Green Fields and Running Brooks | Page 3

fallen hat--
A
little wicker flask tossed into that.
A sense of utter carelessness and grace
Of pure abandon in the
slumb'rous scene,--
As if the June, all hoydenish of face,
Had
romped herself to sleep there on the green,
And brink and sagging
bridge and sliding stream
Were just romantic parcels of her dream.
THE CYCLONE.
So lone I stood, the very trees seemed drawn
In conference with
themselves.--Intense--intense
Seemed everything;--the summer
splendor on
The sight,--magnificence!
A babe's life might not lighter fail and die
Than failed the
sunlight--Though the hour was noon,
The palm of midnight might not
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