Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 5.djvu/443

OLD BARNSTEAD. 405

We talk of buried cities found beneath Italian skies. Where homes and streets, hidden for years, from out their ashes rise; The pleasant thrills that move us, as their relics gather fast. Tell of a strong, magnetic link binding us to the past.

We need not cross the ocean, friends, nor wander up nor down — We, who have come to middle life — to find a buried town. The world is full of them, to-day; not quite so famed, we know. Nor covered by Vesuvian fires, so many years ago.

'Tis but the dust that Father Time lets fall in his swift flight — A golden dust — yet holding close its visions from our sight: The play grounds of our childhood! Oh, the homes of earliest days! We never more may find them, once we leave their mystic ways.

We visit scenes we call the same, and some old trails we find: But there's a marked change over all. that cannot be defined. It gathers deeper, year by year, till each return gives pain. And memory alone can give the old haunts buck again.

And so there's much of sadness in our gathering to-day; — For us who went out gay and young, and come back staid and grey; — And, while this modern Barnstead has its own fair claims, in sooth. Forgive us if we cherish best the old town of our youth.

Old Barnstead! Ah, how vast it was! It almost filled the world! Not quite. — for wasn't Tuttle's stage, in all its grandeur, whirled. Once every week, straight through the town and off beyond the hills, Where Dover lay, — a strip of land, with a few noisy mills?

That stage! No palace car we've seen was half so rich and gay! It had red curtains, you could see more than a mile away. And, when close by Lock's Corner school, at Nutter's store, it paused, What a wild stir of wonderment in our young breasts it caused!

We turned, and stretched our necks, to peer through windows small and high. To catch each crimson flutter in the dust clouds rolling by. And then the school droned slowly on, while fat old bumble-bees Looked in on us with husky boom, then whisked off toward the trees.

We followed them with longing eyes, and thought how cool and dense The shadows lay upon the grass, beyond the pasture fence; And wondered if the worm we saw at recess, on the ledge, Had finished up ins jerky job of inching off its edge.

We heard a chipmunk scold and fret, and knew the very stump Where he was sitting, tail erect, the frisky, saucy hump! An August-bug, with long-drawn whir-r, went slowly sailing by. And happy swallows skimmed and wheeled between us and the sky.