The select poems of Dr. Thomas Dunn English (exclusive of the "Battle lyrics")

Who at danger never laughed,
Let him ride upon a raft
Down Guyan, when from the drains
Pours the flood of many rains,
And a stream no plummet gauges
In a furious freshet rages.
With a strange and rapturous fear,
Rushing water he will hear;
Woods and cliff-sides darting by,
These shall terribly glad his eye.
He shall find his life-blood leaping
Faster with the current's sweeping;

Feel his brain with frenzy swell;
Hear his voice in sudden yell
Rising to a joyous scream
O'er the roar of the raging stream.
Never a horseman bold who strides
Mettled steed and headlong rides,
With a loose and flowing rein,
On a bare and boundless plain;
Never a soldier in a fight,
When the strife was at its height,
Charging through the slippery gore
'Mid bayonet-gleam and cannon-roar;
Never a sailor helm in hand,
Out of sight of dangerous land,
With the storm-winds driving clouds
And howling through the spars and shrouds—
Feels such wild delight as he
On the June rise riding free.

214

Thrice a hundred logs together
Float as lightly as a feather;
On the freshet's foaming flow,
Swift as arrows shoot, they go
Past the overhanging trees,
Jutting rocks—beware of these!
Over rapids, round the crooks,
Over eddies that fill the nooks,
Swirling, whirling, hard to steer,
Manned by those who know no fear.
Tough-armed raftsmen guide each oar,
Keeping off the mass from shore;
While between the toiling hands
Mid-raft there the pilot stands,
Watching the course of the rushing sluice
From the top of the dirt-floored, rough caboose.
Well it is, in the seething hiss
Of a boiling, foaming flood like this,
That the oars are stoutly boarded,
And each log so safely corded
That we might ride on the salt-sea tide,
Or over a cataract safely glide.
If the pins from hickory riven
Were not stout and firmly driven,
Were the cross-trees weak and limber,
Woe befall your raft of timber!
If the withes and staples start
And the logs asunder part,
Off each raftsman then would go
In the seething, turbid flow,
And the torrent quick would bear him
To a place where they could spare him.
Brawny though he be of limb,
Full of life and nerve and vim,
Like a merman though he swim,
Little hope would be for him.

215

Hither the logs would go and thither;
But the jolly raftsman—whither?

Now we pass the hills that throw
Glassy shadows far below;
Pass the leaping, trembling rills,
Ploughing channels in the hills;
Pass the cornfields green that glide
(We seem moveless on the tide)
In a belt of verdure wide,
Skirting us on either side.
Now a cabin meets us here,
Coming but to disappear.
Now a lean and russet deer
Perks his neck and pricks his ear;
Then, as we rise up before him,
Feels some danger looming o'er him,
Thinks the dark mass bodes him ill,
Turns and scurries up the hill.
Now some cattle, at the brink
Stooping of the flood to drink,
Lift their heads awhile to gaze
In a sleepy, dull amaze;
Then they, lest we leap among them,
Start as though a gadfly stung them.
Past us in a moment fly
Fields of maize and wheat and rye;
Dells and forest-mounds and meadows
Float away like fleeting shadows;
But the raftsmen see not these—
Sharp they look for sunken trees,
Stumps with surface rough and ragged,
Sandstone reefs with edges jagged,
Hidden rocks at the rapids' head,
New-made shoals in the river's bed;

216

Steering straight as they pass the comb
Of the sunken dam and its cradle of foam.
Now through narrow channel darting,
Now upon a wide reach starting,
Now they turn with shake and quiver
In a short bend of the river.
Tasking strength to turn the oar
That averts them from the shore.
Ah! they strike. No! missed it barely;
They have won their safety fairly.
Now they're in the strait chute's centre;
Now the rapids wild they enter.
Whoop! that last quick run has brought her
To the eddying, wide back-water.
There's the saw-mill!—now for landing;
Now to bring her up all standing!
Steady! brace yourselves! a jar
Thrills her, stranded on the bar.
Out with lines! make fast, and rest
On the broad Ohio's breast!

Where's the fiddle? Boys, be gay!
Eighty miles in half a day.
Never a pin nor cross-tie started,
Never a saw-log from us parted,
Never a better journey run
From the morn to set of sun.
Oh, what pleasure! how inviting!
Oh, what rapture! how exciting!
If among your friends there be
One who something rare would see,

One who dulness seeks to change
For a feeling new and strange,

217

To the loggers' camp-ground send him,
To a ride like this commend him—
Ride that pain and sorrow dulces,
Stirring brains and quickening pulses,
Making him a happier man
Who has coursed the fierce Guyan
When the June-rain freshet swells it,
And to yellow rage impels it.

BEN BOLT.

Don't you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt—
Sweet Alice whose hair was so brown,
Who wept with delight when you gave her a smile,
And trembled with fear at your frown?
In the old church-yard in the valley, Ben Bolt,
In a corner obscure and alone,
They have fitted a slab of the granite so grey,
And Alice lies under the stone.

Under the hickory-tree, Ben Bolt,
Which stood at the foot of the hill,
Together we've lain in the noonday shade,
And listened to Appleton's mill.
The mill-wheel has fallen to pieces, Ben Bolt,
The rafters have tumbled in,
And a quiet which crawls round the walls as you gaze
Has followed the olden din.

Do you mind of the cabin of logs, Ben Bolt,
At the edge of the pathless wood,
And the button-ball tree with its motley limbs,
Which nigh by the doorstep stood?

218

The cabin to ruin has gone, Ben Bolt,
The tree you would seek for in vain;
And where once the lords of the forest waved
Are grass and the golden grain.

And don't you remember the school, Ben Bolt,
With the master so cruel and grim,
And the shaded nook in the running brook
Where the children went to swim?
Grass grows on the master's grave, Ben Bolt,
The spring of the brook is dry,
And of all the boys who were schoolmates then
There are only you and I.

There is change in the things I loved, Ben Bolt,
They have changed from the old to the new;
But I feel in the deeps of my spirit the truth,
There never was change in you.
Twelvemonths twenty have past, Ben Bolt,
Since first we were friends—yet I hail
Your presence a blessing, your friendship a truth,
Ben Bolt of the salt-sea gale.

BLOWN UP.

Take care and move me easy, boys, and let the doctor see
'F there's any use to try and patch what little's left of me.
There—that'll do. It's all no use—I see it in your eye.
You needn't purse your mouth that way—Van Valen's got to die:
And if there really be no chance to save a fellow's life—
Well, well! the blast was quite enough, and we'll excuse the knife.

219

Just loose my collar gently, boys—it hurts me as I lie;
Put something underneath my head—don't raise me quite so high;
And let me have some water—ah-h! I tell you that's the stuff;
It beats old rye—I ought to know, I've surely drunk enough.
You'll say, whatever were my faults, to say the thing that's right,
That Jim Van Valen never shirked his liquor or a fight.

The circuit-rider? What's the use? I hardly think one prayer,
However long, has power enough my whole account to square:
And at the Day of Judgment, when the world its work is through,
And all the miners round about account for what they do,
The Lord above, who knows all things, will be as just to me
And merciful—at all events, with him I'll let it be.

Somehow my mind goes backward, boys, to many years ago,
To the Valley of the Overproek and the farm-house long and low,
When I wandered yon the Palisades to gather Pinxter bloom,
And, mixed with lilacs, mother placed them in our sitting-room.
I see them in the fireplace, in that pitcher white and high:
What queer things come across the mind when one's about to die!

Why, I can see the orchard, boys, upon the sideling hill;
The place I fished for killies in the crooked Pellum Kill;

220

The deep hole where the pickerel lay—the rascal long and lank,
I caught him with a noose of wire, and snaked him on the bank;
The places in the meadow where I went to trap the mink;
The mill-pond by the roadside where I drove the cows to drink.

And there was little Kitty, boys, her house was close to ours,
The gardens almost joined, but she was prettier than the flowers.
We went to school in winter time upon the Tineck road,
And when I put her books with mine it seemed to ease the load;
But when we both grew up, somehow I wasn't quite so near;
She married Peter Brinkerhoff—and that is why I'm here.

There was my good old father, boys, with stern and rugged brow;
I used to think him hard on me—I know him better now.
And, then, my dear old mother, with that pleasant smile of hers—
Oh, what a gush of tenderness the thought within me stirs!
Come, father, raise me in your arms; and, mother, stroke my brow—
Your hand is cool—what odd conceit! they're neither living now.

They're gone, the old Van Valens, boys; there's no one left but me,
And I am going, too—and so I send no word, you see.
The boys I used to play with, and the girls I used to know,
Grown up to men and women, have forgot me long ago!

221

I've not been to Bergen County, now, for many and many a day,
And no one there would care to hear what I might have to say.

I find I'm getting weaker, boys; my eyes are growing dim;
There's something dancing in the air; my head begins to swim.
Water! That's good! that stirs me up! that gives me life again!
You talk about your dead men—why, I'm just as good as ten.
There's something heavy on my breast—you take the thing away—
Mother! there's Kitty Demarest—may I go out—to—play!

THE OLD WIFE'S TALE.

A terrible wind, sir! Through the vale
And down the road it sweeps,
Hurrying fast, and whirling past
With the maddest bounds and leaps:
It strips the crown of the hill of snow
And gathers the spoil in heaps,
And it blows, blows, and goes, goes,
Till the flesh on a body creeps.

When the storm outside is doing its worst,
You'd best in shelter stay,
And while a tight roof covers your head
Remain there while you may;

222

But, if you'll not, when John comes home
He'll show you on your way,
For every road around to him
Is clear by night or day.

O yes, sir! John's my only boy,
Though really not my son;
And if I be no mother of his,
A mother he has none;
But he is near and dear to me,
As though I had been one.
Now twenty years since first he came
Their changing course have run.

A stormy night like this, when I
The fire sat bending o'er,
There came a fierce and sudden rap
Upon our cottage door;
But I scarcely heeded it at first
Amid the shock and roar
Of the tempest wild that shook the house,
And swept from sea to shore.

But presently came a fainter rap
In the lull of the wind-storm's spite,
And with it was a muffled cry
That thrilled my heart with fright.
I opened the door. A sudden blast
Of wind blew out the light,
And some one staggered wearily in
From out the gloomy night.

At first, if this were woman or man
Was quite beyond my ken;
But I shut the door and bolted it,
And lit the light again,

223

And roused from bed my good man Dick;
And I remember then
The whirring bell of our eight-day clock
Rang out the hour of ten.

A woman it proved, with babe in arms
Well wrapped in cloth and fur;
But, think of it! out on such a night—
Not fit for a worthless cur!
I called on Dick to freshen the fire,
And took the child from her,
While she on yonder settle fell,
And did not move or stir.

I held the baby in my arms—
It was a lovely child—
And the little darling looked at me,
And crowed and crowed and smiled;
And when it calmly sank to sleep,
While howled the tempest wild,
I thought of the babe of Bethlehem,
The Saviour meek and mild.

Dick growled a little—'twas his way—
At being roused from bed;
And turned and sharply questioned her,
But not a word she said.
Face downward, motionless she lay,
Her hands clasped o'er her head;
There were four of us that stormy night,
And one of the four was dead.

From whence she came, or why she came,
Through storm-winds driving free,
Wet, cold, forlorn, with babe in arms,
Was mystery to me;

224

For the baby's furs, her linen and lace,
Her silks, a sight to see,
Those hands and feet—a lady born
If ever were one, was she.

It was her heart, the doctor said,
When he and the coroner came,
And, by her golden wedding-ring,
She was a married dame.
And when we knew the orphan boy
Was not a child of shame,
We craved to keep him for our own—
O yes! we found her name.

“Grace Oswald” on her handkerchief;
Her linen marked “G. O.”;
“John Oswald” on the baby's clothes—
Dear me! how pale you grow!
The town-clerk has the things she left,
And that is all I know—
But are you ill? Your eyes are wild;
What makes you tremble so?

Ah, John, you're back. This stranger stopped
A guide to town to seek;
He seemed a stout old man enough
Though now so faint and weak.
And see! he stretches his hand to you,
While tears roll down each cheek—
How like their faces! Father and son,
If features truth can speak.

He must not stir from here to-night,
No matter who he be;
For the tempest, with a mighty voice,
Cries over land and sea.

225

I hear the breakers on the beach
As they surge there drearily;
And it blows, blows, as it did the night
When John was brought to me.

GAULEY RIVER.

The waters of Gauley,
Wild waters and brown,
Through the hill-bounded valley,
Sweep onward and down;
Over rocks, over shallows,
Through shaded ravines,
Where the beautiful hallows
Wild, varying scenes;
Where the tulip tree scatters
Its blossoms in Spring,
And the bank-swallow spatters
With foam its sweet wing;
Where the dun deer is stooping
To drink from the spray,
And the fish-eagle swooping
Bears down on his prey—
Brown waters of Gauley,
That sweep past the shore—
Dark waters of Gauley
That move evermore.

Brown waters of Gauley,
At eve on your tide,
My log canoe slowly
And careless I guide.

226

The world and its troubles
I leave on the shore,
I seek the wild torrent
And shout to its roar.
The pike glides before me
In impulse of fear,
In dread of the motion
That speaks of the spear—
Proud lord of these waters,
He fears lest I be
A robber rapacious
And cruel as he.
He is off to his eddy,
In wait for his prey;
He is off to his ambush,
And there let him stay.

Brown waters of Gauley,
Impatient ye glide,
To seek the Kanawha,
And mix with its tide—
Past hillside and meadow,
Past cliff and morass,
Receiving the tribute
Of streams as ye pass,
Ye heed not the being
Who floats on your breast,
Too earnest your hurry,
Too fierce your unrest.
His, his is a duty
As plain as your own;
But he feels a dulness
Ye never have known.
He pauses in action,
He faints and gives o'er;

227

Brown waters of Gauley,
Ye move evermore.

Brown waters of Gauley,
My fingers I lave
In the foam that lies scattered
Upon your brown wave.
From sunlight to shadow,
To shadow more dark,
'Neath the low-bending birches
I guide my rude barque;
Through the shallows whose brawling
Falls full on my ear,
Through the sharp, mossy masses
My vessel I steer.
What care I for honors,
The world might bestow,
What care I for gold,
With its glare and its glow;
The world and its troubles
I leave on the shore
Of the waters of Gauley,
That move evermore.

THE OLD TENOR'S LAST SONG.

Before the village inn I checked my steed,
To ask my proper way,
When came along a wandering son of need,
And, as excuse to beg, began to play.

228

He looked a most disreputable tramp,
Unshaven and unshorn,
His forehead with the dew of travel damp,
His hat a fragment, and his clothing torn.

And yet a something in his wrinkled face
My interest awoke;
About his way a spent and lingering grace
Of better days and higher fortunes spoke.

He had a battered fiddle, cracked and vile,
And o'er it drew a bow
That gave a sound at first much like a file,
Then softened to an air of wailing woe.

I sat there motionless as carven stone,
I could not move away;
It seemed from that wild, weird, despairing tone,
A lost soul prisoned in the fiddle lay.

At length he stopped, and, bending body low,
Held open palm to me,
But spoke no begging word meanwhile, as though
I was the only one to pay his fee.

I gave him then what silver coins I had—
They were a due not dole;
For though the wretch was poor, and might be bad,
I gave the tribute to that prisoned soul.

Then with a warmth born of Italian sun,
A tale he briefly told,
How on the lyric stage he laurels won,
In days when he was neither poor nor old.

