All else is gone; from those great eyes
The soul has filed:
When faith is lost, when honor dies,
The man is dead!
Then, pay the reverence of old days
To his dead fame;
Walk backward, with averted gaze, And hide the shame!
66 Jove means to settle
Astræa in her seat again,
And let down from his golden chain
An age of better metal."
BEN JONSON, 1615.
O POET rare and old!
Thy words are prophecies;
Forward the age of gold,
The new Saturnian lies.
The universal prayer
And hope are not in vain; Rise, brothers ! and prepare The way for Saturn's reign.
Perish shall all which takes
From labor's board and can;
Perish shall all which makes
A spaniel of the man!
Free from its bonds the mind,
The body from the rod;
Broken all chains that bind
The image of our God.
Just men no longer pine
Behind their prison-bars; Through the rent dungeon shine The free sun and the stars.
Earth own, at last, untrod By sect, or caste, or clan, The fatherhood of God,
The brotherhood of man!
Fraud fail, craft perish, forth
The money-changers driven, And God's will done on earth, As now in heaven!
Oh for boyhood's painless play,
Sleep that wakes in laughing day,
Health that mocks the doctor's rules,
Knowledge never learned of schools,
Of the wild bee's morning chase,
Of the wild flower's time and place,
Flight of fowl and habitude
Of the tenants of the wood;
How the tortoise bears his shell,
How the woodchuck digs his cell,
And the ground-mole sinks his well;
How the robin feeds her young,
How the oriole's nest is hung;
Where the whitest lilies blow,
Where the freshest berries grow,
Where the ground-nut trails its vine,
Where the wood-grape's clusters shine;
Of the black wasp's cunning way,
Mason of his walls of clay,
And the architectural plans
gray hornet artisans ! For, eschewing books and tasks, Nature answers all he asks; Hand in hand with her he walks, Face to face with her he talks, Part and parcel of her joy, Blessings on the barefoot boy!
Oh for boyhood's time of June, Crowding years in one brief moon, When all things I heard or saw, Me, their master, waited for.
I was rich in flowers and trees,
Hummingbirds and honey-bees;
For my sport the squirrel played,
Plied the snouted mole his spade;
For my taste the blackberry cone
Purpled over hedge and stone;
Laughed the brook for my delight
Through the day and through the night, -
Whispering at the garden wall,
Talked with me from fall to fall;
Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond,
Mine the walnut slopes beyond,
Mine, on bending orchard trees,
Apples of Hesperides !
Still as my horizon grew,
Larger grew my riches too;
All the world I saw or knew
Seemed a complex Chinese toy,
Fashioned for a barefoot boy!
Oh for festal dainties spread,
Like my bowl of milk and bread;
Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,
On the door-stone, gray and rude!
O'er me, like a regal tent,
Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent,
Purple-curtained, fringed with gold,
Looped in many a wind-swung fold;
While for music came the play
Of the pied frogs' orchestra;
And, to light the noisy choir,
Lit the fly his lamp of fire.
I was monarch: pomp and joy
Waited on the barefoot boy!
Cheerily, then, my little man,
Live and laugh, as boyhood can n!
Though the flinty slopes be hard,
Stubble-speared the new-mown sward,
Every morn shall lead thee through
Fresh baptisms of the 'dew;
Every evening from thy feet
Shall the cool wind kiss the heat:
All too soon these feet must hide
In the prison cells of pride,
Lose the freedom of the sod,
Like a colt's for work be shod,
Made to tread the mills of toil,
Up and down in ceaseless moil:
Happy if their track be found
Never on forbidden ground;
Happy if they sink not in
Quick and treacherous sands of sin.
Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy,
Ere it passes, barefoot boy!
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