University of Virginia Library

A tall, mild, wise-eyed, silver-bearded man—
The sea-wind scattering down our village street
His sixtieth autumn's crimson leaves—he moved
Among us, noting all our seaboard ways,
Stealing our little people's hearts with sweets,
And through the children winning all the wives;
But when the men, rough storm-flushed fellows, smiled
With slightly pitying, half-amused contempt,
Their homespun wits he startled to respect
By better knowledge of the things they knew,
Till all our ale-house sages, pipe in cheek,
Confessed “the Doctor” knew a sight o' things
Beyond their weather-gage, and last of all
Our gaunt old whaler, ear-ringed and tattooed,
Bragged less of outland folk and foreign ports.
Nay, I, too, when the gracious Sunday bell
Gathered our village—little children all
Around a common knee—began to feel
An undefined attraction to the man,
And found my sermon three-parts preached to him;
While he, with reverend hair and solemn beard,
A sprig or flower-bud at his button-hole,
Would sit, his grandchild's tiny hand in his,
Listening and musing,—musing most, I thought,—
Patient if not improved, until the close.
I came to like the man—who liked him not?—
And watched his tall grey figure as he passed
Seaward along the bright side of the street,—
Wee flax-head trotting gaily at his side
In crimson cloak and buckled crimson shoes;—
Watched, and surprised him on the breezy downs
Poring through lenses o'er the silvery frost
Of lichens on some ice-scored boulder-stone,
And oft at sunset met, a furlong off,
His spare stretched shadow on the glittering sands,
And then himself—the little one asleep,
Nestled in flaxen hair and hoary beard.