229

Keenly he fixed his deep black eyes on me,
And gathered by my way,
I thought his story false; then suddenly
He sang aloud a soft Italian lay.

At first, his voice was like his fiddle, cracked,
And trembled in his throat;
But steadily the music he attacked,
And purer grew each true and silvery note.

A flood of melody arose in air,
Filling the space around;
And from their houses people gathered there,
And drank with willing ear the welcome sound.

The smith his hammer dropped, and at the door
Of the stithy stood to hear;
The loungers on the porch their talk gave o'er;
Voice, breath and motion all gave place to ear.

The last note died away; the spell was broke;
Loud rang applause around;
And in apology some words I spoke,
When my lost courage and my voice I found.

A pallor on the minstrel's face o'erspread
I sprang at once to ground;
And pillowing on my breast his drooping head,
Made speech of low-toned praise and soothing sound.

I said his voice was sweeter than a bird's;
When he, with a smile of pride,
And—uttering in a gasping way the words,
“The swan sings in his dying, Signor”—died.

230

THE OLD MILL.

Here from the brow of the hill I look,
Through a lattice of boughs and leaves,
On the old grey mill with its gambrel roof,
And the moss on its rotting eaves.
I hear the clatter that jars its walls,
And the rushing water's sound,
And I see the black floats rise and fall
As the wheel goes slowly round.

I rode there often when I was young,
With my grist on the horse before,
And talked with Nelly, the miller's girl,
As I waited my turn at the door.
And while she tossed her ringlets brown,
And flirted and chatted so free,
The wheel might stop or the wheel might go,
It was all the same to me.

'Tis twenty years since last I stood
On the spot where I stand to-day,
And Nellie is wed, and the miller is dead,
And the mill and I are grey.
But both, till we fall into ruin and wreck,
To our fortune of toil are bound;
And the man goes and the stream flows,
And the wheel moves slowly round.

231

THE LOGAN GRAZIER.

At dawn to where the herbage grows,
Up yonder hill the grazier goes.

Obedient to his every word,
Before him stalk the sullen herd,

Reluctant in the misty morn,
With stamping hoof and tossing horn,

With lengthened low and angry moan,
Go black and dappled, red and roan.

Through drain and hollow, up the hill
They pass, obedient to his will.

The slender ox and mighty bull,
The grazier thinks them beautiful.

You see less beauty in the herd
Than in yon orange-tinted bird;

You fix your better-pleasèd gaze
On yon broad sweep of emerald maize,

Yon maples on the hill-side high,
Or on yon field of waving rye:

More pleased with bird, or grain, or trees—
The grazier's sight is set on these.

He sees a netted purse of gold
In every bellowing three-year-old,

He sees new comforts round his home,
When buyers down from Tazewell roam;

232

He sees his cabin nigh the creek,
Its mud-daubed chimney changed to brick;

Its rude logs hid by clapboards sawed,
New shingles on its roof so broad,

New puncheons on the worn-out floor;
A picket fence before the door,

While cups of tin and plates of delf
And pewter spoons adorn the shelf.

Close where the rifle hangs on hooks,
On cupboard top are rows of books—

The Pilgrim of the dreaming John,
And Weems's Life of Marion;

The well-thumbed speeches of Calhoun;
The pictured life of Daniel Boone;

D'Aubignè's story, told so well,
How Luther fought and Cranmer fell;

To please his wife a yellow gown,
And beads to deck his daughters brown;

A jack-knife for his youngest son,
A rifle for his eldest one.

All these to him the cattle low
As up the hill they slowly go.

He fears no ravage of disease
'Mong brutes as strong and fat as these.

There's salt enough for them in store,
Brought from Kanawha's muddy shore;

233

The herbage on the hill is good;
The fern is thick within the wood;

There's tender grass in yonder drain,
And pea-vine on the summit plain.

High thought of gain that moment thrills
The herdsman of the Logan hills.

He envies not the hero bold;
He cares not who may office hold;

The statesman's toil, the stout man's limb,
The lover's hopes, are nought to him.

His mind three things alone receives—
His wife, his children, and his beeves.

So these may flourish and grow fair,
All else to him is smoke and air.

O Logan grazier, stout and strong,
Despising fraud, defying wrong,

Brave as forefathers stern who bore
The stress of combat long and sore,

And fearless met in battle shock,
The wild and painted Shawanock;

True as the rifle in thy hand,
And generous as thy fertile land—

Full oft I've eaten at thy side
The maizen cakes and venison fried;

Oft in thy cabin as thy guest
Have stretched my wearied limbs to rest;

234

I love to note thy honest brow,
Warm friend and true companion thou;

And know no manlier form is seen
Than that within thy coat of jean.

Truth fills those eyes so keenly set
Beneath thy fox-skin cap; and yet

I would not that thy lot were mine;
I would not that my lot were thine.

Guard thou thy beeves and count thy gold;
Be glad when those great herds are sold.

For me, by midnight lamp I pore
My manuscript in silence o'er.

Each to the path that suits his feet;
Each toil, for time is moving fleet,

And soon, in woollen shroud arrayed,
Both in our narrow coffins laid,

It matters not if cattle fair,
Or making lays has been our care.

The poet's and the herdsman's form
Shall feed alike the greedy worm;

Shall pass the poet's glowing words,
Shall pass the herdsman's lowing herds,

And from man's memory fade away
Both herdsman's shout and poet's lay.

235

“FOR THE SAKE OF HIS MOTHER.”

We looked for his sign in the mountains,
And hunted him there far and wide,
The last of the band of marauders
Who had harried the country-side.
Too long of the land a terror,
We said, if we met with him,
A rope and a hickory sapling
Should rid us of Terrible Jim.

Worn out by our steady pursuing,
We caught him asleep one day,
And one of us, up to him creeping,
Stole gun and revolvers away.
But his knife, in a desperate fury,
He used on so many around,
That our leader replied with his rifle,
And brought the mad wretch to the ground.

But he said, on his hand half-rising—
“Let your rope be a strong one, hounds!
Jim is six feet, one, in his stockings,
And weighs over two hundred pounds!”
He looked at the blood that was flowing
From the ugly wound in his side,
And murmuring softly—“mother!”
Sunk back on the earth, and died.

Had we kept the same pitiless feeling
We felt for the man we had slain,
In that desolate rift of the mountain
His corse had been left to remain;

236

We'd have left it behind us unburied,
Alone where the blue billet smote,
As feast for the ravaging vulture,
As food for the howling coyote.

But the word that he uttered in dying
Our memory carried that day
To the hearth-stones and roof-trees of childhood,
And bitterness melted away.
Each thought of his far-away mother;
“He was some mother's son,” it was said;
So we dug him a grave, and we laid him
To wait till they summon the dead.

Since then thirty years have passed over,
And Terrible Jim is forgot,
Except when some wandering hunter
Shall happen to pass by a spot
Where he finds a long slab of white marble—
Who brought it there never was known—
With the words, “For the sake of his mother,”
Cut deep in the face of the stone.

SUE.

In good old Brantford village, when
I ran around a lad of ten,
There was no boy or girl but knew,
Pitied and loved old Crazy Sue.
Her elf-locks white, her withered face,
Her downcast glance, her mincing pace—
I seem to see them clearly now,
When age's wrinkles seam the brow,

237

As in my boyish days, and hear,
As then, her voice in treble clear
Pipe out the words: “Oh! happy me,
The day when John comes back from sea!”

Scarce forty years before, 'twould seem,
Her beauty was the village theme—
Eyes with a deeper shade than blue,
Tinged with the pansy's purple hue;
Locks falling in a waving fold,
In shadow fawn, in sunlight gold;
Skin where the blushes' restless stream
With rose hues flushed the tint of cream;
A form that was as lithe and free
As in the breeze the willow tree;
And with them all sweet winning ways—
Such Crazy Sue in early days.

She loved—but that's a tale as old
As when the earth knew age of gold;
She loved, and thought him man of men;
She loved, and was beloved again.
A handsome sailor came to woo,
And won the heart of pretty Sue,
Who vowed to be his wife when he
Came back from off the Indian Sea.
They parted; ere a year had flown
She found her truth survived alone;
A richer bride her John had wed
Out in Calcutta, shipmates said.

In perilous state for many a day,
'Twixt life and death the maiden lay.
At length came back, the struggle o'er,
Her life; but reason nevermore.

238

She quite forgot her lover's wrong,
Her faith she kept within her strong,
And waited patient, long and fond,
His coming from the far beyond.
In life she toiled for others' weal,
Her woe forgot, or could not feel,
And constant said: “Oh! happy me,
The day when John comes back from sea!”

Henceforth all Brantford surely knew
The mission meant for Crazy Sue;
To every hut where want was found
She with her basket went around;
Where'er the sick in anguish lay
She tender nursed them day by day;
At every needy creature's call,
She shared her substance with them all;
But spoke not, save one sentence, which
Kept John an idol in a niche
For her to worship, waiting when
He'd come to her from sea again.

She seemed as happy as a queen—
(But are queens happy?) never seen
To show a frown, or drop a tear;
And, though her brain were far from clear,
Perhaps that gave her sorrow rest—
God knows; he knows all things the best;
And all things loved her, brute and man!
The little children to her ran;
The birds, when she threw crumbs of bread,
Came fearless to her feet and fed.
Even the starveling, homeless cur,
Who shrank from others, followed her.

239

They missed her from the street one day,
And found her where at home she lay,
Dying alone. The people heard,
Their hearts with tender pity stirred,
Their gentle hands her pillow smoothed,
Their kindly words her anguish soothed;
And, waiting words of hers to show
If reason had returned or no,
They heard her say before her death,
With tremulous voice and struggling breath,
Yet joyous tone: “Ah, happy me!
John has at last come back from sea!”

THE BROWNS.

Margery Brown in her arm-chair sits,
Stitching and darning and patching for life;
The good woman seems at the end of her wits—
No end to the toil of a mother and wife.
She'd like to be far from her home on the farm;
She sighs for the pleasure and rush of the town;
She counts every stitch, and she longs to be rich—
Pity the troubles of Margery Brown.

Here is a coat with a rent in the sleeve;
Here is a sock with a hole in the toe;
This wants a patch on the arm, you perceive;
That must be darned at once, whether or no.
It is patching and darning and sewing of rents,
From dawn till the moment the sun goes down;
And all from those boys full of mischief and noise—
Pity the troubles of Margery Brown.

240

Timothy Brown starts a-field in the morn,
To follow the plough-tail for many an hour;
The drought has been curling the leaves of the corn,
And stirring the ground meets the lack of a shower.
From the dawn of the day to the set of the sun,
Through the terrible rays that pour fierily down,
He treads in his toil o'er the parched, dusty soil—
Pity the troubles of Timothy Brown.

He reaches his home at the close of the day—
The oven wood has to be chopped for next morn;
The horse must be given his oats and his hay,
The cows have their mess, and the pigs get their corn.
He would like for a moment to glance at the news
In the journal that yesterday came from the town;
But when he has fed he must hurry to bed—
Pity the troubles of Timothy Brown.

Riding along is the rich Hector Graeme,
With his wife by his side; both are sickly and wan;
They have not a child left them to carry their name—
The one that they owned to the churchyard has gone.
He looks at the boys perched aloft on the fence;
She sees the stout wife in the skimpiest of gowns—
“These have children and health!” and the people of wealth
Envy the lot of those fortunate Browns.

I think that the world is made up just like this—
Discontent gnaws the higher as well as the low;
The Browns think the Graemes reach the summit of bliss;
The Graemes think the Browns are exempt from all woe.
We are all Browns or Graemes as our stations may be;
We look to our crosses much more than our crowns;
And while Brown and his wife, they repine at their life,
Graemes pass in their coaches and envy the Browns.

241

KATE VANE.

I well remember when at morn
We twain to school would go,
In summer heat, in winter chill—
Unheeding sun or snow.
I think of when I used to gaze
Within your bonnet on those days—
Perchance to steal a kiss, Kate Vane.
Ah, would that we were young again!

I think of when I “did the sums”
That puzzled so your pate,
And, when I went to say my task,
Slipped in your hands the slate.
Oft would I claim and get for this
What now were worth a world—a kiss:
You did not think it harm, Kate Vane—
Ah, would that we were young again!

I think of when the brindle cow
Adown the cattle track
Chased you, and I with stick and stone
In triumph beat her back.
Your little cheek was on my breast,
Your little lips to mine were prest,
Your eyes were filled with love, Kate Vane—
Ah, would that we were young again!

I think of when I halved with you
My cherished, childish store,
And only wished, for your dear sake,
It might be ten times more.

242

Our schoolmates, in their petty strife
With us, would call us “man and wife;”
None call us that just now, Kate Vane—
Ah, would that we were young again!

I see you now when years have passed,
And find you full as fair;
Time has not soiled your purity,
Nor marked your face with care.
I love you as I did before—
Yea! deeper, stronger, better, more.
What! are you in my arms, Kate Vane?
Dear love, we both are young again!

BREAKNECK HILL.

Seeking each once-familiar spot
Which memory holds though time may not,
I stand within the town again,
A stranger at three score and ten.
No trace of what I used to know
In boyhood, sixty years ago.
Houses on houses ranged in rows—
I mind green fields instead of those;
Where stands yon mansion tall and fair,
I think the schoolhouse once stood there;
They've filled the pond, torn down the mill;
No landmark left but Breakneck Hill.

'Tis Summer now, and all is green,
But memory paints a Winter scene,
As on the hill when school was through
Down its steep slope our cutters flew.

243

Some there were furred—the children these
Of folk who walked the paths of ease;
Some clad but poorly—children they
Of those who trod a harder way;
But all essayed with toil and time,
Dragging their sleds the hill to climb;
And, when they reached its summit, then
With laugh and shout, glide down again.

Well I remember years away,
One bitter cold December day,
When I, with Melton, Jack and Phil,
My playmates, climbed that very hill.
All these had richer sires than I,
Their fathers thought their stations high;
While mine, whose purse was poorly filled,
His rude, unfertile acres tilled;
But that ne'er marred our childish joys—
Democracy's the creed of boys;
As equals there we climbed, and then
Each swiftly glided down again.

In after life each played the game;
Jack slowly climbed the hill of fame;
By painful steps and hard he rose,
The wonder of both friends and foes.
His learning struck the crowd with awe,
His smile was honor, word was law;
He reached the summit; for a while
Fortune seemed on her son to smile;
Admired, caressed, by flatterers sought,
The fiend of drink a victim caught.
Jack tottered on his throne, and then
He slid below, nor rose again.

244

Phil strove to climb the hill of wealth,
For this he bartered truth and health;
He lost no chance for gain, and still
Climbed higher on the muddy hill;
No conscience barred, nor shame dismayed,
No pity checked nor mercy stayed,
Until upon the summit there
He stood confessed a millionaire.
The failure of a scheme one day
Swept Phil's ill-gotten gains away,
Left him a load of debt, and then
He never climbed the hill again.

With different aim from Jack or Phil,
Melton went climbing pleasure's hill.
His father left him rich, and he
A man of fashion chose to be;
Kept racers and some other things
That gave his fortune fleetest wings;
Drove four-in-hand and sailed a yacht,
Did all a provident man should not,
And, when one-half his store was drained,
By gaming scattered what remained.
He tottered on the summit, then
Slid down, and never rose again.

In Winter, man, at Breakneck Hill,
May climb and coast it at his will;
Down from the summit he may sweep,
And upward next unhindered creep—
From low to high, from high to low
Upon that sloping plane of snow;
But he who gains the highest ground
Where pleasure, wealth and fame are found

245

Must let no effort be undone
To keep the foothold he has won,
For, should he fall, 'tis certain then
He'll never climb that height again.

