Green Fields and Running Brooks | Page 9

the shadows cool and sweet,?For the fever of the street;?With the silence, like a prayer,?Breathing round us everywhere.
Gracious anchorage, at last,?From the billows of the vast?Tide of life that comes and goes,?Whence and where nobody knows--?Moving, like a skeptic's thought,?Out of nowhere into naught.?Touch and tame us with thy grace,?Placid calm of Woodruff Place!
Weave a wreath of beechen leaves?For the brow that throbs and grieves?O'er the ledger, bloody-lined,?'Neath the sun-struck window-blind!?Send the breath of woodland bloom?Through the sick man's prison room,?Till his old farm-home shall swim?Sweet in mind to hearten him!
Out at Woodruff Place the Muse?Dips her sandal in the dews,?Sacredly as night and dawn?Baptize lilied grove and lawn:?Woody path, or paven way--?She doth haunt them night and day,--?Sun or moonlight through the trees,?To her eyes, are melodies.
Swinging lanterns, twinkling clear?Through night-scenes, are songs to her--?Tinted lilts and choiring hues,?Blent with children's glad halloos;?Then belated lays that fade?Into midnight's serenade--?Vine-like words and zithern-strings?Twined through ali her slumberings.
Blessed be each hearthstone set?Neighboring the violet!?Blessed every rooftree prayed?Over by the beech's shadel?Blessed doorway, opening where?We may look on Nature--there?Hand to hand and face to face--?Storied realm, or Woodruff Place.
FARMER WHIPPLE.--BACHELOR.
It's a mystery to see me--a man o' fifty-four,?Who's lived a cross old bachelor fer thirty year' and more-- A-lookin' glad and smilin'! And they's none o' you can say That you can guess the reason why I feel so good to-day!
I must tell you all about it! But I'll have to deviate?A little in beginning so's to set the matter straight?As to how it comes to happen that I never took a wife--?Kind o' "crawfish" from the Present to the Springtime of my life!
I was brought up in the country: Of a family of five--?Three brothers and a sister--I'm the only one alive,--?Fer they all died little babies; and 'twas one o' Mother's ways, You know, to want a daughter; so she took a girl to raise.
The sweetest little thing she was, with rosy cheeks, and fat-- We was little chunks o' shavers then about as high as that! But someway we sort o' suited-like! and Mother she'd declare She never laid her eyes on a more lovin' pair
Than we was! So we growed up side by side fer thirteen year', And every hour of it she growed to me more dear!--?W'y, even Father's dyin', as he did, I do believe?Warn't more affectin' to me than it was to see her grieve!
I was then a lad o' twenty; and I felt a flash o' pride?In thinkin' all depended on me now to pervide?Fer Mother and fer Mary; and I went about the place?With sleeves rolled up--and workin', with a mighty smilin' face.--
Fer sompin' else was workin'! but not a word I said?Of a certain sort o' notion that was runnin' through my head,-- "Someday I'd mayby marry, and a brother's love was one?Thing--a lover's was another!" was the way the notion run!
I remember onc't in harvest, when the "cradle-in'" was done-- When the harvest of my summers mounted up to twenty-one-- I was ridin' home with Mary at the closin' o' the day--?A-chawin' straws and thinkin', in a lover's lazy way!
And Mary's cheeks was burnin' like the sunset down the lane: I noticed she was thinkin', too, and ast her to explain?Well--when she turned and kissed_ me, _with her arm around me--law! I'd a bigger load o' heaven than I had a load o' straw!
I don't p'tend to learnin', but I'll tell you what's a fac', They's a mighty truthful sayin' somers in a almanack--?Er somers--'bout "puore happiness"--perhaps some folks'll laugh At the idy--"only lastin' jest two seconds and a half."--
But its jest as true as preachin'!--fer that was a sister's kiss, And a sister's lovin' confidence a-tellin' to me this:--?"She_ was happy, _bein' promised to the son o' farmer Brown."-- And my feelin's struck a pardnership with sunset and went down!
I don't know how I acted--I don't know what I said,?Fer my heart seemed jest a-turnin' to an ice-cold lump o' lead; And the hosses kind o' glimmered before me in the road,?And the lines fell from my fingers--and that was all I knowed--
Fer--well, I don't know how long--They's a dim rememberence Of a sound o' snortin' bosses, and a stake-and-ridered fence A-whizzin' past, and wheat-sheaves a-dancin' in the air,?And Mary screamin' "Murder!" and a-runnin' up to where
_I_ was layin' by the roadside, and the wagon upside down A-leanin' on the gate-post, with the wheels a whirlin' round! And I tried to raise and meet her, but I couldn't, with a vague Sort o' notion comin' to me that I had a broken leg.
Well, the women nussed me through it; but many a time I'd sigh As I'd keep a-gittin' better instid o' goin' to die,?And wonder what was left me worth livin' fer below,?When the girl I loved was married