Kitabı oku: «Songs Ysame», sayfa 2

Grandfather

 
HOW broad and deep was the fireplace old,
And the great hearth-stone how wide!
There was always room for the old man's chair
By the cosy chimney side,
And all the children that cared to crowd
At his knee in the evening-tide.
 
 
Room for all of the homeless ones
Who had nowhere else to go;
They might bask at ease in the grateful warmth
And sun in the cheerful glow,
For Grandfather's heart was as wide and warm
As the old fireplace, I know.
 
 
And he always found at his well-spread board
Just room for another chair;
There was always rest for another head
On the pillow of his care;
There was always place for another name
In his trustful morning prayer.
 
 
Oh, crowded world with your jostling throngs!
How narrow you grow, and small;
How cold, like a shadow across the heart,
Your selfishness seems to fall,
When I think of that fireplace warm and wide,
And the welcome awaiting all.
 

The Old Church

 
CLOSE to the road it stood among the trees,
The old, bare church, with windows small and high,
And open doors that gave, on meeting day,
A welcome to the careless passer by.
 
 
Its straight, uncushioned seats, how hard they seemed!
What penance-doing form they always wore
To little heads that could not reach the text,
And little feet that could not reach the floor.
 
 
What wonder that we hailed with strong delight
The buzzing wasp, slow sailing down the aisle,
Or, sunk in sin, beguiled the constant fly
From weary heads, to make our neighbors smile.
 
 
How softly from the churchyard came the breeze
That stirred the cedar boughs with scented wings,
And gently fanned the sleeper's heated brow
Or fluttered Grandma Barlow's bonnet strings.
 
 
With half-shut eyes, across the pulpit bent,
The preacher droned in soothing tones about
Some theme, that like the narrow windows high,
Took in the sky, but left terrestrials out.
 
 
Good, worthy man, his work on earth is done;
His place is lost, the old church passed away;
And with them, when they went, there must have gone
That sweet, bright calm, my childhood's Sabbath day.
 

An Old-Time Pedagogue

 
SLOWLY adown the village street
With groping cane and faltering feet,
He goes each day through cold or heat —
Old Daddy Hight.
His hair is scant upon his head,
His eyes are dim, his nose is red,
And yet, his mien is stern and dread —
Old Daddy Hight.
 
 
The village lads his form descry
While yet afar, and boldly cry —
(For bears are scarce and rods are high)
"Old Daddy Hight!"
But when their fathers meet his glance,
They nod and smile and look askance.
He taught them once the Modoc dance —
Old Daddy Hight.
 
 
How long we cling to servitude,
How long we keep the schoolboy's mood!
Still seems with awful power endued —
Old Daddy Hight.
They feel a cringing of the knee,
Those fathers, yet, whene'er they see
Adown the walk pace solemnly —
Old Daddy Hight.
 
 
Wide is his fame, of how he taught,
And how he flogged, and reckoned naught
The toils and pains that knowledge bought —
Old Daddy Hight.
He had no lack of "ways and means"
To track the loiterers on the greens;
He scorned all counterfeits and screens —
Old Daddy Hight.
 
 
Oh, dire the day that brewed mishap!
That brought to luckless back his strap,
To hanging head his Dunce's cap —
Old Daddy Hight.
No blotted page dared meet his eye;
The owner quaked and wished to die,
When rod in hand, with wrath strode by —
Old Daddy Hight.
 
 
He helped them up the thorny steep
Of wisdom's path with pain to creep,
With vigilance that might not sleep —
Old Daddy Hight.
Now, down his life's long, slow decline,
He walks alone at eighty-nine —
The last of his illustrious line —
Old Daddy Hight.
 

Her Title-Deeds

 
INSIDE the cottage door she sits,
Just where the sunlight, softest there,
Slants down on snowy kerchief's bands,
On folded hands and silvered hair.
 
 
The garden pale her world shuts in,
A simple world made sweet with thyme,
Where life, soft lulled by droning bees,
Flows to the mill-stream's lapsing rhyme.
 
 
Poor are her cottage walls, and bare;
Too mean and small to harbor pride,
Yet with a musing gaze she sees
Her broad domains extending wide.
 
 
Green slopes of hills, and waving fields,
With blooming hedges set between,
Through shifting veils of tender mist,
Smile, half revealed, a mingled scene.
 
 
All hers, for lovingly she holds
A yellow packet in her hand,
Whose ancient, faded script proclaims
Her title to this spreading land.
 
 
Old letters! On the trembling page
Drop unawares, unheeded tears.
These are her title-deeds, her lands
Spread through the realms of by-gone years.
 

INTERLUDES

Voices of the Old, Old Days

 
OH, voices of the old, old days,
Speak once again to me,
I walk alone the old, old ways
And miss your melody.
To-night I close my tired eyes
And hear the rain drip slow,
And dream a hand is on my brow
That pressed it long ago.
 
 
My thoughts stray through the lonely night
Until I seem to see
Home faces, in the firelight,
That always smiled on me.
Those shadows dancing on the walls
Are not by embers cast,
They are the forms my heart recalls
From out the happy past.
 
 
Forgotten is the gathering gloom,
The night's deep loneliness,
As round me in the silent room
With noiseless tread they press.
Though in the dark the rain sobs on,
I heed its sound no more;
For voices of the old, old days
Are calling as of yore.
 

Silent Keys

 
AS we would touch with soft caress the brow
Of one who dreams, the spell of sleep to break,
Across the yellowed keys I sweep my hand,
The old, remembered music to awake;
But something drops from out those melodies —
There are some silent keys.
 
 
So is it when I call to those I loved,
Who blessed my life with tender care and fond:
So is it with those early dreams and hopes,
Some voices answer and some notes respond,
But in the chords that I would strike, like these,
There are some silent keys.
 
 
Heart, dost thou hear not in those pauses fall
A still, small voice that speaks to thee of peace?
What though some hopes may fail, some dreams be lost,
Though sometimes happy music break and cease.
We might miss part of heaven's minstrelsies
But for these silent keys.
 

PART II

Retrospection

 
THE grandsire, in the chimney corner, takes
The almanac from its accustomed place,
And while the kettle swings upon the crane,
And firelight flickers on his wrinkled face,
Reviews the slow procession of the months;
And sees again upon the hills of green
The gypsy Springtime pitch her airy tent
Among the blossoms. Then the silver sheen
Of harvest moon shines down on rustling corn
Until the hazy air of Autumn thrills
With sound of woodman's ax and hunter's horn,
And darker shadows climb the russet hills.
 
 
But while he ponders on the open page,
The last sand in the hour-glass slips away.
The end seems near of his long pilgrimage,
And he would call the fleeting year to stay.
But passing on, she goes – a sweet-faced nun —
To take within the Convent of the Past
The veil of silence. Then the gates swing shut,
And Time, the grim old warden, bolts them fast.
No more can come again those halcyon days
The Year took with it to its dim-lit cell;
But often at the bars they stand and gaze,
When through the heart rings memory's matin-bell.