HAYMAKING.

Their homage men pay to the mowing machine
Which does all the work of a dozen as one,
And, cutting a passageway smoothly and keen,
Keeps steadily on till its labor is done;
But I like to remember the primitive way
When I joined with my fellows to gather the hay,
And labor was pleasantly tempered by play.

The sweep of the scythe as it came and it went,
And the fall at its swish of the green crescent swath;
The swing of the mower with body well-bent,
As the steel gave him room on its pitiless path:
The pause for a moment each haymaker made,
When the grass clogged a little and progress was stayed,
And the clickety-click as he whetted the blade.

The farmer behind with the fork in his grip
To scatter the ridges of grass to the light,
Grim, busy and steady, no smile on his lip,
And a hope that the work would be over by night;
His glances were cast now and then to the sky,
And in fear that some sign of a rain storm was nigh,
He watched every cloud that went lazily by.

The fun of the nooning out under the trees
Where the dainties I mowed as my scythe had the grass,

246

Where I lolled back in hope of a puff of the breeze,
And saw the gay butterflies flutter and pass,
And laughed at some worn, but yet ever new joke,
And felt my heart beat with a trip-hammer stroke
When to her I loved dearly another one spoke.

The calm hush of noonday was pleasantly stirred
By the buzz of our voices, the noise of our glee;
And once in a lull cometh notes of a bird,
Undisturbed by our presence, far up in a tree.
We sat at our ease as we chatted and laughed,
While our mugs of cool switchel we carelessly quaffed,
And thought that Jove's nectar ne'er equalled the draught.

But the frolic next day was the best of it all,
When in windrows they raked the dried grass as it lay,
The girls with us then—there was one, Katy Ball,
Our neighbor's fair daughter, who helped with the hay.
I wore her sunbonnet and she wore my hat—
I dare say I looked like a great, awkward flat;
But what did I care at the moment for that?

For at night when we loaded our wains with the crop
Till they seemed like dark blots on a background of sky,
And Katy with me rode in one on the top,
What monarch in state was so happy as I?
With my darling, all blushes, enthroned by my side,
I sat there in tremulous pleasure and pride—
Dear Katy! ah, black was the day when she died!

A wonderful thing is your mowing machine,
That sweeps o'er the meadow in merciless way;
But I sigh for the scythe, curved and tempered and keen,
And the labor and joy of the earlier day;

247

I sigh for the toil that was mingled with fun,
The contentment we felt when the end had been won,
And the sound, peaceful slumber when daylight was done.

The lush grass of Lehigh, it grows as of yore,
The hay smells as sweetly, the sun is as bright;
But all the old glory of hay-time is o'er,
And the toil of the season has lost its delight;
The scythe and the hay rake are hung up for show,
The fork gives the tedder its place in the row;
And gone are the joys of the loved long ago.

THE ROADSIDE SPRING.

Tall houses crowd the rising ground, where stood the woods before,
But still unchanged the crystal spring and as it was of yore—
The yellow log through which it wells, its bottom strewn with sand,
The gourd hung on the alder bough, so ready to the hand,
The lush grass growing on the edge, the bushes drooping low—
It is the same old roadside spring of fifty years ago.

Here one time was the grazing farm where I was born and bred;
There stood the farm-house—they have built a mansion there instead;
This street was once the turnpike road, o'er which in drought or rain
There used to pass, on creaking wheels, the Conestoga wain;

248

And here, however given was he a stronger draught to take,
The driver always stopped awhile his ceaseless thirst to slake.

How frequent, on my way to school, I tarried at the brink,
And looked within its crystal depth before I bent to drink.
There is no change—the water still the purest and the best;
That gourd—it seems the very same my lips so often pressed;
The grass around is quite as green; the log as mossy seems;
How vividly the past comes back, like figures seen in dreams!

Out yonder stands a church, whose spire is piercing through the air,
Where stood the schoolhouse in a field of grass and bushes bare;
A little wooden house it was, one-storied, narrow, low—
Old Griffin was the teacher then; he died here long ago;
Hard-featured, stern—the neighbors said he was a learned man:
One thing he knew beyond all doubt—the use of his rattan.

Down that side street, so thickly built, the path lay to the glen—
The short road to the village mill; they've arched the stream since then.
That dusty, dun, three-storied mill, with ever open door;
The champing brutes that bore the grist ranged in a row before;
The black wheel turning slowly round, the water falling free;
The clatter and the whir within—how plain they are to me.

249

Mill, woodland, schoolhouse, field and farm—they all have passed away;
This is a strange and alien land wherein I stand to-day;
The scenes of youth I longed to see, at my approach have fled;
Here is the burial place of dreams, and here the past lies dead;
And yet one verdant spot remains within the desert drear,
One oasis within the waste—the roadside spring is here.

HELEN.

The Winter of my life is here:
Leafless the trees around appear:
The straggling sunbeams faintly glow;
Sheeted the dying year in snow;
Yet memory, at three score and ten,
Creates life's early Spring again.

Before these worn and dimming eyes
What phantoms of the past arise!
The lost love of my early days
Appears to my enraptured gaze:
And then events before me pass
Like figures in Agrippa's glass.

Where green Passaic foaming sweeps
By grassy slopes and rocky steeps,
My Helen dwelt, no fairy she,
And yet it ever seemed to me,
All coarser things from thence were banned,
The place around her fairy land.

250

She was a child, and I a child,
Both born within the woodland wild;
We roamed together playmates there;
I cared not were she swart or fair;
But when to womanhood she grew
My soul her wondrous beauty knew.

'Twas sunset. At the gate we stood;
We had been wandering in the wood,
Gathering the flowers beneath the trees,
The bluets and anemones,
And these within her hand she held
When tongue to speak my heart impelled.

I said—I know not what I said;
Blushing, my darling drooped her head
(Her heart's blood showing through the thin
And delicate confine of her skin),
And, sinking on my throbbing breast,
Without a word her love confessed.

Sunny the morn when we were wed;
The day of June its fragrance shed;
The breath of roses filled the air;
The birds sang tunes beyond compare:
Earth changed to heaven, life grew divine,
For I was hers and she was mine.

Two happy years—then evermore
The Springtime of my life gave o'er.
Upon a dark and gloomy day
We bore to earth her lifeless clay,
And left her to her lonely rest,
Her new-born babe upon her breast.

251

I was alone—I am alone;
Though forty years have slowly flown;
No other mate was mine since then;
I did not care to mate again;
My heart was locked and barred, and she
There in her coffin held the key.

Spring, Summer, Autumn, all have passed,
And aged Winter holds me fast;
And yet, beneath my memory fond,
As though through some enchanter's wand,
Above the ice, above the snows,
Blossom the lily and the rose.

BARTON GEER.

Here, from the red-brick forests to the greener,
From dusty streets to grassy rural ways,
I come with quiet heart and calm demeanor,
To find, while fixing on this scene my gaze,
The mind grow clearer, and the vision keener,
The spirit piercing through its mental haze.

No tinge of wrong to darken sinless matter;
No grasping avarice, and no sordid fear;
No stooping in this place to fawn or flatter;
No greed of gain, as in a city, here—
Ah! how such language sounds like bitter satire
While looking at the house of Barton Geer!

Yonder it stands—the great stone buildings by it,
Stables and barns, one time with plenty lined—

252

Where a wild spendthrift wasted gold in riot
Gay in the present, to the future blind,
While Barton Geer himself in mouldering quiet,
Lay in his grave, his riches left behind.

There were no arts devised to heap up treasure
Too low for Barton's use; no cunning mode
Too vile for him; too base he found no measure;
He gained his goal by any crooked road;
To see his riches grow his only pleasure;
“Get when you can,” comprised his moral code.

“Cheating can't prosper,” here nor yet hereafter,
And even knaves should hence refrain to cheat;
He gave such musty proverbs scornful laughter,
Relaxed no grip no matter who'd entreat,
And, though you filled his house from sill to rafter
With victims' moans, would think it music sweet.

Though through his life to impulse kind defiant,
He left his wealth a hospital to build;
And, doing that, upon his craft reliant,
Being in devices eminently skilled,
Was his own lawyer, with a fool for client,
With his own will, and failed in what he willed.

A bachelor, he had one kinsman solely,
A distant cousin whom he hated much,
And whom he swore, with many an oath unholy,
Should never his possessions hold or touch,
Not even when their owner's form lay lowly,
And its cold hands no more his gold could clutch.

They broke the will; the one so fiercely hated
Was held the heir, and took the wealth of Geer;

253

It was not long ere that was dissipated—
Drinking and gaming swept it in a year.
What came by wrong, to go by wrong was fated;
Who earned, who spent—both bodies moulder here.

Slight traces of them now; few have a notion
Which was the miser, which the spendthrift heir;
The heaving billows of Time's restless ocean
Shall soon their memory to oblivion bear;
Yet evermore, with ever-ceaseless motion,
New life moves on, and nature is as fair.

I stand where lived the twain; the wind, gay rover,
The sweets it steals from blossoms, scatters free;
The blue, unclouded sky is bending over;
The birds they flit and twitter in yon tree;
The bees are droning as they milk the clover—
What now am I to Geer, or Geer to me?

THE COUNTRY-BOY'S LETTER.

You needn't tell me of the frolic and glee
Down there, in the holiday days;
With the rattle and rush, and the snow and the slush,
Of the big city's crowded ways;
The people all frown if you holla in town;
You never dare show them your joy,
Nor whistle or shout, if in-doors or out;
And that's rather hard on a boy.

But here, in the morn, when John sounds the horn,
I look at my snares and my traps;
And they're always complete, for I'm not to be beat
In such things by the neighboring chaps.

254

I can yell as I go over hard-crusted snow
Where the doodridges grow by the rocks,
To see if each noose be tightened or loose,
Or if bunny be caught in a box.

When Betty avers that great trouble is hers,
With the oven not fit for the bread,
The axe then I ply, and the great chips they fly,
At the wood-pile under the shed.
As the dry billets in I bring with a grin,
If Betty complain of the rout,
I say: “What would you for the oven-wood do
If you hadn't a young man about?”

While grandfather there in his straight-backed chair,
O'er yesterday's newspaper pores,
Or sinks in a nap, I get mittens and cap,
And go on a lark out of doors.
With my sled off I dash and then like a flash
I coast from the slope of the hill,
Or strap on my skates with their newly-ground plates,
At the pond by the old grey mill.

To the post-office then with one of our men
I ride in the two-horse sleigh;
And John never complains that I handle the reins,
But lets me drive all the way.
But Dobbin and Ball, they don't like it at all,
For I won't stand fooling, you see:
On John they play tricks, but afraid of my licks,
They never cut capers with me.

255

For the rest of the day I just take my own way,
And always have fun at a pinch;
I've a man built of snow in the hollow below,
And high—he's six feet if an inch.
And mother, why she's making something for me—
A ball, stuffed with rubber and yarn;
And when Perkin's Bill he comes over the hill,
Don't we have such high times in the barn?

The shell-barks I've got, you should see what a lot,
And with apples the bins are all full;
There are bushels of pears in the drawers by the stairs;
And father has sold the old bull.
Last summer, you know, the bull frightened you so,
And you ran and crawled under the fence;
'Twas only a cow, not the bull, anyhow—
I thought city boys had more sense.

You write of your fun, and you think we have none,
But you'd better believe we have some
At this time of the year; so join me out here—
Coax your mother, and she'll let you come.
Bring skates and some twine—I've used all of mine—
And some snares I'll soon fix up for you;
We'll skate and we'll trap, and coast, too, old chap;
But don't bring a sled—I have two.

Plum-leaved Viburnum. This boy must be somewhere in New York State or Northern New Jersey. Farther South they call it “sheep-berry.”

RACHEL MAYNE.

No change I see, though seven long years
In foreign lands away;
What struck before the eyes and ears
I see and hear to-day.

256

The blue jay's harsh and chattering note
Surmounts the hum of bees;
The oriole in his flaming coat
Flits through the apple-trees;

The sheep upon the hillside browse,
The colts in pasture scour;
In yonder close the patient cows
Await the milking-hour.

There is the house where I was born,
Long past from me and mine;
The red barn there to which at morn
I went to feed the kine.

There is the swape above the well;
There spread the fields of maize;
The osiers edge the marshy fell,
As in my early days.

The mill is there; the stream flows free,
Piercing the grassy plain;
But where is she who waits for me,
My darling, Rachel Mayne?

I loved her in the olden time
As few have loved before;
And now, when in my manhood's prime,
I love her even more.

I asked her father for her hand,
And these the words he said:
“Who has not gold, nor herds, nor land
Should not with maiden wed.

257

“For seven long twelvemonths Jacob wrought
His Rachel to obtain;
The wealth seven years to you have brought
May buy you Rachel Mayne.

“Hope of reward, that toil impels,
Your lagging life may spur;
Seek other lands, where Fortune dwells,
And win both wealth and her.”

Then here we parted, I and she,
With many tears and sighs;
But ever since has dwelt with me
Her tender, love-lit eyes.

Why comes she not? Why stays she now,
When she has naught to fear?
Has she forgot the parting vow
She made to meet me here?

I wrote her, ere my vessel sailed,
To meet me of her grace,
If she in truth had never failed,
At our old trysting-place.

Why comes she not? The sun is high;
The hour of noon has passed;
Or means she first my love to try,
To bless me at the last?

Perchance my letter missed. Therein
The reason doubtless lies.
I'll seek her, then, her home within,
And give her glad surprise.

258

A strange way, through the churchyard, this,
To reach my darling's side;
Through death's own home to seek for bliss,
O'er tombs to gain a bride.

And here a tombstone, gay and tall,
The marble yet unsoiled.
The name! She meets me, after all!
Was it for this I've toiled?

She is not dead! She could not die!
The letters blaze like fire!
Why, I came here to-day to buy
My dear one from her sire.

I have the price; where is the ware?
Ah, me! why idly rave?
My life is with my Rachel there;
My heart is in her grave.

GOING HOME.

It matters little whose the negligence,
If engineer or switchman were at fault—
A crash within the tunnel, known from thence
Through all the country round as “Deadman's Vault;”
And so, brought from the darkness into day,
Twelve mangled victims, dead or dying, lay.

They sent for me to learn if human art
Could save the lives of such as were not past
The surgeon's skill, and doing there my part
In mercy's work, I came upon at last

259

One hapless sufferer, crushed in every limb—
A shattered wreck, there was no hope for him.

True, he was young in years, and youth is strong,
But drink had stolen all vigor from his frame;
Whether through weakness, or to drown a wrong,
Or sink the memory of some deed of shame,
He fell so low, 'tis useless now to pry—
He could not bear the shock, and so must die.

He seemed to know it too. “No use in skill,”
He told me calmly, “for my race is run;
A life ill-spent could only end in ill;
I shall not live to see the setting sun.”
“I'll write—” I said. He stopped me there. “Not so!
'Twould kill my mother—she must never know.

“I've been a wanderer with no aim in life,
Not even to live, and now my life is lost;
I'm old in heart, if not in years; the strife
Waged in the past is over to my cost.
But promise this: When I am laid to rest,
That none remove what lies upon my breast.”

I promised him, then crept upon his eye
The film of death, his breath grew short and fast,
He gasped and shuddered, drew a heavy sigh—
“Mother,” he murmured, “I am home at last!”
Through the prone body came a sudden thrill,
His fingers clenched, unclosed—then all grew still.

