That fellow's voice! how often steals
Its cadence o'er my lonely days!
Like something sent on wagon wheels,
Or packed in an unconscious chaise.
I might forget the words he said
When all the children fret and cry,
But when I get them off to bed,
His gentle tone comes stealing by—
And years of matrimony flee,
And leave me sitting on his knee.
The times he came to court a spell,
The tender things he said to me,
Make me remember mighty well
My hopes that he'd propose to me.
My face is uglier, and perhaps
Time and the comb have thinned my hair;
And plain and common are the caps,
And dresses that I have to wear—
But memory is ever yet
With all that fellow's flat'ries writ.
I have been out at milking-time
Beneath a dull and rainy sky,
When in the barn 'twas time to feed,
And calves were bawling lustily—
When scattered hay, and sheaves of oats,
And yellow corn-ears, sound and hard,
And all that makes the cattle pass
With wilder richness through the yard—
When all was hateful, then have I,
With friends who had to help me milk,
Talked of his wife most spitefully,
And how he kept her dressed in silk;
And when the cattle, running there,
Threw over me a shower of mud,
That fellow's voice came on the air,
Like the light chewing of the cud—
And resting near some spreckled cow,
The spirit of a woman's spite,
I've poured a low and fervent vow,
To make him, if I had the might,
Live all his life-time just as hard,
And milk his cows in such a yard.
I have been out to pick up wood
When night was stealing from the dawn,
Before the fire was burning good,
Or I had put the kettle on
The little stove—when babes were waking
With a low murmur in the beds,
And melody by fits was breaking
Above their little yellow heads—
And this when I was up perhaps
From a few short and troubled naps—
And when the sun sprang scorchingly
And freely up, and made us stifle,
And fell upon each hill and tree
The bullets from his subtle rifle—
I say a voice has thrilled me then,
Hard by that solemn pile of wood,
Or creeping from the silent glen,
Like something on the unfledged brood,
Hath stricken me, and I have pressed
Close in my arms my load of chips,
And pouring forth the hatefulest
Of words that ever passed my lips,
Have felt my woman's spirit rush
On me, as on that milking night,
And, yielding to the blessed gush
Of my ungovernable spite,
Have risen up, the wed, the old,
Scolding as hard as I could scold.
And in the same vein "The Annoyer," in which is imitated one of the most delicate pieces of sentiment and fancy which Willis has given us:
THE ANNOYER.
"Common as light is love,
And its familiar voice wearies not ever."—Shelley.
Love knoweth every body's house,
And every human haunt,
And comes unbidden, every where,
Like people we don't want.
The turnpike roads and little creeks
Are written with love's words,
And you hear his voice like a thousand bricks
In the lowing of the herds.
He peeps into the teamster's heart,
From his Buena Vista's rim,
And the cracking whips of many men
Can never frighten him.
He'll come to his cart in the weary night,
When he's dreaming of his craft;
And he'll float to his eye in the morning light,
Like a man on a river raft.
He hears the sound of the cooper's adz,
And makes him too his dupe,
For he sighs in his ear from the shaving pile
As he hammers on the hoop.
The little girl, the beardless boy,
The men that walk or stand,
He will get them all in his mighty arms
Like the grasp of your very hand.