IRLF
B 3 315 352
RP
GIFT OF
SONGS OF YESTERDAY.
BY
BENJ. F. TAYLOR,
AUTHOR OF "OLD TIME PICTURES," "THE WORLD ON WHEELS,"
"!N CAMP AND FIELD," ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS.
CHICAGO:
S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY.
COPYRIGHT, 1875,
BY S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY.
KHISHT R LEONARD
SHNIEDE\VEND & LEE,
EI.ECTROTYPERS.
DONOHUE. WILSON & HENNEBERRY,
BOOK HINDERS.
A BANK NOTE.
HART L. WEAVER, ESQ.,
LA PORTE, INDIANA.
MY DEAR SIR:
As a Banker, you deal in
figures of fact; but I commit no error in cordially inscribing
to you this Volume of figures of fancy.
As a little token of regard for a friend in need and in
deed, and a man " to count on " everywhere, I am glad to
believe you will accept this note without either indorsers or
discount, and simply with the signature of
Yours Always and Sincerely,
3G6001
little poems are like Lot s Wife; they all look over
JL their shoulders. Unlike the savory lady who became
muriate of soda, they are not looking back upon .Sodom but
upon Paradise.
As there is a vague rumor of a Wandering Jew, so there is
a suspicion of a man somewhere who never had a childhood,
but bounded into being full-grown. To be brought to a prema
ture end is bad, but to be brought to a premature beginning is
yet worse. For him these glimpses of old days, rudely literal
as a Dutch etching upon a tile, can have no charm.
But whoever has an Eden, where a little plat of grass that
was never plowed or mown keeps always green; where the
mysteries of Christmas Eves and the peopled twilights, and the
memories of simpler times yet linger unrebuked ; for him, per
haps, some of these poems may have a certain quaint old flavor
and fragrance, as of caraway and dill.
The chief of earthly arts is the art of keeping always young.
Time takes heavy toll as we pass, one after one, the Janus-
gated years, but he goes bravely through the world who bears
with him the perfume of his Eden and the romance of the
morning and the lavish heart of youth.
MARY BUTLER S RIDE,
KELLY S FERRY,
THE BARK "TRUE LOVE,"
THE PSALM- BOOK IN THE GARRET,
Mow THE BROOK WENT TO MILL,
THE MILLER AND THE MILL,
THE OLD STATE ROAD,
John Benjamin, Driver,
John Benjamin s Picture,
THE OLD BARN,
The Flails,
The Fanning Mill,
The Old Barn s Tenantry,
Money Musk,
SILVER WEDDING DAY,
THE SPINNING WHEEL,
MOWING,
33
45
55
59
67
70
74
77
80
83
84
89
95
101
107
V1 CONTENTS.
LIFE ON THE FARM, , . m 2
Milking Time, - . I
Night on the Farm, - . .
The Morning, - . .
- 118
The Churn in"-,
119
THE OLD SCHOOL-HOUSE,
School "Called,"
School Time,
I2b
Going to Spelling School, - ,
THE HEROES AND THE FLOWERS, -
Rose Hill, .
LAST YEAR S STARS, - ----- ic
To MY WIFE,
MONUMENTS,
- 163
MISSION OF SONG, ---___ ,
"PLOWING LAND FOR TURNIPS, WITH AWKWARD BUCK AND
BRIGHT," - 15
"THE QUOITING-GROUND WAS GRASSY," - 17
"SHE NEVER DREW THE BRIDLE-REIN TILL FORTY MILES WERE
DONE," 19
"AWAY THEY RODE TO GlLMANTON, HER ARM AROUND HIS WAIST," 21
"THE BOYS IN GRAY FORGOT THAT NIGHT THE BOYS IN BLUE
WERE FOES," - 29
"AND SO THE LADEN CARAVAN WENT FILING DOWN THE HILL," 31
"UNTRAVELED ANGELS HAVE BEEN SEEN
ACROSS THAT STRAIT AND IN THE SKIES
BY CHILDREN S CLEAR AND NAKED EYES!"
THE ORIENTAL EYE,
"YE LITTLE AFRICANS OF SONG,"
THE PULPIT AND THE GALLERY,
HOW THE BROOK WENT TO MILL,
"HE SAW FOUR BUTTERFLIES WINGED IN GOLD,"
" RIGHT-ABOUT WITH A DASH CAME THE FOUR-IN-HAND!"
"I SEE HIM TO-DAY ALL EQUIPPED FOR THE SNOW,"
37
47
49
5 1
56
63
7i
75
vin ILLUSTRATIONS.
44 WHEN THE BOUNCING KERNELS, BRIGHT AND BROWN,
LEAP LIGHTLY UP AS THE FLAILS COME DOWN," - 8l
44 NOTHING AT ALL BUT A BREEZE IN A BOX," 83
THE OLD BARN S TENANTRY, - 85
"I HEAR THE LAUGH WHEN THE EAR IS RED," 87
44 Tis MONEY MUSK BY MERRY FEET," - 91
THE SILVER WEDDING, 97
44 SlIE GIVES A TOUCH AND A CARELESS WHIRL," - -103
THE X-BACKED BOYS, IOCJ
THE MOWERS, - IJI
"BESIDE THE CHURN A MAIDEN STANDS,
NIMBLE AND NAKED HER ARMS AND HANDS," - 121
44 TIP TOED FIGURES REACH THE CATCH," 127
4 HER FINGERS DOVE-TAILED, LIPS APART,
STANDS WITH HEAD OF TREMBLING GOLD," - 131
41 THEY LAUGH AND THEY LEAP TO THE GROUND," 135
DREAMING, H
44 HERE THEY WENT INTO CAMP
WHEN THE { DEAD LINE WAS PASSED," 147
44 AND A LITTLE FORM IN WHITE
SEEMS TO RISE BEYOND THE RAIN," - - 161
THE HARP, - l6 8
KELLY S FERRY.
i.
HAVE you read in any book, heard anybody tell
Of the gallant Third Ohio, Lieutenant-Colonel Bell,
So like in shaggy ruggedness a mountain full of lairs
That when they cheered, you never knew the Buckeyes from
the bears?
Ah ! they loved the River Danger as Satan loves to sin,
Just drew their belts another hole, and then they waded in
Waist-deep, chin-deep, the fellows went, nor drew a doubting
breath,
No halting for an order nor touch of hat to Death !
"Go in!" and "Third Ohio!" their battle-cry and faith.
II.
Their talk was rough as bowlders are, and when they named
the Flag
They christened it "Old Glory" or just "That blessed rag;"
Somebody fell " passed in his checks " was all they had to say ;
26 SONGS OF TESTERDAT.
" God s country " was the happy land of " boiled shirts " every
day;
They told of "wooden overcoats," and rude board coffins meant,
And thought they were a snugger fit than any Sibley tent ;
But count the ragged blouses up, be sure the tale is true,
Each hides a handful of a heart beneath the tattered blue
That always played the Forward, March ! and never beat tattoo.
III.
One Derby day they rode a raid and never drew the rein ;
They rode as if they never meant to ride that route again.
Like long, clean sweep of trenchant blade where bonny flags
burned blue,
And not a rift in all the field to let a star-beam through.
Down came a mantle broad and deep as comes the dusk of night,
In folds of gray and butternut, and swept them out of sight,
And swept them from their saddle-bows, and set their faces South,
And made a Daniel of the troop for Richmond s lion mouth,
And shriveled shut the bannered stars like daisies in a drouth.
IV.
" But why not tell it as it was ? " I hear a fellow shqut,
"Just make a finish of the thing, and say they bowled us out
" One swallow, and the regiment was fairly gobbled up
KELLY S FERRT. 27
" Scooped by the blasted Johnny Rebs like water in a cup.
" They brushed us clean of cavalry, the infantry of clothes,
"And left the Third Ohio boys as naked as a nose."
For heavy baggage only hearts, each haversack was lank,
Nor flag nor fife to cheer along the dull, disastered rank;
Ah ! deader than the March in Saul a canteen s empty clank.
V.
Along the road the weary miles lay quivering in the sun,
While naked Noon, with brazen blows, did weld them into one,
That naked feet must measure off before the work was done.
The days and boys crept slowly on twas thirst and starve
and tramp,
Until they tumbled, supperless, beside a Southern camp.
The Fifty-fourth Virginians came, like long-flanked leopard cats,
With dingy pipes of corn-cob in their shapeless, battered hats,
And, lean as stakes, they stood around and watched the novel
sight
Of colors struck and empty hands, and Yankees "flying light."
VI.
Not long they gazed, but bolted with an " Old Dominion " whoop,
Promoted in a twinkling to a commissary troop !
You heard the clink of coffee-mills, the merry bayonet stroke,
28 SOtfGS OF TESTERDAT,
The camp was turbaned like a Turk with wreaths of cedar smoke ;
Then came the clang of frying-pan, the kettle s tambourine,
They routed out the lazy fires and tucked the " dodgers " in ;
The martyred bacon made complaint and clouds of incense
rose
Oh ! sweeter than the censer s swing to gain a soul s repose,
The Boys in Gray forgot that night the Boys in Blue were foes !
VII.
So sped the night in brotherhood, and when the dawning came,
They tucked two figures in their hearts two figures and a
name
And hand met hand in soldier grip, no word of courtly thanks,
One said, "Good-by, Virginia," and one, "Light out, you Yanks."
Still war s wild weather ruled the year. November to July,
Deep thunders in the Cumberlands and lightnings in the sky.
The raiders were their own again, to Lookout back they came,
They told the tale a thousand times, it ended all the same ;
The " Fifty-fourth Virginia " toast set hearts and cheeks a-flame,
And cheers flew wild, like sparks of fire two figures and a name!
VIII.
The Hawk s Nest hatched great broods of blue; they chipped
the butternut shell,
And fluttered up the rugged Ridge against the gates of hell
KELL r S FERR T.
29
How fierce and grand the flight and swoop let Chattanooga tell.
Lo ! mid the captives whirling down, their faces to the North,
All wrapped like kittens in a cloak, Virginia s Fifty-fourth !
THE BOYS IN GRAY FORGOT THAT NIGHT THE BOYS IN BLUE WERE FOES.
With bodies lean and faces long, they trailed in straggling rank,
And clustered like bepollened bees upon the river bank.
There, on the lazy Tennessee, the Third Ohio lay,
From Kelly s poor old Ferry a rifle-shot away.
30 SONGS OF TESTERDAT.
The sturdy boys were " keeping house," amid the mountain
glooms,
And smoky cones of Sibley tents, like rainy nights mushrooms,
Had spread their gray umbrellas, with narrow streets between,
And the flicker of a bayonet, the glitter of canteen
As flitting spots of indigo pinked out the living green.
IX.
A lounging Buckeye took a look, saw " Old Virginia " come,
And broke for camp with lively feet, as drumsticks beat a drum.
Before he struck the picket-line he emptied every tent,
He never stayed for stock or stone, but shouted as he went
What golden bugles should have blown and made a "joyful
noise ":
" THE FIFTY-FOURTH VIRGINIA is AT THE FERRY, BOYS ! "
Three minutes and the camp had swarmed : they bought the
sutler out,
And brought their treasures to the light, and strewed them
round about,
And nothing but a night surprise could raise so wild a rout.
X.
The kettles filled with Araby upon their muskets swung;
A bag of "hard-tack," tough as tiles, upon a shoulder slung;
A slab of bacon, broad and brown, as if it came from mill,
KBLLT S FERRT. 31
And so the laden caravan went filing down the hill.
The hosts were guests, the guests were hosts, and this alone
was new,
The standard blazed with all its stars above the "bonny blue."
"AND so THE LADEN CARAVAN WENT FILING DOWN THE HILL."
With winking camp-fires dancing lights and dewdrops beaded
shine,
The night-air mantled rich and red as old Madeira wine,
Toned down the mellow picture, and made it half divine.
