The poetical works of John Townsend Trowbridge

First,—do you notice the girl? the slim one helping her mother,—
Tough little tow-head, spry as a catamount, freckled as birch-bark!
Nannie her name is;—it happened the summer when she was a baby.

Times were hard in the States. We lived on the farm with the old folks:
There all our dear little tots had been born, and their mother before them.
But the old hive would n't grow with the fresh young life that was buzzing
In and out of its doors; and, after much tribulation,—
Many a sleepless night I talked it over with Molly,—
We had resolved to push out, and find a new home on the prairies.

Well, it was settled at last; and, packing our pots and our kettles,
Clothing and bedding, and bags of Indian meal and potatoes,
Hen-coop, tools,—the few indispensable things to a poor man,—
Into a regular broad-beamed ark-on-wheels of a wagon,
Canvas-covered and drawn by two yoke of oxen, we started,—
Crowing cockerel, dog and cat, and chickens, and children.

Father and mother and grandmother stood and watched from the dooryard,—
Two generations that stayed saw two generations departing.

Molly just smothered her babies, and sobbed, and hardly looked back once,—

Woman all over! but I (though I broke down trying to cheer her)
Turned at the top of the hill, and gave a good stare at the old house,
Well-sweep, orchard, barn, the smoke from the chimney, and still one
Handkerchief feebly fluttering, with the great sunrise behind all.
That is the picture I saw, and see again at this minute,
Plain as if this was the hill, and down by the creek there the homestead.
Then it dropped into the past, with the life we had lived, and a new world
Opened before us. I tell you, 't was hard on the woman! But, stranger,
Look at her now, with her grown and half-grown daughters about her,
Smart as the best of them, setting the table and getting our supper,
Hopeful and resolute, light of heart and of hand,—and, believe me,
That 's just the way she has been ever since—after having her cry out
Over her young ones that morning—she turned a face like the sunrise
Westward; never a tear from that time nor a word of repining!

Novelty tickles the young; and the children, seeing the world move
Slowly and leisurely past, through the rolled-up sides of the canvas,
Shouted and laughed, and thought there was nothing but fun in a journey.
Tired of that, they walked, or romped with the dog by the roadside,
Racing, gathering flowers, and picking and stringing the berries;
Tired of that, sometimes they rode on the backs of the oxen;
Tired of everything else, they fell asleep in the wagon,
Spite of the jolts:—what wouldn't we give to sleep as a child sleeps?
Then they had something to do, when we camped at noon or at nightfall,
Gathering sticks for the fire, while I looked after the oxen.

Day after day we continued our journey, and night after night slept
Under our canvas, or lay on the ground rolled up in our blankets;
Leaving the cities behind us and pushing on into the backwoods,
Passing the scattered settlements, fording the streams: then the timber
Dwindled and disappeared; and on the great prairies the sun rose
Over the stern of our wagon and set on the horns of the oxen,
Morning and night; then forests once more; and the trail that we followed
Brought us into these woods. We intended to go on and settle
Over on Big Buck Branch, where one of our neighbors, John Osmond,
Going before us, had fenced his claim and rigged up a sawmill.
Here we encamped at night, and here what Molly will call God's
Hand interfered with our plans in the way I am going to tell you.

After a sultry and sweltering day in September, the night came
Breathless and close. We had halted here in the gathering twilight,
Choosing our camping-ground where fuel and water were plenty;
Woods, great woods all about us, only on one side the creek there
Flowed through the grassy bottom much as you see it at present.
I had unyoked and watered the poor lolling cattle, and left them
Deep in the wild grass, tethered, feeding and fighting mosquitoes.
Then in the woods rang the sound of an axe, and I was the chopper,
Slashing away at the tops of a whitewood fallen in the forest,
Throwing off sticks and chips which the two boys caught up and ran with.
Molly, intent on her housekeeping, minding the baby, arranging
Everything for our comfort, was in and out of the wagon;
Robbie already had run with a pail and brought water to cook with;
Then in the darkening woods shot up the blaze of our camp-fire,
Home-like and cheery; and soon the savory smell of our cooking
Made us deliciously hungry,—steaming coffee and stewing
Prairie-chickens; I shot them that afternoon from our wagon.

After supper the little ones said their prayers to their mother,
Kneeling under the great gaunt trees, in the gleam of the firelight.
Molly then (she is one of the pious sort, did I tell you?)
Prayed for us all,—a short prayer that we might be kept until morning.
Little the poor girl knew where the morning would find us! It makes me—
Well, yes, soft is the word, when I think of that prayer and what followed.

Here 's the identical spot! Here (fill your pipe again, stranger),
After preparing our bed,—that is, just spreading our blankets
On the dry ground,—we stood, the mother and I, for a long while
Hand in hand, that night, and looked at our six little shavers,
All asleep in their nests, either in or under the wagon,—
Robbie, and Johnny, and Jane, and Tommy, and Bess, and the baby,—
None of your puny sort,—cheeks brown and handsome as russets;—
Here in the great, still woods we watched them, with curious feelings,
Asking ourselves again and again if we had done wisely
Making this journey, and was n't it all a foolhardy adventure?
Each well enough had divined what the other was thinking: then Molly—
“God will take care of them and of us,” says she, “if we trust him.”

'T was n't for me to dispute her; but somehow I have a notion,
Praying our best is doing our best for ourselves and each other;
Trust in God is believing that, after we have done our part,
He will look out for the rest; anyhow, it is useless to worry,
Whether he does or he does n't; and so I reasoned and acted.
Though, after all has been said, there is certainly something or other,
Call it the finger of God, Fate, Providence, what you 've a mind to,—
Something that governs the cards in this game of life we are playing,
Felt oftentimes if not seen,—as it were, a Presence behind us
Planning and prompting our play,—that 's how I look at it, stranger;
After what happened that night I'm not the man to deny it.

I had been maybe three hours asleep, when the crow of our cooped-up
Rooster, along about midnight, awoke me; and well I remember
What a strange night it was,—how quiet and ghostly and lonesome!
Dark as Egypt all round our little travelling household,
In the small, shadowy space half lit by our flickering night-fire.
Not a leaf rustled; no breath, no sound, except the incessant,
Teasing noise of the vixenish katydids contradicting.
Then there was sudden commotion: the shadowy branches above us
Swayed and clashed, and the woods seemed to reel and rock for a moment.
Then it passed off in a roar like the sea, and again there was silence;
Even the katydids had desisted from scolding to listen.
Nature just seemed to be holding her breath and waiting for something.

“Can't you sleep, Thomas?” says Molly. “Are you awake, too?” I said. “Yes, dear.
I have not slept for an hour, my mind is so full of forebodings.
What can it mean? for I feel there is something dreadful impending!
Twice to-night I have dreamed that a limb from one of the trees fell
Right where we are! Each time I awoke with a scream,—did you hear me?—
Just as 't was falling on you. Sleep again I cannot and dare not,
For if I do I am sure I shall dream the same dream for a third time.
Hark!” she exclaimed; “what is that?”

A singular noise in the southwest;
Not like the sound we had heard, when the wind died away in the distance,—

Sharper and stronger than that; and, instead of dying, increasing,
Thundering onward,—a terrible rushing and howling and crashing;
Louder and louder, as if all the trees in the forest were falling;
Nearer and nearer, a deafening, deluging roar! Then I started;
“Molly!” I shrieked, “the tornado!” and made a dash at the children,
Snatching them out of their beds, all dazed and frightened and stupid,
Half in the dark, in the awfullest din and confusion.

Poor Molly
Did n't know which way to turn, but flung herself on them, to shield them.
“Run!” I yelled; “run!—to the creek!”—In a moment the crash would be on us.
Catching my arms full,—one by the wrist,—the mother beside me
Bearing her part,—Heaven only knows how, we carried, we dragged them
Down the dark slope, in the roar of a hundred Niagaras plunging,
Blackness ahead, and the big trees screeching and breaking and clashing
Close at our heels, all about us,—the tops of one whipped us in falling!
Then the wind took us, and—

Well, the next minute I found myself lying
Down in the grass there, clinging, and holding on to the small fry,
In a mad storm of leaves and broken branches and hailstones,—
Howling darkness, and jaws of lightning that showed us the world all
Rushing and streaming one way. I can't say how long it lasted,
Maybe five minutes, not more; then all of a sudden the lull came.

Counting heads, I found that three of the children were with me,
Cuddled down close; but where all the while were the rest, and their mother?
Never a one to be seen, as I looked by the quivering flashes,—
Only the grass blown flat, ironed down, all along by the creek shore.
Soon as the tempest would let me, I rose to my feet, braced against it,
Shouted, and listened; when out of the dire confusion of noises
Came a long, dismal bellow from one of my poor frightened oxen.
Then a child cried near by. Then her voice: “Are you all safe there?”
“Yes. Where are you?” I cried. “Here! under the bank, by the water,

Tommy and Jennie—not one of us hurt—just where the wind dropped us.
O, what a merciful providence! Did you say—did you say all safe?
Baby and all?”
“The baby!” I said. “Have n't you got the baby?”
That brought her up from the creek with a shriek—shall I ever forget it?
That, or the look she gave, as she rushed out before me? her long black
Hair flying wild in the wind, face white, in a sheet of white lightning!
“O, my baby!” she said, “you had it,—I felt its bed empty!”
“Yes, I remember—I took it, I gave it to some one—to Jennie!
Then I put both in your arms.”
“O father!” says Jennie, “you gave me
Something wrapped up in a blanket. I hugged it tight, but it squirmed so—
I was so frightened—it scratched and jumped from my arms—and, O father!
'T was n't the baby, I know!” And that was the way of it: I had
Thrust my hand into the wagon, and caught up an object I found there
Under the blanket. Consider the horrible uproar and hubbub,
Darkness and fright, and then maybe you'll understand how a man can
Make such a blunder;—the baby had rolled from its place, and the blanket
Dropped on the cat, I suppose, when I took up the last of the children.

Well, there we were, and it 's easy to think of pleasanter places
One might prefer to be in, if he had his choice in the matter:—
Young ones shivering, crying, mother almost distracted,
None of us more than half dressed, just the clothes on which we had slept in;
Dark as Egypt again, not even the lightning to guide us
Into the terrible windfall in search of our camp and the baby;
Weather grown suddenly cold, and five hours yet until daylight!

All was quiet again, very much as if nothing had happened,—
Only occasional flurries of wind and spatters of cold rain;
Then I looked up, and, behold! the stars were shining; I saw them
Glance through flying clouds, and the twisted branches above me
Where I was struggling so madly to find a way back to the wagon.

I for the twentieth time had paused to hear if a child cried,
Hoping still against fate, when they shone out, O so serenely!
Over my head, those stars, looking down on my rage and impatience.
Something entered my soul with their beams,—I could never explain it;
'T was n't just what you might call a pious notion that took me,—
But from that time I was calm, under all my outward excitement;
Calm deep down in my heart, and prepared for whatever might happen.

