‘Purely to the heavens’

Typical New England-style church steeple.

— Photo by Mangoe

“In this wind to wrench the eye

And curdle the ear,

The church steeple rises purely to the heavens;

The sky is clear.’’

— From “Fiend’s Weather,’’ by Louise Bogan (1897-1970), a native of Livermore Falls, Maine, and a U.S. poet laureate

Depressing Depot Street in Livermore Falls in 1909, when the place was a busy mill town like so many others in New England.