Family

Beside a crib that holds a baby's stocking,
A tattered picture book, a broken toy,
A sleeping mother dreams that she is rocking
    Her fair-haired cherub boy.

Upon the cradle's side her light touch keeping,
She gently rocks it, crooning low a song;
And smiles to think her little one is sleeping,
    So peacefully and long.

Step light, breathe low, break not her rapturous dreaming,
Wake not the sleeper from her trance of joy,
For never more save in sweet slumber-seeming
    Will she watch o'er her boy.

God pity her when from her dream Elysian
She wakes to see the empty crib, and weep;
Knowing her joy was but a sleeper's vision,
    Tread lightly -let her sleep.

Why do the houses stand
    When they that built them are gone;
    When remaineth even of one
That lived there and loved and planned
Not a face, not an eye, not a hand,
    Only here and there a bone?
Why do the houses stand
    When they who built them are gone?

Oft in the moonlighted land
    When the day is overblown,
    With happy memorial moan
Sweet ghosts in a loving band
Roam through the houses that stand--
    For the builders are not gone.

Gone are the glorious Greeks of old,
Glorious in mien and mind;
Their bones are mingled with the mould,
Their dust is on the wind;
The forms they hewed from living stone
Survive the waste of years, alone,
And, scattered with their ashes, show
What greatness perished long ago.

Yet fresh the myrtles there, the springs
Gush brightly as of yore;
Flowers blossom from the dust of kings,
As many an age before.
There nature moulds as nobly now,
As e'er of old, the human brow;
And copies still the martial form
That braved Platæa's battle storm.

Boy! thy first looks were taught to seek
Their heaven in Hellas' skies:
Her airs have tinged thy dusky cheek,
Her sunshine lit thine eyes;
Thine ears have drunk the woodland strains
Heard by ...

'Twas on a day of cold and sleet,
A little nomad of the street
With tattered garments, shoeless feet,
    And face with hunger wan,
Great wonder-eyes, though beautiful,
Hedged in by features pinched and dull,
Betraying lines so pitiful
    By sorrow sharply drawn;

Ere yet the service half was o'er,
Approached the great cathedral door
As choir and organ joined to pour
    Their sweetness on the air;
Then, sudden, bold, impelled to glide
With fleetness to the altar's side,
Her trembling form she sought to hide
    Amid the shadows there,

Half fearful lest some worshiper,
Enveloped close in robes of fur,
Had cast a scornful glance at her
    As she had stolen by,
But soon the swelling anthem, fraught
With reverence, her spirit...

Thy verdant scenes, O Goulder's hill,
Once more I seek, a languid guest:
With throbbing temples and with burden'd breast
Once more I climb thy steep aerial way.
O faithful cure of oft-returning ill,
Now call thy sprightly breezes round,
Dissolve this rigid cough profound,
And bid the springs of life with gentler movement play.
How gladly 'mid the dews of dawn
My weary lungs thy healing gale,
The balmy west or the fresh north, inhale!
How gladly, while my musing footsteps rove
Round the cool orchard or the sunny lawn,
Awak'd I stop, and look to find
What shrub perfumes the pleasant wind,
Or what wild songster charms the Dryads of the grove.

Now, ere the morning walk is done,
The distant voice of health I hear
Welcome as beauty's to the lover's e...

[From Farmer Harrington's Calendar.]

NOVEMBER 20, 18 - .

        It's quite a show, and strikes me a good deal -
        How many ride around here on a wheel;
        The streets are graded very smooth and nice,
        And make this town the wheelman's paradise.
        A brother-farmer - neighbor, once, to me -
        Who's down here, like myself, to hear and see,
        Told me, last night, before we "doused the glim,"
        How a young wheel-chap got the start of him.
        'Twould skip my memory, maybe, if I'd let it;
        I'll put it down here so I sha'n't forget it.



[Farmer And Wheel; Or, The New Lochinvar.]

I.

    I was hoein' in my corn-field, on a spring day, just at noon,
    An' a hearkin' in my ...

    Press close your lips,
And bow your heads to earth, for Death is here!
Mark ye not how across that eye so clear,
    Steals his eclipse?

    A moment more,
And the quick throbbings of her heart shall cease,
Her pain-wrung spirit will obtain release,
    And all be o'er!

    Hush! Seal ye up
Your gushing tears, for Mercy's hand hath shaken
Her earth-bonds off, and from her lip hath taken
    Grief's bitter cup.

    Ye know the dead
Are they who rest secure from care and strife, -
That they who walk the thorny way of life,
    Have tears to shed.

    Ye know her pray'r,
Was for the quiet of the tomb's deep rest, -
Love's sepulchre lay cold within her breast,
    Could peace dwell there?

    A tale soon told,<...

I
Over the ball of it,
Peering and prying,
How I see all of it,
Life there, outlying!
Roughness and smoothness,
Shine and defilement,
Grace and uncouthness:
One reconcilement.

Orbed as appointed,
Sister with brother
Joins, ne’er disjointed
One from the other.
All’s lend-and-borrow;
Good, see, wants evil,
Joy demands sorrow,
Angel weds devil!

“Which things must, why be?”
Vain our endeavor!
So shall things aye be
As they were ever.
“Such things should so be!”
Sage our desistence!
Rough-smooth let globe be,
Mixed, man’s existence!

Man, wise and foolish,
Lover and scorner,
Docile and mulish,
Keep each his corner!
Honey yet gall of it!
There’s the life lying,
And I see all ...

Once more the gate behind me falls;
Once more before my face
I see the moulder'd Abbey-walls,
That stand within the chace.

