Snow-Bound | Page 4

the sweet income?And womanly atmosphere of home,--?Called up her girlhood memories,?The huskings and the apple-bees,?The sleigh-rides and the summer sails,?Weaving through all the poor details?And homespun warp of circumstance?A golden woof-thread of romance.
[Illustration]?For well she kept her genial mood?And simple faith of maidenhood;?Before her still a cloud-land lay,?The mirage loomed across her way;?The morning dew, that dries so soon?With others, glistened at her noon;?Through years of toil and soil and care?From glossy tress to thin gray hair,?All unprofaned she held apart?The virgin fancies of the heart.?Be shame to him of woman born?Who hath for such but thought of scorn.
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There, too, our elder sister plied?Her evening task the stand beside;?A full, rich nature, free to trust,?Truthful and almost sternly just,?Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act,?And make her generous thought a fact,?Keeping with many a light disguise?The secret of self-sacrifice.?O heart sore-tried! thou hast the best?That Heaven itself could give thee,--rest,?Rest from all bitter thoughts and things!?How many a poor one's blessing went?With thee beneath the low green tent?Whose curtain never outward swings!
As one who held herself a part?Of all she saw, and let her heart?Against the household bosom lean,?Upon the motley-braided mat?Our youngest and our dearest sat,?Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes,?Now bathed within the fadeless green?And holy peace of Paradise.?O, looking from some heavenly hill,?Or from the shade of saintly palms,?Or silver reach of river calms,?Do those large eyes behold me still??With me one little year ago:--
[Illustration]?The chill weight of the winter snow?For months upon her grave has lain;?And now, when summer south-winds blow,?And brier and harebell bloom again,?I tread the pleasant paths we trod,?I see the violet-sprinkled sod?Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak?The hillside flowers she loved to seek,?Yet following me where'er I went
[Illustration]?With dark eyes full of love's content.?The birds are glad; the brier-rose fills?The air with sweetness; all the hills?Stretch green to June's unclouded sky;?But still I wait with ear and eye?For something gone which should be nigh,?A loss in all familiar things,?In flower that blooms, and bird that sings.?And yet, dear heart! remembering thee,?Am I not richer than of old??Safe in thy immortality,?What change can reach the wealth I hold??What chance can mar the pearl and gold?Thy love hath left in trust with me??And while in life's late afternoon,?Where cool and long the shadows grow,?I walk to meet the night that soon?Shall shape and shadow overflow,?I cannot feel that thou art far,?Since near at need the angels are;?And when the sunset gates unbar,?Shall I not see thee waiting stand,?And, white against the evening star,?The welcome of thy beckoning hand?
Brisk wielder of the birch and rule,?The master of the district school?Held at the fire his favored place;?Its warm glow lit a laughing face?Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce appeared
[Illustration]?The uncertain prophecy of beard.?He teased the mitten-blinded cat,?Played cross-pins on my uncle's hat,?Sang songs, and told us what befalls?In classic Dartmouth's college halls.?Born the wild Northern hills among,?From whence his yeoman father wrung?By patient toil subsistence scant,?Not competence and yet not want,?He early gained the power to pay?His cheerful, self-reliant way;?Could doff at ease his scholar's gown?To peddle wares from town to town;?Or through the long vacation's reach?In lonely lowland districts teach,?Where all the droll experience found?At stranger hearths in boarding round,?The moonlit skater's keen delight,?The sleigh-drive through the frosty night,?The rustic party, with its rough?Accompaniment of blind-man's-buff,
[Illustration]?And whirling plate, and forfeits paid,?His winter task a pastime made.?Happy the snow-locked homes wherein?He tuned his merry violin,?Or played the athlete in the barn,?Or held the good dame's winding yarn,?Or mirth-provoking versions told?Of classic legends rare and old,?Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome
[Illustration]?Had all the commonplace of home,?And little seemed at best the odds?'Twixt Yankee pedlers and old gods;?Where Pindus-born Araxes took?The guise of any grist-mill brook,?And dread Olympus at his will?Became a huckleberry hill.
A careless boy that night he seemed;?But at his desk he had the look?And air of one who wisely schemed,?And hostage from the future took?In trainéd thought and lore of book.?Large-brained, clear-eyed,--of such as he?Shall Freedom's young apostles be,?Who, following in War's bloody trail,?Shall every lingering wrong assail;?All chains from limb and spirit strike,?Uplift the black and white alike;?Scatter before their swift advance?The darkness and the ignorance,?The pride, the lust, the squalid sloth,?Which nurtured Treason's monstrous growth,?Made murder pastime, and the hell?Of prison-torture possible;?The cruel lie of caste refute,?Old forms remould, and substitute?For Slavery's lash the freeman's will,?For blind routine, wise-handed skill;?A school-house plant on every hill,?Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thence?The quick wires of intelligence;?Till North and South together brought?Shall own the same electric thought,?In peace a common flag salute,?And, side by side in labor's free?And unresentful rivalry,?Harvest the fields wherein they fought.
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Another guest that winter night?Flashed back from lustrous eyes the light.?Unmarked by time, and yet not young,?The honeyed music of her tongue?And words of meekness scarcely told?A nature passionate and bold,?Strong, self-concentred, spurning guide,?Its