32 SONGS OF TESTERDAT.
Oh ! sweeter than the censer s swing to gain a soul s repose,
The Boys in Blue forgot that night the Boys in Gray were foes !
XI.
Arms won the game at Mission Ridge and played the hand
alone ;
At Kelly s Ferry hearts were trumps and everybody won.
The drifting years, like thistledown, have glittered out of sight ;
The boys are mustered out of life, let no man say "good-night!"
The Boys in Blue and Boys in Gray sleep peacefully together,
And God s own stars shine through the flag and make it
pleasant weather.
I lay this old love-story down upon the breast of May,
And dare to hope its words are meet for Decoration Day.
I lay this ballad s homely flower upon some soldier s bed,
While Love s sweet rain is falling fast upon the speechless dead.
The rose s stain is not of blood. Are lilies pale with fear?
Then sure this offering of mine will harm nobody here.
At Kelly s Ferry once again let all the people meet,
With blessings clustered round their hearts and blossoms at
their feet,
Give thanks the graves have ebbed at last that broke in bil
lowed sod,
And make one grand Red-letter Day for manhood and for God.
THE BARK "TRUE LOVE."
THE bark " True Love " arrived in the Delaware in No
vember last, direct from Greenland, with a cargo of
cryolite both cargo and craft queer as an old ballad. She
had been in commission one hundred and six years, and, like
"the old ship Zion," her timbers were all sound. With her
tulip-shaped hull and her cumbrous bulwarks she seemed to
have sailed out of another age into our own.
THE BARK "TRUE LOVE."
Christmas Eve, 1875.
WITH tack and turn in the idle air
What craft comes beating up the Bay,
Comes curtsying up the Delaware ?
Ahoy, Three-master! whence away?
Like millers wings, her canvas gray
Is opened wide in ghastly palms
To feel for wind among the calms.
II.
Her sides are curved like the splendid flower
That sets on fire the tulip tree,
Between her teeth the trusty bower
They planted last in nameless sea,
Ah, Hope takes root where er it be !
Plucked up a thousand times with song,
Swung like a charm, and borne along!
36 SONGS OF TESTERDAT.
III.
I hear the flap of the languid sail,
The drowsy creak of swaying yard
I see the bunting s lazy trail,
A figure mount the battered guard
The breeze is purring like a pard.
" How are ye named, O gray and quaint !
" From monarch dead, or faded saint ? "
IV.
Then came the word from the master s mate,
Then bounded back a trumpet gust
Of salt-sea air articulate
In tones that grated rough with rust :
"From no dead king or saintly dust
" The bark True Love from Labrador,
" Whose sun is cold as Kohinor ! "
V.
Where stars show through like the points of spears
And cling and shine in wounded night,
Impale a thousand frozen years
And halt the ages dead and white
Where Arctic s ghostly anthracite,
THE BARK "TRUE
37
tl i -
UNTRAVELED ANGELS HAVE BEEN SEEN
ACROSS THAT STRAIT AND IN THE SKIES
BY CHILDREN S CLEAR AND NAKED EYES!"
38 SONGS OF TESTERDAT.
The icebergs crash before the breeze,
Unmelted, alabaster seas !
VI.
" The bark True Love left the Cape Farewell
" With cryolite from Greenland s coast "
"What s cryolite?" He strove to tell,
But on she swept the words were lost;
The waves white plumage glanced and tossed,
So bore away this Arctic dove
From Cape Farewell to "Brotherly Love."
VII.
Think of her sailing down the age
Across the line, and sailing yet!
The ink has faded from the page
Whereon her score of captains set
Two thousand names old salts forget
Not one of all who worked the ship
Now lingers on a human lip.
VIII.
And here SHE is with her timbers sound,
Stout-hearted oak, all through and through,
As when the columns graced the ground
THE BARK "TRUE LOVE." 39
Where acorns fell and giants grew !
O boatswain shrill ! pipe up the crew,
And bid some breezy ballad blow
They sang an hundred years ago !
IX.
Some Chevy Chase with its endless line
That runs along the slender tune,
As runs the bright Madeira vine
And wreathes the thirty days of June,
Or love-lorn maidens and the moon,
Or Spanish Main, or Blackbeard rhyme
Of ocean s Paradise of crime.
X.
Aye, tumble up from the watch below,
Ye square-built sea-dogs tough and true,
That sailed the young " Love " long ago !
In trowsers broad and jackets blue,
Tarpaulins brave with streamers new,
With waistband hitch, and backward scrape,
And fore-lock touch, they round the Cape
And take the Horn! Can spectres speak?
They shift the cargo in the cheek !
40 SONGS OF TESTERDAT.
XL
The sailor s knot at each rugged throat
As bare and brown as signal gun,
The rolling gait they learned afloat,
Ah, old True Lovers every one !
Good night ! Turn in ! The watch is done !
Sleep till the sea its dead gives up,
As bubbles rise in beaded cup.
XII.
Behold her now! the gallant craft,
Between her teeth the bone-white foam,
She shows old ocean s rabble raft
Of tumbling billows roll and comb,
Her heels at last and scurries home !
From Northern Crown to Southern Cross,
From eider-duck to albatross !
XIII.
To some broad Bay with its breathless glass
Think that you see her sailing in
All things in pairs that thither pass,
The clouds are twos she and her twin !
THE BARK "TRUE LOVE." 41
In such a place to sigh were sin ;
Twould mar the perfect marriage there,
Twixt this in sea and that in air.
XIV.
When days in pairs with their mingled light
Of silver dawn and golden set,
Strike through each thin, transparent night,
As if God s pearls and rubies met
And kindled on a coronet,
How could she sail from Paradise
For Cape Farewell and Arctic ice?
From Greenland to the Delaware
God speed the " True Love " everywhere !
XV.
Almost two thousand Christian years,
And every year of all the host,
An older, grander craft appears
And sails along the Planet s coast
As silent as a passing ghost;
Silent, except one Song they sing
On board the flag-ship of the KING.
42 SO+VGS OF TESTERDAT.
XVI.
Upon its bow is a swinging star,
Its sails are like some evening clouds
With here and there a silver spar;
Its deck is thronged with angel crowds,
Like threads of mist its filmy shrouds,
Its masts are made of beams of moon,
Its lettered flags of golden noon.
STAR IN THE EAST ! Behold the name
Emblazoned on the streamer s flame!
XVII.
It plies the glorious Strait between
Cape Christmas Eve and Paradise;
Untraveled angels have been seen
Across that Strait and in the skies
By children s clear and naked eyes!
It is their only yearly line
Between the earth and shores divine.
XVIII.
That Song of theirs will it ever wane,
Or flow like Life s eternal river?
"GOOD WILL TO MEN," its sweet refrain,
THE BARK ^TRUE LOVE." 43
Is set to the key "Forever."
Ah, narrow Strait two worlds to sever!
The Port of Peace and Perfect Day
Are just across the azure way;
Whoever strikes his earthly tent,
We will not wonder that he went,
We will not say that he has died,
But only gone the other side.
THE PSALM-BOOK IN THE GARRET.
THE old garret with one almond eye in each gable was the
memory of the homestead. The fashions of three gen
erations, the bits of ancient furniture that somehow grew akin
to them that used it, the rusty red cradle, the rush-bottomed
chair, the long-handled warming-pan, the little foot-stove with
a bail to it, the flaring leghorn, the bell-crowned beaver, the
leather-bound book, the wheel, the reel, the distaff and the
swifts these, and a thousand things besides, may be forgotten
below stairs, but they are sure to be remembered above. You
can find them swung to the peak of the rafters, or chucked
under the eaves, or strown along the oaken plate. They are all
there. When I hear of the burning of an old mansion, I do not
ask if they saved the silver, but did salvation reach the garret!
The long-winged psalm-book, " sung in " by people whose
graves are hard to find, lies upon a beam, and beside it a
withered, dusty bundle of summer savory that nobody remem
bers. A little way off is a wooden pitch-pipe about the color
of a chestnut, that used to go a couple of seconds ahead of
Braintree and the rest, and blow like a disconsolate wind at a
key-hole.
46 SONGS OF TESTERDAT.
But the world will keep the old tunes without the help of
garrets. Nobody ever thinks in "the dead waste and middle
of" December that there can ever be another blue-bird. But
there can, and there will. When "the winter is over and
gone " he is sure to drop out of the blue like a winged atom
of live sky. So with the old tunes. They have a way of dying
out of hearing now and then, but, for all that, they will meet
us here and there on the way. St. Martin s, St. Thomas and
St. Mary s are about as immortal as St. Matthew, St. Paul and
St. John. Let us amend the beatitude of Christopher North
and say, " Blessed be the memory of old songs and old singers
forever ! "
THE PSALM-BOOK IN THE GARRET.
\ GARRET grows a human thing
/~\ With lonely oriental eyes,
To whom confiding fingers bring
The world in yesterday s disguise.
THE ORIENTAL EYE.
Ah, richer far than noontide blaze
The soft gray silence of the air,
As if long years of ended days
Had garnered all their twilights there.
48 SONGS OF TESTERDAT.
The heart can see so clear and far
In such a place, with such a light
God counts His heavens star by star,
And rains them down unclouded night.
Where rafters set their cobwebb d feet
Upon the rugged oaken ledge,
I found a flock of singers sweet,
Like snow-bound sparrows in a hedge.
In silk of spider s spinning hid,
A long and narrow Psalm-book lay;
I wrote a name upon the lid,
Then brushed the idle dust away.
Ah, dotted tribe with ebon heads
That climb the slender fence along!
As black as ink, as thick as weeds,
Ye little Africans of song!
Who wrote upon this page "Forget
Me Not ? " These cruel leaves of old
Have crushed to death a violet
See here its spectre s pallid gold.
THE PSALM-BOOK IN THE GARRET.
A penciled whisper during prayer
Is that poor, dim and girlish word,
But ah, I linger longest where
It opens of its own accord.
49
" YE LITTLE AFRICANS OF SONG.
These spotted leaves! How once they basked
Beneath the glance of girlhood s eyes,
And parted to the gaze unasked,
As spread the wings of butterflies.
The book falls open where it will
Broad on the page runs Silver Street!
That shining way to Zion s Hill
Where base and treble used to meet.
50 SONGS OF TESTERDAT,
I shake the leaves. They part at Mear
Again they strike the good old tune,
The village church is builded here,
The twilight turns to afternoon.
Old house of Puritanic wood,
Through whose unpainted windows streamed
On seats as primitive and rude
As Jacob s pillow when he dreamed,
The white and undiluted day!
Thy naked aisle no roses grace
That blossomed at the shuttle s play;
Nor saints distempered bless the place.
Like feudal castles, front to front,
In timbered oak of Saxon Thor,
To brave the siege and bear the brunt
Of Bunyan s endless Holy War,
The pulpit and the gallery stand
Between the twain a peaceful space,
The prayer and praise on either hand,
And girls and Gospel face to face.
THE PSALM-BOOK IN THE GARRET.
I hear the reverend Elder say,
"Hymn fifty-first, long meter, sing!"
I, hear the Psalm-books fluttered play
Like flocks of sparrows taking wing.
5 1
THE PULPIT AND THE GALLERY.
52 SONGS OF YESTERDAY.
Armed with a fork to pitch the tune,
I hear the Deacon call "Dundee!"
And mount as brisk as Bonny Doon
His " Fa, sol, la," and scent the key.
He " trees " the note for sister Gray ;
The old Scotch warbling strains begin;
The base of Bashan leads the way,
And all the girls fall sweetly in.
How swells the hymn of heavenly love,
As rise the tides in Fundy s Bay!
Till all the air below, above,
Is sweet with song and caraway!
A fugue let loose cheers up the place,
With base and tenor, alto, air;
The parts strike in with measured grace,
And something sweet is everywhere !
As if some warbling brood should build
Of bits of tunes a singing nest,
Each bring the notes with which it thrilled
And weave them in with all the rest!
