The Iron Gate and Other Poems | Page 9

perfumes,?And listen, wondering if some feeble note?Yet lingers, quavering in his weary throat:--?I, whose fresh voice yon red-faced temple knew,?What tune is left me, fit to sing to you??Ask not the grandeurs of a labored song,?But let my easy couplets slide along;?Much could I tell you that you know too well;?Much I remember, but I will not tell;?Age brings experience; graybeards oft are wise,?But oh! how sharp a youngster's ears and eyes!
My cheek was bare of adolescent down?When first I sought the academic town;?Slow rolls the coach along the dusty road,?Big with its filial and parental load;?The frequent hills, the lonely woods are past,?The school-boy's chosen home is reached at last.?I see it now, the same unchanging spot,?The swinging gate, the little garden plot,?The narrow yard, the rock that made its floor,?The flat, pale house, the knocker-garnished door,?The small, trim parlor, neat, decorous, chill,?The strange, new faces, kind, but grave and still;?Two, creased with age,--or what I then called age,--?Life's volume open at its fiftieth page;?One, a shy maiden's, pallid, placid, sweet?As the first snow-drop, which the sunbeams greet;?One, the last nursling's; slight she was, and fair,?Her smooth white forehead warmed with auburn hair;?Last came the virgin Hymen long had spared,?Whose daily cares the grateful household shared,?Strong, patient, humble; her substantial frame?Stretched the chaste draperies I forbear to name.?Brave, but with effort, had the school-boy come?To the cold comfort of a stranger's home;?How like a dagger to my sinking heart?Came the dry summons, "It is time to part;?Good-by!" "Goo-ood-by!" one fond maternal kiss. . . .?Homesick as death! Was ever pang like this??Too young as yet with willing feet to stray?From the tame fireside, glad to get away,--?Too old to let my watery grief appear,--?And what so bitter as a swallowed tear!?One figure still my vagrant thoughts pursue;?First boy to greet me, Ariel, where are you??Imp of all mischief, heaven alone knows how?You learned it all,--are you an angel now,?Or tottering gently down the slope of years,?Your face grown sober in the vale of tears??Forgive my freedom if you are breathing still;
If in a happier world, I know you will.?You were a school-boy--what beneath the sun?So like a monkey? I was also one.?Strange, sure enough, to see what curious shoots?The nursery raises from the study's roots!?In those old days the very, very good?Took up more room--a little--than they should;?Something too much one's eyes encountered then?Of serious youth and funeral-visaged men;?The solemn elders saw life's mournful half,--?Heaven sent this boy, whose mission was to laugh,?Drollest of buffos, Nature's odd protest,?A catbird squealing in a blackbird's nest.?Kind, faithful Nature! While the sour-eyed Scot--?Her cheerful smiles forbidden or forgot--?Talks only of his preacher and his kirk,--?Hears five-hour sermons for his Sunday work,--?Praying and fasting till his meagre face?Gains its due length, the genuine sign of grace,--?An Ayrshire mother in the land of Knox?Her embryo poet in his cradle rocks;--?Nature, long shivering in her dim eclipse,?Steals in a sunbeam to those baby lips;?So to its home her banished smile returns,?And Scotland sweetens with the song of Burns!
The morning came; I reached the classic hall;?A clock-face eyed me, staring from the wall;?Beneath its hands a printed line I read?YOUTH IS LIFE'S SEED-TIME: so the clock-face said:?Some took its counsel, as the sequel showed,--?Sowed,--their wild oats,--and reaped as they had sowed.?How all comes back! the upward slanting floor,--?The masters' thrones that flank the central door,--?The long, outstretching alleys that divide?The rows of desks that stand on either side,--?The staring boys, a face to every desk,?Bright, dull, pale, blooming, common, picturesque.?Grave is the Master's look; his forehead wears?Thick rows of wrinkles, prints of worrying cares;?Uneasy lie the heads of all that rule,?His most of all whose kingdom is a school.?Supreme he sits; before the awful frown?That bends his brows the boldest eye goes down;?Not more submissive Israel heard and saw?At Sinai's foot the Giver of the Law.?Less stern he seems, who sits in equal Mate?On the twin throne and shares the empire's weight;?Around his lips the subtle life that plays?Steals quaintly forth in many a jesting phrase;?A lightsome nature, not so hard to chafe,?Pleasant when pleased; rough-handled, not so safe;?Some tingling memories vaguely I recall,?But to forgive him. God forgive us all!
One yet remains, whose well-remembered name?Pleads in my grateful heart its tender claim;?His was the charm magnetic, the bright look?That sheds its sunshine on the dreariest book;?A loving soul to every task he brought?That sweetly mingled with the lore he taught;?Sprung from a saintly race that never could?From youth to age be anything but good,?His few brief years in holiest labors spent,?Earth lost too soon the treasure heaven had lent.?Kindest of teachers, studious to divine?Some hint of promise in my earliest line,?These faint and faltering words thou canst not hear?Throb from a heart that holds thy memory dear.?As to the traveller's eye the varied plain?Shows through