Still it was frightful business,—tearing my way through the treetops,
Climbing about the immense crossed trunks and limbs, till a glimmer
Caught my eye through the brush,—a blinking brand of our camp-fire,
Scattered, but not quite extinguished, for all the hail and the whirlwind.
All this time I had kept up a frequent hallooing to Molly,
Brooding her half-naked young ones, just outside of the windfall,
Waiting in terror and cold to hear the worst. Only Robbie,
Stout little fellow, was with me; wherever I clambered, he followed.
“Father!” he cried, “see the light!” and forward we scrambled to reach it,—
Scraped together what sticks and leaves we could feel with our fingers.
Everything, though, was so damp that, with all our puffing and blowing,
Never a blaze would start (our matches were left in the wagon),—
Till, all at once, a flash! I looked, and there was the rogue, sir,
Tearing his shirt into strips of cotton to kindle the fire with!
“Mother won't care,” says he. “What's a shirt, if we only find baby?”

On went branches and bark. There, in the still light, all around us
Lay the tremendous tangle,—timber scattered like jack-straws;
Shaggy and shadowy masses starting out of the darkness;
Upturned roots, with their cart-loads of earth,—all the work of a minute!
Still no sign of a wagon; no cry, in the terrible silence,—
Only the lisp of the flames, and the hiss and crackle of green stuff
Where they streamed into the hair of a giant pine-tree, and lit up
All that part of the windfall. Near by, on a bough, a small bird sat,
Dazed: you might almost have caught it. Just then I perceived something white gleam,
Rushed for it, tore through the brush; and there, sir, if you'll believe me,
In a rough penfold of trees slung about in the carelessest fashion,
Safe in the midst of 'em, only the tongue smashed up and the canvas

Damaged a trifle—Excuse me, I never could get through the story,
Just along here, without being a little mite womanish!—Well, sir,
There, as I said, was the wagon, and there, as I live, was the baby,
Keeled over into a basket, and sleeping, as peaceful as could be!
That was the wonder,—to think how she had refused to be quiet
Many a night, to sleep at last through a tearing tornado!
Strange, too,—the moment I saw her she woke, and, as if she was bound to
Make up for time she had lost, set up such a musical screeching,
In the wild woods, as I guess never went to the heart of a mother
Gladder than Molly. No need for Robbie to yell, “We have found her!”

Soon, by the help of the light, I had brought the whole tribe through the windfall.
But, after all, the thing did look mighty bad to me, stranger!
There was our poor dog killed by a tree that had crashed on our campfire;
Dinner-pot smashed; likewise the hen-coop beside it demolished;
Wagon disabled; and that, and all our earthly possessions,
Fast in a snarl of big logs that I never expected to cut through:
Fifteen miles to Buck Branch, and not a hand nearer to help us!

Well, I was blue! The woman of course went into hysterics,
Hugging her baby, at first; then came to me with her comfort:
“Don't be down-hearted!” she said. “O dear! do look at that hencoop!
Pull off the branches, why don't you? maybe the poor things are alive yet.”
So I uncovered the rubbish;—three pullets quite stiff; but the rooster
Fluttered a little, got up, looked about him, and shook out his feathers,
Saw his three wives lying dead at his feet, his house all in ruins,
Hopped to a stump, where he flapped his red wings in the flush of the firelight,
Stretched up his neck and crowed! superb, courageous, defiant,
Flinging his note of cheer out into the night, till the echoes
Crowed in the distance. The frightened, huddling and shivering children
Heard it, laughed, and took heart; and I said, “If that cockerel, after
All that has happened to him, has pluck enough left him to crow with,

What am I to despair, with my wife and children around me,
Safe, and with hands to shape our future out of this chaos?”

Daylight came, and showed the work that was laid out before me.
There was the windfall,—a gap in the woods far off in the southwest,
Skipping the creek, then stretching as far away in the northeast,—
Just a big swath through the timber, as if a giant had mowed it!
What did I do? Went out and looked up my cattle, the first thing;
Then set to work with my axe, getting poles and bark for a cabin;
Drove to Buck Branch with a drag, sold one yoke of oxen, and brought back
Things that we needed the most; cut grass for the cattle, come winter,—
Settled, in short, where we were, because we could n't well help it.

Watching my chance, by degrees I burned off, and logged off, the windfall,
Turning it into a wheat-lot that has n't its beat in the country.
Taken together, the woodland, and bottom, and prairie beyond there,
Make the best kind of a farm. And soon we began to have neighbors.
Table and chairs took the place of blocks and slabs in our cabin;
Cabin itself gave way in a couple of years to a log-house;
Log-house at last to a framed house,—this is the article, stranger;
Not the most elegant mansion,—snug, though, and much at your service.
School-house and meeting-house followed. And then came the row with the redskins.
Terrible times! We escaped,—and that's a strange part of my story.
Over on Big Buck Branch, where we had intended to settle,
Every man, woman, and child—except our old neighbor, John Osmond,
He was with us at the time—was murdered, or driven for refuge
Into the woods (it was winter), and all their houses and barns burnt,—
Grist-mill, saw-mill, store, there was n't a building left standing.
We on the creek took in the poor wretches, and often that winter,
Not for ourselves alone, had reason to bless the tornado,—
Or what Power soever that with the twirl of a finger,
Tied us up here in the woods, in the mighty hard knot of a windfall.

That is the story. Beg pardon! your pipe is out. But there 's Nannie—
Baby worth saving, you think?—just coming to call us to supper.

DOROTHY IN THE GARRET

In the low-raftered garret, stooping
Carefully over the creaking boards,
Old Maid Dorothy goes a-groping
Among its dusty and cobwebbed hoards;
Seeking some bundle of patches, hid
Far under the eaves, or bunch of sage,
Or satchel hung on its nail, amid
The heirlooms of a bygone age.

There is the ancient family chest,
There the ancestral cards and hatchel;
Dorothy, sighing, sinks down to rest,
Forgetful of patches, sage, and satchel.
Ghosts of faces peer from the gloom
Of the chimney, where, with swifts and reel,
And the long-disused, dismantled loom,
Stands the old-fashioned spinning-wheel.

She sees it back in the clean-swept kitchen,
A part of her girlhood's little world:
Her mother is there by the window, stitching;
Spindle buzzes, and reel is whirled
With many a click: on her little stool
She sits, a child by the open door,
Watching, and dabbling her feet in the pool
Of sunshine warm on the gilded floor.

Her sisters are spinning all day long:
To her wakening sense, the first sweet warning
Of daylight come, is the cheerful song
To the hum of the wheel, in the early morning.
Benjie, the gentle, red-cheeked boy,
On his way to school, peeps in at the gate;
In neat, white pinafore, pleased and coy,
She reaches a hand to her bashful mate;

And under the elms, a prattling pair,
Together they go, through glimmer and gloom:—

It all comes back to her, dreaming there
In the low-raftered garret-room;
The hum of the wheel, and the summer weather,
The heart's first trouble, and love's beginning,
Are all in her memory linked together;
And now it is she herself that is spinning.

With the bloom of youth on cheek and lip,
Turning the spokes with the flashing pin,
Twisting the thread from the spindle-tip,
Stretching it out and winding it in,
To and fro, with a blithesome tread,
Singing she goes, and her heart is full,
And many a long-drawn golden thread
Of fancy is spun with the shining wool.

Her father sits in his favorite place,
Puffing his pipe by the chimney-side;
Through curling clouds his kindly face
Glows upon her with love and pride.
Lulled by the wheel, in the old armchair
Her mother is musing, cat in lap,
With beautiful drooping head, and hair
Whitening under her snow-white cap.

One by one, to the grave, to the bridal,
They have followed her sisters from the door;
Now they are old, and she is their idol:—
It all comes back on her heart once more.
In the autumn dusk the hearth gleams brightly,
The wheel is set by the shadowy wall,—
A hand at the latch,—'t is lifted lightly,
And in walks Benjie, manly and tall.

His chair is placed; the old man tips
The pitcher, and brings his choicest fruit;
Benjie basks in the blaze, and sips,
And tells his story, and joints his flute:
O, sweet the tunes, the talk, the laughter!
They fill the hour with a glowing tide;

But sweeter the still, deep moments after,
When she is alone by Benjie's side.

But once with angry words they part:
O, then the weary, weary days!
Ever with restless, wretched heart,
Plying her task, she turns to gaze
Far up the road; and early and late
She harks for a footstep at the door,
And starts at the gust that swings the gate,
And prays for Benjie, who comes no more.

Her fault? O Benjie! and could you steel
Your thoughts toward one who loved you so?—
Solace she seeks in the whirling wheel,
In duty and love that lighten woe;
Striving with labor, not in vain,
To drive away the dull day's dreariness;
Blessing the toil that blunts the pain
Of a deeper grief in the body's weariness.

Proud, and petted, and spoiled was she:
A word, and all her life is changed!
His wavering love too easily
In the great, gay city grows estranged.
One year: she sits in the old church pew;
A rustle, a murmur,—O Dorothy! hide
Your face and shut from your soul the view!
'T is Benjie leading a white-veiled bride!

Now father and mother have long been dead,
And the bride sleeps under a churchyard stone,
And a bent old man with grizzled head
Walks up the long, dim aisle alone.
Years blur to a mist; and Dorothy
Sits doubting betwixt the ghost she seems
And the phantom of youth, more real than she,
That meets her there in that haunt of dreams.

Bright young Dorothy, idolized daughter,
Sought by many a youthful adorer,

Life, like a new-risen dawn on the water,
Shining, an endless vista, before her!
Old Maid Dorothy, wrinkled and gray,
Groping under the farm-house eaves,—
And life is a brief November day
That sets on a world of withered leaves!

FARMER JOHN

Home from his journey Farmer John
Arrived this morning, safe and sound.
His black coat off, and his old clothes on,
“Now I'm myself!” says Farmer John;
And he thinks, “I'll look around.”
Up leaps the dog: “Get down, you pup!
Are you so glad you would eat me up?”
The old cow lows at the gate, to greet him;
The horses prick up their ears, to meet him:
“Well, well, old Bay!
Ha, ha, old Gray!
Do you get good feed when I am away?

“You have n't a rib!” says Farmer John;
“The cattle are looking round and sleek;
The colt is going to be a roan,
And a beauty too: how he has grown!
We'll wean the calf next week.”
Says Farmer John, “When I've been off,
To call you again about the trough,
And watch you, and pet you, while you drink,
Is a greater comfort than you can think!”
And he pats old Bay,
And he slaps old Gray;—
“Ah, this is the comfort of going away!

“For, after all,” says Farmer John,
“The best of a journey is getting home.
I've seen great sights; but would I give
This spot, and the peaceful life I live,
For all their Paris and Rome?

These hills for the city's stifled air,
And big hotels all bustle and glare,
Land all houses, and roads all stones,
That deafen your ears and batter your bones?
Would you, old Bay?
Would you, old Gray?
That 's what one gets by going away!

