These, and more wild berries than these:
The black, the blue, the bil-, the mul-, the elder-, the strawberry;
In the groves ran the furry
Round fat red bear, the moose like its speaking name, the deer;
And here
Long ago through the trees might be seen great turkeys strutting
sideways;
The squirrel abounded, the raccoon–the wildcat, the wolf, the
fox, black, blue and grey:
The otter fished in the stream, the beaver built his dam:
There were quails, ducks, geese, partridges, and plenteous other
wild game;
Pigeons so numerous they would obscure the light;
Of which it has been written: “It passeth credit, but the truth
were written right. . .”
In the Great River lamprey eels, salmon, sturgeon, in the
Great River shoals of fish of silver gleam. . .
Say this in a dream,
Then stitch it straightly and precisely in a sampler’s seam. . .
The blur of the sky-bloom trees, the wild vegetation, the pleasant
banks of the river, the paint of the crimson bush. .
Silence is over this country, hush. .
Then, as through a parting in the trees, into this charming country,
strange with his spell unwild,
Comes the white man,
The Puritan,
His spouse, the staid and Biblical child. . .
Faded the colors and stitches, yet fresh as a flower with the rain
on. . .
Children of Israel into the Land of Canaan.
So it would seem, they wish to leave their story,
Rested and wise, too inherent for glory;
Leaving sparse books to tell of their bodies’ and souls’ consecration;
As if to say one and all fervidly entered into this town’s creation;
They come back now wistful, as on tiptoe,
To see again the places they used to love and know;
Finding them whatever change, speaking with the self-same gesture:
Here is Soldiers’ Field, Sentinel Hill, the Middle Ox Pasture. . .
Yet here at first they nearly broke their hearts –
Winter comes down fierce in these Western parts;
Think how it must have been with them here, with winter over all.
It was in the fall
When they first came here – those men of 1635;
Somehow we know they stayed, somehow they kept alive
Through that winter. Even with time so short,
They built dugouts, cattle shelter, a rude palisade, their fort.
With minds scantily given to ponder,
They prayed all would be well –
On November fifteenth the Great River was frozen under –
And winter fell.
The winter fell and the Indians in the swamp,
Paled in their wigwam snow or moved to a further camp;
Corn in their barns of earth to weave through the winter gold,
Cured meat from the hunting – or they could starve in the cold
Like an Indian –
Not so with the white man.
Inside his smoke-filled hut he heard loud the wind, and the
wind’s recoil,
He looked at the pot swinging over the blaze
With nothing under it to boil. . .
It snowed days on days;
The woman’s face blanched, the little children cried;
The wind blew
And he knew
As he listened stricken dumb,
Winter come,
Loud with the wind it had quaffed –
The white man plunged into the forest to find game, but the forest
laughed,
As he ludicrously stumbled and bled;
The forest laughed, the boughs laughed, the beasts laughed – or
were dead;
His children cried,
His cattle knelt down and died;
Then he chopped down through the snow and ice and ate of the
acrid acorn
And found it fit to eat;
Then the Indians came and dealt him out corn
And he ate it without any meat;
And he trembled to hear the wind, rousing the forest apart;
In this winter he had come to know,
Spring must have been many times in his heart,
Then there must have seemed never a spring. . . but the
ever falling snow. . .
He has left us no written word of that winter when the wind surged
Night and day,
But has left us his image, after the winter, too pallid, coming out of
a door as if to say: “Just say
We emerged.”
Oh this beautiful extreme country in Spring, over-coloured,
over-heaped,
How his sallow face must have shone, how his slow gone blood
must have leaped
In this primeval spring, as he stood at his door, or in the wood
to see. . .
He had heard the black ice crack and split on the Great River and
make it free. . .
Nathaniel Ely, Nicholas Clarke, William Butler,
Richard Webb, William Pantry, Stephen Hart, . . .
They seem to step as from a waiting roll call,
And answer in silver: “Here we are . . .”
Sheep’s Ridge,
Gully Brook, Haynes’ Swamp . . .
Near the river. . .
On the bridge, not strange, . . .
Venturers’ Field – where was the first highway from the Little
River to the North Meadow . . .
Look and see, it is in silver now, and will not change. . .
Those who look will know.
John Talcott’s house?
John Talcott’s house. . .
Westwood and Steele, Elder Goodwin and the others
Who, after winter, met on warm spring ground,
What thought was one’s was prudently another’s,
To search for any clearing to be found;
So, these men, who had been nearly broken-hearted,
Were planting now the seed, a glistening thing,
And when this wondrous soil was firstly parted,
In the spring,
The seed they dropped glistened
All for itself, and yours, and for my sake,
Bright rain pattered on it as they listened. . .
