Green Fields and Running Brooks | Page 7

friend.
Tom Van Arden, my old friend,
Are we "lucky dogs," indeed?
Are
we all that we pretend
In the jolly life we lead?--
Bachelors, we
must confess,
Boast of "single blessedness"
To the world, but not
alone--
Man's best sorrow is his own!
And the saddest truth is this,--
Life to us has never proved
What we
tasted in the kiss
Of the women we have loved:
Vainly we
congratulate
Our escape from such a fate
As their lying lips could
send,
Tom Van Arden, my old friend!
Tom Van Arden, my old friend,
Hearts, like fruit upon the stem,

Ripen sweetest, I contend,
As the frost falls over them:
Your regard
for me to-day
Makes November taste of May,
And through every
vein of rhyme
Pours the blood of summertime.
When our souls are cramped with youth
Happiness seems far away

In the future, while, in truth,
We look back on it to-day

Through our
tears, nor dare to boast,--
"Better to have loved and lost!"
Broken
hearts are hard to mend,
Tom Van Arden, my old friend.
Tom Van Arden, my old friend,
I grow prosy, and you tire;
Fill the

glasses while I bend
To prod up the failing fire . . .
You are
restless:--I presume
There's a dampness in the room.--
Much of
warmth our nature begs,
With rheumatics in our legs! . . .
Humph! the legs we used to fling
Limber-jointed in the dance,

When we heard the fiddle ring
Up the curtain of Romance,
And in
crowded public halls
Played with hearts like jugglers'-balls.--
Feats
of mountebanks, depend!--
Tom Van Arden, my old friend.
Tom Van Arden, my old friend,
Pardon, then, this theme of mine:

While the fire-light leaps to lend
Higher color to the wine,--
I
propose a health to those
Who have homes, and home's repose,

Wife- and child-love without end!
. . . Tom Van Arden, my old
friend.
JUST TO BE GOOD.
Just to be good--
This is enough--enough!
O we who find sin's billows wild and rough,

Do we not feel how more than any gold
Would be the blameless
life we led of old
While yet our lips knew but a mother's kiss?
Ah! though we miss
All else but this,
To be good is enough!
It is enough--
Enough--just to be good!
To lift our hearts where they are understood;

To let the thirst for worldly power and place
Go unappeased; to
smile back in God's face
With the glad lips our mothers used to kiss.
Ah! though we miss
All else but this,
To be good is enough!
HOME AT NIGHT.
When chirping crickets fainter cry,
And pale stars blossom in the sky,


And twilight's gloom has dimmed the bloom
And blurred the
butterfly:
When locust-blossoms fleck the walk,
And up the tiger-lily stalk

The glow-worm crawls and clings and falls
And glimmers down the
garden-walls:
When buzzing things, with double wings
Of crisp and raspish
flutterings,
Go whizzing by so very nigh
One thinks of fangs and
stings:--
O then, within, is stilled the din
Of crib she rocks the baby in,
And
heart and gate and latch's weight
Are lifted--and the lips of Kate.
THE HOOSIER FOLK-CHILD.
The Hoosier Folk-Child--all unsung--
Unlettered all of mind and
tongue;
Unmastered, unmolested--made
Most wholly frank and
unafraid:
Untaught of any school--unvexed
Of law or creed--all
unperplexed--
Unsermoned, aye, and undefiled,
An all
imperfect-perfect child--
A type which (Heaven forgive us!) you

And I do tardy honor to,
And so, profane the sanctities
Of our most
sacred memories.
Who, growing thus from boy to man,
That dares
not be American?
Go, Pride, with prudent underbuzz--
Go whistle!
as the Folk-Child does.
The Hoosier Folk-Child's world is not
Much wider than the stable-lot

Between the house and highway fence
That bounds the home his
father rents.
His playmates mostly are the ducks
And chickens, and
the boy that "shucks
Corn by the shock," and talks of town,
And
whether eggs are "up" or "down,"
And prophesies in boastful tone

Of "owning horses of his own,"
And "being his own man," and "when

He gets to be, what he'll do then."--
Takes out his jack-knife
dreamily

And makes the Folk-Child two or three
Crude corn-stalk
figures,--a wee span
Of horses and a little man.

The Hoosier Folk-Child's eyes are wise
And wide and round as
Brownies' eyes:
The smile they wear is ever blent
With
all-expectant wonderment,--
On homeliest things they bend a look

As rapt as o'er a picture-book,
And seem to ask, whate'er befall,

The happy reason of it all:--
Why grass is all so glad a green,
And
leaves--and what their lispings mean;--
Why buds grow on the
boughs, and why
They burst in blossom by and by--
As though the
orchard in the breeze
Had shook and popped its popcorn-trees,
To
lure and whet, as well they might,
Some seven-league giant's
appetite!
The Hoosier Folk-Child's chubby face
Has scant refinement, caste or
grace,--
From crown to chin, and cheek to cheek,
It bears the grimy
water-streak
Of rinsings such as some long rain
Might drool across
the window-pane
Wherethrough he peers, with troubled frown,
As
some lorn team drives by for town.
His brow is elfed with wispish
hair,
With tangles in it here and there,
As though the warlocks
snarled it so
At midmirk when the moon sagged low,
And boughs
did toss and skreek and shake,
And children moaned themselves
awake,
With fingers clutched, and starting sight
Blind as the
blackness of the night!
The Hoosier Folk-Child!--Rich is he
In all the wealth of poverty!

He owns