Poems by Frederick Goddard Tuckerman

The wind, that all the day had scarcely clashed
The cornstalks in the sun, as the sun sank,
Came rolling up the valley like a wave,
Broke in the beech, and washed among the pine;
And ebbed in silence; but at the welcome sound,—
Leaving my lazy book without a mark,
In hopes to lose among the blowing fern
The dregs of a headache brought from yesternight,
And stepping lightly lest the children hear,—
I from a side-door slipped, and crossed a lane
With bitter Mayweed lined, and over a field
Snapping with grasshoppers, until I came
Down where an interrupted brook held way
Among the alders. There, on a strutting branch
Leaving my straw, I sat and wooed the west,
With breast and palms outspread as to a fire.

The breeze had faded, and the day had died;
And twilight, rosy dark, had ceased to climb
Above the borders; when through the alder-thicks
A school-girl fair came up against the brook;
From dell and gurgling hollow, where she had stopped
To pull sweet-flag. And she had been below,
Where the brook doubles,—for well I know each
Angle, and alnage of the weedy stream,—knot,
For those pale amber bell-worts wet with shade:
A girl whom the girl-mother's desperate love
Had clung to, through the years when, one on one,
All of her blood had blushed to drop away;
And she was left the last, with this one tie,
To hang her to the earth. So her young life,
Above the gulf, detached, and yet detained,
Suspended swung; as o'er a fresh-fallen pool
A laurel-blossom, loosened by the rain,
Hangs at its pistil-thread hangs, shakes, and falls.

I saw her crossing through the alder-thicks
And flowerless spoonwood: but, when she stopped to speak,

I seemed to lift my head out of a dream
To gaze upon her; for the ceaseless chime
Of insect-voices singing in the grass,—
Ticking and thrilling in the seeded grass,—
Had sent me dreaming. I mused; and consciously,
In a half-darkness, so would sink away,
But ever and again the soft wind rose,
And from my eyelids blew the skimming sleep.
I looked upon her, and her eyes were wet;
While something of her mother's colour burned
Gay in her cheek; too like her mother there,
She stood, and called me from the land of dreams.

The land of visions! But she, lingering, seemed
Most like a vision, standing in her tears,
Speaking unreal words: but, when I sought
Their import, she said again in clearer tone
Her salutation, and asked, “Did I not fear
The night's unwholesome dew?” and offered flowers.
And as we wandered homeward, by the slopes,
And through the sugar-orchard to the hill,
She told me of her griefs: her music-lesson—

She could not play the notes, nor count aright.
And she had sung before she broke her fast
That morning, and needs must weep before she slept;
And so throughout the day; until at night,
As she was winding upward by the brook,
The thought of her dead mother crossed her heart,
And with it came the fear that she herself
Would die, too, young.
I spoke some soothing words,
For her frank sorrow yielding sympathy;
And, as we rose the hill, stood for a breath,
And told an Indian story of the place,—
Of Wassahoale and the fair Quaker maid,
Who left the bog-hut for a chieftain's lodge,
Until her face grew clear again and calm,
Yet like a sky that cleareth in the night,
Presaging rain to follow. We wandered down;
But, ere we reached the village, she said farewell,
Nearing the house in which her father dwelt,—
Her father, and his brother, and herself.
But I passed on until she left me there

At her own garden-gate, with a half-smile,
And eyelashes fresh-pointed with her tears.

Two brothers were they, dwelling in this place
When first I knew their names and history,
And held for heirs upon the village street;
Yet trained to work from starlight until dusk
For their old father. But he now was old,
Reputed rich, and like the bark to the tree;
Tougher perhaps, but tight enough for that.
And so they toiled and waited, stretched and scrimped,
With one maid-sister fitted to reserve,
Early and late, until their hands were hard,
And their youth left them. Still the promised day
Drew nearer,—the day of rest and competence;
And years went round, and still they rose and slept,
Not for themselves, but him who harder held,
Like a man drowning, his remorseless gripe
As his strength went. At length, when hope was o'er,
The very doorstones at the door worn out,
And they themselves grown old, the old man died;

And left them poor at last, with a great house
That fed upon their substance like a moth.
Bond-debt and meadow-mortgage had the rest,
All but the house,—a sorry patrimony.
To-day I saw it, staring, lacking paint,
With a new suit of shingles to the sky;
Spruce-pine perhaps, but sapwood at the best,
Good for three years, and warranted to rot.

Regardless this; but she of whom I spoke,
The elder brother's child, was like a light
In the blank house: not practical, in truth,
Nor like the father's side, as oftentimes
The child is more the mother's than the man's;
But dearer far for this: and in the porch,—
Where, for a mortal lifetime certainly,
Was seen the old man sitting like a stone,—
Gathered young footsteps, and light laughter ran,
And sweet-girl voices. Once, indeed, I saw
An awkward youth in the dark angle there,
Dangling and flapping like a maple-key
Hung in a cobweb; but she still was kind,

Gentle with all, and, as she seemed for me
Beside the brook, thoughtful beyond her years.

That night, I scarcely slept, before I dreamed
Of softly stepping in the meadow grass
With moccason on foot: and like indeed,
The Indian of the story that I told;
While she who wandered with me in the day,
Still went beside; yet changing in her turn,
Became the truant daughter of the woods!
Now seemed herself, now Phœbe Bellflower,
And neither now,—but on I passed alone.
And like myself, thro' dewless bent and reed,
Brooding again the School-girl's simple griefs,
And her sweet farewell face, and murmuring soft
These words:—

“Sleep, sister! let thy faint head fall,
Weary with day's long-fading gleam;
And blessed Gloom, in interval
Of daylight, bind thine eyes, and seem
To lead thee on through dim-lit dells,
Trembling with tiny harps and bells.

The flowers you found along the day,
While balmy stars of midnight shine,
May those forgetting fingers sway;
And so, until the morning stream,
May all of fair and good be thine,—
Gathered from daylight, or dim hours
When balmy stars of midnight shine!

“Rest, maiden! let thy sorrows rest,—
Nor tearful on the future look,—
The sinless secrets of thy breast;
And close the record like a book.
And thus aside for ever lay
The disappointments of the day:
Nor note nor number bid thee weep;
But lie, lie on, and let thy dream
Dim off to slumber dark and deep.”—
I heard the whisper of the brook;
While the dry fields across the stream,
With myriad-music of the night,
Still shook and jingled in my dream.”

University of Virginia Library

The School-Girl.

AN IDYLL.