Green Fields and Running Brooks | Page 3

lighter lie?Upon the brow of June.
With eyes upraised, I saw the underwings?Of swallows--gone the instant afterward--?While from the elms there came strange twitterings,?Stilled scarce ere they were heard.
The river seemed to shiver; and, far down?Its darkened length, I saw the sycamores?Lean inward closer, under the vast frown?That weighed above the shores.
Then was a roar, born of some awful burst!--?And one lay, shrieking, chattering, in my path--?Flung--he or I--out of some space accurst?As of Jehovah's wrath:
Nor barely had he wreaked his latest prayer,?Ere back the noon flashed o'er the ruin done,?And, o'er uprooted forests touseled there,?The birds sang in the sun.
WHERE-AWAY.
O the Lands of Where-Away!?Tell us--tell us--where are they??Through the darkness and the dawn?We have journeyed on and on--?From the cradle to the cross--?From possession unto loss,--?Seeking still, from day to day,?For the lands of Where-Away.
When our baby-feet were first?Planted where the daisies burst,?And the greenest grasses grew?In the fields we wandered through,?On, with childish discontent,?Ever on and on we went,?Hoping still to pass, some day,?O'er the verge of Where-Away.
Roses laid their velvet lips?On our own, with fragrant sips;?But their kisses held us not,?All their sweetness we forgot;--?Though the brambles in our track?Plucked at us to hold us back--?"Just ahead," we used to say,?"Lie the Lands of Where-Away."
Children at the pasture-bars,?Through the dusk, like glimmering stars,?Waved their hands that we should bide?With them over eventide:?Down the dark their voices failed?Falteringly, as they hailed,?And died into yesterday--?Night ahead and--Where-Away?
Twining arms about us thrown--?Warm caresses, all our own,?Can but stay us for a spell--?Love hath little new to tell?To the soul in need supreme,?Aching ever with the dream?Of the endless bliss it may?Find in Lands of Where-Away!
THE HOME-GOING.
We must get home--for we have been away?So long it seems forever and a day!?And O so very homesick we have grown,?The laughter of the world is like a moan?In our tired hearing, and its songs as vain,--?We must get home--we must get home again!
We must get home: It hurts so, staying here,?Where fond hearts must be wept out tear by tear,?And where to wear wet lashes means, at best,?When most our lack, the least our hope of rest?When most our need of joy, the more our pain--?We must get home--we must get home again!
We must get home: All is so quiet there:?The touch of loving hands on brow and hair--?Dim rooms, wherein the sunshine is made mild---?The lost love of the mother and the child?Restored in restful lullabies of rain.--?We must get home--we must get home again!
We must get home, where, as we nod and drowse,?Time humors us and tiptoes through the house,?And loves us best when sleeping baby-wise,?With dreams--not tear-drops--brimming our clenched eyes,-- Pure dreams that know nor taint nor earthly stain--?We must get home--we must get home again!
We must get home; and, unremembering there?All gain of all ambitions otherwhere,?Rest--from the feverish victory, and the crown?Of conquest whose waste glory weighs us down.--?Fame's fairest gifts we toss back with disdain--?We must get home--we must get home again!
HOW JOHN QUIT THE FARM.
Nobody on the old farm here but Mother, me and John,?Except, of course, the extry he'p when harvest-time come on-- And then, I want to say to you, we needed he'p about,?As you'd admit, ef you'd a-seen the way the crops turned out!
A better quarter-section, ner a richer soil warn't found?Than this-here old-home place o' ourn fer fifty miles around!-- The house was small--but plenty-big we found it from the day That John--our only livin' son--packed up and went way.
You see, we tuck sich pride in John--his mother more 'n me-- That's natchurul; but both of us was proud as proud could be; Fer the boy, from a little chap, was most oncommon bright, And seemed in work as well as play to take the same delight.
He allus went a-whistlin' round the place, as glad at heart As robins up at five o'clock to git an airly start;?And many a time 'fore daylight Mother's waked me up to say-- "Jest listen, David!--listen!--Johnny's beat the birds to-day!"
High-sperited from boyhood, with a most inquirin' turn,-- He wanted to learn ever'thing on earth they was to learn: He'd ast more plaguey questions in a mortal-minute here?Than his grandpap in Paradise could answer in a year!
And read! w'y, his own mother learnt him how to read and spell; And "The Childern of the Abbey"--w'y, he knowed that book as well At fifteen as his parents!--and "The Pilgrim's Progress," too-- Jest knuckled down, the shaver did, and read 'em through and through!
At eighteen, Mother 'lowed the boy must have a better chance-- That we ort to educate him, under any circumstance;?And John he j'ined his mother, and they ding-donged and kep' on, Tel I sent him off to school in town, half glad that he was gone.
But--I missed him--w'y of course I did!--The Fall and Winter through I never