Think of the Puritan’s heart when he first buried
The first of homely seed in Hartford soil;
The winter in his mind, he must have hurried,
Not having spared himself the least in other toil
Of body or intellect – already were order, law, a presiding
Commission;
The shadow of the seed had been before;
Worn missionary, he performed his mission,
Dropped a seed in the earth, then dropped one more. . .
Then he must have stood a little, with the winter still,
Mingled with how he had felt the winter go,
And, covered always under ice and snow,
His need
The Seed
That winter could not kill –
Oh never think of him as poor and forlorn,
Planting in spring a seed for its own sake –
It had survived the sword, the lurid stake;
Soaked salt in sea,
Had been torn
From dead men’s hearts alive.
He
Must have given thought to this,
Cowed, humble and half-grieving
For men who had died and never would come back,
Then he was visionary and believing,
That their hand was his
Delving him seed from a silver hempen sack. . .
Cumbered by myriads of silvery men
Free –
Those who had been and those who would be –
And he cried as these men cried
Then
Planted Liberty!
SWARTH promise of the country gave them reason
To scan what native elements it had;
Salt marsh grass going to the river, and at this season
The river crowded with lamprey eels and shad;
The Indian rows of beans and maize
In the good weather’s
Heat sent shoots from the ground. . .
The sun spread a copper haze. . .
All day birds of colored feathers
Sang and flew around. . .
They rose to landscapes, many tree leaves gleaming
With moisture in the mystic forest spell;
The wilderness was summer dreaming,
But they were not dreaming,
A field was hoed, a post was put as well. . .
An Indian youth, lithe as spring, came running,
Lipped with the inland woods, to them one day,
And told them, while they dared to stand there sunning,
A caravan was in the woods on its way. . .
They watched the rain on their seed, the spring showers,
Then over the field they saw the rainbow’s arch
On them, on their plantation, on the trees and flowers. . .
As they were hearing Thomas Hooker march.
And now they listened more, and, almost reaching
To him, they listened as he stood
In their midst, and comforted with preaching
His flock on that first sweet Sabbath in the wood;
They sensed when his body was most aching
And lifted him on the tangled path he took;
And every footstep that his feet were taking
They heard; at Longmeadow Gate; they could hear his footsteps
ring;
And at Namerick Brook,
And at Pilgrims’ Spring. . .
Over the river on rafts at Bissell’s Ferry –
Hooker, Crusader, Utopian Dreamer, Puritan Divine,
Leading his people into their very
Country, men, women and children, with their cattle, goats and
swine.
They were
At Windsor;
At Captain Holmes’ trading house now –
If the men at Hartford were not there to meet him, they heard the
bivouac, they knew how
The men at Windsor heartened Hooker, after the woods’
Shadow. . .
Hooker, at fifty, leading his flock into the North Meadow. . .
Those men, enthused to settle a plantation –
Their voices must have matched a mutual cheer,
And times when they were met in stern elation,
They must have thought: “Thomas Hooker will come here;”
And from the first he must have seemed beside them,
Newtown and Hartford not such space apart;
And when they prayed he was there to guide them,
Himself so given to others in his heart;
His presence was there, above
Most men in height . . like when, sea dangers passed,
He cried to the welcoming faces, moved by their love,
“Now I will live if in the Lord you stand fast!”
A wilderness, to them a town their own –
They knew they were ordained to clear the ground,
And from the first no merest doubt was shown,
For giants walked these streets and strode around;
Hooker and Haynes and other great men were here;
All bending at their work to build a town,
With noise and sweat and friendly Indians near,
Sailing canoes in the river up and down;
Lots were parcelled and workmen’s wages set,
The swales were filled, new paths were smoothed away,
Houses sprang up each side of the Riveret;
They built a meeting-house of logs and clay,
Where Hooker preached – think what it must have been
To have seen this man, to have heard this orator,
Prophet, half-sad for future time and men,
Yet Pastor of the folk he labored for.
They loved him as the guardian of their flock;
He loved them so, but far more it would seem;
As ever bringing flowers from a rock –
One would have served to illustrate his dream
Of men made simple as they were meant to be –
Free –
Oh, to have seen him hold a crowd entranced,
His sermons for the people, not the shelf,
With simple truth echoingly enhanced,
Giving to each one his Individual Self –
Oh, to have seen him mirror the sinner’s soul
Made whole –
Oh, to have seen him shake it –
Or to have heard him shout: “Since God has given you liberty—
take it”
They built this town from liking it too much,
From detriments with which they had to cope;
They built it, too, from quarreling with the Dutch
Colors flying from the House of Good Hope;
They built this town of purpose hungered for;
Of heart and brain, and something more profound;
They built it, too, of fire from the Pequot War,
When Mason burned the wigwams to the ground.
