FOR A SUMMER FESTIVAL AT "THE LAURELS" ON THE MERRIMAC.
Jean Pierre Brissot, the famous leader of the Girondist party in
the French Revolution, when a young man travelled extensively in
the United States. He visited the valley of the Merrimac, and
speaks in terms of admiration of the view from Moulton's hill
opposite Amesbury. The "Laurel Party" so called, as composed of
ladies and gentlemen in the lower valley of the Merrimac, and
invited friends and guests in other sections of the country. Its
thoroughly enjoyable annual festivals were held in the early summer
on the pine-shaded, laurel-blossomed slopes of the Newbury side of
the river opposite Pleasant Valley in Amesbury. The several poems
called out by these gatherings are here printed in sequence.
Once more on yonder laurelled height
The summer flowers have budded;
Once more with summer's golden light
The vales of home are flooded;
And once more, by the grace of Him
Of every good the Giver,
We sing upon its wooded rim
The praises of our river,
Its pines above, its waves below,
The west-wind down it blowing,
As fair as when the young Brissot
Beheld it seaward flowing,--
And bore its memory o'er the deep,
To soothe a martyr's sadness,
And fresco, hi his troubled sleep,
His prison-walls with gladness.
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