v^' .^^°<^ '.^ ♦TXT* A <^ 'o , ^ * ,0 r^ ^o IDYLS AND LYRICS OF THE OHIO VALLEY, JOHN JAMES PIATT, Auihor of " IVesttrn IVindmus," " Poems rf House and Home," etc. CINCINNATI: W. E. DIBBLE, PUBLISHER. 1881. Copyright, 1880, BY John James Piatt. ELECTROTYPED AT FRANKLIN TYPE FOUNDRY, CINCINNATI. JOSEPH LONGWORTH. BY PUTTING HIS NAME HF.RE, I GIVE TO MY BOOK, NOT TO HIM, A Gift of Grace. PREFACE. '' I ^HE following pieces, designed to express somewhat of life, character and sentiment in the region indi- cated by the title, or to describe Western landscape, have been so kindly received by critics and readers both at home and abroad, on their appearance in the author's previous volumes, that he has been encouraged to hope their presentation in one body might prove acceptable. The poems have been revised for this volume, and a few corrections have been made. North Bend, Ohio, Oct., iSSo. CONTENTS. IDYLS AND LYRICS, Etc. PAGE. The Pioneer's Chimney 9 Fire Before Seed 24 The Mower in Ohio 27 Reading the Milestone 33 The Grave of Rose 35 King's Tavern 36 Fires in Illinois 40 New Grass 44 The Blackberry Farm 49 Land in Cloud 53 A Lost Graveyard 55 Sundown 57 Riding to Vote 60 The Deserted Smithy 66 Grandfather Wright 70 The Old Man and the Spring-Leaves 71 CONTENTS. PAGE. The Lost Farm 75 The Forgotten Well 86 Apple-Gatherlng 89 Farther 92 Two Harvests 93 Moore's Cabin 98 Walking to the Station 103 Transfiguration 107 OTHER POEMS. The Golden Hand iii The Morning Street 114 The End of the Journey 118 The Three Work-Uays 121 The Lost Genius 122 The Boys in Blue ■ 125 Carpe Diem 127 A Rose's Journey 128 A Man's Vote 129 Conflagration 131 The New House 134 Two Watchers 138 IDYLS AND LYRICS THE OHIO VALLEY. THE PIONEER'S CHIMNEY. \T JE leave the highway here a Httle space — (So much of hfe is near so much of death : ) The chimney of a dwelHng still is seen, A little mound of ruin, overgrown With lithe, long grasses and domestic weeds, Among .the apple trees (the ancestors Of yonder orchard fruited from their boughs ) — The apple-trees that, when the place was rough With the wild forests, and the land was new, He planted : one, departed long ago, (9) lO THE PIONEER S CHIMNEY. But Still a presence unforgotten here, Who blessed me in my boyhood, with his hands That seemed like one's anointed. Gentle, strong And warmed with sunny goodness, warming all, Was he. familiar by the reverent name ' • Of Uncle Gardner in our neighborhood : His love had grown to common property By those quick ties that Nature subtly knits, And so at last had claimed the bond of blood. He was an elder in the land, and held His first proprietary right, it seemed, From Nature's self; for, in an earlier day. He came, with others who of old had reached Their neighbor hands across New England farms. Over the mountains to this Western Land, — A journey long and slow and perilous, 'With many hardships and the homesick look THE PIONEERS CHIMNEY. II Of wife and children backward ; chose his farm, Builded his house, and cleared, by hard degrees, Acres that soon were meadows deep and broad. Or wheat-fields rocking in the summer heat. His children grew, and son and daughter passed Into the world that grew around, and some Into that world which, evermore unseen. Is still about us ; and the graveyard where Their bodies slept (a few half-sinking stones, — A stranger's eyes would hardly see them, — show Seventy rods yonder in the higher ground) Gave still a tenderer title, year by year, To the dear places earned by earlier toil. Meanwhile the years that made these woody vales An eager commonwealth of crowding men Passed, one by one, and every thing was changed ; 12 THE PIONEERS CHIMNEY. And he, whose Hmbs were hke the hickory's when He came with Hfe's wrought vigor here, was changed : He heard the voice that tells men they are old. Yet not the less he moved his usual rounds. Walked his old paths ; not idle, sweated still With scythe or sickle in the ha)- or wheat ; Followed his plow, when, in the April sun. The blackbird chattered after, and the crow Far-off looked anxious for the new-dropped corn; And gave the winter hours their services With sheep abroad on slopes that, slanting south, Breathed off the snow and showed a warming green, With cattle penned at home, or bounding flail : Thus — not forgetting social offices Throughout all seasons, (gaining so the love That wei^t acknowledged in his common name,) — He, like the Servant in the Parable, Doing his duty, waited for his Lord. THE PIONEERS CHIMNEY. 