Beyond the lodge the city lies,
Beneath its drift of smoke;
And ah! with what delighted eyes
I turn to yonder oak.

For when my passion first began,
Ere that, which in me burn'd,
The love, that makes me thrice a man,
Could hope itself return'd;

To yonder oak within the field
I spoke without restraint,
And with a larger faith appeal'd
Than Papist unto Saint.

For oft I talk'd with him apart
And told him of my choice,
Until he plagiarized a heart,
And answer'd with a voice.

Tho' what he whisper'd under Heaven
None else could understand;
I found him garrulously given,
A babbler in...

    If a man who turnips cries
    Cries not when his father dies,
    It is a proof that he would rather
    Have a turnip than his father.

The world forsaken, all its busy cares
And stirring interests shunned with desperate flight,
All trust abandoned in the healing might
Of virtuous action; all that courage dares,
Labour accomplishes, or patience bears
Those helps rejected, they, whose minds perceive
How subtly works man's weakness, sighs may heave
For such a One beset with cloistral snares.
Father of Mercy! rectify his view,
If with his vows this object ill agree;
Shed over it thy grace, and thus subdue
Imperious passion in a heart set free:
That earthly love may to herself be true,
Give him a soul that cleaveth unto thee.

The moth and beetle wing about
The garden ways of other days;
Above the hills, a fiery shout
Of gold, the day dies slowly out,
Like some wild blast a huntsman blows:
And o'er the hills my Fancy goes,
Following the sunset's golden call
Unto a vine-hung garden wall,
Where she awaits me in the gloom,
Between the lily and the rose,
With arms and lips of warm perfume,
The dream of Love my Fancy knows.

The glowworm and the firefly glow
Among the ways of bygone days;
A golden shaft shot from a bow
Of silver, star and moon swing low
Above the hills where twilight lies:
And o'er the hills my Longing flies,
Following the star's far-arrowed gold,
Unto a gate where, as of old,
She waits amid the rose and rue,
With star-bright hair and night-...

Welladay!
Here I lay
You at rest - all worn away,
    O my pencil, to the tip
    Of our old companionship!

Memory
Sighs to see
What you are, and used to be,
    Looking backward to the time
    When you wrote your earliest rhyme! -

When I sat
Filing at
Your first point, and dreaming that
    Your initial song should be
    Worthy of posterity.

With regret
I forget
If the song be living yet,
    Yet remember, vaguely now,
    It was honest, anyhow.

You have brought
Me a thought -
Truer yet was never taught, -
    That the silent song is best,
    And the unsung worthiest.

So if I,
When I die,
May as uncomplainingly
    Drop aside as now you do,
    Write of me, as I ...

Brief while they last,
Long when they are gone;
They catch from the past
A light to still live on.

Brief! yet I ween
A day may be an age,
The poet's pen may screen
Heart-stories on one page.

Brief! but in them,
From eve back to morn,
Some find the gem,
Many find the thorn.

Brief! minutes pass
Soft as flakes of snow,
Shadows o'er the grass
Could not swifter go.

Brief! but along
All the after-years
To-day will be a song
Of smiles or of tears.

"Dr. Birch's young friends will reassemble to-day, Feb. 1st."

White is the wold, and ghostly
The dank and leafless trees;
And 'M's and 'N's are mostly
Pronounced like 'B's and 'D's:
'Neath bleak sheds, ice-encrusted,
The sheep stands, mute and stolid:
And ducks find out, disgusted,
That all the ponds are solid.

Many a stout steer's work is
(At least in this world) finished;
The gross amount of turkies
Is sensibly diminished:
The holly-boughs are faded,
The painted crackers gone;
Would I could write, as Gray did,
An Elegy thereon!

For Christmas-time is ended:
Now is "our youth" regaining
Those sweet spots where are "blended
Home-comforts and school-training."
Now they're, I dare say, venting
Their grief in transie...

    Here, on the arid ridge
    Of dead Vesuvius,
    Exterminator terrible,
    That by no other tree or flower is cheered,
    Thou scatterest thy lonely leaves around,
    O fragrant flower,
    With desert wastes content. Thy graceful stems
    I in the solitary paths have found,
    The city that surround,
    That once was mistress of the world;
    And of her fallen power,
    They seemed with silent eloquence to speak
    Unto the thoughtful wanderer.
    And now again I see thee on this soil,
    Of wretched, world-abandoned spots the friend,
    Of ruined fortunes the companion, still.
    These fields with barren ashes strown,
    And lava, hardened into stone,
    Beneath the pilgrim's feet, that hollow sound,
    Where by their nest...

When I seek the world through
For images of you,
Though apple-blossom is glad
And the lily stately-sad,
Gilliflowers kind of breath,
Rosemary true till death;
Though the wind can stir the grass
To memories as you pass.
And the soft-singing streams
Are music like your dreams;
Though constant stars embrace
The quiet of your face,
Your smile lights up sunrise,
And evening's in your eyes,
Each so shadows its part,
All cannot show your heart;
And weighing the beauty of earth
I see it so little worth,
When reckoned beside you,
That I hold heaven for true
But all my heaven is you.

        Into the golden vessel of great song
        Let us pour all our passion; breast to breast
        Let other lovers lie, in love and rest;
        Not we,--articulate, so, but with the tongue
        Of all the world: the churning blood, the long
        Shuddering quiet, the desperate hot palms pressed
        Sharply together upon the escaping guest,
        The common soul, unguarded, and grown strong.
        Longing alone is singer to the lute;
        Let still on nettles in the open sigh
        The minstrel, that in slumber is as mute
        As any man, and love be far and high,
        That else forsakes the topmost branch, a fruit
        Found on the ground by every passer-by.