Classic Poem

Oh! the shadows of the noontide
Give a charm to melting day,
Under boughy trees in meadows,
Under ricks of new-made hay,
Under rocks beside the hill,
Where lightly-trickling streams are shed,
Or where, out-falling over walling,
Hangs the ivy overhead.

Closely narrowed round the elm tree
Lies the shade of tip and limb,
While the cattle thickly huddle
Up within its darksome rim;
And the maiden in her shadow
Like a stunted dwarf is made,
And the steepness and the deepness
Of the hillside gives no shade.

But when evening's yellow sunshine
Gilds the side of bush and weed,
Then the poplar casts his shadow
O'er the stream and half the mead;
And the shadow of the workman
Shoots o'er stiles amid the glare,
Where the flying rooks are hieing
Home with shadows lost in air.

How the shadow of that gable,
While its years of days have run,
Here has glided over flowers,
Over sire, and over son!
O'er the father-planted cypress,
O'er his children in their play,
O'er the daughter till there sought her
He that took her quite away.