1 3 The chimney shows enough for memory, And, it may be, a traveler passing close, If thoughtful, well might think a tender thought Of vanished fireside faces, in his dream Suddenly lighted by a vanished fire ; And should the apple trees that linger, loth To end their blossoming, attract his eye, Their fragrance would not pass unrecognized For deeper gifts than fragrance. He is gone Who planted them, and thirty years are gone. Now, if you look a quarter-mile away. Beyond the toll-gate and its lifted sweep. You see a prouder house, not new nor old, Beneath whose later roof no spirit dwells That had its tenure here : a stranger holds The secondary ownership of law. It is a story, common though it seem, 2 14 THE PIONEER S CHIMNEY. Tender and having- pathos for the heart Which knows, but will not know, that he who says "My own," and looks to-day on willing fields, And sets his family tree in trusted ground, To-morrow hears another answer "Mine." Listen, if you will listen. It is hard To go an alien from familiar doors When we are young, to wrestle w^here we go. And win or lose quick-hearted — we are strong ; But it is pitiful when weak and old, When only for the near in life we seek. And Heaven, yearned after, is not thought afar. To lose our shelter and to want for rest. Of Uncle Gardner's children three were dead ; Yonder they lie. Their mother and two with him — Two youngest : one a boy of fourteen years His latest child ; u "irl of seventeen — THE PIONEERS CHIMNEY. I5 Breathed in his still, contented atmosphere. An elder daughter, wedded years before, Lived far away in watery Michigan. His eldest son, and the first-born of all, Thrived as a merchant in the city near, — Had thriven, at least, or so 'twas said; and he For some shrewd scheme had won the old man's will To be his bond. The father pledged the land — Willing for the grown man, yet for the boy And for his girl at home reluctantly, Holding the chance a rash one. From that day He wrought his daily labors ill-content. And with a trouble in his countenance. To things familiar came a subtle change. The brook that long ago, companion-like, Had grown acquainted with his solitude. And, later, made him music when he walked And led his children through the pasture-ground l6 THE pioneer's CHIMNEY. Up to the haying or the harvest gap, A noisy mimic of their prattled words, Now seemed to lift a stranger's face at him, Wondering why he came there, who he was. Or murmured, with a long and low lament. Some undercurrent of an exile's song That is not on his lips but in his heart. Nothing was as it had been : something vague, That Present of the Future which is born Within the bosom, whispering what will be. Met him and followed him, and would not cease To meet and follow him : it seemed to say " The place that knew you shall know you no more.' And oftentimes he saw the highway stirred With slowly-journeying dust, and, passing slow, The many who forever in our land Were going farther, driven by goads unseen. Or not content and looking for the new ; THE pioneer's CHIMNEY. 1 7 And then he thought of how in those dear days He, too, had ventured, and again he saw With steadfast eyes forgotten faces, known When he was young, and others dear to him From whom he parted with regret but firm In the strong purposes which build the world ; Thought of his consolation — she most dear Was with him, they most helpless with him, too. For whom he sought a newer world of hope ; "But I am old," he murmured, "she is old," And saw his hand was shaken like his thought. Such were his troubled fancies. When he slept, In his slow dreams — with lagging team, the last Of many that, in yonder meadows foaled, Grew and became a portion of the place — Journeying far away, and never more Reaching his journey's goal, (a weary road l8 THE pioneer's CHIMNEY. Whose end came only with the waking day,) He seemed to pass, and always 'twas the same: Through new-built villages of joyous homes, Homes not for him ; by openings recent-made, But not for him ; by cultivated farms Of other men — and always 'twas the same. Then, when he woke and found the dream a dream, And through his window shone the sun and brought The faint rich smell of the new-tasseled corn. More fragrant from the dew that weighed it down, He murmured of his fields — "For other men; They are not mine. The mortgage will be closed ; The mortgage goes wherever I shall go." So passed the quarter of a year, and so The old man, burdened with his little world, Felt it upon his shoulders, stooping down, Bent more with this than every other year. THE pioneer's CHIMNEY. I9 And summer passed to autumn : in his door He sat and saw the leaves, his friends of old, Audible in the sunshine, falling, falling, With a continuous rustle — music fit For his accompanying thought. At last it came, The blow that reached his heart before it came. For all was lost: the son, whose risk he placed Both on his children's home and on his heart. Was ruined, as the careless worldlings say — Ruined indeed, it seemed, for on his brain The quick stroke flashed : for many years the son Breathed in a world in which he did not live. The old man took the blow but did not fall — Its weight had been before. The land was sold. The mortgage closed. That winter, cold and long, (Permitted by the hand that grasped his all, That winter passed he here,) beside his fire 20 THE PIONEER S CHIMNEY. He talked of moving in the spring; he talked, While the shrill sap cried in a troubled blaze, Like one whose life was not all broken down, Cheerfully garrulous, with words that show False witnesses of hope and seeming strength When these are gone and come not. In the spring. When the first warmth was brooding every-where. He sat beside his doorway in that warmth, Watching the wagons on the highway pass. With something of the memory of his dread In the last autumn ; and he fell asleep. Perhaps within his sleep he seemed again Journeying far away for evermore, Leaving behind the homes of other men, Seeking a newer home for those he loved, A pioneer again. And so he slept And still he sleeps ; his grave is one of those. THE PIONEERS CHIMNEY. 