I found a packet on his breast where lay
A well-worn letter and a tress of hair;
The hair was fine and soft and silver-grey;
The writing in the letter neat and fair.

260

“Dear son,” it said; no date, no place it bore;
'Twas signed “your loving mother,” and no more.

I did not read it; what therein was writ
God knows, she knew, and knew the dead; I gave
The packet rest upon his bosom; it
Went with its owner to his nameless grave.
None ever knew his name; he sleeps alone;
The turf is o'er his body, but no stone.

And she, that loving mother, she shall wait
While lingers life, her prodigal's return;
For him remains unlatched the yearning gate,
For him the fire shall glow, the lamp shall burn;—
Nor shall she know that he, her hope and pride,
Fixing his thoughts on her in dying, died.

And who would tell her? Who all hope would crush?
She lives expectant, and such life is joy;
And when alone she sits, upon her rush
Sweet, pleasant memories of her wandering boy.
So shall she live and love and watch and pray—
She shall know all upon the final day.

BARKER'S BOY.

Yonder he goes, that lad of fourteen years,
Denounced by people as “that Barker's boy;”
Cause of his father's wrath, his mother's tears;
Plague of the house, the neighborhood's annoy,
As nuisance branded;

261

He breaks the palings of the garden fence;
Throws stones at nothing, reckless where they fall;
Pounds the tin pan with dinning vehemence;
And chalks queer figures on the red brick wall,
In style free-handed.

He climbs the trees—his clothes were made to tear,
He kicks the stones—the cobbler needs employ;
His whoops and yells rise shrilly on the air;
In aimless mischief lies his chiefest joy,
All quiet scorning;

Sunburned and freckled, turbulent, untamed,
Cats flee his presence, pet dogs keep aloof;
For all unfathered damage he is blamed;
Subject of finger-threatening, sharp reproof,
And angry warning.

You look upon him as the village pest;
You greet him with a cold, forbidding frown,
Or smile contemptuous at his strange unrest,
And feel a strong desire to batter down
His way defiant;

But, tell me! did you come to being then,
Cast at beginning in a perfect mould,
Ready at birth to take your place with men,
Self-poised, self-regulated, self-controlled,
And self-reliant?

I think that all true men have had his ways—
At least were quite as thoughtless at his age:
And, notwithstanding Weems, the preacher, says,
That Washington as boy was grave and sage,
I doubt the story;

262

Bacon and Newton both at marbles played,
Engaged in mischief, and were flogged at times;
Cæsar his father troubled—had he stayed
Always a boy, his life had fewer crimes,
And he, less glory.

This Barker's boy is ill-conditioned, quite;
Yet in the wildest nature ever seen,
The darkest spot is not without its light;
The arid waste has still one spot of green
To half relieve it;

And when I heard that wrinkled Granny Jones,
Who dwells in yonder hovel, weak of limb,
Poor, lone, and friendless, spoke in feeling tones
Her lively sense of gratitude to him,
I could believe it.

When that old woman sick and bed-fast lay,
Shunned by her neighbors as reputed witch,
That boy of Barker served her day by day,
As tenderly as she were great and rich,
Through kindness only;

Begged food and fuel, brought the doctor there,
And coaxed his mother to old granny's side;
Roused older people's sympathy through his prayer;
Without his care the woman might have died,
Unhelped and lonely.

Therefore restrain your stern forbidding looks;
Kindness is best to move a heart that's kind;
Your model boy lives but in story-books,
And there dies young; if not to errors blind,
See traits redeeming;

263

Wait till his manhood to its height is bred;
Wait till the froth of youth has blown away,—
Till older shoulders find an older head,
And on the last behold the kindly ray
Of virtue beaming.

THE OLD HOME.

Hither I come now years have sped,
With trembling limbs and footsteps slow,
My heart unchanged, but on my head
The crown of age's snow.

Before me yonder river lies,
And overhead extend the vines;
Upon the bluff in gloom arise
The grim and wizard pines.

Though man and time have altered not
The house, the orchard, and the lawn,
The olden pleasance of the spot
I find forever gone.

There are no more the lofty trees
That one time lined the river shores;
Shorn or decayed, I find but these
Two hollow sycamores.

Where once upon the burdened wain
In harvest time I often rode,
Weed-overgrown, I see the lane
That bears no more a load.

264

The garden trim that once I knew
A thistly wilderness succeeds;
And where a thousand blossoms grew
There are but noxious weeds.

The spring that from the hillside burst
With sparkling flow and pure and clear,
At which I often quenched my thirst,
Oozes impurely here.

The huge, wide barn, whose threshing-floor
To mind long hours of frolic brings,
Remains, and to it as of yore
The five-leaved creeper clings.

But where are those who shared my play,
The friends in childhood dear to me—
The darling of a later day,
Sweet Alice, where is she?

From where the past unbars its door
A flood of sudden splendor gleams,
And there she stands in sight once more,
The lady of my dreams.

The vision fades—she is not here:
A shade of gloom succeeds instead
The ghosts of former things appear,
I stand amid the dead.

Dead all my childhood's hopes and fears;
Dead those my early lifetime knew;
The feelings of my early years
Are dead and buried too.

265

Hoping with careful providence
To save it for a later day,
Ere my ambition lured me hence
I hid the past away.

Now to its hiding-place alone
I eager come at early dawn,
And memory rolls away the stone
To find the treasure gone.

DORA LEE.

The brown log-cabin in the sandy valley,
Built at the base of Flat Top mountain tall,—
Mountain, from whence the winds at morning sally,
To hold harsh converse with the waterfall,—
The waterfall, that o'er the rock is pouring
Its sheeted glory to the pool below,
While overhead, arrested by its roaring,
The eagle floats, self-balanced, sailing slow,—
The yellow-beaked and mighty-taloned eagle,
With sunk, keen eye, and forest-scaring scream,
Self-borne aloft, with manner more than regal,
And heart undaunted o'er the brawling stream,—
The stream, that moves along in rapid motion,
Of kisses rudely ravishing the shore,
Then hurrying on to seek the distant ocean,
In which it shall be lost for evermore:—
Cabin and mountain, waterfall and eagle,
Stream, shore, and mighty trees that line the shore,
What demons of my fate combine and league ill,
That I may see you never—nevermore?

266

That I have loved you with an earnest feeling,
Even as a mother loved the babes she nurst;
That in your presence joy was o'er me stealing
To my last glance from when I saw you first;
That ye were dear to me, as to a lover
The form whereon his vision loves to dwell,—
It needed not to any to discover;
It needed not these words the truth to tell.
My early thoughts, my earliest—yea! my only,
Were on your beauties and your simple truth;
And here in this filled city I am lonely,
Apart from you—from you, dear scenes of youth.
Around you cling those deep-hued recollections,
Whose tendrils grasp the grey cliffs of the past,
And climb to where the hovering reflections—
Dark, lowering clouds—the sky have overcast.
Ye are so dear from thoughts of past time gladness—
Gladness I fear no more on earth for me:
Dearer from many memories tinged with sadness;
And dearest from the thoughts of Dora Lee.

Sweet Dora Lee! Thy name is not for singing;
No music in the words save to mine ears;
Yet my life's poetry around it clinging
Made rhythm to my soul for many years.
Thine was a spirit sweet and pure and holy;
Thy delicate form a wood-nymph's, as it should
By right have been, for though of lineage lowly,
Thine heir-loom was the beauty of the wood.
The glory of the mountain on thee streaming,
Became thy garment, and thine eyes were born
Of the sun's rays, through boughs above thee gleaming,
Warm, bright and genial, in the early morn.
The quiet of the deep old woods around thee
Had crept within and nestled in thy heart;

267

And guilelessness with his tiara drowned thee—
To win my fondness being thine only art.
Thy soul sank into mine, and tender yearning
Went from our mingled spirits, each to each,
To show what shows not in a scholar's learning,
That feelings speak more audibly, than speech.

Oh, cabin brown! low-roofed and fast decaying!
No kin of mine now dwell within your walls;
Around your ruins now the grey fox straying
His step arrests, and to his fellow calls.
The mountain, round whose tops the winds are blowing,
Still rears its form as lofty to the gaze;
The waterfall yet roars; the stream is flowing
As wildly as it did in other days;
The eagle soars as he was wont; his screaming
Is heard o'erhead as loudly as when I,
Shading my vision from the sun's hot beaming,
Looked up to note his dark form on the sky.
Yet I shall see him not; nor hill, nor valley,
Nor waterfall, nor river rushing on;
And though they rise around continually,
'Tis that they are in constant memory drawn.
There are they figured deeply as an etching
Worked on soft metal by strong hands could be;
And in the foreground of that life-like sketching,
She stands most life-like—long lost Dora Lee.

268

THE SLEIGH-RIDE.

Here, at my chamber window, I
Watch painted cutters gliding by,
And see, along the crowded street,
The horses dash with flinging feet:
But little do I reck of those
As memory's current backward flows.

A winter scene of early days
Is spread before the inner gaze—
The pleasant hours from dark to dawn,
When by the stout farm horses drawn,
The sledges, with their laughing loads,
Went swiftly o'er the Mansfield roads.

John Scudder, in his four-horse sleigh,
Four couples in it, led the way;
A dozen others in a string,
With shouts that made the night-air ring,
While in my cutter, following fast
Myself and Betty came the last.

What cared we two that those ahead
Faster upon the white road sped?
And what cared I if we should win
Later our welcome at the inn?
She sat beside me—thoughts of her
Even now these pulses thrill and stir.

Past houses where the sleepers lay
Unwakened by the watch-dog's bay,

269

Through patches of the woodland where
The leafless trees rose gaunt and bare,
Through drifts our horses scarce could tread,
With songs and laughter on we sped.

How wild the pleasure of that night,
Careering o'er the snow-waste white!
How tinkled musically clear
Our bells within the atmosphere!
How gay our mirth and wild our din
When once we reached M'Ardle's Inn!

The old Scotch landlord, bluff and loud,
A ready welcome gave the crowd,
Made hostlers take our brutes to stall,
Gave us what drink we chose to call,
Then led us to the great, wide room
Where tallow-dips dispelled the gloom.

The fiddler in his corner there
Sat ready in his backless chair;
And soon the rustic belles and beaux
Ranged down the room in double rows,
Waiting the music light and sweet
To set in motion eager feet.

Old Sol, the fiddler, jolly one,
Named after David's royal son,
(Though little did that Solomon know
Save how to handle fiddle-bow,)
Bent down his woolly pate and grey,
Stamped his left foot, and sawed away.

Then every one on pleasure bent
Danced all night long to heart's content,

270

Wound and unwound, and in and out
Moved through the wild, fantastic rout,
Changing their partners oft and free;
But Betty danced alone with me.

Then swiftly, at the dawning grey,
My steel-shod cutter made its way,
With Betty, promised as my bride,
Well-wrapped, and snuggled at my side,
The cold, blue heavens bending o'er,
And Dobbin dashing on before.

Betty is dead, the rest have gone;
But still the stream moves slowly on:
An old man, lone and friendless now,
With wrinkles on my cheeks and brow,
I sit and watch the jingling sleighs
Swift gliding o'er the city ways.

MILLY.

The bellows in the stithy sighs and moans, –
Upon the anvil rings the metric hammer,
While, mingling with the sharp, metallic tones,
Some idlers' voices aid to swell the clamor.
I peer within; the smith, with skillful blow,
Fashions a shoe to fit yon fractious filly;
He's not the one who, forty years ago,
Worked here, and had a pretty daughter, Milly.

My mind goes back to childhood's spring again,
Though now my life has reached its wintry weather,

271

When she was seven, and I scarce more than ten,
And we, on week days, went to school together.
The school-boys, when they saw me walk with her,
Said I was half a girl, and called me silly;
They knew not how my heart within would stir
At every word and glance of gentle Milly.

Ten years rolled on, and she had grown more shy,
And I more bashful when I chanced to meet her;
But when we threw our childish friendship by,
We found instead a feeling deeper, sweeter.
What if we both were poor? Who cares in youth,
When hearts are warm, if fortune should be chilly?
Our common store was in our common truth;
Milly was rich in me, and I in Milly.

What castles in the air we builded then!
For coming happiness what artless scheming!
Ah! of all pleasant thoughts entrancing men,
The sweetest is the raptured lover's dreaming!
But older heads than ours our future planned;
We youngsters thought their action to be silly
When they sent me to seek another land
To win a fortune, parting me and Milly.

We, tearful, parted then; and, far away,
I toiled straight on, my quest of wealth rewarded;
I kept my love intact for many a day,
My vows of truth within my heart recorded;
But gaining much begat the thirst for more;
Love before avarice lifeless grew and stilly:
Absence has deadened thoughts of long before;
Here I return, but not to look for Milly.

272

I would not see her now—the lingering kiss,
The tender, sweet embrace when last we parted—
These—these—but stay! What apparition's this,
So like, that sudden into life has started?
She's coming to the forge. Dark violet eyes,
Hair like the sun, complexion like the lily;
She has her face, her grace, and even her size—
What is your name, my child? I thought so—Milly.

She calls her sire to dinner. Yes! I know
The story plain—the whole is clear as water;
The faithless Milly wedded long ago,
And here we have another blacksmith's daughter.
I'll back unto my money-bags again;
I must to avarice yield me willy-nilly;
One sigh for olden memories, and then
Bury the past, and with it thoughts of Milly.

THE HICKORY FIRE.

Among the things I most admire,
Is the cheerful light of a hickory fire.

I like to sit and watch the blaze,
That over the back log curls and plays,

But more I like the cherry glow,
With orange and blue, in the coals below.

The embers open a book to me,
And wonderful pictures its pages be.

273

They bring back images from the vast,
The shadowy, half-forgotten past.

My early trouble and early pain,
And early joy come back again.

There are the Schuylkill's sloping hills,
Its grand old trees, and singing rills.

And there the nook wherein one day
We sat and dreamed the hours away.

But she has gone with her violet eyes;
Within the church-yard old she lies.

But she has gone with her locks of gold,
And I am childless, grey and old.

It changes now to a glowing red—
My present life before me spread.

Little in that to please I see—
The present is too well known to me.

Again a change—a burned stick falls;
Sparks arise, and a city's walls.

This is the future now I spy,
With the boundless grasp of a dreamer's eye.

There castle and palace, baton and crown,
Rise from the depths and tumble down.

Riches so vast they pass all count;
A height it makes one giddy to mount.

274

And thus for riches, and thus for sway,
I come to my hickory fire alway.

Lamp of the genius never I need,
Nor the wondrous ring of the great Djemsheed.

For I cross the sticks at an angle—so,
For flame above, and for air below.

I pile the dry logs high and higher,
I grasp the poker, and stir the fire;

And want how much whatever I may,
I start to dreamland right away.

Is it a wonder that I admire
The cheerful light of a hickory fire?

Or is it strange that I love to gaze,
Dreamily on its flickering blaze?

The storm outside may whistle and roar,
The sleet may drive, the hail may pour.

What does it matter then to me,
So long as these pleasant things I see;

And visions of past and future days
Rise in the fire to the old man's gaze?

275

SNOW.

Now thicker and quicker the flakes appear
In the grey of the speckled atmosphere;
Hither and thither they heave and toss
Till the roofs grow white with the wintry moss;
Froward and toward the wild snow shifts
In whirls and eddies, in sheets and drifts—
Whatever it touches it blanches;
It forms new shapes at the breeze's whim;
Alights and crawls on the oak-tree's limb;
Covers the dead, unsightly leaves;
Builds its nest at my cottage eaves;
Swings from the top of the gloomy pine;
Feathers the tendrils and twigs of the vine;
And creeps through the red cedar's branches.

