"I was ambitious in my boyhood days,
And dreamed of fame and honors—misty fogs
That climb at morn the ragged cliffs of life,
Veiling the ragged rocks and gloomy chasms,
And shaping airy castles on the top
With bristling battlements and looming towers;
But melt away into ethereal air
Beneath the blaze of the mid-summer sun,
Till cliffs and chasms and all the ragged rocks
Are bare, and all the castles crumbled away.
"There winds a river 'twixt two chains of hills—
Fir-capped and rugged monuments of time;
A level vale of rich alluvial land,
Washed from the slopes through circling centuries,
And sweet with clover and the hum of bees,
Lies broad between the rugged, somber hills.
Beneath a shade of willows and of elms
The river slumbers in this meadowy lap.
Down from the right there winds a babbling branch,
Cleaving a narrower valley through the hills.
A grand bald-headed hill-cone on the right
Looms like a patriarch, and above the branch
There towers another. I have seen the day
When those bald heads were plumed with lofty pines.
Below the branch and near the river bank,
Hidden among the elms and butternuts,
The dear old cottage stands where I was born.
An English ivy clambers to the eaves;
An English willow planted by my hand
Now spreads its golden branches o'er the roof
Not far below the cottage thrives a town,
A busy town of mills and merchandise—
Belle Meadows, fairest village of the vale.
Behind it looms the hill-cone, and in front
The peaceful river winds its silent way.
Beyond the river spreads a level plain—
Once hid with somber firs—a tangled marsh—
Now beautiful with fields and cottages,
And sweet in spring-time with the blooming plum,
And white with apple-blossoms blown like snow.
Beyond the plain a lower chain of hills,
In summer gemmed with fields of golden grain
Set in the emerald of the beechen woods.
In other days the village school-house stood
Below our cottage on a grassy mound
That sloped away unto the river's marge;
And on the slope a cluster of tall pines
Crowning a copse of beech and evergreen.
There in my boyhood days I went to school;
A maiden mistress ruled the little realm;
She taught the rudiments to rompish rogues,
And walked a queen with magic wand of birch.
My years were hardly ten when father died.
Sole tenants of our humble cottage home
My sorrowing mother and myself remained;
But she was all economy, and kept
With my poor aid a comfortable house.
I was her idol and she wrought at night
To keep me at my books, and used to boast
That I should rise above our humble lot.
How oft I listened to her hopeful words—
Poured from the fountain of a mother's heart
Until I longed to wing the sluggard years
That bore me on to what I hoped to be.
"We had a garden-plat behind the house—
Beyond, an orchard and a pasture-lot;
In front a narrow meadow—here and there
Shaded with elms and branching butternuts.
In spring and summer in the garden-plat
I wrought my morning and my evening hours
And kept myself at school—no idle boy.
"One bright May morning when the robins sang
There came to school a stranger queenly fair,
With eyes that shamed the ethereal blue of heaven,
And golden hair in ringlets—cheeks as soft,
As fresh and rosy as the velvet blush
Of summer sunrise on the dew-damp hills.
Hers was the name I muttered in my dreams.
For days my bashful heart held me aloof
Although her senior by a single year;
But we were brought together oft in class,
And when she learned my name she spoke to me,
And then my tongue was loosed and we were friends.
Before the advent of the steeds of steel
Her sire—a shrewd and calculating man—
Had lately come and purchased timbered-lands
And idle mills, and made the town his home.
And he was well-to-do and growing rich,
And she her father's pet and only child.
In mind and stature for two happy years
We grew together at the village school.
We grew together!—aye, our tender hearts
There grew together till they beat as one.
Her tasks were mine, and mine alike were hers;
We often stole away among the pines—
That stately cluster on the sloping hill—
And conned our lessons from the selfsame book,
And learned to love each other o'er our tasks,
While in the pine-tops piped the oriole,
And from his branch the chattering squirrel chid
Our guileless love and artless innocence.
'Twas childish love perhaps, but day by day
It grew into our souls as we grew up.
Then there was opened in the prospering town
A grammar school, and thither went Pauline.
I missed her and was sad for many a day,
Till mother gave me leave to follow her.
In autumn—in vacation—she would come
With girlish pretext to our cottage home.
She often brought my mother little gifts,
And cheered her with sweet songs and happy words;
And I would pluck the fairest meadow-flowers
To grace a garland for her golden hair,
And fill her basket from the butternuts
That flourished in our little meadow field.
I found in her all I had dreamed of heaven.
So garlanded with latest-blooming flowers,
Chanting the mellow music of our hopes,
The silver-sandaled Autumn-hours tripped by.
And mother learned to love her; but she feared,
Knowing her heart and mine, that one rude hand
Might break our hopes asunder. Like a thief
I often crept about her father's house,
Under the evening shadows, eager-eyed,
Peering for one dear face, and lingered late
To catch the silver music of one voice
That from her chamber nightly rose to heaven.
Her father's face I feared—a silent man,
Cold-faced, imperative, by nature prone
To set his will against the beating world;
Warm-hearted but heart-crusted.
[Illustration: WE OFTEN STOLE AWAY AMONG THE PINES, AND CONNED OUR LESSONS FROM THE SELF-SAME BOOK]
"Two years more
Thus wore away. Pauline grew up a queen.
A shadow fell across my sunny path;—
A hectic flush burned on my mother's cheeks;
She daily failed and nearer drew to death.
Pauline would often come with sun-lit face,
Cheating the day of half its languid hours
With cheering chapters from the holy book,
And border tales and wizard minstrelsy:
And mother loved her all the better for it.
With feeble hands upon our sad-bowed heads,
And in a voice all tremulous with tears,
She said to us: 'Dear children, love each other—
Bear and forbear, and come to me in heaven;'
And praying for us daily—drooped and died.
[Illustration: "'DEAR CHILDREN? LOVE EACH OTHER,—BEAR AND FORBEAR, AND COME TO ME IN HEAVEN'">[
"After the sad and solemn funeral,
Alone and weeping and disconsolate,
I sat at evening by the cottage door.
I felt as if a dark and bitter fate
Had fallen on me in my tender years.
I seemed an aimless wanderer doomed to grope
In vain among the darkling years and die.
One only star shone through the shadowy mists.
The moon that wandered in the gloomy heavens
Was robed in shrouds; the rugged, looming hills
Looked desolate;—the silent river seemed
A somber chasm, while my own pet lamb,
Mourning disconsolate among the trees,
As if he followed some dim phantom-form,
Bleated in vain and would not heed my call.
On weary hands I bent my weary head;
In gloomy sadness fell my silent tears.
"An angel's hand was laid upon my head—
There in the moonlight stood my own Pauline—
Angel of love and hope and holy faith—
She flashed upon me bowed in bitter grief,
As falls the meteor down the night-clad heavens—
In silence. Then about my neck she clasped
Her loving arms and on my shoulder drooped
Her golden tresses, while her silent tears
Fell warm upon my cheek like summer rain.
Heart clasped to heart and cheek to cheek we sat;
The moon no longer gloomed—her face was cheer;
The rugged hills were old-time friends again;
The peaceful river slept beneath the moon,
And my pet lamb came bounding to our side
And kissed her hand and mine as he was wont.
Then I awoke as from a dream and said:
'Tell me, beloved, why you come to me
In this dark hour—so late—so desolate?'
And she replied:
"'My darling, can I rest
While you are full of sorrow? In my ear
A spirit seemed to whisper—"Arise and go
To comfort him disconsolate." Tell me, Paul,
Why should you mourn your tender life away?
I will be mother to you; nay, dear boy,
I will be more. Come, brush away these tears.'