Classic Poem

A LADY sat in a boudoir,
In a costly easy chair,
With many a fold of dainty lace
Falling around her aged face,
And shading her snow-white hair.

Over the Gobelin carpet,
The pictures and mirrors bright,
Tables with mother-of-pearl inlaid,
And amber curtains of rare brocade,
Trembled a golden light.

A bird, in a gilded network,
Was singing a plaintive strain,
Of murmuring brooks and whispering breeze,
Learned far away, in the plantain trees
It never should see again.

But the lady sat as dreaming,
Or watching the embers' glow.
While her thoughts went back through many years,
To the loves and labors, the hopes and fears,
Of a home in the long ago.

And again she lulled her baby
To sleep at the close of day;
Prepared her husband's evening meal,
Then filled her distaff and turned her wheel
Till the evening stole away.


" Grandmother, " said little Cora,
" Grandmother, why do you sigh? "
And then, as she stroked the wrinkled face
With her dimpled hands and childish grace,
" Was you ever as small as I?

" And were you obliged to study
Hard lessons the livelong day?
And did your governess scold and frown
Because you happened to tear your gown,
Or soil your hands at play?

" And if you ran in the garden,
Chasing a bird or bee,
Was she sure to say, " O naughty girl!
You have tossed your hair quite out of curl;
You shall not go down to tea?" "

" Come, sit you down, little Cora,
And I'll tell you something new.
I was seventy-five years old last May,
Yet I remember, as yesterday,
When I was as small as you.

" We lived in a wild, new country,
In a settlement just begun;
My best was a linsey-woolsey gown,
And my hands and face were cherry brown,
With working in wind and sun.

" Our home was a rude log cabin,
With many a crack and patch;
A loft and a poplar puncheon floor,
An earthen hearth and a clapboard door,
With a string and a white-oak latch.

" Our one little oblong window,
Where the wind and the sun could pass,
Was opened and shut with a sliding board;
For a pioneer could ill afford
A sash frame, putty and glass.

" Without, through the livelong winter,
Went ringing my father's ax;
Within, the cards and warping-reel,
The flying shuttle and spinning wheel
Sung songs to the wool and flax.

" We children worked in the clearing,
As busy as bees, all day,
Piling and burning the chips and brush —
But after our supper of milk and mush,
Had time to study and play.

" A game of " Puss wants a corner,"
In the shellbark hickory light,
And we huddled down in the chimney nook,
With our one old slate and spelling book,
And learned to read and to write.

" Then, in the beautiful springtime,
Up with the birds at morn;
We fed the chickens and milked the cows,
Prepared the dinner or followed the plows,
Dropping and covering corn.

" But O, in the plenteous harvest,
In the summer's golden prime;
When we bound the sheaves or raked the hay,
And hauled it home at the close of day,
We had the merriest time.

" I married a brave, young farmer,
With neither land nor gold,
And carded my fleeces, spun and wove,
In my humble home, a-light with love,
Till your father was five years old.

" Since then, by chances and changes,
No thought of mine had planned,
I floated up, on the tide of fate,
To the plane of those who live in state,
And rule with a golden wand.

" But my heart, with a weary longing,
Turned from palace, hearth and hall,
To the cabin home, with its simple ways,
And the honest love of the dear old days —
The happiest days of all.

" For the sphere we live in, darling,
Like the beautiful world of art,
Has faultless coloring, taste and tone —
And faultless forms in marble stone,
But rarely a human heart. "