Sweeps to the westward the tempest away;
The deep-blue above us has conquered the grey;
Yet warmth is asleep in the rays of the sun;
Light lies the snow though its falling be done;
Crouch in their mantle the evergreen leaves;
No water-drops drip from the snow-burdened eaves
On the twigs of the leafless clematis;
Before me I see the cold regions that lie
Where the northern aurora shoots up on the sky
Where over the snow, in their light sledges go
The broad-visaged Lapp and the dwarf Eskemo;
And thus may I gaze at the scintillant rays
That in boreal regions bewilder and blaze,
And yet never stir from my lattice.

276

What to me now are the wonderful homes
That are carved in the caverns of earth by the gnomes?
What if I never the palace have seen
Which the slaves of the Lamp raised for young Alla Deen?
Here I behold in the splendor of noon,
What no teller of tales to the Caliph Haroun,
Ever dreamed in his wildest of fancies;
Rubies and topazes break into blaze;
Opals are throwing out rainbows in rays;
Diamonds, emeralds, sapphires their light
Dart like the sheen of a sabre in fight;
Column and architrave, cornice and freize
Rise on the fences and spring from the trees;
The elves have come out of romances.

Bright is the scene as the dream of a child
Which you read when he started in slumber and smiled;
Calm as the lives of our Parents, ere sin
To the Garden of Eden, a serpent, crept in;
Pure as the love that the mother possest,
When first her first-born to her bosom she prest;
And glowing as fondness in woman;
At the wide waste before me of crystalline white,
I gaze from the lattice in joy and delight,
And believe, though the sage at the fancy may frown,
When the flakes from their home in the sky flutter down,
So chaste in their nature, so pure in their glow,
That the tears of the angels are frozen to snow,
As they weep for the sins that are human.

277

THE MOUNTAIN STREAM.

A lone old man, I stand again
Within this wild and rocky glen,
And here the mountain stream I ken—

The rocks and trees, the beryl rill,
The lilac mist of yonder hill,
The autumn landscape calm and still.

How plainly here my memory sees,
By yonder rock beneath the trees,
Two lovers—I am one of these.

Each of each other seems a part,
And one betrays that bashful art
Which shows the blossoming of the heart.

My eyes are filled with happy light;
My tide of joy is at its height;
I am a king who reigns by right.

Through love in her a rapture glows;
Her face the varying feeling shows—
'Tis now a lily, now a rose.

She stands there, half in shame, half pride,
The cherry-lipped and violet-eyed,
Timidly nestling at my side.

At times she pales, as from a thought
That granting me the love I sought
Some evil to us both has wrought.

278

We loved; we parted, pledged fore'er,
The joys and woes of life to share;
Truthless the vows that seemed so fair.

We parted never more to meet,
I to my path with tireless feet;
She to another's kisses sweet.

'Tis idle now the past to seek;
It boots not now of wrong to speak;
But wealth is strong and woman weak.

She wedded well; her mate was old,
Who let her way be uncontrolled;
Then, dying, left her lands and gold.

She lives, a matron, old and grey,
“Respected much,” the people say;
I pass not in the lady's way.

Poor, lonely, childless is my lot,
The arrow of my fate o'ershot:
She has all that which I have not.

Not as she is I would behold,
But see her as she was of old,
Now years on years have backward rolled.

With heart-thrill words can not express,
I hear the rustle of her dress,
I see her wondrous loveliness.

And here, to-day, by memory drawn,
The scene returns that long had gone;
It fades; the mountain stream moves on.

279

THE WESTERBRIDGE INN.

'Twas an old-fashioned tavern, all travellers said,
Where horsekind were baited, and mankind were fed,
Where they gave entertainment to man and to beast,
And the guests had enough, which was good as a feast;
But the landlord who kept it, all folk understood
To be a curmudgeon and grasping and rude,
Who, loving no neighbor and having no friends,
Used meanness and falsehood to carry his ends;
Cared not for the mode so the thing might be done;
Cared not by what tricks or devices he won,
If by these he stocked larder and filled up his bin,
And customers brought to the Westerbridge Inn.

'Twas not that Dame Nature through anger or whim
Had given hard features to Anthony Grimm;
'Twas not that his eyes had a sinister leer,
Creating distrust and awakening fear:
'Twas not that he always was cruel of speech,
With tones that were mixture of mutter and screech;
For hard-featured men with a look and a tone
That shock all beholders, rare goodness may own;
Though homely in aspect their actions may be
From meanness and cruelty happily free;
Or each, though his failings unnumbered may seem,
Some generous impulse may partly redeem.

But no generous impulse moved Anthony Grimm;
Kind word or kind action seemed folly to him;
The lean, starveling cur that would fawn for a crust,
And take your good-will and good-feeling on trust,

280

Never Anthony's nature a moment mistook,
But, drooping his tail, shrunk away at his look.
For Anthony boasted that while he would sell,
And for money give money worth fairly and well,
He never gave alms. “Let fools do it,” said he,
“Such weakness as that makes no precept for me;
Good bread brings good money, and will every day;
I'd rather 'twould choke me than give it away.”

Now it came on a day that was cloudy and damp,
Through the mud of the road trudged a beggarly tramp—
All ragged, and wretched, and pallid, and thin,
Having little outside him and nothing within;
Hollow-cheeked, sunken-eyed, with a look that foretold
His body would shortly lie under the mould;
And he came where old Anthony sat by the door,
Having just at the moment no debts he must score,
And, timidly stopping, his hat in his hand,
Before the old landlord contrived to make stand,
And, bowing most humbly, imploringly said—
“I'd be thankful, kind sir, for a mouthful of bread.”

“Bread!” cried Anthony—“bread, sir?”—then knitting his brows,
“Perhaps you mean gin, and would like a carouse.
I never give bread—it is tasteless and dry;
I'd recommend something much better to try.
Here, John, bring a sandwich!—There, isn't that fine?
The whole village praises this sandwich of mine;
A man on such fare might dine, breakfast and sup—
It is something like eating to gobble it up.”
And then, while the beggar expectant stood by,
Mouth watering, and hope and delight in his eye,
And the people around by the words had been drawn,
Ate the sandwich himself as the beggar looked on.

281

Such a change in the tramp! All his confident air
Was turned to a wan, sullen look of despair;
His skin lost all color, his jaw dropped, he shook
As though with an ague—so wild was his look
That old Anthony, seized with a spasm of mirth,
Shook in laughter, then rolled from his chair to the earth,
Where he writhed in convulsions, then motionless lay,
While the beggar, recovering, went on his way.
Still Anthony stirred not, though black in the face,
And the neighbors around ran in haste to the place.
They raised him—the morsel of bread he denied
Had choked him, and so in his malice he died.

The inn stands decaying—the sign-post is down,
The windows are paneless, the weatherboards brown,
Half rotted the door-step; no mortal may dare
For gain or for need to make residence there;
For there at the noontime the passer may hear
Strange sounds that impress him with horror and fear:
A pitiful plaint from some beggar for bread,
And words breathing hope, but deceivingly said;
Then a wild shout of mirth rings from ground-floor to rafter,
And silence—the silence of horror comes after.
Slow crumbling to ruin, the Westerbridge Inn
Tells the story of Anthony Grimm and his sin.

GUYANDOTTE MUSINGS.

I.

Beneath this leafy maple
No sunbeam droppeth down;
Yet light surrounds my spirit,
Here in the shadows brown—

282

Delight and love hold torches
To light the shadows brown.

My dear wife sits beside me,
Her hand is in my own;
I see her downcast lashes,
I hear her voice's tone—
The distant bells of silver
Have not so sweet a tone.

Our Alice sings a ditty,
And wots not that we hear;
Sad Mary hears the fancies
That whisper in her ear—
She sits and hears the stories
They whisper in her ear.

Sage Annie watches Alice,
For fear of some mishap;
Little Florence is cooing and smiling
Upon her mother's lap—
Her closed hand in her baby mouth,
And she on her mother's lap.

Still darker grow the shadows
That drip from every limb;
They wrap me in their folding,
The outer sense grows dim;—
But the light within grows brighter,
Though all without be dim.

My thought is vague and dreamy,
And misty pictures pass;
The hues are tangled together
At every turn of the glass—

283

Blue, scarlet, green and golden,
Whenever I turn the glass.

II.

I raise my eyes—all passes;
And yonder “Backbone” stands,
With coat of grey and cap of green,
To watch the lower lands—
With coronet of oak trees
To guard the lower lands.

And all my pleasant musings
Are idle ones to-day;
My home, my wife, my children,
Are many miles away—
I linger here no longer—
To saddle and away.

III.

My feet are in the stirrups,
The reins my fingers press;
My mare, with black mane flowing,
Neighs loud at my caress—
With nostrils wide distended,
She neighs at my caress.

Faster, black mare of the mountains,
Rival the wind in thy speed;
They are watching at home for the master,
They listen the tramp of his steed—
A welcome waits the master,
A stable waits the steed.

The fond, ideal picture
That met my spirit's gaze,

284

Shall soon be true and real
Beside the hearth-fire blaze—
And ardent be the welcome
Beside the hearth-fire blaze.

And thou, my good companion,
Shalt share this joy of mine;
Annie shall bring thee white cake,
And Mary bring thee wine—
And thou shalt eat the wheat loaf,
And drink the draught of wine.

Fresh oats shall fill thy manger,
Sweet hay thy couch shall be;
And all because of my musings
Beneath the maple tree—
The maple on Guyandotte river,
Where thou didst wait for me.

BARBARA AND I.

The darling little Barbara! The best of friends were we,
Though she was little more than nine, I nearly twenty-three;
And 'twas a pleasant thing, whene'er we two would chance to meet,
To see her smile and nod her head, and blow me kisses sweet.

And this was why: Where Maple Creek cuts through the Piny Ridge,
Some one (the stream grows narrow there) had felled a tree for bridge,

285

The pent-up torrent swiftly ran, and forty rods below
The cruel points of jagged rocks fretted to foam the flow.

Near that a famous fishing-place, and there, one day was I,
With rod in hand to seek for perch, when Barbara came by.
While on the bridge, she slipped and fell; I heard her sudden scream;
And plunging in, with desperate stroke, I bore her from the stream.

Man likes what he has saved at risk; not often in return
The one he rescues finds within a grateful feeling burn;
But she was better than her kind; and so it grew to be,
While I was fond of Barbara, she fonder was of me.

To search for wealth, I left my home to be away for years:
Friends, smiling, wished me luck, but she was bathed in childish tears.
“You're leaving little Barbara, who loves you,” faltered she.
“You'll soon forget; she never will, wherever you may be.”

The child was right. I soon forgot; and, toiling year on year,
I formed new ties, while passed from mind whatever had been dear;
And as from every stream of gain good fortune on me rolled,
I thought no more of Barbara, but only lands and gold.

I fought for riches, and I won; then, tired of toil at last,
With avarice sated, I returned when ten long years had passed.

286

I sought old friends, and her as well; but when I met her there,
The little Barbara had gone, and left a woman fair.

Ten years had changed the winsome maid, a little child no more!
Little, indeed! a damosel who stood at five feet four,
A lovely girl, of cultured ways, as charming as could be,
Replaced the artless little one who had been fond of me.

The ways and days of years before had died and made no stir:
While time had slowly walked with me, it swiftly fled with her;
But that whene'er we met she blushed and trembled, looking shy,
My uttermost philosophy could find no reason why.

I built a mansion on my farm (folk called it “Gimcrack Hall”),
And fourteen lackeys wages paid to let me board them all;
Then mingled with the crowd of men, went through a dreary round,
And when Miss Barbara I saw, bent with a bow profound.

At length a neighbor gave a “bee”—'tis fashionable “tone,”
The rich should ape the rural ways, if country-seats they own:
So, in a huge, capacious barn, of carven stone at that,
Upon the waxed and polished floor the well-dressed huskers sat.

The gaping rustics ne'er had seen such bee as that before—
The ladies all on tabourets, the others on the floor;

287

But first they straws for partners drew, and so it was, you see,
I sat in front of Barbara, who took the ears from me.

What din and chatter filled the barn! We steady worked and still,
Till, all by chance, our fingers touched; then through me passed a thrill;
My eyes met hers; her eyelids drooped; the place seemed filled with light;
But when a red ear came to view I dared not claim my right.

But why go on? The story's told, 'Twas at that husking-bee
Was born my love for Barbara; not there her love for me;
For when I won confession fond she murmured soft and low:
“The Barbara who loves you, loved you years and years ago.”

PAUL SEES THE LOVERS.

As at my casement here this bright May morning
I breathe the early air,
The opening of the shutters gives no warning
To yonder tender pair.

Their outer ears are closed to bar my presence,
My voice they have not heard,
So filled are they with Love's potential pleasance,
So deep their souls are stirred.

288

The beating of their souls in dulcet rhythm
Is all the sound they hear;
The poetry of youthful life is with them,
Extending far and near.

He, fond and bashful, pleading, as before him
So many swains have done,
Feels at her silence clouds of doubt pass o'er him
That quite obscure the sun.

One hand of hers with apron-string is playing,
The other shades her eyes,
The while her ear drinks in what he is saying
With gladness, not surprise.

Their loving conference should have no witness,
None listen what they say,
Their secret has for secrecy such fitness;
And hence I turn away.

But she, who, as her lover strives to woo her,
Looks down and blushes so,
Brings back Drusilla as I one time knew her
Not many years ago.

Memory, arch-sorcerer, with his wand extended,
Summons again the past;
Youth, love and rapture all in one are blended,
And wretchedness at last.

Now part the gilded walls; to dust they crumble,
My luxury disappears,
And I go back to that condition humble
I filled in early years.

289

The long green hills extending in the distance,
The sloping river shore,
The sandstone cliffs—all spring into existence
As in the long-before.

Nor are they in my eyes a sight of beauty
The gazer's eye to charm;
But witnesses to most unwilling duty
Upon the country farm.

The red-clay farm where I was doomed to labor
Through all the seasons' change,
To plough, to mow, run errands to each neighbor,
And drive the kine to range.

Then, in young manhood, stands Drusilla near me
Beneath the elmen tree;
She blushes as she pauses there to hear me,
The maid so dear to me.

And now at last her smiling promise winning
To be one day my wife,
I feel that night is over, day beginning
To dawn upon my life.

Yet, ere a year, a richer lover sought her,
And won her, though a tyke;
For was she not a rich man's only daughter?
Like ever flows to like.

Her father's farm lay next to ours; with tillage
Its fertile acres smile;
Thrice ours in size, extending from the village,
As the crow flies, a mile.

290

Another year; the bitter pang was over,
And I had power to bear.
To a far land I bent my way, a rover,
To seek for fortune there.

Fortune became my slave; I did but beckon,
And in my lap she poured
Such golden store that it grew hard to reckon
The total of my hoard.

I tired of avarice; a feeling burning
To see old haunts again
Came over me, and hitherward returning,
I built this mansion then.

Why need I mourn that misery attended
Drusilla's wedded life?
Dead now, she lies beneath a tombstone splendid,
Who lived a wretched wife.

But they, the pair who stand before my villa,
Sweet fate to them befall.
May she not prove to be a false Drusilla,
Nor he another Paul.

THE IDYL OF THE PEACH.