21 His wife soon joined his sleep beside him there. Their children Time has taken and the world. The chimney shows enough for memory, The graves remain ; all other trace is gone, Except the apple-trees that linger, loth To end their blossoming. In restless moods I used to wander hither oftentimes, And often tarried till the twilight came, Touched with the melancholy wrought by change ; And something in the atmosphere, I thought, Remained of hours and faces that had been. Then, thinking of the Past and all I knew. And all remembered, of it — most of him Whose vanished fireside blazed so near me here — My fancy, half unconscious, shaped the things Which had been, and among the quiet trees 3 22 THE PIONEER S CHIMNEY. The chimney from its burial mound arose ; The ruined farm-house grew a quiet ghost — Its walls were thrilled with fitful murmurs, made Within by voices scarcely heard without ; And from the window breathed a vaporous light Into the outer mist of vernal dark, And lo ! a crowd of sparks against the sky Sprang suddenly, at times, and from the wood (The wood? — no wood was here for forty years!) Barked the shrill fox, and all tl>€ stars hung bright ; — Till, busy with the silence far away, (And whether heard or heard not hardly known,) First indistinct, then louder, nearer still. And ever louder, grew a tremulous roar ; Then, sudden, flared a torch from out the night, And, eastward half-a-mile, the shimmering train Hurried across the darkness and the dream, And all my fantasy was gone, at once — THE PIONEER S CHIMNEY. 23 The lighted window and the fireside sound : I saw the heap of ruin underfoot, And overhead the leaves were jarred awake, Whispering a moment of the flying fright, And far away the whistle, like a cry, Shrill in the darkness reached the waiting town. FIRE BEFORE SEED.* T T OW bright to-night hes all the Vale, Where Autumn scattered harvest gold, And, far off, hummed the bounding flail When dark autumnal noons were cold ! The fields put on a mask of fire. Forever changing, in the dark ; — Lo, yonder upland village spire Flashes in air a crimson spark ! * It is customary in some parts of the West to rake the last year's stubble of corn into windrows in the Spring, and burn it, preparatory to breaking the ground for a new planting. This burning is generally done after night-fall: — its effect on the land- scape these lines were intended to describe. (24) FIRE BEFORE SEED. 2$ I see the farm-house roofs arise, Among their guardian elms asleep : Redly the flame each window dyes, Through vines that chill and leafless creep. Along the lonely lane, that goes Darkening beyond the dusky hill, Amid the light the cattle doze And sings the awakened April rill. The mill by rocks is shadowed o'er. But, overhead, the shimmering trees Stand sentinels of the rocky shore And bud with fire against the breeze ! Afar the restless riffle shakes Arrows of splendor through the wood, Then all its noisy water breaks Away in glimmering solitude. 26 FIRE BEFORE SEED. Gaze down into the bottoms near, Where all the darkness broadly warms: The priests who guard the fires appear Gigantic shadows, pigmy forms ! The enchanted Year shall here awake With harvest hope among her flowers ; And nights of holy dew shall make The morning smile for toiling hours. Behold the Sower's sacrifice Upon the altars of the Spring ! — O dead Past, into flame arise : New seed into the earth we fling! THE MOWER IN OHIO. [JUNE, MDCCCLXIV.] '' I ^HE bees in the clover are making honey, and I am making my hay : The air is fresh, I seem to draw a young man's breath to-day. The bees and I are alone in the grass : the air is so very still I hear the dam, so loud, that shines beyond the sullen mill. Yes, the air is so still that I hear almost the sounds I can not hear — (27) 28 THE MOWER IN OHIO. That, when no other sound is plain, ring in my empty ear: The chime of striking scythes, the fall of the heavy swaths they sweep — They ring about me, resting, when I waver half asleep ; So still, I am not sure if a cloud, low down, unseen there be, Or if something brings a rumor home of the cannon so far from me : Far away in Virginia, where Joseph and Grant, I know. Will tell them what I meant when first I had my mowers go ! Joseph, he is my eldest one, the only boy of my three Whose shadow can darken my door again, and lighten my heart for me. THE MOWER IN OHIO. 2g Joseph, he is my eldest — how his scythe was striking ahead ! William was better at shorter heats, but Jo in the long-run led. William, he was my youngest; John, between them, I somehow see. When my eyes are shut, with a little board at his head in Tennessee. But William came home one morning early, from Gettysburg, last July, (The mowing was over already, although