“There Money is king,” says Farmer John;
“And Fashion is queen; and it's mighty queer
To see how sometimes, while the man
Is raking and scraping all he can,
The wife spends, every year,
Enough, you would think, for a score of wives,
To keep them in luxury all their lives!
The town is a perfect Babylon
To a quiet chap,” says Farmer John.
“You see, old Bay,—
You see, old Gray,—
I'm wiser than when I went away.

“I 've found out this,” says Farmer John,—
“That happiness is not bought and sold,
And clutched in a life of waste and hurry,
In nights of pleasure and days of worry;
And wealth is n't all in gold,
Mortgage and stocks and ten per cent,—
But in simple ways, and sweet content,
Few wants, pure hopes, and noble ends,
Some land to till, and a few good friends,
Like you, old Bay,
And you, old Gray!
That 's what I 've learned by going away.”

And a happy man is Farmer John,—
O, a rich and happy man is he!
He sees the peas and pumpkins growing,
The corn in tassel, the buckwheat blowing,
And fruit on vine and tree;
The large, kind oxen look their thanks
As he rubs their foreheads and strokes their flanks;

The doves light round him, and strut and coo.
Says Farmer John, “I'll take you too,—
And you, old Bay,
And you, old Gray,
Next time I travel so far away!”

OLD SIMON DOLE

So, Mimy, it 's me an' you agin, is it?
Strange, atter so long a while, to think
I sh'd be comin' to make ye a visit,
An' set tipped back here agin the sink,
An' tock to ye jes' 's I did, ye know,—
Wal, nigh on to forty year ago!

Le' me see! Married in 'twenty-six;
'T wuz a new house then, an' ye moved right in.
Don't look quite so new to-day! It 's slick 's
It ever wuz, though,—neat as a pin!
I ollers telled Jerome, when he got
Our Mimy, he picked the best o' the lot.

Ye axed my advice, remember: “He ain't
The smartis' feller in oll creation,”
Says I, “ner you wun't find him a saint;
Well off, though, an' that 's a consideration.
'F he gits the right kin' of a wife, he'll let her
Manage. I guess ye can't do no better,”

Says I. An' ye found it jes' 'bout so.
Ye begun 'ith him right, I ollers said.
'F a woman expec's to hoe her row
With a man,—keepin' mebby a leetle ahead,—
She mus' start in season: slim chance she'll stan',
Once give him fairly the upper han'!

Then I got married. Ah, wal, poor Mary!
She made a good wife, though she wa'n't re'l strong.
You never looked into a han'somer dairy!
An' she wuz as pleasant 's the day wuz long,

With jes' the pertyis' kin' of a v'ice.
I never had reason to rue my ch'ice.

I got a wife an' a farm to boot;
Ye could n't ketch me a nappin' there!
Thinks I, “Now, s'posin' the wife don't soot?
The farm'll be suthin' to make that square;
No resk 'bout that! An' where 's the harm,
If the wife turns out as good as the farm?”

She 'd nat'ral larnin',—bright 's a dollar!
It runs in the Grimeses,—she wuz clear Grimes.
I'm 'mos' sorry I did n't foller
Her counsels more 'n I did, sometimes.
The' wa'n't nothin' but what she understood;
An' her jedgment in matters wuz ollers good.

It might 'a' be'n well if I had,—do'no'.
'T wa'n't never my way to be led. I hate
A woman 'at wears the breeches; an' so,
Mebby, by tryin' to stan' too straight,
When she 'd have bent me a little, I fell
Over back now an' then,—do'no'; can't tell.

She 'd high idees! She claimed we 'd otter
Give Simon a college edecation;
Teased me to send our secon' dotter
(She knowed 't would cos' like all creation!)
To boardin'-school, an' have a pyaner
An' music-master for Abby an' Hanner.

I thot that notion might cool a spell.
I never 'd sot foot inside a college,
An' I 'd rubbed through the world perty well.
As fer the gals, a trifle o' knowledge,
Enough fer to teach, might help 'em some;
But that they could have 'thout goin' f'm hum.

“They need n't poke off to the 'cademy,
To fin' good husban's, I'm sure,” says I.

“You never done that, an' you foun' me.
They'll make good wives, too, I guess, if they try,
'Thout French an' drarrin'; it don't take these
Fer to mix a pud'n' an' set a cheese.

“I mean to bring up our Sim,” says I,
“To go to meet'n' an' Sunday-school,
An' do 's he 'd be done by, perty nigh,
An' be a good farmer, an' nob'dy's fool,
An' give him schoolin' enough, so 's he
Can take good care of his proppity,—

“With some to take care on; then if he 's sound
In the doctrine, and pop'lar enough fer to go
To the Gin'ral Court when the time comes round
(Don't take much schoolin' fer that, ye know),
I sh'll consider,” says I, “'t I've done
A payrunt's hull dooty to a son.

“But drarrin' an' French an' pyaner-playin',—
That nonsense!—I would n't give a strah
Fer gals brot up tut! An' as fer payin',”
Says I, “bills long 's the marral lah
'T yer board'n'-schools,—when I'm sich a dunce,
Jes' put me under guardeens to once!”

That did n't quite jibe 'ith her idee;
An' once she could n't help flingin' out
'T the money it cost would n't come f'm me,
Sence the farm wuz her 'n. But that wuz about
The last on 't. Tock like that! I told her
'T would make the ol' house too hot to hold her.

Singin' was well enough; an' Sim
An' Jemimy gin'ally sot in the choir.
Then 'f they struck up a Sunday hymn,
A settin' around a winter's fire,—
Er a good ol'-fashioned week-day song,—
Th' evenin's did n't seem quite so long.

But the sweetis' tunes wuz ollers sweeter,
Though I do say it, if she j'ined in.
She wuz jes' the meekis', patientis' creatur'!
I 've said it, er thot it, time an' agin.
Do'no' 's I ever spoke it out loud
To her, 'fear praisin' might make her proud.

Ye never did see sich a cute contriver
Fer makin' things nice an' comf'table!
Work—though she wa'n't no gre't of a driver—
Ollers, when she wuz around, went well.
Seemed 's 'ough the' wuz suthin' in her smile
'At made the wheels run as slick as ile.

Wal, bimeby Hanner she got married;
An' Simon he begun to spark it;
An' Abby died; an' Jemimy carried
Her wool, 's I said, to a dumb poor market;
Took up 'ith the wheelwright's son, an' went
Out West,—smart chap, but had n't a cent.

I might 'a' gi'n 'em a thousan' dollars,
To buy 'em some land; 't would tickled mother!
They 'lotted on 't; but then she wuz ollers
Forever a teasin' fer this un an' t' other;
I'd got so use' ter sayin' no,
I forked out fifty, an' let 'em go.

Sim he done well,—Square Ebbitt's dotter;
They gi'n her a han'some settin'-out!
I fixed 'em a house, an' her folks bot her
The biggis' pyaner in town, about.
'T would do for her. Sounds kin' o' nice!
She'll play! You 'd think her fingers wuz mice!

Childern oll married off er dead,
It seemed some lonesome fer a spell.
We 'uz gitt'n' in years, an' wife she said
We 'd made enough, an' I 'd otter sell,—

Give up hard work, an' settle down,
'Longside o' Simon, nigher town.

I hated, wus 'n ever a man did,
To quit the farm; fer every year
We wuz gittin' more an' more forehanded,—
Layin' up reg'lar suthin' clear;
An' the' 's sich a satisfaction knowin'
Yer grass an' yer bank account is growin'!

I may 'a' be'n wrong; we 're poor, frail creatur's!
But she kep' up so 'bout her work,—
She 'd ollers jes' them delikit featur's,
Wuz jes' so quiet, an' jes' so chirk,
(She never would fret, though she never wuz slack:
I 'd scold, but she never scolded back),—

I did n't once 'spect how low she wuz,
Ner dream o' what wuz a-goin' to happen,
Till bimeby neighbors begun to buzz;
An' says one to me: “Why, ye 're crazy, Cap'n!
She'll work long 's ever she drahs breath,
An' she 's jes' workin' herself to death!”

Another said, she wuz pinin' away,—
She did n't have s'ciety enough,—
She 'd otter go ridin' every day!
I 'xpect I answered 'em kin' o' gruff;
Though I must own I wuz gin'ally loth
To have comp'ny much,—it 's a perfick moth.

I s'pose I wuz wrong,—the best is li'ble
To miss it,—an' yit I tried to do right.
I kep' the sabbath, an' read the Bible,
An' prayed in the fam'ly marnin' an' night,—
'Thout 't wuz in hayin'-time, now an' then,
When wages wuz high, an' we 'd hired men.

We had the darktor to her; but she
Did n't seem to have no settl' disease.

“'T ain't 'zac'ly the lungs, Mis' Dole,” says he.
“Can't be,” says I, “the butter an' cheese!
An', Darktor,” says I, “how could it come
F'm lonesomeness? I'm ollers to hum!”

Oll we know is, 't wuz a dispensation!
Heavem's ways ain't our 'n—'t 's a world o' trouble!
Ye may s'arch f'm eend to eend o' the nation,
Fer another sich evem-mated couple!
Men tock o' divorce,—that never 'd be needed,
If oll drah'd true in the yoke as she did.

It e'en a'mos' makes me shed tears, to think
How jes' her comin' into the room—
Like a sunbeam stealin' through a chink—
'U'd sometimes lighten up the gloom,
Though she did n't speak! I never could git
No help that wuz savin' as she wuz yit.

So I concluded to let the place.
'Mos' wish I 'd sold; fer I can't go
Anigh Drake, but he sasses me to my face:
He 's the new tenant; he 's terrible slow!
Can't manage more 'n a fly! I 've had
Three others, but they wuz 'bout as bad.

Men will ack so like the very deuse!
Ye may plead 'ith 'em in an' out o' season,
They 're so dumb selfish 't ain't no use
A-tryin' to make 'em hear to reason.
Evem Sim's got jes' them folts I hate!
Who he takes 'em frum, I can't consait.

I kin' o' make it my hum 'ith him,
An' visit around among the relations;
But the son-in-lahs is wus 'n Sim!
Hain't none o' the dotters got the patience
The mother had. Jemimy 's the best,
Atter all. (They 're doin' re'l well, out West!)

You 've had your trouble as well as me;
We 're barn tut, ye know, as the sparks fly up'ard.
But when wus comes to wust, you'll agree
The' 's some comfort in a full cupboard.
Jerome he left ye perty well off,—
Though 't wuz a pity 'bout that cough!

Wal, here we be agin! Sich is life.
You 've had yer Jerome, I 've had my Mary,—
He made a good husban', an' she a good wife,—
An' now,—on'y think!—we hain't got nary!
Jes' brother an' sister once more, is it?
An' I 've come to make ye a good long visit!

AUTHOR'S NIGHT

“Brilliant Success!” the play-bills said,
Flaming all over the town one day,
Blazing in characters blue and red,
(Printed for posting, by the way,
Before the public had seen the play!)
“Received with thunders of applause!
New Piece! New Author!! Tremendous hit!!!”
This was on Tuesday: still it draws,
And to-night is the Author's Benefit.