THE PSALM-BOOK IN THE GARRET. 53
The congregation rise and stand;
Old Hundred s rolling thunder comes
In heavy surges, slow and grand,
As beats the surf its solemn drums.
Now come the times when China s wail
Is blended with the faint perfume
Of whispering crape and cloudy veil,
That fold within their rustling gloom
Some wounded human mourning-dove,
And fall around some stricken one
With nothing left alive to love
Below the unregarded sun !
And now they sing a star in sight,
The blessed Star of Bethlehem;
And now the air is royal bright
With Coronation s diadem.
They show me spots of dimpled sod,
They say the girls of old are there
Oh, no, they swell the choirs of God,
The dear old Songs are everywhere !
HOW THE BROOK WENT TO MILL.
A RIFTED rock in a wooded hill,
A spring within like a looking-glass,
A nameless rill like a skein of rain
That showed as faint as a feeble vein,
And crept away in the tangled grass
With a voiceless flow and a wandering will,-
The wish-ton-wish of a silken dress,
The murmured tone of a maiden s " yes !
A thirsty ox could have quaffed it up,
A boy dipped dry with a drinking cup !
Broke in a brook the rill complete
Broke in a song the brook so fleet
Broke in a laugh the song so sweet !
II.
Twas pebble, rubble, and fallen tree,
Twas babble, double, through every mile;
It battled on with a shout and shock,
S OF TESTERDAT.
And white with foam was the
rugged rock,
And dark were the hemlocks all
the while,
Till the road grew broad, and
the creek ran free.
It glassed along on the slippery
slide,
And shot away with an arrowy
glide
It slipped its shoes and in stock
ing feet
$ Under the bank and
in from the street
Whirled in a waltz
about and out
Sprinkled with gold
and put to rout
And bright with the ; ;
flash of the spotted
trout !
HOW THE BROOK WENT TO MILL. 57
III.
It floats a name and it bears a boat ;
Tis Leonard s Creek and is bound for mill,
And makes you think, with its ripple and flow,
So light it trips to the stones below
The rhythmic touch of the gay quadrille
How her fingers went when they moved by note
Through measures fine, as she marched them o er
The yielding plank of the ivory floor.
Beneath the bridge with a rasping rush,
A bird takes toll, tis a thirsty thrush,
It nears the Gulf of the hemlock night
Where stars shine down in the mid-day light,
It verges the brink of the shadow s lair,
Stumbles and falls on the limestone stair !
Clings to the mute and motionless edge
Tumbles and booms from ledge to ledge
Thunders and blunders down to the sedge !
THE MILLER AND THE MILL.
A RIVER and a brook ran across my boyhood s world;
lively fellows they were, and things to thank God for.
The one rambled through pastures and meadows, among the
buttercups and strawberries, and turned shingle wheels and
floated boats that suggested the slipper of Cinderella, and wet
boys feet and their trowsers withal, even to the waistbands,
glassed out in the spring rains like the Zuider Zee, and sub
mitted to be dammed without a murmur.
The other rattled down the roughest, crookedest piece of
road you ever saw, and quarreled with banks and wrangled
with rocks and foamed over fallen logs as green as lizards,
and plunged into hemlock shadows it never could get rid of,
slipped over the broad flat pavements and tumbled down stairs
at last at the foot of the mill. The old mill with its rumble
and grumble, its ghostly corners, its powdery floors, and its dim
gray look, as if lost in a fog that never lifts, is there yet, rum
bling and grumbling still. It hums like a king-bee in the nest
of a village. The great wheel in its damp dungeon below day
time, gives way as of old beneath the tread of water, like a
flight of stairs forever tumbling down.
60 SONGS OF TESTERDAT.
The mill was our only enchanted castle, and nobody has
ruined it by improvement. As of old,
" Water runneth by the mill
The miller wots not of."
What treasures of childhood came home in the grists ; the
turnover bundled in a coverlid, tucked in with a thumb and
plump with happiness ; the golden samp ; the corner lot of
Johnny-cake ; the acrobatic flap-jack, and the twisted dough
nut. But the charm of them has vanished. Happiness is rarer
and costlier. The old miller has laid off his dusty clothes for
garments of white, and strange hands take toll.
THE MILLER AND THE MILL.
THE roar came up in a misty cloak
Whose skirt was trimmed with the swan s-down
foam,
Beside the mill with its window d wall
Of rusty red as it loomed so tall.
The wheel was still in its dank, dim room,
The air as whist as a wreath of smoke,
The tangled light through the cobwebs fell,
The mill was as dumb as a heather-bell !
The dusty miller was leaning o er
The lower half of the battened door,
Thinking the things he always thought,
Tolling the grist no man had brought,
Counting the dreams that came to nought.
62 SO N G S O F TE 8 TE RDAT.
II.
He saw four butterflies winged in white
That fluttered over the wayside pool,
They looked like bits of an old love-note
To Lucy Jones, and the first he wrote
But never sent to the Flower of school
" What if he had ? " and " Perhaps she might ! "
He saw four butterflies winged in gold
And thought what things the "perhaps" might fold
A woman s foot on the powdered sill
With arch enough for a running rill,
To walk his world and he thought again
How blossoms show in the route of rain
Make summer-time till the first snow-fall.
Perhaps and Might ! How they puzzle all !
Jogging along a horse came slow,
Boy was aloft and bag below,
Calliper legs and head of tow.
III.
The miller starts from the faded dream,
A lever creaks and he lifts the gate.
The rumbling flood in the frothy flume
THE MILLER AND THE MILL.
Is rolling through to the twilight room
In whirls and swirls at a reckless rate
The rustic strength of the headlong stream.
"HE SAW FOUR BUTTERFLIES WINGED IN GOLD."
64 SO2VGS OF YESTERDAY.
A storm of rain in the chamber dim !
A mighty swing of a giant limb !
The Wheel is washing his naked arms!
The mill is alive with the strange alarms!
A lazy log has just turned over.
The mill is full of a thousand things,
They tramp with feet and they hum with wings
A troop has halted awhile to feed,
Old Pan has come with his drowsy reed.
Hark ! Bees abroad from a field of clover !
A flock of grouse with a frightened whir!
A Scotch brigade with a Tweedside burr!
Two wheels lay hold with their iron teeth
And turn a shaft that is hung beneath,
With a jumbling thump of the tumbling bolt,
Like the awkward trot of a bare-foot colt;
In swaying glide are the leathern bands,
The hoppers jar with their palsied hands,
Forever spilling the grists of grain
In rattling showers like frozen rain,
While face to face with its gritty mate
The mill-stone whirls with a grinding grate.
THE MILLER AND THE MILL. 65
What might be laid in a castle s wall
Is twirled as light as a parasol !
And out from the Rock, as once of old,
A streamlet flows in its white or gold !
Busy as bees when the buckwheat blows
Are the little buckets that run in rows
Up stairs and down with a sparrow s weight,
A tiny drift of the dainty freight.
The place is thrilled with a rumbling tread,
The air is gray with the ghost of bread !
Dizzy and busy, above, below,
Lydian river and floury flow
Corn in the gold and wheat in the snow.
IV.
The old gray mill is yet murmuring on,
The brook brawls down through the limestone street,
The girls that blossomed around the door
And hid and sought till the grist-snowed floor
Was printed off with their merry feet
Like notes of music the girls are gone !
The miller said that he always heard
66 SONGS OF TESTERDAT.
The slender song of the outside bird
Through the grumbling roll of the whirling mill,
He never heard when the wheels were still.
Perhaps why not? through the anthem grand
He helps to chant in the Better Land,
The mill s old murmuring monotone
May now steal up to his ear alone,
Bringing a breath of the Savior s Prayer
Droning the base to the angels air
Hum of the Mill in the golden choir!
THE OLD STATE ROAD.
THE old State Road from Utica, New York, to Lake Ontario
was, like Jordan, "a hard road to travel." Macadamized
with rocks that never felt a hammer; bordered with bowlders
and mayweed in summer, and in winter with drifts of snow
that left the country as fenceless as the Arctic Ocean ; rising
and falling with the high hills and the deep valleys like a tre
mendous sea; the most like a liquid when it had a solid s
three dimensions, length, breadth and thickness, with all this,
it had a charm for " us boys " that the Appian Way or the
sheep paths up the Hill of Science never possessed, for it led
out into the unseen world, and people went by stage the
yellow, egg-shaped, rollicking coach that smelled of tar, leather,
buffalo robes and reeking horses, but then no triumphal chariot
of classic story was ever half so grand.
Of that road John Benjamin, Driver, was hero and king.
The breadth of his realm was as far as he could see on both
sides of the way, and his subjects were all the people. His
name, as here given, is exactly half true, and that is about all
we can say of most history. A genial, hearty, tough fellow was
John Benjamin. A reinsman without a master, he could get more
68 SONGS OF TESTERDAT.
volleys of small-arms out of the farther end of a whip-lash and
a skein of silk than any man going; he could turn a straight
tin horn into a key-bugle; he believed in oats, and next to a
matched and mettled four-in-hand, he admitted that man was
the noblest animal on earth. He knew everybody, and was
not above a nod to little boys, and a smile for slips of girls,
even if he could count their toes any summer day as they
stood by the road side. A man might be forgiven for being
unacquainted with Apollo, Jehu or Palinurus, but not with
John Benjamin. Not a lad in the country but meant to be a
man and a driver himself. Not a lass but wished she could
ride in John Benjamin s coach on her wedding day.
The coaches are all wrecked. The Drivers are all gone;
but the stage road remains. I got glimpses of it a while ago,
as I went scurrying along by rail, and of dilapidated stage-
houses, as gray as wasps nests, and as empty as martin-boxes
in mid winter. " So runs the world away ! "
THE OLD STATE ROAD.
CUT through the green wilderness down to the ground,
Straight over the hills by the route of the crow,
Now black as the bird, where the hemlocks abound,
Then through the dim pines, half as white as the snow*
By a cataract s track sunk away to the gulf
That yawned grim and dark as the mouth of a wolf,
Up hill and down dale like the trail of a brave,
From Mohawk s wet marge to Ontario s wave,
When the world was in forest, the hamlet in grove,
Ran the stormy State Road where old Benjamin drove.
The rude rugged bridges all growled at the stage,
The rough rolling ridges all gave it a lift,
You read off the route like a line on a page,
Then dropped out of day into twilight and rift !
Through the sloughs of October it heavily rolled
And lurched like a ship that is mounting a sea,
O er rattling macadams of torrents untold,
Now in silence and sand midway to the knee.
70 SOWGS OF TESTERDAT.
It visioned the night with its yellow-eyed lamps
Like creatures that prowl out of gun-shot of camps,
When plunging along in the gloom of the swamps,
With halt, jolt and thump and the driver s " ahoy ! "
It struck with a bounce on the ribbed corduroy,
And from hemlock to hemlock, log in and log out,
The coach jumped and jounced in a trip-hammer bout
Through Gothic old chasms that swallowed the night,
Out into the clearings all golden with light,
Where flocks of white villages lay in the grass
And watched for the stage and its cargo to pass.
JOHN BENJAMIN, DRIVER.
THE boys and the girls all abroad in high feather,
The heads 6f the horses all tossing together,
Flinging flakes of white foam like snow in wild weather,
All swinging their silk like tassels of corn,
Twas Benjamin s time ! And he whipped out the horn !
Twas the drone of king bees and a myriad strong
Twas fanfare ! and fanfare ! with a bugle s prolong,
Chanticleer ! Chan-ti-deer ! I am coming along !
The bellows dropped down with a vanishing snore,
The smith in black crayon gave the anvil the floor
Til E OLD S TA TE ROAD.