They went to war too spare of men, too tired,
To measure depth beyond expediency,
Or think if latent hatred was inspired
By deeper hurts and brooded enmity. T
They went as ready warriors to shield
Their growing hamlet, free it of torment,
The tomahawk, the child snatched from the field –
They could illy afford to go – but they went. . .
Sometimes in red-banked evening we aspire,
When voices speak, almost to speak a name :
The Indians who must go, went up in fire –
But Captainship and Chieftancy still flame –
Knotted eye to eye, we see them stand –
It was the worsting of the white or red!
Then Mason, in a corner, lit the brand. . .
The white man came. . .
The Indian fire burned low . . . and a proud Chief was dead. . .
We see them when they returned, as with faint cheers,
Nor time for them, their jealous thought the land’s;
They turned to it with heroic hands. . .
With scarred hands, blistering with tears. . .
What of the Seed, dark-buried, glistening, what?
While men were clutched in war, with dreams it cried.
It lived through war, through famine, harvest rot,
While men with wasted sobs and cattle died.
When Hooker, a gaunt Prophet on the shore,
Saw spirit-men, such as the Lord would choose,
When Indians came from Deerfield in canoes
Laden with corn, and a strange vessel came to moor, –
The Master, the Merchant, the provisions as if decreed,
But Hooker preached it was of spirit-men. . .
So the Seed
Found dew and light . . . they rose up then. . .
NOW in this place, in this community,
One rule was followed, one strict commandment theirs:
Each brought with him his premise to be free
And from the first took a part in the town’s affairs.
On looking next door, he found his neighbor likewise;
This Truth stayed rampart under a rough coat;
And from the first they practiced the franchise, –
The right of every citizen to vote!
War could not stop nor famine unexplain
The purpose they had planted and would guard;
Men gathered to think and talk with heart and brain
With Hooker and Ludlow and Haynes in the Meeting-House yard;
And, being on enchanted ground, yet simple men,
As greatness will usurp itself for cause,
They seem to wish to leave no diary then
Of just who wrote the Fundamental Laws,
But as if to say, as if speaking out loud,
The People made them of sinew and heart and might . . .
And then they seem encompassed in a cloud,
Then there is Light! . . .
Three hundred years . . . their tombstones in the mist
Seem looking on the square for lonely eyes,
And when they seem like somber amethyst,
We look and find them there with no surprise,
As if to see them standing, kind and tall,
Or coming down the steps inclined to roam,
And, listening curiously, we hear them call
Ludlow home. . .
THREE hundred years . . . they come back spirit-wise;
We show them how their Light has traveled far;
To ships in air, Olympias in the skies;
We link it now to Arcturus, a Star:
We see the planets through a lake of glass –
That man is not yet free must seem absurd –
Why, when we look through the telescope must we see pass
And near to us, a ghost, a winged threat, a monstrous bird –
We cannot brush off from us those gnashing wings,
We think we live our ordinary lives,
Men, women, husbands and wives,
We laugh through the day or frown at petty things, –
And yet we do not meet each others’ eyes,
And like a band that threatens on our throats,
When ships are congregating in our skies,
We look for a silver ship and hear grating notes –
Science introverted – genius must we abhor? –
Our heritage to our children – shall it be War? –
Who now shall answer these inhibited fears? –
The Pioneers.
They have wrung a soul; they know this country best;
They are not mute, tame phantoms of desire.
Let Hooker rise and answer for the rest,
As of old, a leader to inspire.
What fitter sign for us than his retort,
When he pleaded he might go and build this town,
That day in Boston before the General Court.
He pleaded too magnificently, then he sat down, . . .
His plea was denied, but he looked like one possessed;
With prophecy. He saw as light brings
His voice rings,
We may hear him still.
Ask of him today as in that narrow room,
Before the body of those august men;
Like to the Court, and the listeners he addressed,
Or at his tomb. . .
Listen again. . .
So shall his words bring to us peace as wide,
Faith, vision-blent, sure as the rainbow’s arch –
If his heart failed him, his soul cried,
As he marched in a vision – as we shall march
Forward, by his side,
Whither?
The strong bent of our spirits move us thither.
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