“New piece”: I 've a word to say about that.
Nine years ago, it may be more,
There came one day to the manager's door
A hopeful man, with a modest rat-tat,
Who smilingly entered, took off his hat,
And, begging the great man's pardon, slipt
Into his hand a manuscript.

In a month he came again: “The play—
Which I troubled you with—the other day”—
“The play? Oh! ah!” says the manager,
Politest of men. “Excuse me, sir;
'T is being considered.” (Safe to bet
He had n't looked at the title yet!)

“I'll drop you a line; or you'll confer
A favor by calling a week from now.”
And he turned him out with a model bow.
Eight days later again they met,—
Modest author hopeful as ever;
But the great man finished his business thus:
“I 've read your play, sir; very clever;
But” (handing it back to him) “I regret
It is n't exactly the thing for us.
Good-morning, sir!” Politest of men!
Nine years ago, it may be ten.

Author and piece were new enough then.
But sorrow and toil and poverty
Have taken the gloss from him, you see;
And the play was afterwards knocked about
The theatres, keeping company
With dice and euchre-packs so long,
And pipes and actors' paint, it grew
To look so dingy and smell so strong,
You 'd have called it anything but new!
Till gruff and gouty old Montagu
Happened to take it up one day:
'T was after dinner; he thought, no doubt,
'T would help him to a nap. “But stay!
What in the deuce, boys! Here 's a play!”
He rubbed his glasses, forgot his gout,
And read till he started up with a shout,
“'T is just the thing for my protégée,
And hang me, if I don't bring it out!”

And so it chanced, politest of men!
The play came into your hands again
Nine years later,—did I say ten?
And either age had improved its flavor,
Or you are wiser than you were then;
For now you deem it a special favor
That gouty and grouty old Montagu
Consented to bring it out with you.

“Tremendous hit!”
In the vast theatre's hollow sphere
High hangs the glittering chandelier;
Its bright beams flash on
Beauty and fashion;
A sea of life pours into the pit,
And cloud upon cloud piles over it,
Where Youth and Pleasure and Mirth and Passion
And Years and Folly and Wisdom and Wit
Throng to the Author's Benefit.

The orchestra leader takes his place;
Horn and serpent and oboë follow,
Violin and violoncello,
Trombone, trumpet, and double-bass.
A turning of music-leaves begins,
With a thrumming and screwing of violins;
Then the leader waves his bow, and—crash!
Kettle-drum rattles and cymbals clash,
And brass and strings and keen triangle
And high-keyed piccolo, piercing and pure,
Their many-colored chords entangle,
Weaving the wild, proud overture.

Old Montagu, with fret and frown,
All cloaked and gloved, walks up and down
Before the door of his protégée,
Keeping her worshippers at bay.
But he catches one who comes that way,
Gives him a gouty finger or two,
And seems quite civil: “Why did n't you
Have a bouquet
For my protégée,
In the boudoir-scene last night? 'T will do
As well to-night, though.” (Straight off goes gay
Young Lothario, hunting a nosegay.)
He punches a pale reporter next
With his playful cane: “She 's terribly vext
At you, young fellow! Why did n't you get
That notice into your last Gazette?
You will in your next, eh? Don't forget!”

And gruff and snuffy old Montagu
Limps down to the curtain and peeps through:
“Boys! what a house it is! Thanks to me,
The fellow's fortune is made,” growls he.

Then, tinkle-tinkle! The music hushes;
Up to the ceiling the great curtain rushes;
And a world of surprise
To fresh young eyes,
A realm of enchantment, glows and flushes,
Stretching far back from the footlights' brink.
How does it look to worldly-wise
And crusty old Montagu, do you think?

And the author, where all the while is he?
How seems it to him? Were I in his place,
Turning at last my toil-worn face
From the dreary deserts of poverty,
Would n't all my heart leap high to see
The flowers of beauty and fashion and grace,
One many-hued, gay,
Immense bouquet,
Flaunting and fluttering here for me?
The costumed players, even she,
The bright young queen
Of the radiant scene,
Speaking his speeches, living his thought;
And all this vast, pulsating mass
Held captive by the spell he wrought,—
Held breathless, like a sea of glass
That bursts in breakers of wild applause:—
Would n't you conceive you had some cause
For an honest thrill, if you were he?
But where, as we said, can the fellow be?

Montagu is crabbed and old;
And the wings are barren and gusty and cold;
And, ah! could the fresh young eyes behold,
Around and under
That vision of wonder,—

Behind the counterfeit joys and hopes,
The tinsel and paint of the players' parts,—
The barn-like vault, with its pulleys and ropes,
Shabby canvas and sheet-iron thunder,
And, O, the humanest lives and hearts!

Within the wings, just hid from view,
Snuffy and puffy old Montagu
Watches his ward, as a lynx his prey;
Wheedles her lovers, and reckons his gains;
Though naught but praise of his protégée,
Will he hear from another, he follows the play
With eyes that threaten and brows that rebuke her,
And lips that can chide in a fierce, sharp way,
When all is over, for all her pains.
The priest and the lover are playing euchre
In the intervals of their parts; the clown,
Dull fellow enough when the curtain is down,
Has had, they say,
Bad news to-day;
The merry ghost of the murdered man
Takes pleasant revenge on the whiskered villain
At a game of chess which they began
In the green-room, just before the killing;
The beggar is scuffling with the king;
And the lovelorn maiden is gossiping
With the misanthrope, prince of all good fellows;
And some are sad, and some are gay,
Some are in love, and some are jealous;
And there 's many a play within the play!

And, O young eyes! in yonder alley,
Which the tall theatre overtops
(Its sheer crag towering above a valley
Of poor men's tenements and shops),—
Where three little cherubs, not overfed,
Are lying asleep in a trundle-bed,
While a thin, wan woman, sitting late,
Is stitching a garment beside the grate,—
You might, at this moment, see a man

Act as no paid performer can,—
In that wholly unstudied, natural way
No one to this day
Ever saw in a play!

Out at elbows, out at toes,
A needy, seedy, lank little man,
To and fro and about he goes,
With a vexed little bundle of infantine woes;
Sitting down, rising up, and with rocking and walking,
With hushing and tossing and singing and talking,
Vainly trying
To still its crying;
While a shadow behind him, huge and dim,
With a shadow-baby mimics him,
Sketched on the wall,
Grotesque and tall.

Anon he pauses. Hark to the cheers!
He laughs as he hears;
And he says, “I believe I could tell by the cheers
(If only this child would n't worry so!)—
Whether they come from above or below,
Begin in the boxes or up in the tiers,—
Which is the speech, and who is the player!”
In his keen face kindles a youthful glow,—
And lo! 't is the face of the man we know;
'T is certainly so!
Though faded and jaded, thinner and grayer,
With a ghost of the look of long ago.
“To think,” he says, “I never knew
The play was to be brought out, until
I saw it that morning on the bill!
Then did n't I hurry home to you
(I vow, this baby will never hush!
There, bite my finger, if you will!)
With the wonderful news? And did n't I rush
Up the alley, to find old Montagu?
You would n't believe it was really true,
And you only half believe it still!”

Reason enough that she should doubt!
For has n't she witnessed, all these years,
His coming in, and his going out,
His wisdom, his weakness, his laughter and tears?
Seen him pine and seen him fret?
Eating his dinner (when dinners were had);
Serious, frivolous, hopeful, sad;—
Why, he never could get
A living yet,
And all that he tried has failed outright!
Now can it be,
Is it really he,
This poor weak man at her side, whose wit
Is making the theatre shake to-night
As if its very sides would split?

Odd, is it not? But, after all,
If you will observe, it does n't take
A man of giant mould to make
A giant shadow on the wall;
And he who in our daily sight
Seems but a figure mean and small,
Outlined in Fame's illusive light,
May stalk, a silhouette sublime,
Across the canvas of his time.

She answers with a peevish smile,
Taking stitch upon stitch the while:
“Why did n't they pay you something down
To buy you a coat and me a gown?
Then I could go to the theatre too,
And you would n't be ashamed to sit
In the private box they offered you,
Instead of sneaking in as you do.
They put you off with a benefit!
And how do I know but Montagu
Is going to cheat you out of it?”

“These women never will understand
Some things!” he cries. “How many times more

Must I explain”—A rap at the door!
A step on the creaking stairway floor!
He opens, and sees before him stand
A visitor, courteous, bland, and grand,—
His friend, the manager, true as you live!
Who puts a packet into his hand,
Very much as once we saw him give
A manuscript, with the same old bow.
(Everything seems altered now
But the model man and his model bow:
He will enter, I fancy, the other world
In just this style,—
With a flourish and smile,
Diamonds sparkling, and mustache curled!)

“It gives me very great pleasure: one third
Of the gross receipts”: presenting the packet.
“For a first instalment, upon my word,
Not bad, my friend!—A check, if preferred;
But I thought you might manage this,” he says.
“A little seed, which I trust will grow.
The piece is certainly a success,
And, with the right management to back it,
Will run, I should say, six weeks or so.
Really, a very neat success!
We shall always be playing it more or less.
I'm happy to say so much; although
I think I was right, nine years ago.
(Sign this little receipt,if you please?)
Times were not ripe for it then, you know;
The play would have failed, nine years ago.
Now, when can you give us another piece?”

The author, in the sudden heat
And tumult of his joy (or is it
His strange confusion at this visit?
The greatest honor of all his life!)
Partly because the said receipt
Is to be signed, and partly, maybe,
Because one arm still holds the baby,

Turns over the packet to his wife.
She tears the wrapper, and both her hands
Amazed she raises,—
Amazed she gazes!
The bursting treasure her broad lap fills,—
Gold and silver and good bank-bills!
Why, this at last she understands;
And now she believes in the benefit,
In the manager, and in Montagu,
In the play, and just a little bit
In her dear, old, clever husband too!

As for him, he seizes his hat,—
Wife and children must have a treat!
He follows the manager into the street,
Bent on purchasing this and that,
Something to wear and something to eat.
But the worthy man is quite too fast:
The shops are mostly closed; and at last
He comes around to the play-house door,
Where he hears such a din
Burst forth within,
What does he do, but just look in?

He reaches the lobby, and stands in the crowd;
By craning his neck, and tiptoeing tall,
He can see that the curtain is down, that 's all.
But still the roar
Goes up as before,
Shout upon shout!
Rapping and clapping and whistling and calling,
Stamping and tramping and caterwauling.
So he cries aloud to a man in the crowd,
“What is it about?”
And the man in the crowd screams back as loud,
“Don't you know?
It 's the end of the show!
They 're trying to call the author out!”

