I sithed agin, three times, but Miss Tutt didn’t notice ’em a mite no more’n they’d been giggles or titters. She wouldn’t have took no notice of them. She wuz firm and decided doin’ her own errent, and not payin’ no attention to anything, nor anybody else.
“Ardelia, read the poem you have got under your arm to Miss Allen! The bag wuz full of her longer ones,” sez she, “but I felt that I must let you hear her poem on Spring. It is a gem. I felt it would be wrongin’ you, not to give you that treat. Read it Ardelia.”
I see Ardelia wuz used to obeyin’ her ma. She opened the sheet to once, and begun. It wuz as follows:
“ARDELIA TUTT ON SPRING.”
“Oh spring, sweet spring, thou comest in the spring;
Thou comest in the spring time of the year.
We fain would have thee come in Autumn; fling-
est thou so sad a shade, oh Spring, so dear?
“So dear the hopes thou draggest in thy rear,
So mournful, and so wan, and not so sweet;
So weird thou art, and oh, all! all! too dear
Art thou, alas! oh mournful spring; my ear—
“My ear that long did lay at gate of hope,
Prone at the gate while years glided by—
I fain would lift that ear, alas, why cope
With cruel wrong, it must lie there so heavy ’tis my eye—
“My eye, I fling o’er buried ruins long,
I flung it there, regardless of the loss;
That eye, I fain would gather in with song;
In vain! ’tis gone, I bow and own the cross.
“Dear ear, lone eye, sweet buried hopes, alas,
I give thee to the proud inexorable main;
Deep calls to deep, and it doth not reply,
But sayeth my heart, they will not be mine own again.”
Jest the minute Ardelia stopped readin’ Miss Tatt says proudly: “There! haint that a remarkable poem,?”
Sez I, calmly, “Yes it is a remarkable one.”
“Did you ever hear anything like it?” says she, triumphly.
“No,” sez I honestly, “I never did.”
“Ardelia, read the poem on Little Ardelia Cordelia; give Miss Allen the treat of hearin’ that beautiful thing.”