The golden Melacatoon is here;
Its downy cheek has a ruddy flush,
And brings to mind my buried dear,
With gipsy skin and sunset blush,
The depths of her lustrous, liquid eyes
Filled to the brim with shy surprise,

291

When, standing there the leaves among,
I whispered love with faltering tongue,
And earnest strove the maid to woo
In the orchard where the peach-trees grew.

And I was young, and she was young,
And I was fond, and she was fair;
The sunlight fondly stooped and flung
A flood of glory on her there;
Sweeter than woodland minstrelsy
The tremulous tone of her voice to me,
As, drooping on my fluttering breast,
Her love she timidly confessed.
And earth seemed past and heaven in view
In the orchard where the peach-trees grew.

Beneath us there the meadows spread;
Beyond the woodland waved its boughs;
Some bird passed singing overhead,
Tuning its wild notes to our vows;
But charms that nature there displayed
Drew no regard from youth and maid;
Such rapture had the moment brought,
All things around to them were naught;
Each all-in-all to each, the two,
In the orchard where the peach-trees grew.

And there we planned our future life,
When I should win a name and fold,
And back return to claim a wife
From her grim father, stern and old,
And she, till toil should conquer fate,
Would at the hearth-stone patient wait.
And so, with many a vow of truth,
Parted that day the maid and youth;

292

And never met again those two
In the orchard where the peach-trees grew.

I won the name I strove to win,
I gained me wealth with toil, and then
I left behind the city's din
And sought the scenes of youth again.
Naught stood around that I had known;
I found the air and sky alone.
Gone was the meadow, gone the wood;
A mansion where the farmhouse stood;
And they had built a village new
In the orchard where the peach-trees grew.

They show me her neglected tomb—
A grave in the valley brier-grown,
A hollow where the bluets bloom,
Some remnants of a shattered stone,
Whereon the comer scarcely reads
A name among the moss and weeds;
That only brings the past to me,
And with the eyes of my heart I see
A loving pair unseen by you
In the orchard where the peach-trees grew.

Here in this Melacatoon you see
Only a luscious peach—no more;
It has a talisman's power for me
The early rapture to restore.
Returns with this the love that lies
Within my darling's dove-like eyes;
Her timid fingers touch my own;
Fills ear and soul that silvern tone;
She meets me, loving, fond, and true,
In the orchard where the peaches grew.

293

“A FINE DAY IN THE MORNING.”

The sun had been gloomy; the clouds overhead
Were in doleful accord with my sorrow;
The pattering of rain made a dirge full of dread,
As I hopelessly feared for the morrow.
A tramp who for shelter stood under a tree,
Saw me look at the east where it darkened,
And, taking his pipe from his mouth, said to me,
As though to my thought-voice he hearkened—
“Just turn your eyes yonder, look upward and high
Where the sunset the west is adorning;
Streaks of crimson and gold light the gloom of the sky,
And we'll have a fine day in the morning.”

He was surely a most philosophical tramp,
With a figure well-knitted and burly;
He seemed, as he stood there, both hungry and damp,
But he neither looked sulky nor surly.
I had spurned him the moment before from the place,
Cold victuals and shelter denied him;
Yet he gazed with a placid content in my face,
As I gloomily stood there beside him.
“Yes,” he said, “for his own part he let the world go,
Its crosses and misery scorning;
He had learned, though 'twas cloudy at nightfall, to know
When we'd have a fine day in the morning.”

Of course, after that I refused him no more,
Gave him supper, poor wretch, in the kitchen,
And—first putting his pipe on the shelf o'er the door—
A bed in the barn, comfort rich in.

294

Next morning, well-fed, he went gaily away,
With thanks for the boon unexpected;
But when I suggested hard work at fair pay,
He very serenely objected.
“He felt much obliged for the offer,” he said,
“But the state of his health gave him warning,
If he ever with labor fatigued went to bed,
He would have no fine day in the morning.”

Since then, when the world has been gloomy and sad,
And few hopes of success rose before me,
Whatever oppression of trouble I had,
Or whatever misfortune hung o'er me,
Instead of intently regarding the dark,
Or letting it fill me with sorrow,
I set myself out pleasant omens to mark,
And from them some comfort to borrow.
I turned my eyes westward, looked upward and high
For some sign more of promise than warning,
And sought for those warm, glowing tints in the sky
That foretold a fine day in the morning.

HOW HE WON MILLY.

Be sure that no woman worth winning
Will suffer to bid her farewell
The lover she loves, who is bashful
And fears his affection to tell.
Be she ever so modest and timid,
If loving, true-hearted and young,
Ere in silent despair he shall leave her,
Her wit will supply him a tongue.

295

If she love him, and know that he loves her,
But sees that his courage is weak,
Or his doubt makes him blind to her favor,
She'll give him the cue how to speak.
It was long years ago that I learned it—
(Dear memory that of my life!)
Since, but for some words that she faltered,
I had never won Milly for wife.

Young Milly, the red-lipped and bright-eyed,
With golden, rebellious curls,
That ne'er would lie still when she smoothed them,
And teeth with the lustre of pearls.
And oh! the white snow of her forehead;
And oh! the clear light of her eye;
The mind that was pure as a fountain,
The soul that broke forth in her sigh.

A sad life my love for her led me;
My heart-strings were all out of tune;
Her frowns were the clouds of October;
Her smiles were the sunshine of June.
And at last, in her fight for her freedom,
She told me, with fire in her eyes:
“Men are ever deceivers! I hate them,
As all maidens would, were they wise!”

That last drop the goblet brimmed over,
And I said, as I sprang to my feet:
“There never was one half so cruel,
There never was one half so sweet.
How much and how madly I love you
No language is able to tell;
But I am a man. Men—you hate them!
God bless you, my darling! Farewell.”

296

With tears in my eyes from emotion,
Half-blinded, I turned me to leave,
When I felt her warm breath at my shoulder,
And her nervous hand-clutch on my sleeve;
Her face it grew redder and redder,
The hue of a peach next the sun,
And she murmured: “The men! yes, I hate them;
But, Frank—I might manage—with—one!”

Ah! quick with my strong arms I pressed her
To my heart, amid smiling and tears;
And there she has budded and blossomed
In beauty for many long years.
And now, when I think of that moment,
My pulses they quicken and stir;
For I know we had parted forever
Save for words that were uttered by her.

There she sits in her chair by the window,
Scarce older to me by a day,
Though her tresses have altered to silver,
And years have flown noiseless away.
You may say that her age is near fifty,
That lines in her face I may see;
With you the lines deepen to wrinkles;
They're nothing but dimples to me.

THE MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN.

Alone, within the felon's dock,
He waits the doom about to fall;
In look emotionless as rock,
He stands unmoved amid them all.

297

The white-haired judge is speaking now
The doom that isolates from men;
Nor shame nor terror cloud his brow;
His thoughts are with his youth again.

His form is here, his soul is there
In yon rough land where he was bred;
The court-room vanishes in air—
The Past is living, Present dead.

He sees the grand old granite hills,
In rude and jagged outline rise—
Their bushy slopes, their leaping rills,
Their misty tops, the steely skies.

There stands the farmhouse, roofed with moss;
Its door, half open, idly swings:
And, where the elms their great arms toss,
A robin sits and gaily sings.

The wilding flowers the meadows yield
Their blossoms one by one unfold;
And, sheeted o'er the pasture-field,
The daisies with their eyes of gold.

The mowers busy with their math,
Upon the sultry summer-day;
And, as they toss the half-dried swath,
The odor of the new-mown hay.

The sheep that browse amid the rocks,
The kine at rest beneath the trees;
And, playing gently with his locks,
The burning noontide's scanty breeze.

298

And she, the farmer's daughter fair,
With eyes of blue and lips of red,
And wealth of wavy, golden hair,
That made a halo round her head.

All these are things of long ago,
The memories of the early days,
Ere, seeking gold and finding wo,
He trod the city's crowded ways.

He might have led a farmer's life,
Devoid of care and want and dread;
He might have taken for his wife
Sweet Mirabel—but she is dead.

Dead! She is dead! But what is he?
Beside him in his shame and sin,
With finger pointed mockingly,
The spectre of the Might-have-been.

“It might have been!” he cries, and falls.
The listeners stand in dumb amaze;
And then, despite the sheriff's calls,
They press upon the wretch to gaze.

Struck down by memory's fatal ban,
He passes from your thrall away;
You doomed to death a living man;
This is a form of lifeless clay.

299

THE OLD HEARTH-FIRE.

The hearth-fire of our fathers,
With back-logs, huge and round,
Of maple, beech, or hickory,
The largest to be found;
And on it piled the cord wood sticks
To crackle and to roar
And snap responses to the wind
That howled outside the door.

The hearth-fire of our fathers!
Each syllable recalls
The doings in that red-clay farm
Which lay by Glyndon Falls—
The husking-time, the thrashing-time—
Ah! that we know no more,
When up and down the merry flails
Made music on the floor.

The hearth-fire of our fathers,
Where, on the winter days,
John came from barn at dinner-time
To warm him at the blaze;
Where hung the caldron o'er the flame
By hook suspended low,
Looking at jolly Johnny-cakes
All baking in a row.

The hearth-fire of our fathers,
Where, on the winter nights,

300

The boys and girls were gathered round
To find the same delights;
The hickory-nuts on sad-irons cracked,
The apples from the bin—
They munched at these while granny dozed,
And gran'ther stroked his chin.

The hearth-fire of our fathers,
With neighbors gathered round;
Perchance the minister dropped in
To give them precepts sound;
His talk how heaven is filled with love
Made such impression there,
That Peter's hand crept slowly o'er
The back of Susan's chair.

The hearth-fire of our fathers,
Where oft the tale was told,
While listening children sat in awe
Of ghosts and witches old;
Where, too, the baby crowed and jumped,
And laughed the children all,
When father with his joined hands made
The rabbit on the wall.

The hearth-fire of our fathers!
'Twill never blaze again;
Its great, wide chimney shows no more
To glad the eyes of men;
Its embers quenched, its ashes strown,
No more its light shall gleam;
The hearth-fire of the past is now
A memory and a dream.

301

ONLY A CUR.

Only a cur—a blind, old, meagre creature,
Mongrel in blood, long-jawed, and lean of limb;
Ugly enough in color, shape and feature—
Who seeks a lady's pet would pass by him.
And yet within that form uncouth, ungainly,
Are things not always linked to human dust—
Virtues that oft in man we look for vainly—
Courage, affection, faithfulness to trust.

Only a cur—'tis very true, I own it;
I have no record of his pedigree;
The stock he sprung from, I have never known it,
If high or low his family may be.
He should be poor indeed to suit his master,
To whom a greenback sometimes is a show;
But not the wealth of Rothschild or of Astor
Would tempt me now to let old Towser go.

You see that stripling in the meadow mowing—
Well-knit for eighteen years, and strong and lithe;
'Longside the foremost in the row a-going;
Steady as clock-work moves his sweeping scythe.
Well, that's my boy, and something like me, rather
In face than mind—in habits not, they say;
The son is far more careful than the father,
Earns much, spends little—he'll be rich one day.

Old Towser one time saved that boy from dying,
Twelve years ago—round here the story's known;
You'd scarcely think, as you behold him lying,
He fought a wolf, and mastered him alone.

302

Even if the service we don't care to measure,
The feat's not one that every dog can do—
That's right, old Towser! raise your ears with pleasure,
And wag your tail—you know I speak of you.

Since then the true old dog has stood as sentry
Over our household camp by night and day;
Nor rogue nor robber ever made an entry
With Towser's vigilance to stop the way.
Not locks, nor bolts, nor bars were ever needed;
We slept serenely while he stood on guard;
Each sound suspicious by his quick ears heeded—
His fangs intruders from our slumbers barred.

Faithful to us, distrustful to a stranger,
Obedient to a sign expressing will;
True to his master, fearless of all danger,
Ill-fed at times, but fond and grateful still—
No sleek and pampered dog of finest breeding,
Reared in a palace and with dainties fed,
Has ever shown high qualities exceeding
Those of this brute, base-born and underbred.

Only a cur, indeed! If such you name him,
Where be your dogs of honor and degree?
Since none with duties left undone can blame him,
What brute ranks higher in its kind than he?
If human-kind would do as well its duty,
The world were spared one-half its woe and pain,
Worth would seem better in our eyes than beauty,
And deeds, not looks, our admiration gain.

303

THE OLD SCHOOL-HOUSE.

I stand where two roads meet: the main one here,
And there the long lane leading to the mill;
Here stood a house upon a sand-waste drear,
Wherein the youthful mind they used to till,
And plant of useful knowledge, seeds;
And now a mansion rises tall and wide,
With turrets, oriels and a double door,
And all that best accords with human pride;
A marble-bounded fish-pond stands before;
A well-trimmed lawn the sand succeeds.

Yet as I stand, and on the railing lean,
Thought gradually shapes the olden place;
Rises before me all the early scene,
And bit by bit each portion here I trace
Of where one time I went to school.
Red-roofed and low and small was learning's seat,
The broken plaster seamed with many cracks,
The sanded flooring worn by children's feet,
The rows of desks, the seats devoid of backs,
The dunce's penitential stool;

The platform where the mighty teacher sat,
Enthroned in state, half awful, half grotesque,
Behind him on a peg his well-kept hat,
His lithe rattan before him on his desk—
Symbol of majesty and might;
The oblong stove, in winter crammed with wood,
The faggots near it from the wood-pile brought,
The water-pail that in the corner stood,

304

With tape-bound gourd by thirsty youngsters sought,
And drained with evident delight.

All these arise before me clear and plain;
A half a century rolls its clouds away;
Shaking off age, I am a boy again,
Backward at learning, forward at my play,
The pleasure of the present mine;
And though before me sits the teacher grim,
Watching with keen grey eye the little folk,
What care I, with my fresh twelve years, for him?
Have I not wit enough to ease his yoke,
Or slip it, if I so incline?

The boys are all around me. Cleaver's Joe—
He never has grown up, and gone to sea,
Swept overboard and drowned; that is not so,
For there he sits next row but one to me,
Trying to do a puzzling sum;
And there is Peter—Morse's Peter—who
Some one has said was born to be a judge,
With patient air to hear long cases through—
What! restless Peter, full of mischief—fudge!
That life for him could never come.

And yonder on the dunce's stool alone,
That stupid Ned—Ned Baxter—silly sits;
Who says that he, to vigorous manhood grown,
Turned out a scholar great, and prince of wits—
Ned with the dull and vacant stare?
And, wriggling at my elbow, Simson's Tim,
Restless and reckless, first in every prank
The rest annoying, who predicts of him
He 'mid divines will take the highest rank,
His life sedate and void of care?

305

They're here—all here, from fifty years ago;
Back from the churchyard some, some from the seas,
And some from later life; the locks of snow,
The wrinkled faces, and the trembling knees,
And age-bent bodies cast away;
A group of children, free from present care,
The school broke up, all hurrying eager out,
Pouring their gladness on the evening air,
With constant chatter, or with sudden shout,
As though all life were made for play.

And there is Mabel too—ah! now it flies!
School-house and pupils all dissolve in air;
For well I know that Mabel with her eyes
Of deepest violet, and sunny hair—
Mabel grew up to be my bride;
I know her grave within the valley made;
The roses, with their buds less sweet than she,
Cluster above it; there her form was laid;
All hope, all pleasure, all repose for me
Were lost the day that Mabel died.