the only mower was I : ) William, my captain, came home for good to his mother ; and I '11 be bound We were proud and cried to see the flag that wrapt his coffin around; 30 THE MOWER IN OHIO. For a company from the town came up ten miles with music and gun : It seemed his country claimed him then — as well as his mother — her son. But Joseph is yonder with Grant to-day, a thousand miles or near, And only the bees are abroad at work with me in the clover here. Was it a murmur of thunder I heard that hummed again in the air? Yet, may be, the cannon are sounding now their Onward to Richmond there. But under the beech by the orchard, at noon, I sat an hour it would seem — It may be I slept a minute, too, or wavered into a dream. THE MOWER IN OHIO. 31 For I saw my boys, across the field, by the flashes as they went, Tramping a steady tramp as of old, with the strength in their arms unspent; Tramping a steady tramp, they moved like soldiers that march to the beat Of music that seems, a part of themselves, to rise and fall with their feet ; Tramping a steady tramp, they came with flashes of silver that shone, Every step, from their scythes that rang as if they needed the stone — (The field is wide and heavy with grass) — and, com- ing toward me, they beamed With a shine of light in their faces at once, and — surely I must have dreamed ! 32 THE MOWER IN OHIO. For I sat alone in the clover-field, the bees were working ahead. There were three in my vision — remember, old man: and what if Joseph were dead ! But I hope that he and Grant ( the flag above them both, to boot,) Will go into Richmond together, no matter which is ahead or afoot ! Meantime, alone at the mowing here — an old man somewhat gray — I must stay at home as long as I can, making, myself, the 'hay. And so another round — the quail in the orchard whistles blithe; — But first I '11 drink at the spring below, and whet again my scythe. READING THE MILESTONE. T STOPPED to read the Milestone here, A laggard school-boy, long ago ; I came not far — my home was near — But ah, how far I longed to go ! Behold a number and a name, — A finger, Westward, cut in stone : The vision of a city came, Across the dust and distance shown. Around me lay the farms asleep In hazes of autumnal air. And sounds that quiet loves to keep Were heard, and heard not, every-where. (33) 34 READING THE MILESTONE. I read the Milestone, day by day: ^ I yearned to cross the barren bound, To know the golden Far-away, To walk the new Enchanted Ground ! THE GRAVE OF ROSE. T CAME to find her blithe and bright, Breathing the household full of bloom, Wreathing the fireside with delight; — I found her in her tomb! I came to find her gathering flowers — Their fragrant souls, so pure and dear. Haunting her face in lonely hours; — Her single flower is here ! For, look: the gentle name that shows Her love, her loveliness, and bloom, (Her only epitaph a rose,) Is growing on her tomb ! (35) KING'S TAVERN. 1 ^"AR-OFF spires, a mist of silver, shimmer from the far-off town ; Haunting here the dreary turnpike, stands the tavern, crumbling down. Half a mile before you pass it, half a mile when you are gone, Like a ghost it comes to meet you, ghost-like still it follows on. Never more the sign-board, swinging, flaunts its gilded wonder there : "Philip King" — a dazzled harvest shocked in West- ern sunset air! (36) KING S TAVERN. 37 Never, as with nearer tinkle through the dust of long ago Creep the Pennsylvania wagons up the twilight — white and slow. With a low, monotonous thunder, yonder flies the hurrying train — Hark, the echoes in the quarry! — in the woodland lost again ! Never more the friendly windows, red with warmth and Christian light, Breathe the traveler's benediction to his brethren in the night. Old in name, The Haunted Tavern holds the barren rise alone ; — Standing high in air deserted, ghost-like long itself has grown. 4 38 king's tavern. Not a pane in any window — many a ragged cor- ner-bit : Boys, the strolling exorcisors, gave the ghost their notice— "Quit" Jamestown-weeds have close invaded, year by year, the bar-room door, Where, within, in damp and silence gleams the lizard on the floor. Through the roof the drear Novembers trickle down the midnight slow ; In the summer's warping sunshine green with moss the shingles grow. Yet in Maying wind the locust, sifting sunny blossom, snows. And the rose-vine still remembers some dear face that loved the rose, — KING S TAVERN. 39 Climbing up a southern casement, looking in neg- lected air ; And, in golden honey-weather, careful bees are hum- ming there. In the frozen moon at midnight some have heard, when all was still — Nothing, I know ! A ghostly silence keeps the tavern on the hill ! FIRES IN ILLINOIS. T T OW bright this weird autumnal eve — While the wild twilight clings around, Clothing the grasses every-where, With scarce a dream of sound ! The high horizon's northern line, With many a silent-leaping spire, Seems a dark shore — a sea of flame — Quick, crawling waves of fire ! (40) FIRES IN ILLINOIS. 