"Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Maypole of Merry Mount" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawthorne Nathaniel)

1836

TWICE-TOLD TALES

THE MAYPOLE OF MERRY MOUNT

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

BRIGHT WERE THE DAYS at Merry Mount, when the Maypole was the
banner staff of that gay colony! They who reared it, should their
banner be triumphant, were to pour sunshine over New England's
rugged hills, and scatter flower seeds throughout the soil. Jollity
and gloom were contending for an empire. Midsummer eve had come,
bringing deep verdure to the forest, and roses in her lap, of a more
vivid hue than the tender buds of Spring. But May, or her mirthful
spirit, dwelt all the year round at Merry Mount, sporting with the
Summer months, and revelling with Autumn, and basking in the glow of
Winter's fireside. Through a world of toil and care she flitted with a
dreamlike smile, and came hither to find a home among the lightsome
hearts of Merry Mount.

Never had the Maypole been so gayly decked as at sunset on
midsummer eve. This venerated emblem was a pine-tree, which had
preserved the slender grace of youth, while it equalled the loftiest
height of the old wood monarchs. From its top streamed a silken
banner, colored like the rainbow. Down nearly to the ground the pole
was dressed with birchen boughs, and others of the liveliest green,
and some with silvery leaves, fastened by ribbons that fluttered in
fantastic knots of twenty different colors, but no sad ones. Garden
flowers, and blossoms of the wilderness, laughed gladly forth amid the
verdure, so fresh and dewy that they must have grown by magic on
that happy pine-tree. Where this green and flowery splendor
terminated, the shaft of the Maypole was stained with the seven
brilliant hues of the banner at its top. On the lowest green bough
hung an abundant wreath of roses, some that had been gathered in the
sunniest spots of the forest, and others, of still richer blush, which
the colonists had reared from English seed. O, people of the Golden
Age, the chief of your husbandry was to raise flowers!

But what was the wild throng that stood hand in hand about the
Maypole? It could not be that the fauns and nymphs, when driven from
their classic groves and homes of ancient fable, had sought refuge, as
all the persecuted did, in the fresh woods of the West. These were
Gothic monsters, though perhaps of Grecian ancestry. On the
shoulders of a comely youth uprose the head and branching antlers of a
stag; a second, human in all other points, had the grim visage of a
wolf; a third, still with the trunk and limbs of a mortal man,
showed the beard and horns of a venerable he-goat. There was the
likeness of a bear erect, brute in all but his hind legs, which were
adorned with pink silk stockings. And here again, almost as