Classic Poem

With bevelled binding, with uncut edge,
With broad white margin and gilded top,
Fit for my library's choicest ledge,
Fresh from the bindery, smelling of shop,
In tinted cloth, with a strange design—
Buskin and scroll-work and mask and crown,
And an arabesque legend tumbling down—
‘The Works of Shakspere’ were never so fine.
Fresh from the shop! I turn the page—
Its ‘ample margin’ is wide and fair—
Its type is chosen with daintiest care;
There's a ‘New French Elzevir’ strutting there
That would shame its prototypic age.
Fresh from the shop! O Shakspere mine,
I've half a notion you're much too fine!

There's an ancient volume that I recall,
In foxy leather much chafed and worn;
Its back is broken by many a fall,
The stitchers are loose and the leaves are torn;
And gone is the bastard-title, next
To the title-page scribbled with owners' names,
That in straggling old-style type proclaims
That the work is from the corrected text
Left by the late Geo. Steevens, Esquire.

The broad sky burns like a great blue fire,
And the Lake shines blue as shimmering steel,
And it cuts the horizon like a blade—
But behind the poplar's a strip of shade—
The great tall Lombardy on the lawn.
And lying there in the grass, I feel
The wind that blows from the Canada shore,
And in cool, sweet puffs comes stealing o'er,
Fresh as any October dawn.

I lie on my breast in the grass, my feet
Lifted boy-fashion, and swinging free,
The old brown Shakspere in front of me.
And big are my eyes, and my heart's a-beat;
And my whole soul's lost—in what?—who knows?
Perdita's charms or Perdita's woes—
Perdita fairy-like, fair and sweet.
Is any one jealous, I wonder, now,
Of my love for Perdita? For I vow
I loved her well. And who can say
That life would be quite the same life to-day—
That Love would mean so much, if she
Had not taught me its A B C?

The Grandmother, thin and bent and old,
But her hair still dark and her eyes still bright,
Totters around among her flowers—
Old-fashioned flowers of pink and white;
And turns with a trowel the dark rich mould
That feeds the blooms of her heart's delight.
Ah me! for her and for me the hours
Go by, and for her the smell of earth—
And for me the breeze and a far love's birth,
And the sun and the sky and all the things
That a boy's heart hopes and a poet sings.

Fresh from the shop! O Shakspere mine,
It wasn't the binding made you divine!
I knew you first in a foxy brown,
In the old, old home, where I laid me down,
In the idle summer afternoons,
With you alone in the odorous grass,
And set your thoughts to the wind's low tunes,
And saw your children rise up and pass—
And dreamed and dreamed of the things to be,
Known only, I think, to you and me.

I've hardly a heart for you dressed so fine—
Fresh from the shop, O Shakspere mine!