Читать книгу Pieces People Ask For - George Melville Baker - Страница 22

Table of Contents

For other versions of this work, see The House in the Meadow.

​

THE HOUSE IN THE MEADOW.

It stands in a sunny meadow,

The house so mossy and brown,

With its cumbrous old stone chimneys,

And the gray roof sloping down.

The trees fold their green arms round it,—

The trees a century old;

And the winds go chanting through them,

And the sunbeams drop their gold.

The cowslips spring in the marshes,

The roses bloom on the hill,

And beside the brook in the pasture

The herds go feeding at will.

Within, in the wide old kitchen

The old folks sit in the sun

That creeps through the sheltering woodbine

Till the day is almost done.

Their children have gone and left them;

They sit in the sun alone,

And the old wife's ears are failing

As she harks to the well-known tone

That won her heart in her girlhood,

That has soothed her in many a care,

And praises her now for the brightness

Her old face used to wear.

She thinks again of her bridal,—

How, dressed in her robe of white,

She stood by her gay young lover

In the morning's rosy light.

​

Oh, the morning is rosy as ever,

But the rose from her cheek is fled;

And the sunshine still is golden,

But it falls on a silvered head.

And the girlhood dreams, once vanished,

Come back in her winter-time,

Till her feeble pulses tremble

With the thrill of springtime's prime.

And, looking forth from the window,

She thinks how the trees have grown

Since, clad in her bridal whiteness,

She crossed the old door-stone.

Though dimmed her eye's bright azure,

And dimmed her hair's young gold,

The love in her girlhood plighted

Has never grown dim or old.

They sat in peace in the sunshine

Till the day was almost done.

And then, at its close, an angel

Stole over the threshold stone.

He folded their hands together,

He touched their eyelids with balm,

And their last breath floated outward,

Like the close of a solemn psalm.

Like a bridal pair they traversed

The unseen, mystical road

That leads to the Beautiful City

Whose Builder and Maker is God.

Perhaps in that miracle country

They will give her lost youth back,

And the flowers of the vanished springtime

Will bloom in the spirit's track.

One draught from the living waters

Shall call back his manhood's prime;

And eternal years shall measure

The love that outlasted time.