THE BAREFOOT BOY

Mine, on bending orchard trees,
Apples of Hesperides!

Still as my horizon grew,
Larger grew my riches too;
All the world I saw or knew
Seemed a complex Chinese toy,
Fashioned for a barefoot boy!

Oh for festal dainties spread,
Like my bowl of milk and bread;
Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,
On the door-stone, gray and rude!
O'er me, like a regal tent,
Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent,
Purple-curtained, fringed with gold,
Looped in many a wind-swung fold;
While for music came the play
Of the pied frogs' orchestra;
And, to light the noisy choir,
Lit the fly his lamp of fire.
I was monarch: pomp and joy
Waited on the barefoot boy!

Cheerily, then, my little man,
Live and laugh, as boyhood can!
Though the flinty slopes be hard,
Stubble-speared the new-mown sward,
Every morn shall lead thee through
Fresh baptisms of the dew;
Every evening from thy feet

Shall the cool wind kiss the heat:
All too soon these feet must hide
In the prison cells of pride,

45

Lose the freedom of the sod,
Like a colt's for work be shod,
Made to tread the mills of toil,
Up and down in ceaseless moil:
Happy if their track be found
Never on forbidden ground;
Happy if they sink not in

Quick and treacherous sands of sin.
Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy,

Ere it passes, barefoot boy!

John Greenleaf Whittier.

ICHABOD

So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn

Which once he wore!

The glory from his gray hairs gone
Forevermore!

Revile him not, the Tempter hath
A snare for all;

And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath,
Befit his fall!

Oh, dumb be passion's stormy rage,

When he who might

Have lighted up and led his age,

Falls back in night.

Scorn! would the angels laugh, to mark

A bright soul driven,

Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark,
From hope and heaven!

ISRAFEL

Let not the land once proud of him
Insult him now,

Nor brand with deeper shame his dim,

Dishonored brow.

But let its humbled sons, instead,

From sea to lake,

A long lament, as for the dead,

In sadness make.

Of all we loved and honored, naught
Save power remains;

A fallen angel's pride of thought,
Still strong in chains.

All else is gone; from those great eyes

The soul has fled:

When faith is lost, when honor dies,
The man is dead!

Then, pay the reverence of old days
To his dead fame;

Walk backward, with averted gaze,

And hide the shame!

47

John Greenleaf Whittier.

ISRAFEL

IN Heaven a spirit doth dwell

"Whose heart-strings are a lute";

None sing so wildly well

As the angel Israfel,

And the giddy stars (so legends tell), Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell Of his voice, all mute.

Tottering above

In her highest noon,

The enamoured moon
Blushes with love,

While, to listen, the red levin
(With the rapid Pleiads, even,
Which were seven)

Pauses in Heaven.

And they say (the starry choir
And the other listening things)
That Israfeli's fire

Is owing to that lyre

By which he sits and sings –
The trembling living wire
Of those unusual strings.

But the skies that angel trod,

Where deep thoughts are a duty

Where Love's a grown-up god

Where the Houri glances are

Imbued with all the beauty

Which we worship in a star.

Therefore thou art not wrong,
Israfeli, who despisest

An unimpassioned song;

To thee the laurels belong,

Best bard, because the wisest!

Merrily live, and long!

THE VALLEY OF UNREST

The ecstasies above

With thy burning measures suit
Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,
With the fervor of thy lute -
Well may the stars be mute!

Yes, Heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely — flowers,
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
Is the sunshine of ours.

If I could dwell

Where Israfel

Hath dwelt, and he where I,

He might not sing so wildly well

A mortal melody,

While a bolder note than this might swell

From my lyre within the sky.

49

Edgar Allan Poe.

THE VALLEY OF UNREST

ONCE it smiled a silent dell
Where the people did not dwell;
They had gone unto the wars,
Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,
Nightly, from their azure towers,
To keep watch above the flowers,
In the midst of which all day
The red sunlight lazily lay.