When all things I heard or saw,
Me, their master, waited for;-
I was rich in flowers and trees,
Humming birds 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 frog's 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!
SONG for the early times out West, And our green old forest home, Whose pleasant memories freshly yet Across the bosom come:
A song for the free and gladsome life,
In the early days we led,
With a teeming soil beneath our feet,
And a smiling heav'n o'erhead!
Oh, the waves of life danced merrily,
And had a joyous flow,
In the days when we were pioneers,
Seventy years ago!
The hunt, the shot, the glorious chase,
The captured elk or deer;
The camp, the big, bright fire, and then
The rich and wholesome cheer:
The sweet, sound sleep, at dead of night,
By our camp-fire, blazing high-
Unbroken by the wolf's long howl,
And the panther springing by.
Oh, merrily passed the time, despite
Our wily Indian foe,
In the days when we were pioneers,
Seventy years ago!
We shunned not labor: when 'twas due,
We wrought with right good will;
And for the homes we won for them,
Our children bless us still.
We lived not hermit lives, but oft
In social converse met;
And fires of love were kindled then,
That burn on warmly yet.
Oh, pleasantly the stream of life
Pursued its constant flow,
In the days when we were pioneers,
Seventy years ago!
We felt that we were fellow-men;
We felt we were a band,
Sustained here in the wilderness
By Heaven's upholding hand.
And when the solemn Sabbath came,
Assembling in the wood,
We lifted up our hearts in prayer
To God, the only Good.
Our temples then were earth and sky;
None others did we know,
In the days when we were pioneers,
Seventy years ago!
Our forest-life was rough and rude,
And dangers closed us round;
But here, amid the green old trees,
Freedom was sought and found.
Oft through our dwellings wintry blasts
Would rush with shriek and moan;
We cared not-though they were but frail,
We felt they were our own!
Oh, free and manly lives we led,
'Mid verdure, or 'mid snow,
In the days when we were pioneers,
Seventy years ago.
But now our course of life is short;
And as, from day to day,
We're walking on with halting step,
And fainting by the way,
Another land more bright than this
To our dim sight appears,
And on our way to it we'll soon
Again be pioneers!
Yet while we linger, we may all
A backward glance still throw,
To the days when we were pioneers,
Seventy years ago.
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