Again before me stands the palace fair,
The half-grown grove, the broad, pretentious lawn;
The low-roofed school-house is no longer there;
It, with its memories, in the air has gone,
And I am standing lonely here;
I wait my turn to give to others place,
To be a faint remembrance at the best,
To leave upon the minds of men no trace,
But, after sinking to my final rest,
From life and memory disappear.

306

THE TWO SONGS.

A thrush in a cage, and you ask me to buy
And be lord of the little brown captive? Not I.
Stay—here is your dollar; that cage give to me;
The window is open—brown thrush, you are free!

The vender has gone with his silver, and you
Seem astonished at both what I say and I do.
Not strange had you known of the feeling that stirred
The depths of my soul at the voice of the bird.

When Avice was living, you knew me not then;
She's been dead twenty years—I ne'er married again.
Twice won and twice lost was my darling so fair—
Twice won by the voice of a thrush in the air.

I met with my Avice when scarce more than boy,
I, bashful and fond, and she, timid and coy;
And, as her face reddened and drooped at my gaze,
My heart thrilled with rapture, my brain with amaze.

Ah! first love is fond love, and purest of all,
The least selfish sentiment known since the Fall;
Let worldlings deride it much as they may,
'Tis the rosy aurora that ushers life's day.

Though strong was my feeling, my purpose was weak;
I could look what I felt, with no courage to speak;
And for nearly two years, though we met day by day,
She could not, I dare not—so time rolled away.

307

How well I remember that morning in June,
When the brook with the leaves of the wildwood kept tune,
When a party of young folk climbed yonder hill's crest,
And Avice and I went along with the rest.

We scattered in couples, as young lovers will,
And roamed through the coppice that covered the hill,
And gathered the wild blooms that scantily grew,
Though little we noted their odor or hue.

As Avice and I walked in silence we heard
Arise from a thicket the song of a bird,
And Avice's finger held up bade me hear
The notes of a thrush sounding mellow and clear.

Our hands chanced to touch, and a thrill went through each
Too subtle for telling, too potent for speech;
And the thrush sang on cheerily, note after note,
While our heart-beats kept time with each sound from his throat.

We plighted our faith, hand in hand, heart in heart;
We vowed naught asunder our twin souls should part;
The world seemed before us a pathway of flowers,
And the light and the glory of loving were ours.

But we quarrelled, as lovers will quarrel at times;
For jealousy magnifies trifles to crimes,
And friends were still ready to keep us apart,
And for faults of the head lay the blame on the heart.

A year passed in pain. Oft we met with no word,
Whatever emotion within us was stirred;
No look showed the feelings our bosoms contained,
Nor that sparks still alive in the ashes remained.

308

At length I could bear with my suffering no more,
And sought change of thought on a far foreign shore;
Five years toiled for fortune, nor sought it in vain;
Then, worn by the struggle, came back o'er the main.

I returned on a morning in June, calm and still;
Instinctive my steps sought the path to the hill;
And I stood all alone on the bush-covered crest
Where Avice and I had our loving confessed.

A rustling of leaves struck my ear in the place—
'Twas Avice. What brought her? No change in her face.
I trembled and bowed, would have passed her; but then
The song of six years before sounded again.

'Twas the voice of the thrush with its wonderful strain;
On the fever within us the notes fell like rain;
Love arose from the grave of the long, weary years;
Our hands met, our lips met, with sighing and tears.

Ten years she was mine—you must pardon this tear;
She lies in the churchyard, and I linger here.
Now you know why the captive I bought and set free,
Why the thrush of all birds is the dearest to me.

SLAIN.

There, where the foul birds
Heavily hover,
Where the gaunt grey wolf
Creeps to his cover,

309

Where with loud cawing
Crows come unbidden,
Deep in the woodland
Something is hidden.

What lies in covert—
Brutal or human,
Breathing or breathless,
Man, or a woman?
Lifeless and livid,
Ghastly and horrid,
Ball-mark and gore-clot
On the white forehead.

Did a fierce foeman
Meet him in strife here?
Was it his own hand
Ended his life here?
Foe's work or self work,
Life is concluded—
Dead! but the murder
No one knows who did.

Ha! where yon lizard
Hurriedly crosses,
Two kinds of footprints
Dent the deep mosses;
Broken low branches
Lie there around him;
Crushed is the herbage
There where they found him.

Here a revolver
Found the coarse grass in,
Dropped in his fleeing
By the assassin.

310

No! Every chamber
Heavily loaded,
Bullets and powder—
Not one exploded.

See if those footprints
Tidings may render:
One is a woman's,
Shapely and slender.
Was, then, the slaying
By her or for her—
Doer or witness
Of the black horror?

Strange is his figure,
Stranger his face is;
Name or whence coming,
Naught on him traces,
High-born or low-born,
Married or wifeless;
All that we know is—
There he lies lifeless.

Ever the hemlocks
Mournfully drooping,
Ever the fir-trees
Sorrowful stooping,
Ever the laurels,
Gnarled and low-growing,
Keep the dread secret
Hid from our knowing.

311

THE DELAWARE.

My mother, the cloud, cast me down to the ground,
And thence through the sand-soil a pathway I found,
And broke from the rock at the foot of the hill
In a fountain that trickled and swelled to a rill.
I gathered my brothers from hill-side and steep,
And eagerly hurried my way to the deep—
Sauntering slowly through low-lying meadows,
Sleeping in nooks beneath willow-tree shadows,
Tossing the blades of the o'erhanging grasses,
Gliding, meandering, strolling through valleys
Where dallies the wind with the flowers as it passes,
And flowing and flowing.

I swallow the brooks that descend from the hills,
I widen from tribute of fountains and rills
Who to join me come out from the nooks where they creep,
And the cloven ravines where they frolic and leap,
While together we dash against rocks in our way,
Or in eddies and whirlpools incessantly play.
Mine are the button-woods mottled and high,
In whose hollows the bears and the catamounts lie;
And mine are the reed and the flag and the lily,
And mine are the aster and golden-rod drooping
And stooping o'er water so placid and stilly,
Yet flowing and flowing.

Through the hills and beneath the green arches that grow
By limbs interlacing from grey trunks below,
I hurry and struggle and foam and complain,
Till I get to the kiss of the sunlight again.

312

Then I rest in dark pools in an emerald sleep,
Till I gather the force and the strength for a leap,
In a torrent of crystal and beryl and snow
From the green edge above to the white foam below;
Then over the rocks in my pathway I run,
Hissing and roaring and leaping and dashing,
And flashing a myriad of gems to the sun,
And flowing and flowing.

Down through the hills and through valleys that glow
With the sun from above and the green from below,
On by the cities that lie at my side,
Growing deeper and wider, I quietly glide
Past where the Schuylkill pays tribute to me,
Till I reach in my journey the fathomless sea.
There where the ships from the North and the South,
And the East and the West, with their keels vex my mouth,
I mingle my waters with those of the main,
Bury my flood in the flood of the ocean,
Whose motion repels me again and again,
Yet flowing and flowing.

THE BOONE WAGONER.

I.

Bring hither to my view again
The long-lost Conestoga wain.

Its jingling bells with cheery chime,
To clinking hoof-stamps keeping time.

Its body curved and painted red,
With canvas canopy o'erhead.

313

Its axles strong and broad-tired wheels,
Its Norman studs with clumsy heels.

Its Lehigh wagoner, honest Fritz,
Who in the wheel-house saddle sits.

Steady and slowly goes the load
Adown the dusty turnpike road.

From out my vision's teeming rack,
To life again come back. Come back!

O vain command! the words give o'er,
Come back my early days no more.

Nor bells I hear, nor stamping heels,
Nor creaking of the burdened wheels.

The wagon rots beneath the shed,
And honest Fritz long since is dead.

II.

But what is this I see below
Through Len's Creek valley toiling slow?

A wagon dragged in devious line,
By wrath-provoking sons of kine.

Six ill-matched oxen hard to guide;
A brindle cur the wain beside.

Coffee and salt the load which reels
Above the worn and creaking wheels—

314

The creaking wheels, with narrow tire,
That deeply mark the yellow mire.

The wagoner with aspect grim,
With narrow chest, but sinewy limb.

His face, sharp-featured, wrinkled, spare,
Crowned with unkempt and raven hair.

His whip, beneath the left arm borne—
The long lash trailing back forlorn.

So much absorbed in thought is he,
He has no thought to waste on me.

I know him well, by face and name;
From Boone he comes—'tis Burwell Graeme.

His life is one unvarying scene—
Is, will be, as it still has been.

That which he did on yesterday,
To-day he does the self-same way.

When sunset comes he pauses near
Some bubbling fountain, lone and clear.

Down lie the oxen in their yokes,
And soon the camp-fire snaps and smokes.

His coffee simmers o'er the blaze,
While champ his oxen blades of maize.

His table is the verdant sod,
He sits and eats and thanks his God.

315

His meal despatched, his form he throws
Upon the ground to seek repose;

A quilt perchance beneath him spread,
A good stout log supports his head.

All night in dreams delight he takes,
And cheerful in the morning wakes.

III.

You scorn, who pass that wagoner by
The humble man; not so do I.

For 'neath that torn and tattered coat,
A manly spirit well I note.

Patient and honest, frank and free,
No guile within his heart has he.

A loving husband, tender sire,
He never dreams of station higher.

Content to live on scanty fare,
So he may shun both debt and care.

What matters it to him, the strife
That marks the busy haunts of life?

The Gallic patriotism burns;
The Gaul a dynasty upturns.

In England sink the three-per-cents;
Drop fearfully low the Gallic rentes.

316

Spain totters on destruction's brink,
The Prussian king goes mad through drink.

In Mexico a change again;
New rulers weekly, weakly reign.

King Ludwig yields and crowns his son;
Sebastopol is lost and won.

Yet what are these to Burwell Graeme?
He drives the oxen all the same.

He lets not these his spirit stir;
He is our Boone philosopher.

And humble though the teacher be,
His lesson is not lost on me.

Henceforth I leave the haunts of men,
And take me to the hills again.

Content and quietude is there,
Blue are the skies and sweet the air.

There let me live, there let me die,
There let my worn-out body lie.

IV.

But, stay! the road curves to the right,
And shuts my mentor out of sight.

Away goes wagoner and wain—
I mingle with the world again.

317

My olden life again I feel;
Again revolves Ixion's wheel.

With Sisyphus the stone I turn,
With Tantalus in thirst I burn.

The dream of quiet life is o'er;
Pass Burwell Graeme for evermore.

PHILLIS.

Phillis was out in the garden,
Flesh and blood moving in metre;
Fit was her place with the blossoms;
They were not fairer nor sweeter.
Vainly I strove to accost her;
Words from my lips would not start;
Frozen I was into silence,
Chilled by the ice in her heart.

Stately she moved through the roses,
Nowise my presence she heeded;
Roses! why, never their color
That of her two lips exceeded.
Then, when her eyes fell upon me,
Standing dejected apart,
Colder and colder her glances,
Chilled by the ice in her heart.

Desperate made by her scorning,
Wild throbbed my heart with emotion;
Grasping her fingers, I murmured
Words filled with love and devotion.

318

Low drooped her head on my shoulder—
Ah, had her coyness been art?
Or had the love that was hidden
Melted the ice in her heart?

THE DOUBLE RESCUE.

You like to view those mettled horses grazing
In yonder pasture, brutes of noblest breed;
They make, you say, a picture past all praising,
Save one alone—this old and sorry steed.
Old—thirty-three; few horses grow much older;
Eyes dim, but ears that hear my faintest call;
See how he rests his head upon my shoulder!
The dear old friend to me is worth them all.

In coming here you crossed a streamlet narrow,
Creeping its way; they call it Rocky Run.
Shallow in summer, coursing like an arrow
O'er stony rapids ere its mouth be won;
But in the spring time, swollen to a torrent
By melting mountain snows, its waters roar.
A fearful sight! Yet one time from its current
That old horse brought me safely from the shore.

“Well, many a horse does that much for his master;”
True; but old Selim did much more for me;
In two ways there he saved me from disaster;
He saved my life and shaped my destiny.
Clouds of disgrace around me lowered horrent,
My feet were on the path that leads below,
The least of danger was the foaming torrent,
The greater was the one that bore to woe.

319

A wild young man, I led a life of riot;
My days were idle, drunken were my nights;
You'd scarcely think it now in one so quiet;
But I was hero in a dozen fights.
The good folk shunned me as a moral leper;
I was accounted of all bad the worst,
And kept there sinking deeper, deeper, deeper,
A being even to myself accurst.

Selim was then a colt, but broken newly,
Who stood without where I got drunk within,
And in my wandering ever served me truly—
Not his to know his master's shame and sin.
Less brute than I, he always safely bore me
Through storm and darkness to my lonely bed;
If I fell off, he patient waited for me—
Poor, faithful servant! often badly fed.

One night, near morning, Rocky Run was roaring
In wildest wrath, as by its banks we stood;
To cross was madness while that flood was pouring;
But liquor gave me a defiant mood.
The sober man may shrink, however fearless,
Where the foolhardy, half-crazed drunkard dares;
So, spurring Selim in that current cheerless,
I madly yelled: “We'll cross or drown—who cares?”

The cold plunge sobered me; and then the whirling,
Dark, furious stream we effort made to breast;
And Selim struggled till the torrent swirling
Had nearly borne us to the rapids' crest.
My senses left. But better horse or braver
Than Selim never perilled rider bore;
By his young vigor, under Heaven's good favor,
He gained firm footing on the shelving shore.

320

My senses came. The sun was shining brightly,
Glinting its slanting beams on bush and tree;
One foot of mine wedged in the stirrup tightly—
Had Selim ran!—he never stirred from me.
I rose and said: “My colt, I have a notion,
Your services good liquor should command;
You first, I next.” His hoof, with furious motion,
To fragments dashed the bottle in my hand.

Well, you may smile, sir, but on that May morning
A light shone in my soul which shines there still;
I had a lesson and I had a warning;
I never drank again, and never will.
He saved me both ways. Though not now I need him,
We two shall never part till one is cold—
Why, if 'twould pleasure him, on pearls I'd feed him,
Give him a bed of down and shoes of gold.

PHILLIS, MY DARLING.

The memory of age has beneficent uses,
And events of the past in our mind reproduces,
Till they rush as the mill-waters flow through their sluices,
And joys long departed bring back to our ken;
The loved and the lost in our vision are vivid,
The red blood of life paints the lips that are livid,
And eyes that are closed beam in beauty again.

The foremost is Phillis, my darling, my charmer,
Whose innocence formed her invincible armor;
There lived not a creature who offered to harm her,
To hurt with a glance, or to wound with a word;

321

A being of impulse, yet faithful to duty,
Her mind matched her face in its impress of beauty,
Till hearts all around her to loving were stirred.

The beautiful Phillis! No mortal was sweeter;
The rose in its loveliness never completer;
Her words flowed unknowing to musical metre;
Her glances to sunlight, that brightened and blessed;
What hope was for me, a rude stripling who tended
My kine and my flocks? Yet my worship ascended
As I bent and I bowed at the shrine with the rest.

Yet I fancied at times, for our love feeds our fancies,
And my brain took the feelings that come of romances,
That she dropped, in her mercy, some favoring glances,
And fed through her pity, the love in my heart;
And no knight of poor fortune a proud princess serving,
His passion to deeds of high derring-do nerving,
More manfully played his disconsolate part.

The fetters that bound me they galled in the wearing;
I grew helpless and blind; but the depth of despairing
Engendered within me a fever of daring;
I would speak, though she crushed me with anger and scorn;
So there at the twilight I sought her and told her
(How my arms ached that moment to fondly enfold her!)
My passion, and turned, feeling lost and forlorn.