I r i
m
I
72 SONGS OF TESTERDAT.
And leaned on his sledge in the cave of a door;
The landlord in slippers cut away at the heel
Shuffled out on the stoop at the rattle of wheel,
Click-dick went the gates, and like yarn from a reel,
Smiling women wound out and looked down the street
Where the driver swung plumb in his oriole seat,
The mail, chained and padlocked, tramped under his feet.
He tightens the reins and whirls off with a fling
From the roof of the coach his ten feet of string;
The invisible fire-works rattle and ring,
Torpedoes exploding in front and in rear,
A Fourth of July every day in the year!
Now lightly he flicks the " nigh " leader s left ear,
Gives the wheelers a neighborly slap with the stock,
They lay back their ears as the coach gives a rock
And strike a square trot in the tick of a clock !
There s a jumble, a jar and a gravelly trill
In the craunch of the wheels on the slate-stone hill
That grind up the miles like a grist in a mill.
He touches the bay and he talks to the brown,
Sends a token of silk, a word and a frown
To the filly whose heels are too light to stay down.
THE OLD STATE ROAD. 73
Clouds of dust roll behind with two urchins inside
That tow by the straps, as the jolly-boats ride,
From the boot rusty-brown like an elephant s hide.
With a sharp jingling halt he brings up at the door,
A surge to the coach like a ship by the shore,
He casts off the lines and his journey is o er.
If king were to banter, would Benjamin trade
His box for a knighthood, his whip for the blade
That should make him Sir John by some grand accolade ?
Ah, few whips alive in their cleverest mood
Can write with a coach as old Benjamin could,
And you ought to have seen the sixteen feet
With their iron shoes on the stricken stone
When they waltzed around in the narrow street
To a time and a tune that were all their own,
Like the short sharp clicks of the castanet
By the Moorish girls in a dancing set,
When, as free as the sweep of a wizard s wand,
Right-about with a dash came the four-in-hand !
Twas crackle of buckskin and sparkle of fire,
And never a rasp of a grazing tire,
As he cut a clean 6 and swept a bold 8,
Like a boy that is trying his brand-new slate !
74 SOJVGS OF TESTERDAT.
JOHN BENJAMIN S PICTURE.
I SEE him to-day all equipped for the snow
In a wonderful coat that falls to his heels,
With its ripple of capes on his shoulders a-flow,
And a plump visored cap that once was a seal s
Drawn snug to his eye-brows down over his head ;
In gloves of tough buckskin so wrinkled and brown,
With muffler begirt, an equator of red !
A shawl round his neck like a turban slipped down ;
A couple of cubs are his buffalo shoes
Asleep on the mail-bag that carries the news.
All through of a size, in his Esquimaux guise,
He read off the road and he breasted the storm,
No sign of the man but his hands and his eyes,
His heart below frost ah! it always kept warm.
"Afraid?" If bright Phoebus had told him to try
His horses of fire down the steep of the sky,
With the motto Ich dien, I faithfully serve,
He would grasp the gold reins, no falter of nerve,
And, foot on the brake, he would drive down the Blue
Without breaking an axle or losing a shoe !
A touch of North-easters had frosted his tones,
He always must talk so his leaders could hear,
THE OLD STATE ROAD.
75
"l SEE HIM TO-DAY ALL EQUIl 1 ED KOR THE SNOW."
76 SOJVGS OF TESTERDAT.
Ah, men preach from grand pulpits and sit upon thrones,
Whose vision of duty was never so clear!
He loved the old route with its hemlock and rock,
Its sprinkle of mayweed, the breath of its hills,
The girls trailing out in bare feet from the flock
That ran alongside when the horses would walk,
Till they wore a small path like the travel of rills !
Ah, Hero of boyhood ! Asleep in thy grave,
Last Station of all on humanity s route,
In measureless peace where the Lombardies wave,
But time and its tempests have blotted it out.
I letter his name on the Way Bill of Death
To tell who he was that is waiting beneath :
Good night to John Benjamin, King of the Road !
Who sleeps till the blast of the bugle of God.
In feverish noon, on the Highway of Strife,
Make the driver s old rule the law of your life :
Keep the track if you can, but mid-day or mid-night,
Whatever you do, always turn to the right !
THE OLD BARN.
GENUINE boys take to barns as ducks take to water; not
dandies of barns, disguised with paint and crowned with
observatories, but roomy, gray, sincere fellows, with the per
petual twilight, and the big beam, and the broad bay, billowy
with sweet hay, and the granary with its delicious Radcliffian
gloom, and the threshing-floor where flails fell, and feet danced
after the husking, to the measure of Money Musk ; barns with
no adorning save a diamond in each gable to let the swallows
through, and a shingle chanticleer upon the ridge that creaks
but never crows; barns with musical roofs and twittering eaves,
where the rainy days are the pleasantest in all the calendar.
Here, if anywhere, a boy slips off the harness of constraint
and the shoes of propriety that he wears in the house, and
turns himself out to grass, leastwise to hay, and climbs like the
ambitious bean of Jack the Giant-Killer, and leaps like the frogs
of Egypt, and makes a hoop of himself, and lets out his quick
silver life at every toe and finger end like sparks of lightning
from the points of an electric wheel, and gives tongue like the
hounds of Actaeon, and, all the while like the righteous, "with
none to molest or make him afraid ! "
78 SONGS OF TESTERDAT.
Later, he leads the dance with some belle of the husking
on the oaken floor, by the twinkle of tin lanterns, and the eyes
of the astonished horses shining in the stalls, and the fowls
winking slow from the high perch.
The relentless years go on, and the man makes thought-
pilgrimage to the homestead, but he reaches it by way of the
barn, and he tarries there and enters it, sometimes, and beholds
his own boyhood come to resurrection in the old twilight amid
the shouts of dead comrades, the flutter of dead birds, and the
fragrance of clover that perished full forty mowings ago. The
same bee in black velvet and yellow trimmings drifts in his
saucy way over the door-sill. The same red fanning-mill stands
beside the granary door with a hen s nest in the hopper. The
same bars of dusty sunshine strike through the creviced wall
and slant across the bay. There is a strange mingling of the
living and the dead. A man can slip back into childhood
faster in a barn than in a human dwelling. There are no new
fashions in furniture. The doves and the swallows are in the
same old clothes, and the clips of the broad-ax show as plain
as ever on the cobwebbed beams.
If barns are the Meccas of rural boyhood they were the first
Christian churches of the young wilderness. Honored is the
barn above all the palaces of earth, for in it the Savior of the
world was born, and the manger was His cradle.
THE OLD BARN.
A GREAT dim barn with the fragrant bay
Up to the beam with the winter s hay,
And its shrunken siding wasp-nest gray;
Where the cracks between run up and down,
Like the narrow lines in a striped gown,
And let in light of a golden brown.
They are bars of bronze, they are silver snow,-
As the sunshine falls, or sifting slow
The white flakes drift on the wealth below
Of the clover blossoms faint with June
That had heard all day his small bassoon
As the ground-bee played his hum-drum tune.
Ah, what would you give to have again
Your pulse keep time with the dancing rain,
When flashing through at the diamond pane
8o SONGS OF YESTERDAY.
You saw the swallows rapier wings
As they cut the air in ripples and rings
And laughed and talked like human things?
When they drank each other s health, you thought,-
For the creak of the corks you surely caught,
And all day long at their cabins wrought,
Till the mud-walled homes with a foreign look,
A pictured street in an Aztec book,
Began to show in each rafter d nook ?
Never again ! Alack and alas !
Like a breath of life on the looking-glass,
Like a censer smoke, the pictures pass.
THE FLAILS.
"WELL, Jack and Jim," said the farmer gray,
" The flour is out and we ll thrash to-day ! "
A hand is on the granary door,
And a step is on the threshing floor,
It is not his and it is not theirs,
He went above by the Golden Stairs;
The boys are men and the nicknames grown,
Tis James Esquire and Reverend John.
THE OLD BA/tN.
81
WHEN THE BOL NCING KERNELS, BRIGHT AND BKOWN,
LEAP LIGHTLY UP AS THE FLAILS COME DOWN."
82 SONGS OF TESTERDAT.
How they waltzed the portly sheaves about
As they loosed their belts, and shook them out
In double rows on the threshing floor
Clean as the deck of a Seventy-four!
When down the midst in a tawny braid
The sculptured heads of the straw were laid,
It looked a poor man s family bed !
Ah, more than that, twas a carpet fair
Whereon the flails with their measured tread
Should time the step of the answered prayer,
" Give us this day our daily bread ! "
Then the light half-whirl and the hickory clash
With the full free swing of a buckskin lash,
And the trump tramp trump, when the bed is new,
In regular, dull, monotonous stroke,
And the click clack click, on the floor of oak
When the straw grows thin and the blows strike through;
And the French-clock tick to the dancing feet
With the small tattoo of the driven sleet,
When the bouncing kernels bright and brown
Leap lightly up as the flails come down.
THE OLD BARN.
THE FANNING MILL.
HANG up the flails by the big barn-door!
Bring out the mill of the one-boy power !
Nothing at all but a breeze in a box,
Clumsy and red it rattles and rocks,
- ;
H
NOTHING AT ALL BUT A BREEZE IN A BOX.
Sieves to be shaken and hopper to feed,
A Chinaman s hat turned upside down,
The grain slips through at a hole in the crown
Out with the chaff and in with the speed !
84 SOA GS OF TESTERDAT.
The crank clanks round with a boy s quick will,
The fan flies fast till it fills the mill
With its breezy vanes, as the whirled leaves fly
In an open book when the gust goes by ;
And the jerky jar and the zig-zag jolt
Of the shaken sieves, and the jingling bolt,
And the grate of cogs and the axle s clank
And the rowlock jog of the crazy crank,
And the dusty rush of the gusty chaff
The worthless wreck of the harvest s raff,
And never a lull, the brisk breeze blows
From the troubled grain its tattered clothes,
Till tumbled and tossed it downward goes
The rickety route by the rackety stair,
Clean as the sand that the simoon snows,
And drifts at last in a bank so fair
You know you have found the Answered Prayer!
THE OLD BARN S TENANTRY.
THE rooster stalks on the manger s ledge,
He has a tail like a scimitar s edge,
A marshal s plume on his Afghan neck,
An admiral s stride on his quarter deck.
THE OLD BARN.
86 SOJV G S OF 2 E S TE RDA 2".
He rules the roost and he walks the bay,
With a dreadful cold and a Turkish way,
Two broadsides fires with his rapid wings -
This sultan proud, of a line of kings,
One guttural laugh, four blasts of horn,
Five rusty syllables rouse the morn !
The Saxon lambs in their woolen tabs
Are playing school with their a, b, abs;
A, e! I, o! All the cattle spell
Till they make the blatant vowels tell,
And a half-laugh whinny fills the stalls
When down in the rack the clover falls,
A dove is waltzing around his mate,
Two chevrons black on his wings of slate,
And showing off with a wooing note
The satin shine of his golden throat.
It is Ovid s " Art of Love " re-told
In a binding fine of blue and gold !
Ah, the buxom girls that helped the boys-
The nobler Helens of humbler Trovs
THE OLD BARN.
88 SONGS Or YESTERDAY.
As they stripped the husks with rustling fold
From eight-rowed corn as yellow as gold,
By the candle-light in pumpkin bowls,
And the gleams that showed fantastic holes
In the quaint old lantern s tattooed tin,
From the hermit glim set up within;
By the rarer light in girlish eyes
As dark as wells, or as blue as skies.
I hear the laugh when the ear is red,
I see the blush with the forfeit paid,
The cedar cakes with the ancient twist,
The cider cup that the girls have kissed,
And I see the fiddler through the dusk
As he twangs the ghost of "Money Musk!"
The boys and girls in a double row
Wait face to face till the magic bow
Shall whip the tune from the violin,
And the merry pulse of the feet begin.
THE OLD BARN. 89
MONEY MUSK.
IN shirt of check and tallowed hair
The fiddler sits in the bulrush chair
Like Moses basket stranded there
On the brink of Father Nile.
