Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/109

Rh There haply with her jewelled hands
 * She smooths her silken gown,—

No more the homespun lap wherein
 * I shook the walnuts down.

The wild grapes wait us by the brook,
 * The brown nuts on the hill,

And still the May-day flowers make sweet
 * The woods of Follymill.

The lilies blossom in the pond,
 * The bird builds in the tree,

The dark pines sing on Ramoth hill
 * The slow song of the sea.

I wonder if she thinks of them,
 * And how the old time seems,—

If ever the pines of Ramoth wood
 * Are sounding in her dreams.

I see her face, I hear her voice;
 * Does she remember mine?

And what to her is now the boy
 * Who fed her father’s kine?

What cares she that the orioles build
 * For other eyes than ours,—

That other hands with nuts are filled,
 * And other laps with flowers?

O playmate in the golden time!
 * Our mossy seat is green,

Its fringing violets blossom yet,
 * The old trees o’er it lean.

The winds so sweet with birch and fern
 * A sweeter memory blow;

And there in spring the veeries sing
 * The song of long ago.

And still the pines of Ramoth wood
 * Are moaning like the sea,—

The moaning of the sea of change
 * Between myself and thee!

beaver cut his timber
 * With patient teeth that day,

The minks were fish-wards, and the crows
 * Surveyors of highway,—

When Keezar sat on the hillside
 * Upon his cobbler’s form,

With a pan of coals on either hand
 * To keep his waxed-ends warm.

And there, in the golden weather,
 * He stitched and hammered and sung;

In the brook he moistened his leather,
 * In the pewter mug his tongue.

Well knew the tough old Teuton
 * Who brewed the stoutest ale,

And he paid the goodwife’s reckoning
 * In the coin of song and tale.

The songs they still are singing
 * Who dress the hills of vine,

The tales that haunt the Brocken
 * And whisper down the Rhine.

Woodsy and wild and lonesome,
 * The swift stream wound away,

Through birches and scarlet maples
 * Flashing in foam and spray,—

Down on the sharp-horned ledges
 * Plunging in steep cascade,

Tossing its white-maned waters
 * Against the hemlock’s shade.

Woodsy and wild and lonesome,
 * East and west and north and south;

Only the village of fishers
 * Down at the river’s mouth;

Only here and there a clearing,
 * With its farm-house rude and new,

And tree-stumps, swart as Indians,
 * Where the scanty harvest grew.

No shout of home-bound reapers,
 * No vintage-song he heard,

And on the green no dancing feet
 * The merry violin stirred.

“Why should folk be glum,” said Keezar,
 * “When Nature herself is glad,

And the painted woods are laughing
 * At the faces so sour and sad?”

Small heed had the careless cobbler
 * What sorrow of heart was theirs