Classic Poem

Dull and muffled now the tumult of the city comes to me:
Wagons rattle, hoofs are thudding, amid laughs and shouts of glee.
Through the open window pouring, floods the sultry summer air,
And I see the sunlight shining, and the heavens, how blue and fair!

On the table just before me, gray and blurred, the paper lies,
And I look its columns over thoughtlessly with hurried eyes.
Dear old village names are in it, and to me the pictures come
Of the people as they read it in the cottages at home.

By the window sits the grandsire in his leather-covered chair,
While through darkened panes the daylight faintly falls and lingers there.
How the old man spells the fine print through his goggles rimmed with brass,
And the pages crisply rustle as his smoothing fingers pass!

And I see around the table how the farm-girls read it, too,
By the faint and pallid glimmer of the lamp-light when he's through,
Arms about each other's necks the while their fingers rough and brown
Roam the gray and crumpled pages, line by line each column down.

And outside I see the walls shine white beneath their mossy thatch,
And the light green of the chestnuts and the elms I faintly catch,
And I hear the myriad plant-life growing on the earth's wide-breast,
While the vernal May-day softly sinks into its evening rest.

And I feel a subtle perfume from that dingy page upcoil,
Sweet as scent of budding flowers, strong as scent of field and soil.
And a rich, pulsating music seems to billow through it all,
In whose quiet swell is mingled song of lark and lap-wing call.