He feels the fiddle s slender neck,
Picks out the notes with thrum and check,
And times the tune with nod and beck,
And thinks it a weary while.
All ready ! Now he gives the call,
Cries, Honor to the ladies!" All
The jolly tides of laughter fall
And ebb in a happy smile.
D-O-W-N comes the bow on every string,
"First couple join right hands and swing ! "
And light as any blue-bird s wing
"Swing once and a half times round!"
Whirls Mary Martin all in blue
Calico gown and stockings new,
And tinted eyes that tell you true,
Dance all to the dancing sound.
90 .S O N G S OF TE ,V TE RDAT.
She flits about big Moses Brown
Who holds her hands to keep her down
And thinks her hair a golden crown
And his heart turns over once !
His cheek with Mary s breath is wet,
It gives a second somerset !
He means to win the maiden yet,
Alas, for the awkward dunce !
" Your stoga boot has crushed my toe ! "
"I d rather dance with one-legged Joe,"
" You clumsy fellow ! " "Pass below ! "
And the first pair dance apart.
Then "Forward six ! " advance, retreat,
Like midges gay in sunbeam street
Tis Money Musk by merry feet
And the Money Musk by heart!
" Three quarters round your partner swing ! "
"Across the set!" The rafters ring,
The girls and boys have taken wing
And have brought their roses out !
Tis "Forward six /" with rustic grace
Ah, rarer far than "Swing to place!"
THE OLD KARN.
9 2 SOA GS OF YESTERDAY.
Than golden clouds of old point-lace
They bring the dance about.
Then clasping hands all "Right and left!"
All swiftly weave the measure deft
Across the woof in living weft
And the Money Musk is done !
Oh, dancers of the rustling husk,
Good night, sweethearts, tis growing dusk,
Good night for aye to Money Musk,
For the heavy march begun!
SILVER WEDDING DAY.
A SILVER wedding means two starry days : one trembling
1\ with the ineffable grace of youth through the dews of
the early East; the other, clear, calm, serene, shining down
upon the middle of the world. " One star differeth from another
star in glory."
A slender, smooth-faced friend, who could tumble types into
position as a French clock ticks, helped the writer commit his
first typographical sin by printing a book for him. It was
born of an old hand-press, and bound to a board like a small
papoose, in the year eighteen hundred and well, no matter,
it was before the first starry day had dawned. The friend
turned editor, general, Congressional Representative, and at last
turned his twenty-fifth wedding day. And so from the hills of
Chenango to the Lakes of Wisconsin, a greeting went to him
of the silver beard and the silver day. But these silver-mounted
annuals glitter all along the year. The clock of the age strikes
quarters for some pair every day. And so, from this pebble
of a poem flung into the river Time, a concentric ring may
ripple out perhaps and touch yet other hearts with its little
wave of cheer.
SILVER WEDDING DAY.
B
REAK cloudless bright, thy Silver Day,
Old friend of boyhood and of prime!
Bind August sheaves with flowers of May,
And ring the silver bells of Time!
II.
The years, like planets, rise and set,
We bid some royal day good-by
Stand fast, dear heart, that day may yet
Dawn grandly up the Eastern sky.
III.
Oh, Wedding Morn ! as once before
Upon the rose of forty-nine,
On silver bride of seventy-four
In breathless splendor rise and shine!
9 6 SOWGS OF YESTERDAT.
IV.
Three bridemaids stand and bless the place :
A stately girl with step of air
Another with uplifted face,
And parted lips and golden hair
V.
And one appareled all in white
Save where the rose shows through the cheek,
Save where the eyes flash blue and bright
And look the vow she cannot speak.
VI.
I know them all! Red, white, and blue
Are Love s own colors everywhere,
And there smiles Hope as young as dew,
With tangled sunshine in her hair.
VII.
And grander than the graceful twain,
Lo, queenly Faith, whose heavenly eyes
Discern the clear beyond the rain
And catch their tint from cloudless skies.
SIL VER WEDDING DA T.
97
98 SONGS OF TESTERDAT.
VIII.
Joy to the Wife who stands beside
That trefoil group of Paradise !
God bless the bridegroom and the bride !
As Thou hast blest, so bless them twice,
IX.
With rounded days, serene as June,
That flowers the year in tropic clime,
Through life s long summer afternoon,
Like perfect words in perfect time.
X.
Chenango s greensward breaks to-day
As grandly round the scalloped sky,
Her billows lift the rocks of gray,
Their wooded crests as bravely fly,
As when they kept the world away,
These breathless seas that never die!
XL
This troubled earth is troubled still,
The brooks yet run their pebbly route,
I count each old familiar hill,
But how " God s acre " widens out !
SILVER WEDDING DAT. 99
XII.
The marble doors bear household words
That charm our daily speech no more,
Strange that the sweet old songs of birds
Outlive the name that beauty bore
XIII.
That youth and genius should have died
Like waves along some drowsy shore,
And yet these graceful elms abide
And lilacs bloom beside the door.
XIV.
The sunshine has a lonely look,
The dew has vanished from the sod,
The past a worn and tattered book
With little left but love and God.
XV.
Whoever dies, these live right on!
Why play the gloomy March in Saul?
Be green, ye graves ! Be bright, oh, sun !
Life is not lived without ye all.
100 SONGS OF TESTERDAT.
XVI.
Be girded up, oh, heart of mine,
And wing this greeting to the West;
Old comrade of the days lang syne,
Be thou and thine forever blest!
THE SPINNING WHEEL.
A WHITE pine floor and a low-ceiled room,
A wheel and a reel and a great brown loom,
The windows out and the world in bloom,
A pair of " swifts " in the corner, where
The grandmother sat in her rush-wrought chair,
And pulled at the distaff s tangled hair,
And sang to herself as she spun the tow
While "the little wheel" ran as soft and low
As muffled brooks where the grasses grow,
And lie one way with the water s flow.
As the Christ s field lilies free from sin,
So she grew like them when she ceased to spin,
Counted her " knots " and handed them in !
"The great wheel" rigged in its harness stands
A three-legg d thing with its spindle and bands;
102 SONGS OF TESTERDAT.
And the slender spokes, like the willow wands
That spring so thick in the low, wet lands,
Turn dense at the touch of a woman s hands.
As the wheel whirls swift, how rank they grow !
But how sparse and thin when the wheel runs slow
Forward and backward, and to and fro !
There s a heap of rolls like clouds in curl.
And a bright-faced, springy, barefoot girl
She gives a touch and a careless whirl,
She holds a roll in her shapely hand
That the sun has kissed and the wind has fanned,
And its mate obeys the wheel s command.
There must be wings on her rosy heel !
And there must be bees in the spindled steel !
A thousand spokes in the dizzy wheel !
Have you forgotten the left-breast knock
When you bagged the bee in the hollyhock,
And the angry burr of an ancient clock,
All ready to strike, came out of the mill,
Where covered with meal the rogue was still,
Till it made your thumb and finger thrill?
THE SPINNING WHEEL.
It is one, two, three the roll is caught;
Tis a backward step and the thread is taut,
A hurry of wheel and the roll is wrought !
103
^s*<^__
"SHE GIVES A TOUCH AND A CARELESS WHIRL."
Tis one, two, three, and the yarn runs on,
And the spindle shapes like a white-pine cone,
As even and still as something grown.
104 SONGS OF TESTER DAT,
The barefoot maiden follows the thread
Like somebody caught and tether d and led
Up to the buzz of the busy head.
With backward sweep and willowy bend
Monarch would borrow if maiden could lend,
She draws out the thread to the white wool s end,
From English sheep of the old-time farm,
With their legs as fair as a woman s arm,
And faces white as a girl s alarm.
She breaks her thread with an angry twang,
Just as if at her touch a harp-string rang
And keyed to the quaint old song she sang
That came to a halt on her cherry lip
While she tied one knot that never could slip,
And thought of another, when her ship,
All laden with dreams in splendid guise,
Should sail right out of the azure skies
And a lover bring with great brown eyes !
Ah, broad the day but her work was done
Two "runs" by reel! She had twisted and spun
Her two score ** knots " by set of sun,
THE SPINNING WHEEL. 105
With her one, two, three, the wheel beside,
And the three, two, one, of her backward glide,
So to and fro in calico pride
Till the bees went home and daytime died !
Her apron white as the white sea foam,
She gathered the wealth of her velvet gloom,
And railed it in with a tall back-comb.
She crushed the dews with her naked feet,
The track of the sun was a golden street,
The grass was cool and the air was sweet.
The girl gazed up at the mackerel sky,
And it looked like a pattern lifted high,
But she never dreamed of angels nigh,
And she spoke right out : " Do just see there !
" What a blue and white for the clouded pair
" I m going to knit for my Sunday wear ! "
The wheel is dead and the bees are gone,
And the girl is dressed in a silver lawn,
And her feet are shod with golden dawn.
106 SONG S OF TESTERDAT.
From a wind-swung tree that waves before,
A shadow is dodging in at the door,
Flickering ghost on the white-pine floor,
And the cat, unlearned in Shadow s law,
Just touched its edge with a velvet paw
To hold it still with an ivory claw!
But its spectral cloak is blown about,
And a moment more and the ghost is out,
And leaves us all in shadowy doubt
If ever it fell on floor at all,
Or if ever it swung along the wall,
Or whether a shroud or a phantom shawl!
Oh, brow that the old-time morning kissed !
Good night, my girl of the double and twist!
Oh, barefoot vision ! Vanishing mist !
MOWING.
H, days that are always dying,
Each turning its face to mine
Across the breadth of a life-time,
Like suns with their level shine
That set on a world divine !
II.
Sweet day of doom in the meadow
Most redolent day abroad,
When grasses, daisies and clover
All die like the Saints of God,
And fragrance floats in the sunshine
And eloquence fills the sod.
III.
But Time has mowed with the mowers,
The boys have boys of their own,
A monster prowls in the meadow,
I0 8 SONGS OF YESTERDAY.
The daisies of girls are grown,
I linger and think alone.
IV.
That maple Bethel of summer!
I think of its emerald crown,
Whence fell the dapples of shadow,
Rosettes and a golden brown,
As if a beautiful leopard
In a timothy lair lay down.
V.
There heroes sit in the noonings
And gaze on the battle-ground,
And wipe their brows with their jackets,
And luncheon and laugh go round,
And lads in the yarn suspenders,
The X-backed boys abound!
VI.
A jug as sleek as a cricket
Is drawn from a grassy drift,
Swung lightly out by the shoulder,
Swung up with a dexterous lift,
Swung back to the bird s-nest rift !
MO WING.
VII.
The mowers all rallied and ready
Strike in at the leader s word,
Right on through clusters of lilies,
Those duplicate texts of the Lord,
And put the broad field to sword!
109
THE X-BACKED BOYS.
VIII.
The woods grow fine in the distance,
As moss in a painted urn,
The lady elms and the beeches
Are patterns in lace that turn
Asparagus plumes and fern.
no SO1VGS OF TESTERDAT.
IX.
* The hills are polished as porcelain
And tinted with mountain blue,
One lamb-like cloud, as if angels,
With nought upon earth to do,
Had brought up by hand a ewe,
X.
Lies clean and white in the welkin
As snow on a blue-grass hill ;
A red-capped drummer is beating
Tattoo with an ivory bill;
A small brown fifer is playing
A low and a lazy trill;
And the blade of a narrow rill
Slips out from under a shadow,
A scabbard so strangely still,
That what was pictured by willow
Might well have been cast by hill!
XI.
The birds trail wings in the sunshine
And sit in a silent row,
The locusts are winding their watches,
MOWING.
in
THE MOWERS.
H2 SONUS OF TESTERDAT.
The butterflies opening slow,
Like flame are the flowers in blow.
XII.
A breeze drops out of the maple
And travels the rippling grain,
The fog lifts white from the river,
The glorified ghost of rain
Ascending to Heaven again.
