Page:The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, Gilder, 1908.djvu/442

414 Or lying naked in the sun,

Scraped bare by the ancient glacier,

Scoured by rains and scarred by lightnings,

And with a look as if the salt sea had beaten and bitten there for a thousand years.

IV

Stately and gracious with elms and willows are the smooth and grassy meadows

Leveled for human use by the lakes of untold ages,

Then covered with forests, that the pioneers uprooted—

Rich now and full of peace; bringing back the well-loved images of the Bible;

Meadows where first I heard the swift song of the bobolink,

Throbbing and ringing madly, back and forth in the meadow air,

And whence, in full summer, after a long, hot day

The boy that was I came back to the home barn

Royally charioted on the high-piled, sweet-scented hay.

Ah, there's no place like the old place!

V

There, under the hill, is the homestead;

How large the maples have grown that the old folks planted!

Sweet was the sap in the spring and the shade in the summer.

I never knew such water as from the spring at our house,

Running cold as ice in the kitchen and out in the barn.

And the little window up there was mine!

I tell you I slept well, and rose early in those days,

Tho' sometimes at night after a long rain, or when the ice was melting in Hayes's pond,