The manager appears in his place,
Hat in hand, extremely polite,
Bowing and smiling to left and right,
(If only the author could get a sight!)
And delivers with characteristic grace
A neat little speech of about a minute,
With a plenty of pleasant nothings in it:—

“Author—unable to appear—
Obliged—presents—
Compliments”—
(If only the author himself could hear!
How the people cheer!)
“Company—favorite—credit due—
My friend and the public's—Montagu—
Theatre—enterprise in securing—
Author—other plans maturing—
Public—generous appreciation—
Gratification—
This ovation”—

And so, with a beautiful peroration,
Just the thing for the happy occasion,
He sails away in the breeze of a grand sensation.

All is over, and out with the throng
The jostled author is borne along.
Will the fresh young eyes, I wonder, see
The crumpled man in the crowd, and note
The napless hat and the seedy coat?
Alone, unknown, he goes his way,
None so unknown and lonely as he!
While he hears at his side a sweet voice say,
“O, what would n't any one give to be
The author of that delightful play!
I know he is handsome, he must be gay,
And tall,—though of that I'm not so certain.
Why did n't he come before the curtain?”

ONE DAY SOLITARY

I am all right! good-by, old chap!
Twenty-four hours, that won't be long.
Nothing to do but take a nap,
And—say! can a fellow sing a song?
Will the light fantastic be in order,—
A pigeon-wing on your pantry floor?
What are the rules for a regular boarder?
Be quiet? All right!—Cling clang goes the door!

Clang clink, the bolts! and I am locked in.
Some pious reflection and repentance
Come next, I suppose, for I just begin
To perceive the sting in the tail of my sentence,—
“One day whereof shall be solitary.”
Here I am at the end of my journey,
And—well, it ain't jolly, not so very!—
I 'd like to throttle that sharp attorney!

He took my money, the very last dollar;
Did n't leave me so much as a dime,
Not enough to buy me a paper collar
To wear at my trial; he knew all the time
'T was some that I got for the stolen silver!
Why has n't he been indicted too?
If he does n't exactly rob and pilfer,
He lives by the plunder of them that do.

Then did n't it put me into a fury,
To see him step up, and laugh and chat
With the lying lawyers, and joke with the jury,
When all was over,—then go for his hat,—
While Sue was sobbing to break her heart,
And all I could do was to stand and stare!
He had pleaded my cause; he had played his part
And got his fee; and what more did he care?

But why blame him? When I go out,
I'll leave plain thieving, and take to the law;

That will be safer! These are about
The lonesomest lodgings ever I saw!
There would n't be room for cutting a caper,
If I was inclined; and it 's just as well!
Wish I could ring for the morning paper!
Can't say that I fancy this hotel.

It 's droll to think how, just out yonder,
The world goes jogging on the same!
Old men will save and boys will squander,
And fellows will play at the same old game
Of get-and-spend,—to-morrow, next year,—
And drink and carouse; and who will there be
To remember a comrade buried here?
I am nothing to them, they are nothing to me!

And Sue,—yes, she will forget me too!
I know! already her tears are drying.
I believe there is nothing that girl can do
So easy as laughing and lying and crying.
She clung to me well while there was hope,
Then broke her heart in that last wild sob;
But she ain't going to sit and mope
While I am at work on a five years' job.

They'll set me to learning a trade, no doubt;
And I must forget to speak or smile.
I shall go marching in and out,
One of a silent, tramping file
Of felons, at morning and noon and night,—
Just down to the shops and back to the cells,—
And work with a thief at left and right,
And feed and sleep and—nothing else?

Was I born for this? Will the old folks know?
I can see them now on the old home-place:
His gait is feeble, his step is slow,
There 's a settled grief in his furrowed face;
While she goes wearily groping about
In a sort of dream, so bent, so sad!—

But this won't do! I must sing and shout,
And forget myself, or else go mad.

I won't be foolish; although, for a minute,
I was there in my little room once more.
What would n't I give just now to be in it?
The bed is yonder, and there is the door;—
The Bible is here on the neat white stand.
The summer-sweets are ripening now;
In the flickering light I reach my hand
From the window, and pluck them from the bough!

When I was a child, (O, well for me
And them if I had never been older!)
When he told me stories on his knee,
And tossed me, and carried me on his shoulder;
When she knelt down and heard my prayer,
And gave me in bed my good-night kiss,—
Did ever they think that all their care
For an only son could come to this?

Foolish again! No sense in tears
And gnashing the teeth! And yet—somehow—
I have n't thought of them so for years!
I never knew them, I think, till now.
How fondly, how blindly, they trusted me!
When I should have been in my bed asleep,
I slipped from the window, and down the tree,
And sowed for the harvest that now I reap.

And Jennie,—how could I bear to leave her?
If I had but wished—but I was a fool!
My heart was filled with a thirst and fever
That no sweet airs of heaven could cool.
I can hear her asking,—“Have you heard?”
But mother falters, and shakes her head:
“O Jennie! Jennie! never a word!
What can it mean? He must be dead!”

Light-hearted, a proud, ambitious lad,
I left my home that morning in May;

What visions, what hopes, what plans I had!
And what have I—where are they all—to-day?
Wild fellows, and wine, and debts, and gaming,
Disgrace, and the loss of place and friend,—
And I was an outlaw, past reclaiming:
Arrest and sentence, and—this is the end!

Five years! Shall ever I quit this prison?
Homeless, an outcast, where shall I go?
Return to them, like one arisen
From the grave, who was buried long ago?
All is still; it's the close of the week;
I slink through the garden, I stop by the well;
I see him totter, I hear her shriek!—
What sort of a tale shall I have to tell?

But here I am! What's the use of grieving?
Five years—will it be too late to begin?
Can sober thinking and honest living
Still make me the man I might have been?—
I'll sleep. O, would I could wake to-morrow
In that old room, to find, at last,
That all my trouble and all their sorrow
Are only a dream of the night that is past!

ONE BIRTHDAY

Where the willows that overhang the lane
Make a pleasant shade in the golden weather,
Through gleams that flicker on flank and mane
The mare and her colt come home together;
Over them softly, one by one,
I see the yellowing leaflets fall,
And lie like brighter spots of sun
On the faded turf and gray stone-wall:—

Of all the scenes in my life, to-day
That is the one that I remember;
How sweetly on all the landscape lay
The mellow sunlight of September!

It slept in the boughs of the hazy wood,
On glimmering stubble and stacks of grain:
And there at the farm-yard bars we stood
While the mare and her colt came up the lane.

The bright leaves fell, and over us blew
The fairy balloons of the air-borne thistle,
As, pricking her ears at the call she knew,
With whinny and prance at voice and whistle,
Coquettish and coy, she came with her foal:
O, well I remember,—his neck and ears
By her great gray side shone black as a coal,
And his legs were slender and trim as a deer's!

With hands on the bars, and curly head bare,
I stood, while farm boy Fred, who was taller,
Reached over and shook, at the proud, shy mare,
A handful of oats in my hat, to call her.
Then a form I loved came close behind,
A hand I loved on my shoulder lay,
And a dear voice spoke,—so gentle and kind,
Ah, would I could hear its tones to-day!—

“There is n't a handsomer colt in town!
Just look at that beautiful neck and shoulder!
His color will change to a chestnut brown,
To match your curls, as he grows older.
This is your birthday—let me see!”
The hand went higher and stroked my head:
“I'll make you a present—what shall it be?”
“O father! give me the colt!” I said.

And the colt was mine—how proud was I!—
The doves sailed down from the sunlit gable,
The valiant cock gave a challenging cry,
The cockerel croaked in the open stable:—
So well I recall each sight and sound
That filled the heart of the happy boy,
And left one day in my memory crowned
Forever with color and light and joy.

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THE STREAMLET

It is only the tiniest stream,
With nothing whatever to do,
But to creep from its mosses, and gleam
In just a thin ribbon or two,
Where it spills from the rock, and besprinkles
The flowers all round it with dew.

Half-way up the hillside it slips
From darkness out into the light,
Slides over the ledges, and drips
In a basin all bubbling and bright,
Then once more, in the long meadow-grasses,
In silence it sinks out of sight.

So slender, so brief in its course!
It will never be useful or grand,
Like the waterfall foaming and hoarse,
Or the river benignant and bland,
That sweeps far away through the valley,
And turns all the mills in the land.

Just a brooklet, so perfect, so sweet,—
Like a child that is always a child!
A picture as fair and complete,
And as softly and peacefully wild,
As if Nature had only just made it,
And laid down her pencil and smiled.

The strong eagle perched on these rocks
And dipped his proud beak, long ago;
In the gray of the morning the fox
Came and lapped in the basin below;
By a hoof-printed trail through the thicket
The deer used to pass to and fro.

Now the jolly haymakers in June
Bring their luncheon, and couch on the cool

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Grassy margin, and drink to the tune
The brook makes in the pebble-lined pool,—
From grandfather down to the youngsters
In haying-time kept out of school.

They joke and tell tales as they eat,
While, wistful his share to receive,
The dog wags his tail at their feet;
Then each stout mower tucks up his sleeve,
And the farmer cries, “Come, boys!” The squirrel
Dines well on the crumbs which they leave.

The children all know of the place,
And here with their basket, in search
Of wild roses, come Bertha and Grace,
And Paul with his fish-pole and perch,
While the meadowlark sings, and above them
The woodpecker drums on the birch.

Is the drop the bee finds in the clover
More sweet than the liquor they quaff?
It drips in the cup, and runs over;
And, sipping it, spilling it half,—
Hear their mirth! Did Grace learn of the brooklet
That low, lisping, crystalline laugh?

For music I'm sure that it taught
Its neighbor, the pied bobolink,—
Where else could the fellow have caught
That sweet, liquid note, do you think,
Half tinkle, half gurgle? The wren, too,
I'm certain has been here to drink!

O, teach me your song, happy brook!
If I visit you yet many times,
If I put away business and book,
And list to your fairy-bell chimes,
Will your freshness breathe into my verses,
Your music glide into my rhymes?

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THE PHANTOM CHAPEL

I

The night-breeze puffed our sail, as through
The shadowy strait we steered; and soon
Along the flashing lake we flew,
Upon the white wake of the moon.

Betwixt the islands and the shore,
From cape to cape, we still pursued
Her sparkling keel, which sped before
Like hopes that, laughing, still elude.

The mild night's universal smile
Touched sheltered cove and glistening leaf;
Each shadow-girt and wooded isle
Shook in the wind its silvered sheaf.

By day a flower, by night a bud,
Her pure soul rocked in dreamy calms,
The lily slept upon the flood
Her nun-like sleep with outspread palms.

From cove to cove, from cape to cape,
We chased the hurrying moon,—when, lo!
In yonder glen, what gleaming shape
Behind the trees uprises slow?

Between the upland and the wood,
Half hid by elms that fringed the shore,
The semblance of a chapel stood
Where never chapel stood before.

All still and fair, in misty air,
The lovely miracle upsprings,
As if some great white angel there,
Just lighted, stooped with half-shut wings.

Locked in the lonely vale, aloof
From men, the Gothic wonder rose:

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On pallid pinnacle and roof
The quiet moonlight shed its snows.

From the dim pile, across the gray,
Uncertain landscape, faintly came,
Through pictured panes, a stainéd ray,
Red from some martyr's shirt of flame.