4I I stand in dusky solitude, October' breathing low and chill, And watch the far-off blaze that leaps At the wind's wayward will. These boundless fields, behold, once more, Sea-like in vanished summers stir ; From vanished autumns comes the Fire — A lone, bright harvester ! I see wide terror lit before — Wild steeds, fierce herds of bison here And, blown before the flying flames, The flying-footed deer ! Long trains (with shaken bells, that move Along red twilights sinking slow) Whose wheels grew weary on their way Far westward, long ago : 42 FIRES IN ILLINOIS. Lone wagons bivouacked in the blaze, That, long ago, streamed wildly past ; Faces, from that bright solitude, In the hot gleam aghast ! A glare of faces like a dream, No history after or before, Inside the horizon with the flames, The flames — nobody more ! That vision vanishes in me, Sudden and swift and fierce and bright ; Another gentler vision fills The solitude, to-night : The horizon lightens every-where. The sunshine rocks on windy maize ; — Hark, every-where are busy men. And children at their plays ! FIRES IN ILLINOIS. 43 Far church-spires twinkle at the sun, From villages of quiet born, And, far and near, and every-where, Homes stand amid the corn. No longer, driven by wind, the Fire Makes all the vast horizon glow, But, numberless as the stars above. The windows shine below ! NEW GRASS. A LONG the sultry city street, Faint subtile breaths of fragrance meet Me, wandering unaware (In April warmth, while yet the sun For Spring no constant place has won,) By many a vacant square. Whoever reads these lines has felt That breath whose long-lost perfumes melt The spirit — newly found While the sweet, banished families Of earth's forgotten sympathies Rise from the sweating ground. (44) NEW GRASS. 45 It is the subtile breath of grass ; And as I pause, or hngering pass, With half-shut eyes, behold ! Bright from old baptisms of the dew, Fresh meadows burst upon my view, And new becomes the old ! Old longings (Pleasure kissing Pain), Old visions visit me again — Life's quiet deeps are stirred The fountain-heads of memory flow Through channels dry so long ago, With music long unheard. I think of pastures, evermore Greener than any hour before, Where cattle wander slow, Large-uddered in the sun, or chew 5 46 • NEW GRAbS. The cud content in shadows new, Or, shadowy, homeward low. I dream of prairies dear to me : Afar in town I seem to see Their widening miles arise, Where, like the butterfly anear, Far off in sunny mist the deer. That seems no larger, flies. Thy rural lanes, Ohio, come Back to me, grateful with the hum Of every thing that stirs : Dear places, saddened by the years, Lost to my sight send sudden tears Their secret messengers. I think of paths a-swarm with wings Of bird and bee — all lovely things NEW GRASS. 47 From sun or sunny clod ; — Of play-grounds where we children play, And fear not Time will come to-day, And feel the warming sod. New grass : it grows by cottage doors, In orchards hushed with bloom, by shores Of streams that flow as green. On hill-slopes white with tents or sheep, And where the sacred mosses keep The holy dead unseen. It grows o'er distant graves I know : — Sweet grass ! above them greener grow, And guard them tenderly ! My brother's, not three summers green ; My sister's — new made, only seen Through far-off tears by me ! 48 NEW GRASS. It grows on battle-fields — alas, Old battle-fields in withered grass ! New battles wait the new : Hark, is it the living warmth I hear?- The cannon far or bee anear? The bee and cannon too ! Washington, D. C, April, 1863. THE BLACKBERRY FARM. IV T ATURE gives with freest hands Richest gifts to poorest lands. When the lord has sown his last And his field 's to desert passed, She begins to claim her own, And — instead of harvests flown, Sunburnt sheaves and golden ears Sends her hardier pioneers : Barbarous brambles, outlawed seeds. The first families of weeds Fearing neither sun nor wind, With the flowers of their kind (Outcasts of the garden-bound). (49) 50 THE BLACKBERRY FARM. Colonize the expended ground, Using (none her right gainsay) Confiscations of decay : — Thus she clothes the barren place, Old disgrace, with newer grace. Title-deeds, which cover lands Ruled and reaped by buried hands, She — disowning owners old, Scorning their "to have and hold" Takes herself; the moldering fence Hides with her munificence ; O'er the crumbled gatepost twines Her proprietary vines; On the doorstep of the house Writes in moss "Anonymous," And, that beast and bird may see, "This is Public property;" To the bramble makes the sun THE BLACKBERRY FARM. 5 1 Bearer of profusion : Blossom-odors breathe in June Promise of her later boon, And in August's brazen heat Grows the prophecy complete ; — Lo, her largess glistens bright, Blackness diamonded with light! Then, behold, she welcomes all To her annual festival : "Mine the fruit but yours as well," Speaks the Mother Miracle ; "Rich and poor are welcome; come, Make to-day millennium In my garden of the sun: Black and white to me are one. This my freehold use content — Here no landlord rides for rent ; I proclaim my jubilee, 52 THE BLACKBERRY FARM. In my Black Republic, free. Come," she