Myth and Romance: Being a Book of Verses. Cawein Madison Julius

      How memory takes me back the ways that lead—

      As when a boy—through woodland and through mead!

      To orchards fruited; or to fields in bloom;

      Or briary fallows, like a mighty room,

      Through which the winds swing censers of perfume,

      And where deep blackberries spread miles of fruit;—

      A splendid feast, that stayed the ploughboy's foot

      When to the tasseling acres of the corn

      He drove his team, fresh in the primrose morn;

      And from the liberal banquet, nature lent,

      Took dewy handfuls as he whistling went.—

      A boy once more I stand with sunburnt feet

      And watch the harvester sweep down the wheat;

      Or laze with warm limbs in the unstacked straw

      Nearby the thresher, whose insatiate maw

      Devours the sheaves, hot drawling out its hum—

      Like some great sleepy bee, above a bloom,

      Made drunk with honey—while, grown big with grain,

      The bulging sacks receive the golden rain.

      Again I tread the valley, sweet with hay,

      And hear the bob-white calling far away,

      Or wood-dove cooing in the elder-brake;

      Or see the sassafras bushes madly shake

      As swift, a rufous instant, in the glen

      The red-fox leaps and gallops to his den;

      Or, standing in the violet-colored gloam,

      Hear roadways sound with holiday riding home

      From church, or fair, or bounteous barbecue,

      Which the whole country to some village drew.

      How spilled with berries were its summer hills,

      And strewn with walnuts were its autumn rills—

      And chestnut burs! fruit of the spring's long flowers,

      When from their tops the trees seemed streaming showers

      Of slender silver, cool, crepuscular,

      And like a nebulous radiance shone afar.

      And maples! how their sappy hearts would gush

      Broad troughs of syrup, when the winter bush

      Steamed with the sugar-kettle, day and night,

      And all the snow was streaked with firelight.

      Then it was glorious! the mill-dam's edge,

      One slant of frosty crystal, laid a ledge

      Of pearl across; above which, sleeted trees

      Tossed arms of ice, that, clashing in the breeze,

      Tinkled the ringing creek with icicles,

      Thin as the peal of Elfland's Sabbath bells:

      A sound that in my city dreams I hear,

      That brings before me, under skies that clear,

      The old mill in its winter garb of snow,

      Its frozen wheel, a great hoar beard below,

      And its West windows, two deep eyes aglow.

      Ah, ancient mill, still do I picture o'er

      Thy cobwebbed stairs and loft and grain-strewn floor;

      Thy door,—like some brown, honest hand of toil,

      And honorable with labor of the soil,—

      Forever open; through which, on his back

      The prosperous farmer bears his bursting sack.

      And while the miller measures out his toll,

      Again I hear, above the cogs' loud roll,—

      That makes stout joist and rafter groan and sway,—

      The harmless gossip of the passing day:

      Good country talk, that tells how so-and-so

      Has died or married; how curculio

      And codling-moth have ruined half the fruit,

      And blight plays mischief with the grapes to boot;

      Or what the news from town; next county fair;

      How well the crops are looking everywhere:

      Now this, now that, on which their interests fix,

      Prospects for rain or frost, and politics.

      While, all around, the sweet smell of the meal

      Filters, warm-pouring from the grinding wheel

      Into the bin; beside which, mealy white,

      The miller looms, dim in the dusty light.

      Again I see the miller's home, between

      The crinkling creek and hills of beechen green:

      Again the miller greets me, gaunt and brown,

      Who oft o'erawed me with his gray-browed frown

      And rugged mien: again he tries to reach

      My youthful mind with fervid scriptural speech.—

      For he, of all the country-side confessed,

      The most religious was and happiest;

      A Methodist, and one whom faith still led,

      No books except the Bible had he read—

      At least so seemed it to my younger head.—

      All things in earth and heav'n he'd prove by this,

      Be it a fact or mere hypothesis;

      For to his simple wisdom, reverent,

      "The Bible says" was all of argument.—

      God keep his soul! his bones were long since laid

      Among the sunken gravestones in the shade

      Of those black-lichened rocks, that wall around

      The family burying-ground with cedars crowned;

      Where bristling teasel and the brier combine

      With clambering wood-rose and the wild-grape vine

      To hide the stone whereon his name and dates

      Neglect, with mossy hand, obliterates.