Green Fields and Running Brooks | Page 9

village bells
At
twilight, as the truant hears
Them, hastening home, with smiles and
tears.
Such joy it is to hear her sing,
We fall in love with everything--
The
simple things of every day
Grow lovelier than words can say.
The idle brooks that purl across
The gleaming pebbles and the moss,

We love no less than classic streams--
The Rhines and Arnos of
our dreams.
To hear her sing--with folded eyes,
It is, beneath Venetian skies,
To
hear the gondoliers' refrain,
Or troubadours of sunny Spain.--
To hear the bulbul's voice that shook
The throat that trilled for Lalla
Rookh:
What wonder we in homage bring
Our hearts to her--to hear
her sing!
BEING HIS MOTHER.
Being his mother--when he goes away
I would not hold him overlong,
and so
Sometimes my yielding sight of him grows O
So quick of
tears, I joy he did not stay
To catch the faintest rumor of them! Nay,

Leave always his eyes clear and glad, although
Mine own, dear
Lord, do fill to overflow;
Let his remembered features, as I pray,

Smile ever on me! Ah! what stress of love
Thou givest me to guard
with Thee thiswise:
Its fullest speech ever to be denied
Mine
own--being his mother! All thereof
Thou knowest only, looking from
the skies
As when not Christ alone was crucified.
JUNE AT WOODRUFF.
Out at Woodruff Place--afar
From the city's glare and jar,
With the
leafy trees, instead
Of the awnings, overhead;
With 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