And, listening ever, we could trace
The strains of a mysterious hymn,
Divinely cadenced, like the praise
Of far-off quiring seraphim.

The winds were hushed: a holy calm
Filled all the night: it seemed as if
The spirit of that solemn psalm
Had charmed the waves that rocked our skiff.

The winds were hushed, our hearts were bowed
In silent awe, when on the night
Rose dark and slow a wingéd cloud,
And swept the marvel from our sight.

But, homeward voyaging, we seemed
Like souls that leave a realm enchanted,
And all night long in memory gleamed
That moonlit valley wonder-haunted.

II

Upon the morrow, to explore
At dawn the mystery of the night,
We pushed once more our boat from shore,
Through whispering flags and lilies white.

Along the widening strait we steered,
Past windy cape and sheltered cove:
The cape we cleared, the vale we neared,
There sloped and upland, flushed the grove;

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And, where the church had stood, behold!
The latticed wing and pointed gable
And well-sweep of a farmhouse old,
Turret and vane on barn and stable!

There at their work the housemaids sung
The songs that had entranced the night;
The farm-boy's magic-lantern hung,
A pumpkin, in the morning light!

Thereat we murmured: “Wherefore pray
For perfect knowledge? Better far
Than the sure insight of the day,
The moonlight's soft illusions are.

“The moon is full of fairy dreams:
She pours them from her pensile horn,
And buildeth with her silver beams
Fabrics too frail to meet the morn.

“So fade the airy hopes of youth,
And Love's young promise disappears
Before the morning gray of Truth,
The unsparing light of later years.

“So perish manhood's pillared schemes;
And in the dawning of that day
That wakes us from this world of dreams,
Even church and faith may fade away.”

But one said, “Nay, though we may miss
The cherished, changeful veil of things,
Within illusion's chrysalis
The shrouded Truth hides shining wings.

“Though we may miss the pearl and gold,
And heaven be other than we deem,
Doubt not the future will unfold
To something better than our dream.

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“Last evening's bud laughs on the flood,
A perfect flower of purest white;
And life is but a folded bud
That still awaits the Morning Light.”

Even while we spoke, a sweeter charm
Than ever night and moonlight knew,
Breathed over all the breezy farm,
And lurked in shade and shone in dew.

Freshness of life and pure delight
In earth and air, in sight and sound,
Displaced the fancies of the night,
And better than we sought we found.

The farmhouse, fairer in the glance
Of dawn than in its moonlight vest,
Lay clasped in airs of sweet romance
And tender human interest.

Along the dazzling waves the glory
Of the full summer morning blazed;
From the sun-fronting promontory
The crescent-crownéd cattle gazed.

The wild crows cawed; on great slow wings
Up soared the heron from the brake;
The pickerel leaped in rippling rings;
The supple swallow skimmed the lake.

O'er all, its roof the blue above,
Its floor the common daily sod,
Walled round with light, upheld by Love,
Arose the living Church of God.

THE CUP

The cup I sing is a cup of gold,
Many and many a century old,
Sculptured fair, and over-filled
With wine of a generous vintage, spilled

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In crystal currents and foaming tides
All round its luminous, pictured sides.

Old Time enamelled and embossed
This ancient cup at an infinite cost.
Its frame he wrought of metal run
Red from the furnace of the sun.
Ages on ages slowly rolled
Before the glowing mass was cold,
And still he toiled at the antique mould,—
Turning it fast in his fashioning hand,
Tracing circle, layer, and band,
Carving figures quaint and strange,
Pursuing, through many a wondrous change,
The symmetry of a plan divine.
At last he poured the lustrous wine,
Crowned high the radiant wave with light,
And held aloft the goblet bright,
Half in shadow, and wreathed in mist
Of purple, amber, and amethyst.

This is the goblet from whose brink
All creatures that have life must drink:
Foemen and lovers, haughty lord,
And sallow beggar with lips abhorred.
The new-born infant, ere it gain
The mother's breast, this wine must drain.
The oak with its subtile juice is fed,
The rose drinks till her cheeks are red,
And the dimpled, dainty violet sips
The limpid stream with loving lips.
It holds the blood of sun and star,
And all pure essences that are:
No fruit so high on the heavenly vine,
Whose golden hanging clusters shine
On the far-off shadowy midnight hills,
But some sweet influence it distils
That slideth down the silvery rills.
Here Wisdom drowned her dangerous thought,
The early gods their secrets brought;

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Beauty, in quivering lines of light,
Ripples before the ravished sight;
And the unseen mystic spheres combine
To charm the cup and drug the wine.

All day I drink of the wine, and deep
In its stainless waves my senses steep;
All night my peaceful soul lies drowned
In hollows of the cup profound;
Again each morn I clamber up
The emerald crater of the cup,
On massive knobs of jasper stand
And view the azure ring expand:
I watch the foam-wreaths toss and swim
In the wine that o'erruns the jewelled rim:—
Edges of chrysolite emerge,
Dawn-tinted, from the misty surge:
My thrilled, uncovered front I lave,
My eager senses kiss the wave,
And drain, with its viewless draught, the lore
That kindles the bosom's secret core,
And the fire that maddens the poet's brain
With wild sweet ardor and heavenly pain.

THE MISSING LEAF

By chance, in the dusty old library foraging,
Seeking some food for my fancy, I drew
From its shelf a stout volume, entitled The Origin
And End of Creation (a sort of review
Of the Works of the Lord, by a confident critic).
“Now here should be something,” I said, “that's worth saving,—
Profound, philosophical, learned, analytic,”—
Just what my insatiable soul had been craving.

I bore the rich prize to a nook by the window,
And revelled straightway in the lore of the ages,—
Chinese, Persian, Roman, Greek, Hebrew, and Hindoo,
With modern research to its ultimate stages:

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All which, to what followed, was but the musician's
Light touches to see if his strings were in tune, a verse
Used by the wizard to conjure his visions:
Then opened the writer's grand scheme of the universe.

He held the round world in his hand like a watch,
With the sun and the stars for the chain and the seal;
Showed the cases of gold and of crystal, the notch
Where the thing was wound up, pivot, mainspring, and wheel,
And—in short, you'd have fancied, his knowledge was such,
He could take it to pieces and put it together,
And set it agoing again with a touch
Of just the right oil from his erudite feather!

I read and read on, by divine curiosity
Fired, in pursuit of one still missing page,
One leaf, to redeem this portentous verbosity,
Then—Well, I just flung down the book in a rage;
Through the window, out into the garden I sprung,
Put screens of red roses and jasmines between us,
And cooled my hot brow and my anger among
The dear little illiterate pinks and verbenas.

The martins that flew to their summer-house door,
The voluble finches their little ones feeding,
The snail with his pack on his back, taught me more
Than all the pedantic sad stuff I 'd been reading.
The river moved by without ripple or swirl,
The world in its bosom, a wondrous illusion!
And even the slow kitchen smoke's upward curl
Hinted beauties beyond my great author's solution.

A spider was weaving his net by the stream;
And in the thin gossamer's light agitation
I saw my philosopher flaunting his scheme
Before the vast, mystical web of creation!
I watched the still swan on the water afloat,
The sisterly birches bowed over the glass,
Their white limbs reflected, the boys in their boat,
The colts on the bank, fetlock-deep in the grass;

109

I heard, over hay-fields and clover-lots wafted,
The lowing of kine; and so cool was the kiss
Of the breeze on my temples,—the air, as I quaffed it,
So sweet to my sense,—that mere breathing was bliss!
And I cried, “Who can say how this life has its being;
How landscape and sky with delight overfill me;
Why sound should enchant; how these eyes have their seeing;
How passion and rapture enkindle and thrill me?

“I prize the least pebble your science can bring,
Or whispering shell, from the shore of life's ocean;
No word the true prophet or poet may sing,
But deep in my heart stirs responsive emotion:
Yet who can tell aught of this afternoon glory,
This light and this ether, this wave and this clover?
Not a syllable lisped, of the marvellous story,
In all your nine hundred dull pages and over!

“What moulds to my likeness these limbs and these features,
This tangible form to the form hid within it?
Bright robe renewed daily and nightly by Nature's
Invisible spindles, that ceaselessly spin it,
Marble-firm fibre and milky-fine filament:
The pulse's soft shuttle mysteriously weaving
From dust and corruption a living habiliment:
Oldest of miracles, still past believing!

“And you—did you fancy that you could infold it,
And label it, fast in your tissue of fallacies?
While firm in the grasp of your reason you hold it,
It flies, it defies your most subtile analysis!
There 's something that will not be measured and weighed,
And brought to the test of your last sublimation;
And this is the little mistake that you made,
That you left it quite out of your grand calculation.

“Though other than bigots have deemed, the Creator
Is not the blind physical force you believe him;
Not less, O, be sure, but unspeakably greater,
Than creeds have proclaimed, or than sages conceive him!

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Of nothing comes nothing: springs rise not above
Their source in the far-hidden heart of the mountains:
Whence then have descended the Wisdom and Love
That in man leap to light in intelligent fountains?”

So, bathed in the sunset, I stood by the stream,
With a heart full of joy and devout adoration,
Enwrapped in my mystery, dreaming my dream,
Till my soul seemed dissolved in the Soul of Creation.
I looked, and saw wonder on wonder without,
And, looking within, beheld wonder on wonder,
And trembled between, like the swan floating out,
With one sky arched above and one sky imaged under!

THE CITY OF GOOD-WILL

As through the wood I went, by rock and spring,
And leopard-colored banks with bright moss furred,
Careless as are the brooks, or birds that sing,
Of any other song of brook or bird;
Heeding my own sweet thoughts, and hearkening
To voices which no ear has ever heard;
Through moss and leaf and flickering sunbeam, seeing
A world that in my own mind had its being;—

As thus I went, the pathway ceased in light:
Aloft upon a jutting crag I stood,
Beside a sudden torrent leaping white
From out its lair within the darksome wood:
A sea of dazzling mist below the height
Heaved silently; while on the solitude,
From the deep bosom of an unseen valley,
The sound of many bells broke musically.

Slowly anon, like a wind-wasted cloud,
The veil of vapor, lifting, rolled asunder;
And through its lucent edges pierced the proud
Spires of a vast, dim city, shining under,
Whose golden belfries, still more sweetly loud,
Pealed forth, unmuffled, their harmonious thunder,

111

Beneath a full, resplendent bow, which spanned
With its swift arch all that enchanted land.

The forest path had ceased: but there, beside
The torrent tumbling sheer athwart the brown
Crest of the crag, a stairway I descried,
By many a vine-clad terrace winding down;
And with the wild, white waters for my guide,
I took that wondrous highway to the town,
Past many a cottage hanging like a nest,
Or bosomed in the mountain's verdurous vest.