XIII.
The fields are grand in their velvet,
The tall grass rustles red,
The bees boil up in their anger,
The meadow-lark leaves her bed,
Right onward the mowers tread!
XIV.
With steady stride they are swaying
The snath with the chronic writhe,
A wispy rush and a rustle,
A swing to the grasses lithe,
Right home through the swath the scythe!
MOWING. 113
XV.
Then rising, falling, and drifting,
As buoys on the billows ride,
The braided brims of the shadows
Afloat on the red-top tide
The brows of the mowers hide.
XVI.
The blades are rasping and sweeping,
The timothy tumbles free,
The field is ridgy and rolling
With swaths like the surging sea
Heaped up to the toiler s knee.
XVII.
Hark ! whit-to-whit of the whetstone,
The stridulous kiss of steel,
The shout of winners exultant
That distance the field and wheel
As gay as a Highland reel.
XVIII.
Swing right! Swing left! And the mowers
Stream out in a sea-bird flight,
114 SONGS OF TESTERDAT.
The line grows dimmer and dotted
With flickering shirt-sleeves white
Washed clean in the morning light.
XIX.
The steel-cold eddies are whirling
About and about their feet,
Die, Clover, Grasses and Daisies !
No dead in the world so sweet,
Ye Slain of the windrow street!
XX.
Oh, wreck and raid of September!
Oh, prodigal death to die !
Til April gay with her ribbon,
Comes bringing the blue-bird sky,
Oh, lilies of Christ, good-by !
LIFE ON THE FARM.
MILKING TIME.
A" the foot of the hill the milk-house stands,
Where the Balm of Gilead spreads his hands,
And the willow trails at each pendent tip
The lazy lash of a golden whip,
And an ice-cold spring with a tinkling sound
Makes a bright green edge for the dark green ground.
Cool as a cave is the air within,
Brave are the shelves with the burnished tin
Of the curving shores, and the seas of white
That turn to gold in a single night,
As if the disc of a winter noon
Should take the tint of a new doubloon!
Burned to a coal is the amber day,
Noon s splendid fire has faded away,
And, lodged on the edge of a world grass-grown,
Il6 SONGS OF 1 ESTERDAr.
Like a great live ember, glows the sun ;
When it falls behind the crimson bars
Look out for the sparks of the early stars-.
With the clang of her bell a motherly brown
No trace of her lineage handed down
Is leading the long deliberate line
Of the Devons red and the Durhams fine.
" Co-boss ! " " Co-boss ! " and the caravan
With a dowager swing comes down the lane,
And lowing along from the clover bed
Troops over the bars with a lumbering tread.
Under the lee of the patient beasts,
On their tripod stools like Pythian priests,
The tow-clad boys and the linsey girls
Make the cows " give down " in milky swirls.
There s a stormy time in the drifted pails,
There s a sea-foam swath in the driving gales,
Then girls and boys with whistle and song,
Two pails apiece, meander along
The winding path in the golden gloom,
And " set " the milk in the twilight room.
LIFE ON THE FARM. 117
NIGHT ON THE FARM.
Now all clucked home to their feather beds
Are the velvety chicks of the downy heads,
In the old Dutch style with the beds above,
All under the wings of a hovering love,
But a few chinked in, as plump as wrens,
Around the edge of the ruffled hens !
With nose in the grass the dog keeps guard,
With long-drawn breaths in the old farm-yard
The cattle strand on the scattered straw,
And cease the swing of the under jaw.
The cat s eyes shine in the currant bush,
Dews in the grass and stars in the hush,
And over the marsh the lightning-bug
Is swinging his lamp to the bull-frog s chug,
And the slender chaps in the greenish tights,
That jingle and trill the sleigh-bells nights.
The shapes with the padded feet prowl round
And the crescent moon has run aground,
And the inky beetles blot the night
And have blundered out the candle-light!
i8 SONGS OF TESTERDAT.
And everywhere the pillows fair
Are printed with heads of tumbled hair.
Time walks the house with a clock-tick tread,
Without and within the farm s abed!
THE MORNING.
APPRENTICED angels everywhere
Were out all night in the darkened air,
A dome to build and a wall to lay
And shelter the world from outer day.
They smoothed the arch with trowels of night,
Work as they would it never shed light ;
They mended the roof with might and main,
But it leaked like broken thatch in the rain.
At crevice and chink the curves of blue
Would let the glory glimmering through
From the countless stars like silver sand
All sifted and sowed with radiant hand.
To show Creation s grain in the sky
God quarried the worlds and let them lie !
LIFE ON THE FARM. 119
That Eastern wall with its granite crown
In the early dawn came tumbling down,
With no more crash than the roses make
When out of the buds the beauties break.
The world is a-fire with a pearl surprise,
A garden gate to our wondering eyes
Is opening into Paradise !
The dews are off and the bees abroad,
The Sun stands armed in the gates of GOD!
THE CHURNING.
No graceful shape like a Grecian urn,
But upright, downright, stands the churn.
Broad at the base and tapering small,
Above it the dasher straight and tall
Windowless tower with flag-staff bare,
Warrior or warden, nobody there!
Fashioned of cedar, queen of the wood,
Cedar as sweet as a girl in a hood
Hiding her face like a blush-rose bud.
The dasher waits knee-deep in the cream,
As cattle wade in the shady stream,
120 SONGS OF TESTERDAT.
And flat in the foot as a four-leafed clover,
Just waits a touch to trample it over.
Beside the churn a maiden stands,
Nimble and naked her arms and hands
Another Ruth when the reapers reap,
Her dress, as limp as a flag asleep,
Is faced in front with a puzzling check;
Her feet are bare as her sun-browned neck;
Her hair rays out like a lady fern.
With a single hand she starts the churn,
The play at the first is free and swift,
Then she gives both hands to the plunge and lift:
A short quick splash in the Milky Way
One-two, one-two, in Iambic play
A one-legg d dance in a wooden clog,
Dancing a jig in a watery bog
A soberer gait at an all-day jog
Up-down, up-down, like a pony s feet,
A steady trot in a sloppy street.
The spattering dash and the tinkling wash
Deaden and dull to a creamy swash
Color of daffodil shows in the churn !
Glimpses of gold ! Beginning to turn !
LIFE ON THE FARM.
121
BESIDE THE CHURN A MAIDEN STANDS,
NIMBLE AND NAKED HER ARMS AND HANDS.
122 SONGS OF TESTERDAT.
Slower and lower deader and dumb
Daisies and Buttercups ! Butter has come !
What thinks the maiden all the while?
Whatever she thinks, it makes her smile,
Whatever she does it is only seeming,
Spinning and weaving, wedding and dreaming;
Ah, charms are hid in the ingots gold,
And more come out than the churn can hold!
Not butter at all, but bonnets sown
With gardens of flowers and all full blown;
A clouded comb of the tortoise shell,
Ah, it is a beauty and she a belle !
A grape-leaf breast-pin s restless shine
Is twinkling up from the fairy mine.
The dasher clinks on a bright gold ring,
Morocco shoes, like a martin s wing,
Come up with a gown of flounces silk
Some fairy lost in the buttermilk !
Ribbons of blue for love-knot ties
To match the tint of her longing eyes;
Ribbons of pink and a belt of gray
Rippling along in a watery way.
LIFE ON THE FARM. 123
She looks at herself in Fancy s glass,
And she sees her own lithe figure pass
She closes her eyes and looks again,
And sees, as she dreams, the prince of men
She closes her eyes, and, side by side,
He is the bridegroom and she the bride !
Ah, never, my girl, will visions burn
As bright as rose in the cedar churn!
Ah, what have we won if this be lost:
THE BLESSING FREE AND THE BLISS AT COST !
THE OLD SCHOOL-HOUSE.
EiW-BROWED school-house, silver-sided,
Crowns Life s Eastern shore,
Where the downy day-times glided,
Ere the throngs around the door,
By the Jordan were divided
Evermore !
Evermore till comes the Master
Through the gates ajar,
And each faded earthly aster
Shall have blossomed out a star
God the Master of our master,
From afar !
Slow the battered door is giving,
As it gave of yore
Lo, the life it has been living
Curved upon the entry floor
126 SONGS OF TESTERDAT.
Closed at last on every grieving,
Locked at last with spiders reeving
Weary door!
Cenotaph of vanished faces
Lettered by the dead
Carved and graved the empty places,
Names unmeaning and unsaid,
And no token of the graces
That have fled!
As the door of ceaseless swinging,
Wander as it will,
Ever to the portal clinging
Sweeps its arc and bides there still,
So life s curve is homeward bringing,
So my heart forever winging,
Bides there still!
SCHOOL "CALLED."
DON T you hear the children coming,
Coming into school?
Don t you hear the master drumming
On the window with his rule ?
THE OLD SCHOOL-HOUSE.
Master drumming, children coming
Into school?
Tip-toed figures reach the catch,
Tiny fingers click the latch,
Curly-headed girls throng in
Lily-free from toil and sin;
127
" TIP-TOED FIGURES KEACH THE CATCH."
Breezy boys bolt in together,
Bringing breaths of winter weather,-
Bringing baskets Indian-checked,
Dinners in them sadly wrecked ;
I2 8 SONGS OF TESTERDAT.
Ruddy-handed, mittens off,
Soldiers from the Malakoff
Built of snow all marble white,
Bastions shining in the light,
Marked with many a dint and dot
Of the ice-cold cannon shot!
Hear the last assaulting shout,
See the gunners rally out,
Charge upon the battered door,
School is called, and battle o er!
SCHOOL TIME.
DON T you hear the scholars thrumming?
Bumble-bees in June!
All the leaves together thumbing,
Like singers hunting for a tune?
Master mending pens, and humming
Bonny Doon ?
As he thinks, a perished maiden
Fords the brook of song,
Comes to him so heavy laden,
Stepping on the notes along,
THE OLD SCHOOL-HOUSE. 129
Stands beside him, blessed maiden !
Waited long!
Cherry-ripe the glowing stove,
Grammar class inflecting " love,"
"I love you love, and love we all"
Bounding States the Humboldts small,
Chanting slow in common time,
Broken China s rugged rhyme :
" Yang-tse-kiang Ho-ang-ho "
Heavenly rivers ! How they flow !
" Dnieper-Dniester "- Russian snow !
Writing class with heads one way
Tongues all out for a holiday!
Hark, the goose-quill s spattering grate,
Rasping like an awkward skate,
Swinging round in mighty Bs,
Lazy Xs, crazy Zs
Here a scholar, looking solemn,
Blunders up a crooked column,
Pisa s own Italic tower,
Done in slate in half an hour,
Figures piled in mighty sum,
He wets a finger, down they come \
130 SOA GS OF I ESTERDAT.
Learners in the Rule of Three,
" I love you, but he loves me ! "
Blue eyes, black eyes, gray eyes, three.
Aproned urchin, aged five,
Youngest in the humming hive,
Standing by the Master s knee,
Calls the roll of A, B, C ;
Frightened hair all blown about,
Buttered lips in half a pout,
Knuckle boring out an eye,
Saying "P" and thinking "pie,"
Feeling for a speckled bean,
Twixt each breath a dumb ravine,
Like clock unwound, but going yet,
He slowly ticks the alphabet :
" A-a/i E-a/i C-ah D,"
Finds the bean and calls for " E ! "
See that crevice in the floor
Slender line from desk to door,
First Meridian of the school,
Which all the scholars toe by rule.
Ranged along in rigid row,
Inky, golden, brown and tow,
THE OLD SCHOOL-HOUSE.
HER FINGERS DOVE-TAILED, LIPS APART,
STANDS WITH HEAD OF TREMBLING GOLD.
SONGS OF YESTERDAY.
Are heads of spellers high and low,
Like notes in music sweet as June,
Dotting off a dancing tune.