Came the words, quick and joyous, amid my abasement:
“You love me, then, Laurence!” I turned in amazement;
There she stood, framed in mist, in the half-open casement,
Her features transfigured, her eyes filled with light.
O, triumph, O, rapture! the memory thrills me,
And, forty years gone, with its happiness fills me,
And youth has returned, and the future is bright.

322

Ah! who would not spurn honor, riches and glory,
For the power to recall when our locks have grown hoary,
The rapture that followed the ever-new story,
When told to the damsel we loved in our youth,
When our frame thrilled to madness at favoring glances,
When the meetings of lovers were magical trances,
When life was all fancies, and fancies were truth.

JOHN TREVANION'S STORY.

They have laid him to-day in the churchyard old,
And I sit by myself in the twilight dim,
With thoughts going back to the earlier days
That I passed at the school or the play-ground with him.
Over half of a century memory leaps,
And brings the young life into being again,
When we were a couple of bare-footed boys,
And to him I was Jack, and to me he was Ben.

Young Benedict Brown was a shoemaker's boy;
My father, the wealthiest man in the town;
But boys are not sordid, and soon we were known
As Damon Trevanion and Pythias Brown.
The two of us went to old Morris's school,
And were constant companions when school work was done;
But, mark you, though he was at head of the class,
In fishing I always caught two to his one.

While chatting together one day when half-grown
We talked of the future, and what we should do
When each came to manhood; I said I would strive
To double my fortune before I was through.

323

Quoth Ben: “You'll have money to further your plan;
I have nothing but firm, honest purpose, and I
Intend to read law, win a name and respect,
And be member of Congress and judge ere I die.”

I laughed. “'Tis a very good purpose,” I said;
“You aim pretty high, Ben; but think, after all,
How rocky and rugged and steep is the road,
How high is the hill, and how far if you fall.”
He answered: “Though rocky and rugged the road,
Its length may be travelled by one with a will;
And up to the House they call Beautiful, Jack,
The Pilgrim must climb by the Difficult Hill.”

His words brought the story of Bunyan to mind,
And the blood to my cheeks by my shame was impelled,
For I felt that the man with the muck-rake was I,
While he gazed at the crown by an angel upheld.
And I knew that, with honor and courage possessed,
He would follow the earnest career he had planned;
So I said: “Well, my comrade, whatever your aim,
Count on Jack as your friend;” and I gave him my hand.

I left him for college, and Ben went to work;
He sat on the shoe-bench and hammered away,
Made enough to support him and buy a few books;
The night gave to study, to labor the day.
'Twas but in vacations I saw him for years;
He was there, while I read at my college afar;
But a week ere my bachelor's honors I took,
Young Benedict Brown had been called to the bar.

I crossed the Atlantic, and roamed foreign lands;
Was gone for ten years; and, returning again,

324

I sought for old friends, and among them I found,
Ranking high among lawyers, my school-fellow, Ben.
Not rich, but with comforts around him, and blest
With children and wife and his fellows' regard;
But he owned, as we sat after dinner and talked,
That the climbing of Difficult Hill had been hard.

He gained, in the end, all he aimed at, and more—
Congress, Governor, then was Chief-Justice at last;
And as I had become, as I wished, millionaire,
We often recurred to our hopes of the past.
Our friendship ne'er checked; you may judge what I felt
When the telegraph flashed me a message, to come,
If I'd see my old friend ere his bright eyes were closed,
And the silvery voice, thrilling thousands, grown dumb.

I stood at his bedside; his fast-glazing eye
Lit when he beheld me; though dying, and weak,
His lips moved; I bent to the pillow my ear,
And he managed, in difficult whisper, to speak—
“I go to the House they call Beautiful, Jack;
I have done with all climbing on Difficult Hill.”
Then he smiled, and a glory came over his face,
And the heart of the Pilgrim forever was still.

GIDEON.

With his pack on his back, and his yard-stick for staff,
And a nervous look-out for all possible buyers,
With burrs on his clothes caught in crossing the fields,
And rents and a rip made in passing through briers,
With dust on his shoes from the road that he strode
From the dawn of the day till the sun sunk in crimson,

325

With a look that spoke weariness, hunger and thirst,
Trudged onward the peddler, old Gideon Simson.

For years more than thirty he travelled this way—
The sun rays they tanned him, the rain drops they sprinkled—
And under the load of his pack and his years,
His hair had grown white, and his face become wrinkled.
While rival on rival gave way in disgust,
Declaring our trade would not pay for the labor,
Old Gideon went round every month of the year,
As welcome as ever, from neighbor to neighbor.

How Gideon could thrive was a mystery quite
To puzzle the wits of the craftiest scholar,
For he never took profit on goods that he sold,
For a hundred cents giving what cost him a dollar.
Yet somehow this profitless trade that he drove,
Was not to his fortune at all detrimental,
Since a friend who should know said that Gideon in town
Owned a tenement-house with a very large rental.

And what was the secret of Gideon's success,
That his cents grew to dimes, and his dimes into dollars?
Why was it in bondage our women he led,
Inclosing their necks in the closest of collars?
Each customer felt that she dealt with a rogue,
Yet dealt to the best of her purse's ability—
And why? He had mastered the key to success,
Much flattery, mingled with smiling civility.

That hooked nose of his might forbid you to buy,
The craft that peered out from his eyes might alarm you;

326

But the sweet, simple smile that was wreathed round his lips,
And that soft, wheedling tongue were quite certain to charm you.
He handled coarse woollens and talked till the stuff
A texture like velvet the dazed eyes begat in;
And a sixpenny print in his fingers was made,
To the poor girl who cheapened, a fabric like satin.

Old Gideon is dead, and there comes in his stead
A peddler who honestly deals, and we know it;
We grumble, and when we can't help it, we buy;
But we don't like the dealer, and don't spare to show it.
He may give us the worth of the money we spend,
May throw in an inch on the yard in his measure,
But where is the flattery Gideon bestowed,
The smiles and the falsehood that gave us such pleasure?

THE BRIDE'S STORY.

When I was but a country lass, now fifteen years ago,
I lived where flowed the Overpeck through meadows wide and low;
There first, when skies were bending blue and blossoms blooming free,
I saw the ragged little boy who went to school with me.

His homespun coat was frayed and worn, with patches covered o'er;
His hat—ah, such a hat as that was never seen before!

327

The boys and girls, when first he came, they shouted in their glee,
And jeered the little ragged boy who went to school with me.

His father was a laboring man, and mine was highly born;
Our people held both him and his in great contempt and scorn.
They said I should not stoop to own a playmate such as he,
The bright-eyed, ragged little boy who went to school with me.

For years they had forgotten him, but when again we met
His look, his voice, his gentle ways remained in memory yet;
They saw alone the man of mark, but I could only see
The bright-eyed, ragged little boy who went to school with me.

He had remembered me, it seemed, as I remembered him;
Nor time, nor honors, in his mind, the cherished past could dim;
Young love had grown to older love, and so to-day, you see,
I wed the little ragged boy who went to school with me.

THE MOUNTAIN HUNTER.

My footsteps through the forest rove,
My heart is in the forest free;
All former days and former love
Are playthings of the past to me;

328

And I have learned, within this grove,
A hunter of the deer to be.

The running brook supplies my thirst,
My rifle finds me daily food:
In other days I learned that worst
Of evils o'er the city brood;
I fled, and then upon me burst
The glory of the pathless wood.

Here sits the scarlet tanager
In music upon the hornbeam bough;
Its voice reminds me much of her—
What matters such a memory now?
She would not know her worshipper
With these elf-locks and swarthy brow.

Within the hills my cabin stands,
Of logs and clay a palace rare,
The work of these my brawny hands,
Rest, health, and comfort meet me there;
The solitude of these broad lands
Would never fit my lady fair.

Yet could I see her once again,
As in my dreams I often see,
It were a spirit-cheering pain
E'en did she frown as erst on me,
And I might gather from it then
New strength thus lonely here to be.

The wish is vain; another wears
The jewel I had hoped to own;
Of me she neither knows nor cares;
I waste within this wood alone;

329

My heart no more to struggle dares
Against its hardening into stone.

Up, man! forget the gnawing past,
Enjoy the freshning morning air;
Be glad whene'er the wildwood blast
Shall toss in play thy tangled hair;
And, when the sun is overcast,
Go track the wild bear to his lair.

There in the laurel-roughs meet him,
Acquit thee as a hunter should,
Quail not before his brawny limb,
Attack him with thy weapon good;
Strike till his eye begins to dim—
Thou art the monarch of this wood.

A wilder brute than he there lies
Hid in thy soul—the bitter wrong
She did unto thee with her eyes,
Which caused so many fiends to throng
Into thy spirit's cell; arise
And conquer that, and so be strong.

That is a true man's truest fight;
Who quells his passions is a king
To reign within the realm of right;
To him the just their homage bring,
And angels wait with garments bright
To robe him when his soul takes wing.

Ah! all in vain such counsel brave!
My spirit still in Lethè seeks
The fervor of its woe to lave,
To drown its pang-betraying shrieks,

330

And ever in its breathing grave
Its agony and anguish speaks.

I may not crush, but bear the asp
Which gnaws forever at my heart;
In dreams I feel her gentle clasp,
And at her touch to life I start,
Then all reality I grasp,
And stand alive, from life apart.

Here in these grand old woods, whose shade,
So dusky brown, befits my lot,
I sit within the leafy glade
And gaze upon the Guyandotte,
And, as I sit, to calm betrayed,
Drink deep the beauty of the spot.

Last Mistress, Nature; love no more
My soul pursues; to hunt the deer
My sole pursuit; my youth is o'er,
My manhood past, and age draws near;
Seared by my sorrows to the core,
I own no hope, I feel no fear.

MARGARET NEVILLE.

His heart is barred with her lily-white hand,
And can let no new love enter there;
He is bound to the past by a glittering band,
Made of her locks of golden hair.
He looks at the scene from the open door;
He bows his form and droops his head,
And murmurs, “All this I own, and more—
What does it matter with Margaret dead?”

331

For fifteen years he had toiled for her;
For fifteen years she waited for him;
He never knew in the noisy whirr
Of his busy life how her hope grew dim;
How, tired with waiting, her hope gave way,
And a weary life at last was sped,
Till they sent him the news that summer day
That Margaret Neville was lying dead.

He had toiled for years, that lonely man,
Had felled the forest and ploughed the soil;
One purpose alone through his efforts ran;
One hope had sweetened his ceaseless toil.
He could see the smiles on the face well known,
A halo of light on the dear one's head;
But the vision had flown and he was alone,
And Margaret Neville was lying dead.

She saw as she faded from earth, the boy—
For what had he been when he strolled away?
With a springy step, and a face of joy,
And dimples where laughter loved to play.
And she died in the arms of memory there,
Nor knew him a wrinkled man instead,
With a frowning brow, and a peevish air,
Whose hopes, like the woman he loved, lay dead.

He saw as he sat at the open door,
A girlish form and a girlish face,
Less perfect if nature had given her more,
A being of beauty and love and grace.
He did not see that her golden hair
Was streaked with silver, her bloom had fled,
Her face was pallid, and dull her air—
Not so to him was his Margaret dead.

332

There are damsels around who'd sell for his land
And his flocks and herds their beauty fair;
But they cannot pass her lily-white hand,
Nor break those fetters of golden hair.
For there he sits at the open door,
Hours after the day to the dark has fled,
And murmurs, “I live no more, no more,
Now Margaret Neville is dead—is dead!”

COME BACK.

You say the poor-house is a mile ahead;
It once stood yonder—“That was years ago.”
True, true! They'll give me supper and a bed;
A job at picking oakum, too, I know,
For that's their way.

Old Potter always used to find some work,
And plenty, for the travelling tramp to do;
And his successor, even if less a Turk,
Will follow his example. “So I knew
Old Potter, eh?”

Of course I did. Not as a pauper though;
I made poor-masters and such things just then;
For, strange as it may seem, I'd have you know
That I have ranked among the “solid men”
Of Brantford town.

Now I am mostly in the liquid line
When I can get it. Thirty summers since.
My food was dainty, clothes were superfine—
They said I feasted people like a prince—
But now I'm down.

333

Who from a high position falls, falls far,
And from the distance feels the more the hurt.
The humbler men in life much happier are,
For they lie prone already in the dirt,
And feel no ill.

“Travelled around!” You bet I have. I left
These parts long years ago, and I have been
From east to west since then, have felt the heft
Of years of trouble, and the sights I've seen
A book would fill.

Now you're a man of substance; one whom chance,
Or labor, may be, helped to fill his purse—
“You've had your troubles?” Every one must dance
Just as his fortune fiddles. (He'll disburse
At least a dime.)

Troubles are nothing with the means to thrive—
“Abandoned by your father?” Why, how mean
Some people are. If my son were alive
He'd be your age. The boy I have not seen
A long, long time.

A quarter! Thank you. May I ask your name?
What! “Abner Brown!” Your mother? Dead, you say!
(There are her eyes and hair—the very same.)
These are not tears—the raw east wind to-day
Moistens the eyes.

You don't object to please an old man's whim
By giving me your hand? You mind me much
Of one I knew. (My head begins to swim.)
“I tremble?” Age and want the sinews touch
As manhood flies.

334

Good-bye. God bless you! He has gone. His smile
Had sunlight in it; zephyrs in his breath—
He shall not know how, after this long while,
Hither returned to die a pauper's death,
His father came.

Let the boy prosper. Never let his life
Be shadowed by my half-forgotten crime:
I've seen and touched him. My poor, patient wife
Is dead; but he is like me in my prime,
All but my shame.

For me the poor-house, and the pauper's bed,
And the pine coffin, and the noteless grave.
He shall not blush to know when I am dead
He was akin to one, to vice a slave,
Who soiled his name.

University of Virginia Library

RURAL SKETCHES.

RAFTING ON THE GUYANDOTTE.

BEN BOLT.

BLOWN UP.

THE OLD WIFE'S TALE.

GAULEY RIVER.

THE OLD TENOR'S LAST SONG.

THE OLD MILL.

THE LOGAN GRAZIER.

“FOR THE SAKE OF HIS MOTHER.”

SUE.

THE BROWNS.

KATE VANE.

BREAKNECK HILL.

HAYMAKING.

THE ROADSIDE SPRING.

HELEN.

BARTON GEER.

THE COUNTRY-BOY'S LETTER.

RACHEL MAYNE.

GOING HOME.

BARKER'S BOY.

THE OLD HOME.

DORA LEE.

THE SLEIGH-RIDE.

MILLY.

THE HICKORY FIRE.

SNOW.

THE MOUNTAIN STREAM.

THE WESTERBRIDGE INN.

GUYANDOTTE MUSINGS.

I.

II.

III.

BARBARA AND I.

PAUL SEES THE LOVERS.

THE IDYL OF THE PEACH.

“A FINE DAY IN THE MORNING.”

HOW HE WON MILLY.

THE MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN.

THE OLD HEARTH-FIRE.

ONLY A CUR.

THE OLD SCHOOL-HOUSE.

THE TWO SONGS.

SLAIN.

THE DELAWARE.

THE BOONE WAGONER.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

PHILLIS.

THE DOUBLE RESCUE.

PHILLIS, MY DARLING.

JOHN TREVANION'S STORY.

GIDEON.

THE BRIDE'S STORY.

THE MOUNTAIN HUNTER.

MARGARET NEVILLE.

COME BACK.