Be still, sad heart! and cease repining : CHILDREN. Come to me, O ye children! Ye open the Eastern windows Where thoughts are singing swallows In your hearts are the birds and the sunshine, But in mine is the wind of Autumn And the first fall of the snow. Ah! what would the world be to us, What the leaves are to the forest, Ere their sweet and tender juices That to the world are children : Through them it feels the glow Of a brighter and sunnier climate Than reaches the trunks below. Come to me, O ye children! And whisper in my ear What the birds and the winds are singing For what are all our contrivings, Ye are better than all the ballads And all the rest are dead. JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 1807 IN SCHOOL-DAYS. Still sits the school-house by the road, And blackberry vines are running. Within the master's desk is seen, The charcoal frescoes on its wall; Long years ago a winter sun It touch'd the tangled golden curls, Of One who still her steps delay'd For near her stood the little boy Where pride and shame were mingled. Pushing with restless feet the snow The blue-check'd apron finger'd. He saw her lift her eyes; he felt "I'm sorry that I spell'd the word; Because" (the brown eyes lower fell), 66 Still memory to a grey-hair'd man He lives to learn, in life's hard school, TELLING THE BEES. Here is the place: right over the hill Runs the path I took; You can see the gap in the old wall still, And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook. There is the house, with the gate red-barr'd, And the poplars tall, And the barn's brown length, and the cattle yard,, There are the bee-hives ranged in the sun; Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed o'er-run, A year has gone, as the tortoise goes, Heavy and slow; And the same rose blows, and the same sun glows, And the same brook sings, of a year ago. There's the same sweet clover-smell in the breeze; Tangles his wings of fire in the trees, I mind me how, with a lover's care, I brush'd off the burrs, and smoothed my hair, Since we parted a month had pass'd,— To love a year; Down through the beeches I look'd at last On the little red gate and the well-sweep near. I can see it all now,-the slant-wise rain The sun-down's blaze on her window-pane, Just the same as a month before, The house and the trees, The barn's brown gable, the vine by the door,- Before them, under the garden wall, Forward and back, Went drearily singing the chore-girl small, Trembling I listen'd: the summer sun For I knew she was telling the bees of One Then I said to myself-My Mary weeps Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps The fret and the pain of his age away. But her dog whined low; on the doorway sill, The old man sat; and the chore-girl still And the song she was singing ever since Stay at home, pretty bees! fly not hence! ICHABOD. So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn The glory from his grey hairs gone Revile him not! the Tempter hath And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath, O! dumb be passion's stormy rage, Have lighted up and led his age |