Слике страница
PDF
ePub

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining :
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all :
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.

CHILDREN.

Come to me, O ye children!
For I hear you at your play :
And the questions that perplex'd me
Have vanish'd quite away.

Ye open the Eastern windows
That look toward the sun,

Where thoughts are singing swallows
And the brooks of morning run.

In your hearts are the birds and the sunshine,
In your thoughts the brooklets flow:

But in mine is the wind of Autumn

And the first fall of the snow.

Ah! what would the world be to us,
If the children were no more?
We should dread the desert behind us
Worse than the dark before.

What the leaves are to the forest,
With light and air for food,

Ere their sweet and tender juices
Have been harden'd into wood,-

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
In your sunny atmosphere.

For what are all our contrivings,
And the wisdom of our books,
When compared with your caresses
And the gladness of your looks?

Ye are better than all the ballads
That ever were sung or said:
For ye are living poems,

And all the rest are dead.

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 1807

IN SCHOOL-DAYS.

Still sits the school-house by the road,
A ragged beggar, sunning:
Around it still the sumachs grow,

And blackberry vines are running.

Within the master's desk is seen,
Deep-scarr'd by raps official;
The warping floor, the batter'd seats,
The jack-knife's carved initial;

The charcoal frescoes on its wall;
Its door's worn sill, betraying
The feet that, creeping slow to school,
Went storming out to playing.

Long years ago a winter sun
Shone over it at setting;
Lit up its Western window panes
And low eaves icy fretting.

It touch'd the tangled golden curls,
And brown eyes full of grieving,

Of One who still her steps delay'd
When all the school were leaving.

For near her stood the little boy
Her childish favour singled,
His cap pull'd low upon a face

Where pride and shame were mingled.

Pushing with restless feet the snow
To right and left, he linger'd,
As restlessly her tiny hands

The blue-check'd apron finger'd.

He saw her lift her eyes; he felt
The soft hand's light caressing;
And heard the tremble of her voice,
As if a fault confessing :

"I'm sorry that I spell'd the word;
I hate to go above you,

Because" (the brown eyes lower fell),
Because, you see, I love you."

66

Still memory to a grey-hair'd man
That sweet child-face is showing:
Dear girl! the grasses on her grave
Have forty years been growing.

He lives to learn, in life's hard school,
How few who pass above him
Lament their triumph and his loss,
Like her, because they love him.

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,,
And the white horns tossing above the wall.

There are the bee-hives ranged in the sun;
And down by the brink

Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed o'er-run,
Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink.

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;
And the June sun warm

Tangles his wings of fire in the trees,
Setting, as then, over Fernside Farm.

I mind me how, with a lover's care,
From my Sunday coat

I brush'd off the burrs, and smoothed my hair,
And cool'd at the brookside my brow and throat.

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
Of light through the leaves,

The sun-down's blaze on her window-pane,
The bloom of her roses under the eaves.

Just the same as a month before,

The house and the trees,

The barn's brown gable, the vine by the door,-
Nothing changed but the hives of bees.

[ocr errors][merged small]

Before them, under the garden wall,

Forward and back,

Went drearily singing the chore-girl small,
Draping each hive with a shred of black.

Trembling I listen'd: the summer sun
Had the chill of snow;

For I knew she was telling the bees of One
Gone on the journey we all must go.

Then I said to myself-My Mary weeps
For the Dead to-day :

Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps

The fret and the pain of his age away.

But her dog whined low; on the doorway sill,
With his cane to his chin,

The old man sat; and the chore-girl still
Sang to the bees stealing out and in.

And the song she was singing ever since
In my ear sounds on:

Stay at home, pretty bees! fly not hence!
Mistress Mary is dead and gone!"

ICHABOD.

So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn
Which once he wore !

The glory from his grey hairs gone
For evermore!

Revile him not! the Tempter hath
A snare for all;

And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath,
Befit his fall.

O! dumb be passion's stormy rage,
When he who might

Have lighted up and led his age
Falls back in night!

« ПретходнаНастави »