beckons; "enter, through Gates of gossamer, doors of dew (Lit with Summer's tropic fire), Mv Liberia of the brier." LAND IN CLOUD. A BOVE the sunken sun the clouds are fired With a dark splendor ; the enchanted hour Works momentary miracles in the sky ; Weird shadows take fi-om fancy what they lack For semblance, and I see a boundless plain, A mist of sun and sheaves in boundless air, Gigantic shapes of Reapers moving slow In some new harvest: — so I can but dream Of my great Land, that takes its Morning star Out of the dusky Evening of the East : My Land, that lifted into vision gleams Misty and vast, a boundless plain afar, (53) 54 LAND IN CLOUD. (Like yonder fading fantasy of cloud,) With shadowy Reapers moving, vague and slow, In some wide harvest of the days to be — A mist of sun and sheaves in boundless air ! A LOST GRAVEYARD. A TEAR by, a soundless road is seen, o'ergrown with grass and brier; Far off, the highway's signal flies — a hurrying dust of fire. But here, among forgotten graves, in June's delicious breath, I linger where the living loved to dream of lovely death. Worn letters, lit with heavenward thought, these crumbled headstones wear ; Fresh flowers (old epitaphs of Love) are fragrant here and there. ^55) 56 A l'ost graveyard. Years, years ago, these graves were made; — no mourn- ers come to-day : Their footsteps vanished, one by one, moving the other way. Through the loud world they walk, or lie — like those here left at rest — With two long-folded useless arms on each forgotten breast. SUNDOWN. "\T 7HILE fitful breezes kiss to frosty gold The swells of foliage down the vale serene, And all the sunset fills The dreamland of the hills, Now all the enchantment of October old Feels a cold veil fall o'er its passing scene. Low sounds of Autumn creep along the plains. Through the wide stillness of the woodlands brown, Where the weird waters hold The melancholy gold ; The cattle, lingering slow through river lanes, Brush yellowing vines that swing through elm- trees down. (57) 58 SUNDOWN. The forests, climbing up the northern air, Wear far an azure slumber through the light, Showing, in pictures strange, The stealthy wand of change ; The corn shows languid breezes, here and there — Faint-heard o'er all the bottoms wide and bright. On many a silent circle slowly blown, The hawk, in sun-flushed calm suspended high, With careless trust of might Slides wing-wide through the light, — Now golden through the restless dazzle shown, Now drooping down, now swinging up the sky. Wind-worn along their sunburnt gables old, The barns are full of all the Indian sun, In golden quiet wrought Like webs of dreamy thought, SUNDOWN. 59 And in their Winter shelter safely hold The green year's earnest promise harvest- won. With evening bells that gather, low or loud, Some village, through the distance, poplar-bound, O'er meadows silent grown. And lanes with crisp leaves strown, Lifts up one spire, aflame, against a cloud That slumbers eastward, slow and silver-crowned. RIDING TO VOTE. [the old democrat in the west.] ^V/ONDER the bleak old tavern stands — the faded sign before, That years ago a setting sun and banded harvest bore : The tavern stands the same to-day, — the sign you look upon Has ghntings of the dazzled sheaves, but nothing of the sun. In Jackson's days, a gay young man, with spirit hale and blithe, (60) RIDING TO VOTE. 6l And form like the young hickory, so tough and tall and lithe, I first remember coming up — we came a wagon- load, A dozen for Old Hickory — this rough November road. Ah ! forty years — they help a man, you see, in getting gray; They can not take the manly soul, that makes a man, away ! It 's forty years, or near : to-day I go to vote once more ; Here, half a mile away, we see the crowd about the door. My boys, in Eighteen Sixty — what ! my boys ? my men, I mean ! 6 62 RIDING TO VOTE. ( No better men, no braver souls, in flesh-and-blood are seen ! ) — One twenty-six, one twenty-three, rode with their father then : The ballot-box remembers theirs — my vote I '11 try again ! The ballot-box remembers theirs, the country well might know — Though in a million only two for little seem to go; But, somehow, when my ticket slipped I dreamed of Jackson's day : The land, I thought, has need of one whose will will find a way ! ''He did not waver when the need had called for steadfast thought, — The word he spoke made plain the deed that lay behind it wrought;" • RIDING TO VOTE. 63 And while I mused the Present fell, and, breathing back the Past, Again it seemed the hale young man his vote for Jackson cast ! Thank God it was not lost ! — my vote I did not cast in vain ! I go alone to drop my vote, the glorious vote, again ; Alone — where three together fell but one to-day shall fall; But though I go alone to-day, one voice shall speak for all! For when our men, awaking quick, from hearth and threshold came, Mine did not say, "Another day!" but started like a flame ; 64 RIDING TO VOTE. I'll vote for them as well as me; they died as soldiers can, But in my vote their voices each shall claim the right of man. The elder left his wife and child — my vote for these shall tell ; The younger's sweet-heart has a claim — I '11 vote for her as well ! Yes ! for the myriad speechless tongues, the myriad offered lives, — Oh, desolation at the heart of orphans and of wives ! I go to give my vote alone — I curse your shameless shame Who fight for traitors here at home in Peace's holy name ! RIDING TO VOTE. 65 ■ I go to give my vote alone, but, even while I do, I vote for dead and living, all — the living dead and you ! See yonder tree beside the field, caught in the sud- den sough, How conscious of its strength it leans, how straight and steadfast now ! If Lincoln bends (for all, through him, my vote I mean to cast) — What winds have blown ! what storms he 's known ! the hickory's straight at last ! November, 1864. ^ THE DESERTED SMITHY. \ T the end of the lane and in sight of the mill Is the smithy ; I pass it to-day, in a dream Of the days whose red blood in my bosom is warm, While the real alone as the vanished I deem : For the years they may crumble to dust in the heart, But the roses will bloom though the grave-stones depart. In the loneliest evenings of long ago, The smithy was dear in the darkness to me, When the clouds were all heaping the world with their snow, (66) THE DESERTED SMITHY. 6/ And the wind shivered over dead leaves on the tree ; Through the snow-shower it seemed to be bursting aflame : — How the sparks in the dark from the chimney came ! It was dear in the Past ; and still it is dear, In the memory fond of the far-away time, When the binging and banging, and clinging and clanging, In the heart of my boyhood, were music and rhyme ; When the bellows groaned to the furnace-glow, And the lights through the chinks danced out in the The irons within on the anvils were ringing: There were glowing arms in the bursting gleam ; 68 THE DESERTED SMITHY. And shadows were glowering away in the gloaming, That, suddenly bounding to giants, would seem Now out of the open doorways to spring. Now up in the rafters vanishing ! The smith I remember: oh, many a smile Has played on his lips with me, and kind Were the words that would lighten the dusk of his face — His face, at the memory, gleams in my mind — With a heart that could beat in the heart of a boy, A heart for his grief, and a heart for his joy ! Adown from the farm of my father once more, That so long has forgotten us up on the hill, — With the wings in my blood to the bound of the steed, That passes the breezes so merry and shrill, — THE DESERTED SMITHY. 6g I seem to be flying ; then, suddenly, seem To drop to the earth from the wings of my dream ! Vain dream of the Past ! — But I pass it to-day : No longer the furnace is bursting with flame ; No longer the music comes out of the door, That, long ago, to the schoolboy came : The winds whisper low through the window and door, The chimney is part of the dust of the floor. . . . Phoebe Morris! sweet Phoebe! — the sweetest of girls That brightened old dreams with a beautiful face ! — It may be that she smiled from her father's lips. And blossomed her smile in the dusky place ! Ah, she smiles, to-day, in my boyhood for me, With her lips that are kissing — a memory! 7 GRANDFATHER WRIGHT. r T E knew of the great pioneering days, And the dread Indian times that only live In dreams of old men when the ember-ghost Of long December evenings, Memory, Rising from the white ashes of the hearth And from the ashes of their outburnt lives, Haunts them, and fills them with a tender breath From the rough forests, full of wolves and deer, Where their young hearts made the fierce land their own. (70) THE OLD MAN AND THE SPRING-LEAVES. T T NDERNEATH the beechen tree All things fall in love with me ! Birds, that sing so sweetly, sung Ne'er more sweet when I was young ; Some shy fay, ( I zvill not see ! ) Steals to kiss me, lovingly ; All the leaves, so blithe and bright. Dancing sing in Maying light Over me : "At last, at last, He is stolen from the Past!" (71) 72 THE OLD MAN AND THE SPRING-LEAVES. Wherefore, leaves, so merrily mad ? I am rather sad than glad. "He is the happy child that played Underneath our beechen shade, Years ago, — whom all things bright Gladdened, glad with his delight ! " I am not the child that played Underneath your beechen shade; I am not the boy ye sung Songs to, in lost fairy-tongue. He read fairy dreams below: Legends leaves and flowers must know ; He dreamed fairy dreams, while ye Changed to fairies, in your glee Dancing, singing, on the tree; And, awakened, fairy-land THE OLD MAN AND THE SPRING-LEAVES. 73 Circled childhood's magic wand ! Joy warmed his heart, joy kissed his brow ; — I am following funerals now. Fairy shores from Time depart ; Lost horizons flush my heart. I am not the child that played Underneath your beechen shade. " ' T is the merry child that played Underneath our beechen shade, Years ago, — whom all things bright Gladdened, glad with his delight ! " Ah, the bright leaves will not know That an old man dreams below ! No; they will not hear nor see, — Clapping their hands at finding me, Singing, dancing, on their tree ! 