YE OLDEN TIME.
A TRIBUTE.
Written for Carver’s Old Home Day Celebration.
A song to the brave of ye olden time,
Who rest where the night hangs low,
Where never a breeze of the morning stirs,
And only the death-lamps glow.
Where ever and ever, a-side by side,
The prince and the pauper dwell,
While the summer blooms and the autumn fades
And the winter weaves its spell
Through the leafless boughs, and the snow descends,
And wraps them all as one,
And the stars adore, and the still moon waits,
While the hurrying world moves on.
A song to the man of a courtly mien,
With his buckles, and wig, and frill,
And a song to the man with a horny palm,
And the grip of an iron will,
Who planted these fields with their living green,
With the plough, and the hoe and pick;
Who lighted his way by the Psalmist’s lay,
And the glow of a tallowed wick.
A song to the maid of the minuet,
With a blush as of autumn fruit,
Whose wheel was rife with such magic strains
As the strings of a lover’s lute;
Who caught with her shuttle the firelight glim,
As she worked at her cloth of gold,
And took up her task at the early dawn
With the skillet and candle mould.
A song to the dame with her green calash,
Her curls and her pensive grace,
Who gladdened the days with her homespun ways,
And the charm of her tranquil face.
A song to the woman who made the Home,
Who hovered about the nest
With the sheltering wings of a mother’s prayers,
And the warmth of a mother’s breast.
To her be the chaplet of stars we bring!
To her be our gifts of myrrh!
For heaven is heaven and God is God,
For the goodness we found in her.
Swing out ye bells from your signal towers!
Swing out with your tongues of gold!
And mingle your strain, O ye fields of grain,
With a tenderness yet untold,
Till it reach the throngs on those peaks of light
Where the hosts of the holy stand,
And their voices wake for the old love’s sake—
For the loves of life’s yester-land.