So to the foot I came of that high hill;
And on a lofty flower-wreathed gateway saw
These sun-bright words: “The City of Good-Will:”
And through its welcoming portal went with awe.
On arch beyond high arch uprising still,
I read, “Truth is our Trust,” and “Love is Law.”
Thus, flaming amid flowers, on every hand
Were raised the written statutes of the land.

Strange yet familiar were the streets: I seemed
Revisiting, upon a festal day,
Some future London, or New York redeemed;
So sweet a peace on all that city lay!
And over all an air of gladness gleamed,
Which never shone in Cheapside or Broadway,—
A light, methought, which came not from the sky,
But from the faces of the passers-by.

I talked with some. They were a strong, fair race,
Who wrought and trafficked without haste or din.
There is no prison-house in all the place;
For to its wise inhabitants each sin
Reveals itself so subtly in the face
Unlighted by the heavenly beam within,
And meets such looks of searching truth and pity,
That forth it goes, self-banished, from the city.

Nor sovereignty nor servitude appears:
Each in his place does simply what he can:

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No rank, but of the soul; but all careers
Are free to all, to woman as to man,
Of diverse gifts and attributes, yet peers
Forever in the sacred social plan.
All in their fitting labor find enjoyment,
But deeds of love are still their best employment.

Their busy life is like a river flowing
Between broad banks of flower-embroidered leisure;
High thoughts attend their coming and their going,
And sweet discourse is their immortal pleasure;
A wisely serious, joyous people, knowing
The blessedness of love, beyond all measure;
Whose proudest wishes ever at the seat
Of Justice wait, and kiss her shining feet.

No sacrifice of soul and body's health
To Mammon or the passions' direful furies;
Nor poor, nor rich, in that pure commonwealth,
Nor any need of wrangling courts and juries.
“Here good alone,” they said, “is done by stealth,
And only evil thoughts are held in duress.
Most blessed are they who labor most to bless,
And happiest hearts reck not of happiness.”

The needful laws, which in our lower state
Protect the many and confound the few,
The outward ties that, binding mate to mate,
Constrain the false, and sometimes vex the true,
Have here no place; where all subordinate
All things to charity, as angels do,
And men, through righteousness and reverence,
Dwell in an age of second innocence.

On faint winds borne, the soul of odorous balm,
From gardens fountain-cooled, breathed everywhere;
Music, commingled with the jubilant psalm
Of chiming golden bells, rose on the air;
And awful beauty gleamed in godlike calm,
Where rangéd statues stood entranced and bare

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Within the many-niched and pensive shades
Of pallid alabaster colonnades.

And over all, with soaring porticoes,
And pillared dome, and glittering pinnacles,—
Of cloud, or marble pure as sculptured snows,—
And all its tuneful towers of marvellous bells,
In frozen beauty and divine repose,
The phantasm of a vast cathedral swells.
From far within the organ's music pours,
Deep-toned as surges upon thunderous shores.

Amidst the organ's sounding and the chime
Of bells above, O strong, and clear, and solemn,
Ascends a thousand-voicéd chant sublime,
By thrilling architrave and shivering column;
And silver eloquence or golden rhyme,
From living lips or treasured script and volume,
Fills up the pauses of the chant, and stirs
With joy the souls of countless worshippers.

Their prayers,—the aspirations of the heart;
Their worship,—good to man and thanks to Heaven;
Religion,—no sad symbol set apart,
Or fashion to be served one day in seven,
But, lighting home and hearth and public mart,
A constant ray for guide and solace given.
All who throng hither, ravished by its beauty,
Go forth, diffusing it in daily duty.

Whereat I cried aloud: “O life elysian!
O mortals! love and truth alone are good!
Forsake the ways of falsehood and derision,
And seek the holy paths of Brotherhood!”
When, lo! at sound of my own voice the vision
Vanished, and I was walking in the wood,
Only in moss and leaf and sunbeam seeing
That brighter world which in my mind had being.

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LOVE

In sad foreknowledge of man's state, that he
Might not despair, and perish utterly,
By rude distractions hither and thither hurled,
In the beginning the dear lords above,
With infinite compassion, gave him Love;
And Love is the sweet band that binds the world.

What holds the convex ocean in his place,
Pillars the starry vault, and guides through space
The myriad-motioned planets swiftly whirled,—
What it may be that made and keeps them so
(If 't be not Love) I know not: yet I know
That Love is the sweet band that binds the world.

Dreams, laughter, hope, derision, toil, and grief,
These are man's portion, and his time is brief;
A little leaf by wild winds tossed and twirled;
In trouble and in doubt he draws his breath,
Illusion leads him, and his way is death;
Yet Love is a sweet band that binds the world.

Strong to destroy, and very weak to save
Is man; at once a tyrant and a slave;
And ever war's red banner is unfurled;
But, Love, since thou art left us, all is well;
If Love were banished heaven itself were hell;
Immortal Love! sweet band that binds the world!

Bitter companions met me everywhere,
Sin-wasted Youth, and Folly with white hair,
And keen-eyed Craft, and Scorn with sad lip curled,
Sorrows, and masks, and miseries manifold;
But, “O my heart!” I said, “be thou consoled,
For Love is the sweet band that binds the world.”

Birds build their nests: Love taught the gentle art;
The babe laughs in its mother's arms: her heart
With Love's fresh morning thoughts is all impearled;

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Chaste Comfort sits beside the household hearth;
The sun with golden girdle clasps the earth,
And Love is the sweet band that binds the world.

COMMUNION

There is peace on the mountains,
There 's joy in the glen,
For the Day, which was buried,
Is risen again:
At the dawn, in cloud-raiment
Too dazzling for sight,
Sits the calm, shining seraph,
The Angel of Light.

And the air and the perfume
Of Paradise, fanned
By invisible pinions,
Breathe over the land:
The lost glory of Eden
Is flooding the earth:
'T is the youth of Creation,
The world at its birth!

Ethereal Sabbath!
Day evermore blest!
I will walk in my garden,
Enjoying thy rest,
While the peal from the belfry
Is sweet on the air,
And the people are thronging
To sermon and prayer.

The churches invite me,
Their tables are spread
With the brightness of silver,
The whiteness of bread;
The golden-lipped goblets
Are dusky with wine,
And I know the Communion
Of Christ is divine.

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While to me the day's fulness
Of glory is given,
Round, perfect, refulgent,
Fresh coinage of heaven,
New stamped with the image
And word of the Lord,—
Shall not I to his service
My tribute accord?

I scorn not, I seek not,
The wine and the bread,
Question not if the symbol
Be living or dead:
Christ speaks from the mountain,
Still walks on the sea;
Yonder river is Jordan,
This lake, Galilee!

Whoso leaveth transgression
Is cleansed by its flood;
To love, is his body,
To serve, is his blood:
Who walk with the humble,
The fallen lift up,
They sit at his supper,
And drink of his cup.

I scorn not, I take not,
The wine and the bread:
In this temple of maples
His table is spread;
In this air, in these zephyrs,
This world at my feet,
I have found a communion
Most secret and sweet.

All the lightness and gladness
That gleam in the rest
Seem but sparks of the rapture
That burns in my breast;

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I flash in the brooklet,
I mount upon wings,—
'T is my soul in the sunbeam,
My spirit that sings.

And I dream of a Oneness
Pervading the Whole;
In all nature, all nations,
The Soul of each soul;
One breath in all bosoms,
A mystical chain
Whose harmony makes us
All brothers again.

When wilt thou, dear Presence!
Whatever thy name!
Pour out on the nations
Thy baptism of flame
(As thou pourest this sunshine),
And teach us to heed
The living communion
Of truth and of deed?

O Love! till thou make us
At peace with our kind,
And establish thy kingdom
In heart and in mind;
Till thy will in our wishes
And actions be done;
Man gropeth in shadow,
And waits for the sun.

He gropeth and creepeth,
With symbol and creed,
Till the Day of Salvation
Be risen indeed,—
Till the strong, wingéd Seraph,
The Angel of Light,
Roll the stone of great Darkness
Away from the Night.

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SHERIFF THORNE

That I should be sheriff, and keep the jail,
And that yonder stately old fellow, you see
Marching across the yard, should be
My prisoner,—well, 't is a curious tale,
As you'll agree.

For it happens, we 've been here once before
Together, and served our time,—although
Not just as you see us now, you know;
When we were younger both by a score
Of years or so.

When I was a wild colt, two thirds grown,
Too wild for ever a curb or rein,
Playing my tricks till—I need n't explain;—
I got three months at breaking stone,
With a ball and chain.

The fodder was mean, and the work was hard,
And work and I could never agree;
And the discipline,—well, in short, you see,
'T was rather a roughish kind of card
That curried me!

A stout steel bracelet about my leg,
A cannon-shot and chain at my feet,
I pounded the stones in the public street,
With a heart crammed full of hate as an egg
Is full of meat.

The schoolboys jeered at my prison rig;
And me, if I moved, they used to call
(For I went with a jerk, if I went at all)
A gentleman dancing the Jail-bird Jig,—
At a public ball.

But once, as I sat in the usual place,
On a heap of stones, and hammered away

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At the rocks, with a heart as hard as they,
And cursed Macadam and all his race,
There chanced that way,

Sir, the loveliest girl! I don't mean pretty;
But there was that in her troubled eye,
In her sweet, sad glance, as she passed me by,
That seemed like an angel's gentle pity
For such as I.

And, sir, to my soul that pure look gave
Such a thrill as a summer morning brings,
With its twitter and flutter of songs and wings,
To one crouched all night long in a cave
Of venomous things.

Down the broad green street she passed from sight;
But all that day I was under a spell;
And all that night—I remember well—
A pair of eyes made a kind of light
That filled my cell.

Women can do with us what they will:
'T was only a village girl, but she,
With the flash of a glance, had shown to me
The wretch I was, and the self I still
Might strive to be.

And if in my misery I began
To feel fresh hope and courage stir,—
To turn my back upon things that were,
And my face to the future of a man,—
'T was all for her.

And that 's my story. And as for the lady?
I saw her,—O yes, when I was free,
And thanked her, and—Well, just come with me;
As likely as not, when supper is ready,
She'll pour your tea.

120

She keeps my house, and I keep the jail;
And the stately old fellow who passed just now
And tipped me that very peculiar bow—
But that is the wonderful part of the tale,
As you'll allow.

For he, you must know, was sheriff then,
And he guarded me, as I guard him;
(The fetter I wore now fits his limb!)—
Just one of your high-flown, strait-laced men,
Pompous and grim,—

The Great Mogul of our little town.
But while I was struggling to redeem
My youth, he sank in the world's esteem;
My stock went up, while his went down,
Like the ends of a beam.

What fault? 'T was not one fault alone
That brought him low, but a treacherous train
Of vices, sapping the heart and brain.
Then came his turn at breaking stone,
With a ball and chain.

It seemed, I admit, a sort of treason,
To clip him, and give him the cap and ball,
And that I was his keeper seemed worst of all.
And now, in a word, if you ask the reason
Of this man's fall,—

'T was a woman again,—is my reply.
And so I said, and I say it still,
That women can do with us what they will:
Strong men they turn with the twirl of an eye,
For good or ill.

