Classic Poem

By summer and fall, and by tide upon tide,
The apple-tree stems may lean lower aside,
And the loosening bricks out in orchard may fall
On the tree-begloom'd grass from the long-sided wall,
And the bank-sweeping water, with shock upon shock,
May wash down the tongue of dry ground at the rock;
And old folks once gay,
And sprightly of limb,
With eyes wearing dim,
May now stoop on their way.

There's an old leaning stone in the churchyard, bespread
With the scales of grey lichen above a green bed,
With the name of a mother that few, or that none,
Now alive e'er beheld by the light of the sun;
Aye, a mother of mothers, from older to young,
To the mother that worded my own little tongue,
And found the wall sound,
And apple-trees trim,
And play'd on the brim
That is wash'd from the ground.

Oh! now could she come, as we all have been told
She walk'd in her time, of the comeliest mould,
And show us as what we may see in a dream,
Her looks and her smiles by the twilighted stream,
Where star-beams may twinkle through leaves of the oak,
And tell us her tales of her old fellow folk
That here have liv'd on,
In joy or in woe,
From sprightly to slow,
And from blooming to wan.

What maid was belov'd or what woman was bride,
Who droop'd in their grief or upstraighten'd with pride,
Who knelt in the church, putting head beside head,
Who stood to the children or mourn'd for the dead,
Who milk'd at the dairy in long-shaded light,
Who knelt up to thatch the round rick's peaked height,
What mower was strong,
Or what haymaker quick,
Who play'd the best trick,
Or who sang the best song.