74 THE OLD MAN AND THE SPRING-LEAVES- Ah, their happy voices steal Years away ; — again I feel. While they sing to me apart, The lost child come in my heart: In the enchantment of the Past, The old man is the child at last ! THE LOST FARM. THE schoolmaster's STORY. "\^ /"HEN my strong fathers came into the West, They chose a tract of land which seemed the best, Near a swift river, in whose constant flow Peacefully earth and heaven were one below ; Gigantic wardens, on the horizon, stood Far-circling hills, rough to their tops with wood. They came, a long and dangerous journey then. Through paths that had not known of civil men ; With wives and children looking back, and still Returning long in dreams confusing will, (75) ']6 THE LOST FARM. They came, and in the panther-startled shade The deep foundations of a State were laid. The axe, in stalwart hands, with steadfast stroke. The savage echoes of the forest woke, And, one by one, breaking the world-old spell, The hardy trees, long-crashing, with thunder fell. The log-house rose, within the solitude, And civilized the tenants of the wood. It was not long before the shadow'd mold Open'd to take the sunshine's gift of gold ; In the dark furrow dropp'd the trusted seed, And the first harvest bless'd the sower's need. Oh, dear the memory of their simpler wealth. Whose hardship nursed the iron flower of health ; Oh, sweet the record of the lives they spent, Whose breath was peace, whose benison content ; Unenvied now by us, their delicate sons, THE LOST FARM. JJ The dangers which they braved, those heartier ones ! The Indian's midnight coming, long ago, And the wolf's howl in nights that shone with snow, These are but dreams to us (who would but dream), Pictured far ofif, heard as lost sounds that seem : They knew the terror, seventy years gone by, Of the realities we may not try, Who left the farm on which my new-born eyes Saw the great miracle of earth and skies. The fields were clear'd ; the farm-house, girt around With meadow-lands and orchards, held its ground ; The goodly place had wavering uplands, sweet With cattle-pastures, hot with ripening wheat. The house look'd Westward, where the river lay Shimmering o'er level lands at close of day. Or, many-twinkling through the autumnal morn, In the hazy heat rustled the languid corn. 78 THE LOST FARM. Not far were neighbors — heirs of acres wide, Or the small farms in which the old divide. By the close pike, a half-mile off to the north, The tavern, with old-fashion'd sign thrust forth, Show'd Washington, a little faded then, (Too faded now, among new-famous men !) And, close beside, the blacksmith-shop was found, In August noons obtrusive with its sound, Or late in winter eves, a welcome sight, Burning and brightening through with bursting light ! Such was the farm — how dear to my regret !— Whose fresh life runs into my bosom yet. My -dreams may bear me thither even now . Again, with eager heart and sunburnt brow, Homesick at times, I take a noiseless train, Wandering, breath-like, to my home again ; THE LOST FARM. 79 See my glad brothers, in the June-sweet air, Toss the green hay, the hot sheaves of harvest bear ; The fireside warms into my heart — how plain ! And my lost mother takes her boy again ; My sisters steal around me tenderly — And all that can not be yet seems to be ! In thirty years what changes there have been ! — How disappear the landmarks that were seen ! If I should go to seek my boyhood's place, What chart would show the way, what guide would trace ? New people came. Around the tavern grew New dwellings and new manners — all things new. The impetus of something in the land (Some gold, unseen, diviners understand). Some mystic loadstone of the earth or air, 80 THE LOST FARM. Drew all the nimble spirits of action there. The village, not without a conscious pride, Grew fast and gather'd in the country-side, Then took the style of town. And now, behold, A wild, strange rumor through the country roll'd ! — A railroad was projected, East and West, Which would not slight us, so the shrewd ones guess'd. Strange men with chain and compass came at last Among the hills, across the valley pass'd , Through field and woodland, pasture, orchard, they Turn'd not aside, but kept straight on their way. Old farmers threaten'd, but it did no good — The quick conservatives of the neighborhood. "We do not want it !" many said, and one, " Through field of mine I swear it shall not run ! " And paced his boundary-line with loaded gun. Others replied (wise, weather-sighted, they I') THE LOST FARM. 8 1 " You ']1 think a little different, friend, some day. The wheels of progress will you block — good speed! (Cut off your nose to spite your face, indeed !) 'T will make the land worth double, where you walk." "Stuff! stuff!" the old fogies answer'd — "how you talk!" The road was open'd. Soon another, down Northward and Southward, cut across the town : Both pass'd through meadows where my boyhood stray'd : One through the barn within whose mow I play'd. And then a newer force of circumstance Took hold and pull'd the place in quick advance; The lovely river — swift, and deep, and strong — Upon whose shore I fish'd and i