AT MY ENEMY'S GATE

As I passed my enemy's gate
In the summer afternoon,

121

On my pathway, stealthy as Fate,
Crept a shadow vague and chill:
The bright spirit, the rainbow grace
Of sweet, hovering Thought, gave place
To a nameless feeling of loss,
A dark sense of something ill.

Whereupon I said, in my scorn,
“There should grow about his door
Nothing but thistle and thorn,
Shrewd nettle, dogwood, and dock;
Or three-leaved ivy that twines
A bleak ledge with poisonous vines,
And black lichens that incrust
The scaly crest of a rock!”

Then I looked, and there, on the ground,
Were two lovely children at play;
The door-yard turf all around
Was bordered with pansies and pinks;
From his apple-trees showered the notes
Of a pair of ecstatic throats,
And up from the grass-lot below
Came the gossip of bobolinks.

And, behold! like a cloud, overhead,
Flocked a multitude of white doves!
They circled round stable and shed,
Alighting on sill and roof:
All astir in the sun, so white,
All a-murmur with love, the sight
Sent a pang to my softening heart,
An arrow of sweet reproof.

Then I thought of our foolish strife,
And “How hateful is hate!” I said.
“Under all that we see of his life
Is a world we never may know,
With its sorrows, and solace, and dreams;
And, even though bad as he seems,

122

He is what he is, for a cause,
And Nature accepts him so.

“She gives this foeman of mine
Of the best her bounty affords;
Sends him the rain and the shine,
And children, whom doubtless he loves;
She fosters his horses and herds,
And surrounds him with blossoms and birds,—
And why am I harder of heart
To his faults than the daisies and doves?

“To me so perverse and unjust,
He has yet in his uncouth shell
Some kernel of good, I will trust,
Though a good I never may see.
And if, for our difference, still
He cherishes grudge and ill-will,
The more 's the pity for him,—
And what is his hatred to me?”

So for him began in my heart
The doves to murmur and stir,
The pinks and pansies to start,
And make golden afternoon.
And now, in the wintry street,
His frown, if we chance to meet,
Brings back, with my gentler thoughts,
The birds and blossoms of June.

RACHEL AT THE WELL

By an elm-tree half decayed,
In a skeleton of shade
From the bird-forsaken boughs,
With the melancholy stains
Of a century of rains,
And its quaintly mended panes,
Stands the house.

123

From the modern street aloof,
It uprears its olden roof
In the sleepy summer air;
And the shadow falls across;
And the sunlight sheds a gloss
On the patches of old moss,
Here and there.

Near the gate that guards the lane,
With its rusty hinge and chain
Hangs, half shut, the crippled wicket.
Lilac clumps, beyond the wall,
Grow neglected, filling all
The wild door-yard with a tall
Tangled thicket.

There 's a little path between
The encroaching ranks of green;
Then a garden, half grown over
With striped grass and poppies red;
There the sunflower hangs her head,
And you scent somewhere a bed
Of sweet clover.

There is fennel mixed with phlox;
And, with pinks and hollyhocks,
Here the mistress of the place
In her lone and widowed age
Keeps her caraway and sage,—
Immemorial heritage
Of her race.

At a pathway's end, a score
Of brief footsteps from the door,
Is the well; and there, aslant,
Warped and cracked by sun and rain,
Stands the well-sweep in the lane,
On its one leg, like a crane
Long and gaunt.

124

In her ancient bombazine,
And her hood of faded green,
From the kitchen, on her crutch,
Comes the widow with her pail;
In the hook she hangs the bail;
And the well-sweep gives a wail
At her touch.

With a dismal, wailing creak,
Like an almost human shriek,
Down the slow sweep goes, and up
With the wavering pail once more;
While, in yellow pinafore,
Runs her grandchild from the door
With a cup.

Grandchild did I say? Behold!
Like a fleece of living gold,
Just let loose from fairy-land,
Half to perfect beauty spun,
And half flying in the sun,
Making sun and shadow one,
See her stand!

In old Rachel can there be
Aught akin to such as she?
Winter's snow and summer's glow!
Poor old Rachel, bent and thin,—
Withered cheeks and peakéd chin,—
Has outlived all other kin
Long ago.

From the curb, with many a groan,
Comes the bucket to the stone;
And her crutch is in its place;
And now, pausing at the brink,
For the elf to dip and drink,
She, poor soul, must breathe and think
For a space.

125

Lo! the cloudy years—they part
Like a morning mist: her heart
For a moment is beguiled
With bright fancies thronging fast;
She beholds the glowing past,
Her own girlish image, glassed
In the child!

And will ever that sweet elf
Be a creature like herself,
Bowed with age and grief and care?
Can such freshness fade away
To a phantom of decay,—
Golden tresses to a gray
Ghost of hair?

'T was but yesterday she saw
Her own grandam go to draw
Water, with her pail and crutch;
And she wondered to behold
One so pitifully old!—
Eighty years, when all is told,
Are not much.

Like a vision of the dawn,
Youth appears, and youth is gone:
From four summers to fourscore
Is a dream! 'T is ever so:
Roses come and roses go,
Roses fade and roses blow
Evermore.

Ruined petals strew the walk:
Laughing buds are on the stalk:
Mighty Nature is consoled.
Surging life no bounds can stay:
Beauty floods the young and gay,
Life and beauty ebb away
From the old.

126

We are figures on the loom:
Out of darkness, into gloom,
We but flit across the frame;
And the gnomes that toil within
Care not for the web they spin:
Ever ending, they begin
Still the same.

While sad Rachel dimly peers
Through the glimmering film of years,
There the grandchild, all aglow,
Stooping, dipping, sees by chance
Her own broken countenance
In the water wave and glance
To and fro.

Tossing arms and gleeful scream
Startle Rachel from her dream;
And as sunshine, in dark seas,
Gilds some lone and rocky isle,
On her wrinkled face the while
Rests a heavenly light, a smile
Of deep peace.

On her lone heart's desert place,
Golden head and gleaming grace
Shed a radiance warm and mild.
Rachel knows not age nor care,—
Life and hope are everywhere,
As her soul goes out in prayer
For the child.

Little fingers drop the cup
Which old Rachel must take up:
Rachel, smiling, stoops with pain;
While away the maiden hies,
After birds and butterflies,
Clapping hands with happy cries,
Down the lane.

127

TROUTING

With slender rod, and line, and reel,
And feather fly with sting of steel,
Whipping the brooks down sunlit glades,
Wading the streams in woodland shades,
I come to the trouter's paradise:
The flashing fins leap twice or thrice:
Then idle on this gray boulder lie
My crinkled line and colored fly,
While in the foam-flecked, glossy pool
The shy trout lurk, secure and cool.

A rock-lined, wood-embosomed nook,—
Dim cloister of the chanting brook!
A chamber within the channelled hills,
Where the cold crystal brims and spills,
By dark-browed ledges blackly flows,
Falls from the cleft like crumbling snows,
And purls and plashes, breathing round
A soft, suffusing mist of sound.

Under a narrow belt of sky
Great boulders in the torrent lie,
Huge stepping-stones where Titans cross!
Quaint broideries of vines and moss,
Of every loveliest hue and shape,
With tangle and braid and tassel drape
The beetling rocks, and veil the ledge,
And trail long fringe from the cataract's edge.
A hundred rills of nectar drip
From that Olympian beard and lip!

And see! far on, it seems as if
In every crevice along the cliff
Some wild plant grew: the eye discerns
An ivied castle: feathery ferns
Nod from the frieze and tuft the tall
Dismantled turret and ruined wall.

128

Strange gusts from deeper solitudes
Waft pungent odors of the woods.
The small, bee-haunted basswood-blooms
Drop in the gorge their faint perfumes.
Here all the wild-wood flowers encamp
That love the dimness and the damp.

High overhead the blue day shines;
The glad breeze swings in the singing pines.
Somewhere aloft in the boughs is heard
The fine note of some warbling bird.
In the alders dank with noonday dews
A restless catbird darts and mews.

Dear world! let summer tourists range
Your great highways in quest of change,
Go seek Niagara and the sea,—
This little nook suffices me!

So wild, so fresh, so solitary,—
I muse in its green sanctuary,
And breathe into my inmost sense
A pure, sweet, thrilling influence,
A bliss, even innocent sport would stain,
And dear old Walton's art, profane.

Here, lying beneath this leaning tree,
On the soft bank, it seems to me,
The winds that visit this lonely glen
Should soothe the souls of sorrowing men,—
The waters over these ledges curled
Might cool the heart of a fevered world!

SONG OF THE FLAIL

In the Autumn, when the hollows
All are filled with flying leaves,
And the colonies of swallows
Long have quit the stuccoed eaves,

129

And a silver mantle glistens
Over all the misty vale,
Sits the little wife, and listens
To the beating of the flail,
To the pounding of the flail,—
By her cradle sits and listens
To the flapping of the flail.

The bright summer days are over,
And her eye no longer sees
The red bloom upon the clover,
The deep green upon the trees;
Hushed the songs of finch and robin,
And the whistle of the quail,
While she hears the mellow throbbing
Of the thunder of the flail,
The low thunder of the flail,—
Through the amber air, the throbbing
And reverberating flail.

In the barn the stout young thresher
Stooping stands with rolled-up sleeves,
Beating out his golden treasure
From the ripped and rustling sheaves:—
O, was ever knight in armor,
Warrior all in shining mail,
Half so handsome as her farmer,
As he plies the flying flail,
As he wields the flashing flail?
The bare-throated, brown young farmer,
As he swings the sounding flail!

All the hopes that saw the sowing,
All the sweet desire of gain,
All the joy that watched the growing
And the yellowing of the grain,
And the love that went to woo her,
And the faith that shall not fail,
All are speaking softly to her
In the pulses of the flail,

130

Of the palpitating flail,—
Past and Future whisper to her
In the music of the flail.

In its crib the babe is sleeping,
And the sunshine, from the door,
All the afternoon is creeping
Slowly round upon the floor;
And the shadows soon will darken,
And the daylight soon must pale,
When her heart no more shall hearken
To the tramping of the flail,
To the dancing of the flail,—
Her fond heart no more shall hearken
To the footfall of the flail.

And the babe shall grow and strengthen,
Be a maiden, be a wife,
While the moving shadows lengthen
Round the dial of their life:
Theirs the trust of friend and neighbor,
And an age serene and hale,
When machines shall do the labor
Of the strong arm and the flail,
Of the stout heart and the flail,—
Great machines perform the labor
Of the good old-fashioned flail.

But when, blesséd among women,
And when, honored among men,
They look round them, can the brimming
Of their utmost wishes then
Give them happiness completer?
Or can ease and wealth avail
To make any music sweeter
Than the pounding of the flail?
O, the sounding of the flail!
Never music can be sweeter
Than the beating of the flail!

University of Virginia Library

THE EMIGRANT'S STORY AND OTHER POEMS

THE EMIGRANT'S STORY