Boy of Bashan takes the lead,
Roughly thatched his bullet head;
At the foot an eight-year-old,
Stands with head of trembling gold;
Watch her when the word is missed !
Her eyes are like an amethyst,
Her fingers dove-tailed, lips apart,
She knows that very word by heart!
Swinging like a pendulum,
Trembling lest it fail to come.
Runs the word along the line
Like the running of a vine,
Blossoms out from lip to lip
Till the girl in azure slip,
Catches breath and spells the word,
Flits up the class like any bird,
Cheeks in bloom with honest blood,
And proudly stands where Bashan stood!
Evening reddens on the wall
" Attention ! " Now " Obeisance " all !
THE OLD SCHOOL-HOUSE. 133
The girls short dresses touch the floor
They drop their curt sies at the door ;
The boys jerk bows with jack-knife springs,
And out of doors they all take wings !
Sparkling smiles along the line,
Beads upon the amber wine,
Sunshine on the river Rhine.
Broken line and clouded wine,
Night upon the river Rhine !
Vanished all all change is death;
Life is not the counted breath.
The slanting sun low in the West,
Brings to the Master blessed rest.
See where it bridges afternoon,
And slopes the golden day-time down,
As if to him at last was given,
An easy grade to restful Heaven!
His hair is silver not with light,
His heart is heavy not with night,
Dying day the world has kissed,
Good-night, Sweethearts ! The school s dismissed !
134 SONGS OF TESTERDAT.
GOING TO SPELLING SCHOOL.
THE broad of a silvery noon !
And the world lies under the moon,
Under the moon and the snow ;
The moon comes out from under a cloud
And shines on the world below
The snow, cold white as a linen shroud
Put on but an hour ago,
Is a pearly web with a silver thread,
Robe for a bridal and not for the dead.
The river is silent as light,
The road is a ribbon of white,
\
Ribbon of silk from Japan
Its borders rich with satin and shine,
Betray where the sleigh-shoes ran
That iron the snow to a fabric fine,
And edged like a lady s fan.
Ah, the night is fair as a marble girl,
Dusty with stars and the mother of pearl !
The school-house is red and aloof,
And rolls from its mossv old roof
THE OLD SCHOOL-HOUSE.
135
I3 6 SONGS OF TESTERDAT.
Columns of glorified gloom,
As if there grew from the chimney rude
A Smoke-tree clad in its bloom,
A phoenix fair of the burning wood,
Just sprung from the summer room.
With that only trace of an earthly taint
Picture as white as the soul of a saint!
A twanging and trilling of wires !
Are angels attuning their lyres,
Tuning with negligent hand?
Hark, chimes of bells from over the hills
Dance merrily through the land
The tinkling troll of a hundred rills!
Cymbals of brass from a band !
Tis the ringing strings of the bells in bronze
Sprinkling the night with their showery tones.
A spell is abroad and a song,
The spellers and singers along,
Wizards and witches by pairs;
In cutters snug are the Adams and Eves,
Eden s own children and heirs!
Bells in the woods, in lieu of the leaves
And bells that the echo wears
THE OLD SCHOOL-HOUSE. 137
It is ring, ring, ring, to the swinging gait,
Then the teams break trot, for the hour is late,
At a ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling, galloping rate !
Now over the ridges they ride,
And down through the valley they glide,
Bring up at the school-house door,
With bundled girls in the quilted hood,
Edging of down, as of yore,
Their hearts as sweet as the cedar wood,
Gowns without gusset or gore,
Vandykes with a peak before,
And their hair glossed down like a blackbird s wings,
And their shoes laced up, and with leather strings!
They laugh and they leap to the ground,
In woolen, all mittened and gowned,
Lit up with a ribbon blue,
A breath of cloves or of sassafras,
And innocent eyes so true
That look you back like a looking-glass,
And cheeks with the roses through,
All the girls like flowers that are newly blown,
In the zoneless grace of their " London brown,"
138 SOA GS OF TESTERDAT.
Not a charm in bonds, nor a beauty laced,
The cestus of Venus would girdle the waist.
A chorusing crew comes last
In the Family Ark of the past,
Packing it full and in pairs
The rude old sleigh, so roomy and red,
Kitchens not robbed of their chairs,
But strewn with straw like Poverty s bed,
Millennial lambs in their lairs!
Like an emigrant ship is the lumbering craft,
Crowded and laden both forward and aft,
With a wooden heart surmounting the stern,
Where the teamsters old gave the reins a turn
Ah, the hearts that throbbed with their youthful blood
Were as free from care as the sculptured wood !
Oh, sweetheart of Visions below,
Old Covenant Ark of the snow,
Freighted for church at the door!
Two, side by side, on the sheep-skin seat,
Are bound for Canaan s shore,
The square foot-stove is under their feet,
A buffalo robe before
THE OLD SCHOOL-HOUSE. 139
In the two flag chairs that are side by side,
Are the gray old man and his silver bride;
Still she carries one for the added ten,
May follow the rule and carry again !
Then the boys and girls in their Sunday clothes,
And the rank slopes down as it farther goes,
To three in a row, for the last are least,
Like the sparks of stars in the early East !
Ah, the old red sleigh, be it ever blest !
It has borne the dead to their silent rest,
The bearers, by twos, as they rode abreast
Has carried the brides, their bedding and " things,"
When the girls were queens and the bridegrooms kings,
To the splay-foot jog of the olden time,
And the clang, clang, clang, of the sleigh-bells chime.
Ah, necklace of melody old,
With apples and walnuts of gold
That danced to the horses feet !
The mother bell in the middle hung,
As big as a " Golden Sweet,"
Then small each way till the string was strung,
And two filbert bells did meet,
And two rhyming hearts did beat.
140
SOWGS OF YESTERDAY.
Ah, the beaded bells of the satin street
That beat the air with their tuneful sleet !
Ah, the string is dumb, and as green with rust
As the dimpled graves of the maidens dust!
DREAMING.
THE HEROES AND THE FLOWERS.
IN Rose Hill, Chicago, stands a monument to the Boys in
Blue. It is the Angel Hope, waked by a master from her
sleep in the pale tombs of Carrara. A star is over her head,
and one hand is lifted toward it as if she had just plucked it
fresh from Heaven, or as if she had halted it that it might
shine there forever. She keeps watch and ward over the dead
soldiers of Bridges Battery lying at her feet. Their graves
radiate from the base of the monument like the rays that
encircle the head of the Madonna.
Standing by the Angel one day in May, and looking down
upon those beds of peace, whose occupants I had known, and
some of whom I had seen in the grand anger of battle, this
was the thought : will nothing wake these cannoneers ?
Let us try bugles, and they shall not wake them.
Let the drums beat to arms, but they shall not heed them.
We will wheel out the battery and give the thunder-gusts
of battle, and they shall slumber right on.
They are hopelessly dead. They are utterly dumb. We
must summon witnesses to testify for them who cannot speak,
and among them this marble Angel that came all the way
142 SOJVGS OF YESTERDAY.
across the sea for their sake. That star above her brow is a
star fallen out of the Flag ! The Flag ? And we never thought
of it when we would wake the sleepers ! Ah, that s the thing.
Over all " the pomp and circumstance " of war, over all consti
tutions and laws, they will surely heed the Flag, and they do,
and the dead soldiers answer the roll-call. So, the poem did
not blossom like a flower in a week, but opened like a fan in
an instant, and who wonders?
That golden day in May, on the threshold of June, the mur
mur of the distant city, the hush of the multitude, the air sweet
with ten thousand flowers, the marble doors of the enduring
houses the grave-digger builds, standing far and near, white and
still in the sunshine doors that shall open to mortal love and
longing never more ah, me, I can never forget it, for I shall
never look upon its like again.
THE HEROES AND THE FLOWERS.
ROSE HILL.
I.
OH, be dumb all ye clouds
As the dead in their shrouds,
Let your pulses of thunder die softly away,
Ye have nothing to do
But to drift round the blue,
For the emerald world grants a furlough to-day !
II.
Bud, blossom, and flower,
All blended in shower,
In the grandest and gentlest of rains shall be shed
On the acres of God
With their billows of sod
Breaking breathless and beautiful over the dead!
144 SOJVGS OF TESTERDAT.
III.
They do flush the broad land
With the flower-laden hand,
Drift the dimples of graves with the colors of even;
Where a BOY IN BLUE dreams,
A " Forget-me-not " gleams
No rain half so sweet ever fell out of Heaven !
IV.
From no angel was caught
The magnificent thought
To pluck daisies and roses, those bravest of things,
For they stand all the while
In their graves with a smile
And to strew with live fragrance dead lions and kings!
V.
It was somebody born,
It was Rachel forlorn,
Twas the love they named Mary, the trust they called Ruth ;
Twas a woman who told
That the blossoms unfold
A defiance to death and a challenge for truth;
That the violet s eye,
THE HEROES AND THE FLOWERS. 145
Though it sleep, by and by
Shall watch out the long age in the splendor of youth.
VI.
Ah, she hallowed the hour
When she gathered the flower;
When she said, " This shall emblem the fame of my brave ! "
When she thought, "This shall borrow
"Brighter azure to-morrow;"
When she laid it to-day on the crest of a grave.
A great mart s majestic arterial beat
Throbbed this multitude out, where the graves at our feet
Have so roughened the earth with their motionless surge
That we know we are treading its uttermost verge,
That another step more and life s flag would be furled,
Another step more we are out of the world!
Did ye think we had come to give greeting to June,
Who had opened her gates by a May-day too soon,
Breathed her buds into blossom, her birds into song,
And reached here before us by ever so long?
Stay, reverent feet ! Bid the bosom be still !
The campaigning is ended we halt at Rose Hill.
146 SOJVGS OF YESTERDAY.
We are looking for comrades off duty forever !
Do you dream that a handful of ashes can sever
The stout sterling hearts that were beating as one,
And kept time as they beat, to the throb of a gun?
Now summon the sexton, master-builder for man,
Who has worked for the world since its dying began
Bid him tell if he thinks he ever has crushed
Out the love of a heart that was worth the poor dust
That would hide it. I solemnly tell you, no clod
Tolls the knell of the love as immortal as God,
That is born out of danger and christened with blood;
That can look in the graves of dead valor and say
It was grander than living, that passing away,
For they halted the world for the truth and the right,
Said " Begone, mighty Death, and forever good-night ! "
And, shoulder to shoulder, let Batteries tell
How they marched within hail of the borders of hell.
Ah, the brave cannoneers overtaken at last !
Here they went into camp when " the dead line " was passed,
Left the turbulent world with a cadence sublime,
And these born sons of thunder had marched out of time,
Worn away for grand orders their glorious scars,
Here they lie, side by side, front face to the stars!
THE HEROES AND THE FLOWERS. 147
HERE THEY WENT INTO CAMP
WHEN THE DEAD LINE WAS PASSED."
148 SO^VGS OF TESTERDAT.
And I knew we should find them ! As ever their wont,
Bridges Battery Boys always breasted the brunt,
As in life, so in death, they had gone to the " front ! "
Will they sleep out their furlough ? Blow bugles amain t
Give the old warble breath ! Let them hear it again
As they heard it that day when Cumberland s crags
Right up to the sky were a-flutter with flags,
As if eyries of eagles should burst on the sight,
And sweep up the mountain on pinions of might
To meet the gray morning half way in its flight !
Let the sounding recall mock Euroclydon s lips
When it strews the Levant with a million of ships,
And the shout through the roar of the seas as they whelm,
Is "All hands upon deck and two at the helm!"
Oh, ye trumpets give o er! If the sleepers can hear
They will answer you back with an old-fashioned cheer.
There s a goldfinch aloft on a billow of song,
There s the drift of a leaf as it rustles along
Can nothing bring utterance out of the sod
But the blast of that angel, the Bugler of God?
