Unabashed, the maid began:
“Up and down the brook I ran,
Where, beneath the bank so steep,
Lie the spotted trout asleep.
“ ‘Chip!’ went squirrel on the wall,
After me I heard him call,
And the cat-bird on the tree
Tried his best to mimic me.
“Where the hemlocks grew so dark
That I stopped to look and hark,
On a log, with feather-hat,
By the path, an Indian sat.
“Then I cried, and ran away;
But he called, and bade me stay;
And his voice was good and mild
As my mother’s to her child.
“And he took my wampum chain,
Looked and looked it o’er again;
Gave me berries, and, beside,
On my neck a plaything tied.”
Straight the mother stooped to see
What the Indian’s gift might be.
On the braid of wampum hung,
Lo! a cross of silver swung.
Well she knew its graven sign,
Squando’s bird and totem pine;
And, a mirage of the brain,
Flowed her childhood back again.
Flashed the roof the sunshine through,
Into space the walls outgrew;
On the Indian’s wigwam-mat,
Blossom-crowned, again she sat.
Cool she felt the west-wind blow,
In her ear the pines sang low,
And, like links from out a chain,
Dropped the years of care and pain.
From the outward toil and din,
From the griefs that gnaw within,
To the freedom of the woods
Called the birds, and winds, and floods.
Well, O painful minister!
Watch thy flock, but blame not her,
If her ear grew sharp to hear
All their voices whispering near.
Blame her not, as to her soul
All the desert’s glamour stole,
That a tear for childhood’s loss
Dropped upon the Indian’s cross.
When, that night, the Book was read,
And she bowed her widowed head,
And a prayer for each loved name
Rose like incense from a flame,
With a hope the creeds forbid
In her pitying bosom hid,
To the listening ear of Heaven
Lo! the Indian’s name was given.
MY PLAYMATE
[When written, this poem bore the title Eleanor, and when first printed The Playmate.]
The pines were dark on Ramoth hill,
Their song was soft and low;
The blossoms in the sweet May wind
Were falling like the snow.
The blossoms drifted at our feet,
The orchard birds sang clear;
The sweetest and the saddest day
It seemed of all the year.
For, more to me than birds or flowers,
My playmate left her home,
And took with her the laughing spring,
The music and the bloom.
She kissed the lips of kith and kin,
She laid her hand in mine:
What more could ask the bashful boy
Who fed her father’s kine?
She left us in the bloom of May:
The constant years told o’er
Their seasons with as sweet May morns,
But she came back no more.
I walk, with noiseless feet, the round
Of uneventful years;
Still o’er and o’er I sow the spring
And reap the autumn ears.
She lives where all the golden year
Her summer roses blow;
The dusky children of the sun
Before her come and go.
