Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/429

Rh 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! 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!

no more my vanished years:
 * Beneath a tender rain,

An April rain of smiles and tears,
 * My heart is young again.

The west-winds blow, and, singing low,
 * I hear the glad streams run;

The windows of my soul I throw
 * Wide open to the sun.

No longer forward nor behind
 * I look in hope or fear;

But, grateful, take the good I find,
 * The best of now and here.

I plough no more a desert land,
 * To harvest weed and tare;

The manna dropping from God’s hand
 * Rebukes my painful care.

I break my pilgrim staff, I lay
 * Aside the toiling oar;

The angel sought so far away
 * I welcome at my door.

The airs of spring may never play
 * Among the ripening corn,

Nor freshness of the flowers of May
 * Blow through the autumn morn;

Yet shall the blue-eyed gentian look
 * Through fringed lids to heaven,

And the pale aster in the brook
 * Shall see its image given;—

The woods shall wear their robes of praise,
 * The south-wind softly sigh,

And sweet, calm days in golden haze
 * Melt down the amber sky.

Not less shall manly deed and word
 * Rebuke an age of wrong;

The graven flowers that wreathe the sword
 * Make not the blade less strong.

But smiting hands shall learn to heal,—
 * To build as to destroy;

Nor less my heart for others feel
 * That I the more enjoy.

All as God wills, who wisely heeds
 * To give or to withhold,

And knoweth more of all my needs
 * Than all my prayers have told!

Enough that blessings undeserved
 * Have marked my erring track;

That wheresoe’er my feet have swerved,
 * His chastening turned me back;

That more and more a Providence
 * Of love is understood,

Making the springs of time and sense
 * Sweet with eternal good;—