Bring out the drum-majors ! Strike with ague the air,
Bid them sling up the parchment, and tighten the snare,
THE HEROES AND THE FLOWERS. 149
While the drums of the drummer-boys beat " the long roll,"
And the surges of thunder rumble up to the pole,
Till they jar the dead clod, till they thrill the live soul.
Stormy pulses be dumb ! All unheeded, unheard,
As the heart-beat that troubles the breast of a bird.
Wheel the Battery out! Unlimber the guns!
All flashing electric the eyes of its sons,
All glowing the forges, all ready to fire,
The cannon all panting with keenest desire,
The columns all grander and broader and nigher,
For the souls within range, God pardon their sins!
Let all go, Mighty Heart ! and the battle begins.
Each throb is the thunder a bolt for each flash
Rends the air with a howl, smites the earth with a crash,
And the shriek of the shell with the quivering cry
That a demon might utter if demons could die,
Cuts keen through the din like a wing through the sky;
Till old Kennesaw roars from its mantle of cloud,
And Lookout stands white before God in its shroud,
As if Gabriel s trumpet had sounded that day,
And the mountain had heard and was first to obey !
And the breath of the battery dims the broad noon,
And the heart of the battery quickens its tune,
150 SOJVGS OF TESTERDAT.
It is " Stand by the guns ! " It is " Right about wheel ! "
It is " In with the iron ! " It is " Out with the steel ! "
As a squadron swoops down with a roar on the flank
And it reddens the Ridge and it riddles the rank
It is God and dry powder forever we thank !
Round the turbulent land its sledges have swung,
In a score of grand battles its melody rung,
Atlanta and Franklin have heard its grand chime,
And before Mission Ridge it gave them the time.
Chickamauga s dread Sunday it thundered " amen "
Mid the gusts of wild fire, when the iron clad rain
Did ripen brown earth to the reddest of stars,
And baptized it anew and christened it Mars.
In that moment supreme, to their bridles in blood,
Like a rock in the wilderness grandly he stood
Till the Red Sea was cleft and he rode down the street,
With the fame on his brow and the foe at his feet !
Oh, be muffled ye drums ! Let artillery toll !
Cloud up, all ye flags ! Earth has lost a great soul.
Gallant THOMAS, good-night, but good-morn to thy glory,
Outranking them all in the charm of thy story !
Like a shadow in sunshine they have borne thee in state
Far across the new world, to the true " Golden Gate "
Philip Sydney, make room, for thy comrade is late !
THE HEROES AND THE FLOWERS. 151
Spike the guns! When their tongues of eloquent fire
Sent the crashing old anthem, that ought to inspire
The pale dead in their graves, around the green world,
Not a cheer fluttered up, not a shroud was unfurled.
Did the men of Chaldea, lone watching afar,
Ever hear, in their dreaming, the throb of a star?
Inarticulate earth! Is there nothing can reach
To thy chambers serene ? Can unlock the dead speech ?
We have come into court, this court of the Lord,
To bear witness for them who can utter no word.
Bare-hearted, bare-browed, in this presence we stand,
For the gift Pentecostal comes down on the land;
To speak for the speechless how witnesses throng,
And the earth is all voice, and the air is all song!
There s a fleet of white ships blown abroad on the deep,
And their courses forever they peacefully keep,
And they toss us a roar and it melts into words,
And they strike to the heart like the sweeping of swords:
"Would ye honor the men you must look in their graves,
Who did score danger out with their wakes from the waves."
There are soft, fleecy clouds fast asleep in the sun,
Like a flock of white sheep when the washing is done,
152 SONGS OF TESTEKDAT.
Not a breath of a battle is staining the blue,
It is nothing but Paradise all the way through !
There are domes of white blossoms where swelled the white tent,
There are plows in the field where the war-wagons went,
There are songs where they lifted up Rachel s lament.
Would you know what this mighty beatitude cost,
You must search in the graves for what Liberty lost !
Has man waited too long that the silence is broken
By beings that God never meant should have spoken
And that never were born poor inanimate things
All endowed with the accents of creatures and kings?
Oh, ye living, make way! For direct from the tomb
Of Carrara a wonderful witness has come
As fair as an angel, as free from all sin,
With one whisper from God would her pulses begin!
She had lain there forever in marble repose
But Love spoke the word, she grew human, and rose,
At the touch of the sculptor, awoke from the swoon,
Cast off the cold shroud and stood up in the noon !
Will you see where that hand, pure and pale as a drift,
Has just halted a star with its eloquent lift,
That the heroes who lie in their slumber together
May have it for emblem, whatever the weather?
Tis a spark from the Flag ! Dare ye think they are dead
THE HEROES AND THE FLOWERS. 153
Without whom the brave star had forever been shed,
And the autumn come down like the night on the world
And our fragment of heaven disaster d and furled!
Aye ! up with the banner and down with the thought !
Fling the " old glory " out till the breezes have wrought
Into billows of beauty its marvelous flame
That can kindle a soul to the color of fame!
Now, Sergeant, the roll ! Soft and low, sweet and clear,
The dread silence is cleft, and the answer is " HERE ! "
" Here ! " Bishop and Seborn ! Brave lieutenants, stand fast !
Thanks to God for the flag, we have found you at last !
" Here ! " Ferris and Smith ! " Here ! " Hammond and Brown I
Ye that trod the acanthus and trampled it down,
And it turned at the touch a Corinthian crown.
Here ! glorious Score ! On our hearts and our lips,
Not a name of ye all can be quenched in eclipse 1
Disenthralled from your graves you have left them alone,
We will borrow them now for these dead of our own !
Let us bury all bitterness, passion, and pride,
Lay the rankling old wrong to its rest by their side,
Keeping step to the manhood that marches the zone,
And believe the good GOD will take care of His own !
LAST YEAR S STARS.
WHEN Science grasped a filmy thread of light
That dimly floated in the empty air,
And dared to draw the silver woof of night
Until she saw a star was clinging there,
She trembled at the vision she had seen,
It only told her that a star had been!
II.
That starry tress had faded in its flight,
So long it wandered through the blue abyss,
Before it met a mortal s startled sight.
While yet it journeyed from that world to this,
Perhaps some hand had borne the wondrous urn
Beyond the range of human thought s return,
Perhaps extinguished e en the stars do die
Ere Heaven unfolded to her earnest eye
156 SONGS OF TESTERDAT.
III.
Things are around us that have ceased to be,
And starry hopes, extinguished long ago,
Still link us to the past. Who would be free,
Or give that tearful past for all we know,
Or dream, of bliss and blessing yet to come?
All, all is mortal till it reach the tomb,
And all unblest until it find its wings !
That last year s Heaven of stars! Ah, who would give
For aught besides? Filled with translated things,
Too bright to die, too beautiful to live.
TO MY WIFE.
THERE are thousands who need not stray out of their own
hearts to find the reason for recording here this tribute
of long ago. The world is full of little graves, and the thou
sands I mean, have been crowned, each in her tearful turn, the
mother of a sinless angel child.
As of the woodman s work, so of the mother s love; it will
always be true that the little chips are nearest the heart.
TO MY WIFE.
ETCY, don t you hear the voices, gentle voices in the air:
Like the waving of a pinion, like the panting of a prayer,
Like a song of singers dead,
Like a dream of beauty fled,
When we cannot quite remember what the angel vision said?
II.
%
Oh, the voices of the Yesterdays! Time s melancholy choir,
With the twilight singing minor and the dawning singing air,
With the clouds of glory round
And their brows with garlands bound,
And a million golden minutes strown like grain upon the ground.
III.
Ah, they must be up the River, and it cannot be a dream,
For the wind is blowing soft, my Love, is blowing down the
stream,
160 SONGS OF TESTERDAT.
And is wafting to your ears
What your list ning spirit hears,
Till the past grows dim and dimmer through the mist of many
tears.
IV.
And a little form in white seems to rise beyond the rain,
And a little hand to beckon and a little voice complain,
To your heart a moment pressed,
Then away to be a guest,
And to sing among the Angels in the Gardens of the Blest.
V.
For the little infant spirit that a brighter angel bore,
A darker angel challenged at the threshold of the door,
And he bade it back again,
As returns the morning rain
To the heaven o er the mountain and the glory o er the main.
VI.
In his arms the angel clasped her, and as he turned and smiled
He crowned you there, the mother of a sinless angel child.
Ah, the beauty that she wore,
Borne so swiftly on before,
Just to learn the Heaven for "welcome" to that bright and
blessed shore !
TO Mr wirr:
161
"AND A LITTLE FORM IN WHITE
SEEMS TO RISE BEYOND THE RAIN.
162 SONGS OF TESTERDAT.
VII.
But Lucy, twill be by and by, when Junes have followed June,
And many a sad December night has played a solemn tune;
When the snow upon your hair
Forgets to melt and lingers there,
And a form so frail and faded trembles in the old arm-chair.
VIII.
Then here s my hand, my Dearest, we ll travel on together,
In days both clear and cloudy, in rude and rainy weather,
Till the winter at the last
Shall the shadows Eastward cast,
And our lives and loves forever shall be blended with the Past.
MONUMENTS.
A,AS, for the land where " God s acres " are vain,
And the heroes grow grass and not heroes again,
And Valor and Virtue wronged out of the grace
That can make of the grave a most eloquent place.
They have melted dumb guns, and the effigies start
Like the Worthies of old from the furnace s heart.
They have knocked at the ledge of white limestone, and said
" Oh, ye sleepers, awake ! and come forth, oh ye dead ! "
And, the stone from the sepulchre lifted away,
The pale marble immortals stand up in the day!
The untenanted tombs tumble in at their feet,
And beside them two centuries mingle and meet.
MISSION OF SONG.
i.
HOW beautiful and strange ! The air that brings
The sweet small gospel from the broider d sod,
Through which we see the starry camps of Even
Stained through and through with glory and with
Heaven
That floats the cloudy squadrons of a God,
Breaks into billows when a sparrow sings,
And lends these lives of ours immortal wings!
II.
Those bird-like breaths of song sweep o er the dumb,
Where waves the corn on old red fields of fame :
We call the roll : in accents loud and clear,
Along the lines the soldiers answer " Here ! "
And each green billow renders up a name
With ranks unbroken, lo the columns come,
And old dead captains march at beat of drum !
166 SOJV(,S OF TESTRRDAT.
III.
Though David s crown is only rust,
Yet the stately step of his royal Psalms
Is as fresh as May in the fragrant dust,
And grand as the wind in the Palms.
Tis a bird in the sky!
Tis an Archangel nigh !
The whisper of God in the calms!
Corunna s Hero walks the world
With the rhythmic march of his Burial Song
With bugle wail and banner furled
The old dead troopers ride along,
And Marion s men
Start out of the glen
With their cheer so wild and strong.
Hark ! Korner s Sword Song rings amain,
With its wild " hurrah " for his iron bride
Bozzaris strikes for the Greeks again,
And the Light Brigade will ride
Through the Valley of Death,
At the Poet s breath,
And fall into rank by our side !
MISSION OF SONG. 167
IV.
A Child of Song lay dying, and his breath
Went sad and slow as moves the March in Saul;
His hands were folded white upon his breast,
Like two sweet doves that wearied and had rest.
Those hands had touched all hearts and kindled all,
Until the songs came forth like birds in Spring neath
Cottage eaves. If he could die, then this was death.
V.
Then came a breath or two of some brave strain
A hand began within another room,
And trembled there a poor unended tune,
A single dew-drop on the breast of June :
But twilight stained anew that growing gloom
Those hands unfolding swept the chords again,
Gave the last note and played the sweet refrain.
Oh, Child of Song, how grandly thou didst die,
Thy Life s last cadence a melodious sigh !
VI.
These lives of ours have rhythm : every one
A little note of that great Anthem, TIME,
!68 SONGS OF TESTERDAT.
Forever sounding down the world amain
Since fell the hammers swung by Tubal Cain.
How grand the footfall ringing out sublime!
How grand to think that Anthem long begun,
Without our music never can be done !
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