Читать книгу The Life, Travels, and Literary Career of Bayard Taylor - Russell H. Conwell - Страница 9

“The corn was warm in the ground, the fences were mended and made,

And the garden-beds, as smooth as a counterpane is laid,

Were dotted and striped with green, where the peas and the radishes grew,

With elecampane at the foot, and comfrey, and sage, and rue.

From the knoll where stood the house, the fair fields pleasantly rolled,

To dells where the laurels hung, and meadows of buttercup gold.”

Such was the farm when he left it, in words of the poet’s choosing, and what he found when, after a quarter of a century of wanderings, he can best describe.

“Here are the fields again, the soldierly maize in tassel

Stands on review, and carries the scabbarded ears in its armpits.

Rustling, I part the ranks,—the close, engulfing battalions

Shaking their plumes overhead,—and, wholly bewildered and heated,

Gain the top of the ridge, where stands, colossal, the pin-oak.

Yonder, a mile away, I see the roofs of the village,—

See the crouching front of the meeting-house of the Quakers,

Oddly conjoined with the whittled Presbyterian steeple.

Right and left are the homes of the slow, conservative farmers,

Loyal people and true; but, now that the battles are over,

Zealous for Temperance, Peace, and the Eight of Suffrage for Women.

Orderly, moral are they,—at least, in the sense of suppression;

Given to preaching of rules, inflexible outlines of duty:

Seeing the sternness of life; but, alas! overlooking its graces.

Let me be juster: the scattered seeds of the graces are planted

Widely apart; but the trumpet-vine on the porch is a token:

Yea, and awake and alive are the forces of love and affection,

Plastic forces that work from the tenderer models of beauty.”

There must be many things in the events of common life which find no voice in poetry, as every life has its prose side. At all events, there were some duties connected with agricultural work which young Bayard never enjoyed. He never was ambitious to follow the plough, or do the miscellaneous odd jobs which perplex and weary a farmer’s boy. Yet, like Burns, he worked cheerfully, and wrung more or less poetry out of every occupation. He was a spare, wiry, nervous boy, quick at work, study, or play, and consequently had many leisure moments, when other boys were drudging along with ceaseless toil. His schoolmates, and the only school-teacher now living (1879) who taught him in his boyhood, all agree that he was a mischievous boy. He loved practical jokes, and, in fact, jokes of every kind. But he was ceaselessly framing verses. When his lesson was mastered, which was always in an incredibly short space of time after he took up his book, he plunged recklessly into poetry. Verses about the teacher, about snowbanks, about buttercups, about pigs, about courting, funerals, church services, schoolmates, and countless other themes filled his desk, pockets, and hat.

Often he wrote love letters, couched in the most delicate phraseology, and signing the name of some classmate to them, would send them to astonished ploughboys and blushing maidens. One old gentleman in West Chester, Penn., always claimed that a set of Bayard’s burlesque verses, sent out in that way, induced him to court and marry a girl with whom he had no acquaintance, until the explanation of his tender epistle was demanded by her father. What volumes of poetry he must have written, which never saw the type, and how much more of that which he was in the habit of repeating to himself was left unwritten! The life he led, from his earliest school days, until he was fifteen years of age, was that of every farmer’s boy in America, who is compelled to work hard through the spring, summer, and autumn, and attend the district school in the winter. The only remarkable difference between Bayard and many other boys, was found in his strong desire to read, and his genius for poetry. He gathered the greater part of his youthful education from books, which he read at home, and by himself.

He had a noble father, and a lovely mother, God bless them! and they made it as easy for Bayard as they could in justice to the other children. They might not have fully understood the signs of genius which he displayed; but they put no needless stumbling-blocks in his way. No better proof of this is needed, than the excellent record of the other children, all of whom hold enviable positions in society. One brother, Dr. J. Howard Taylor, is a physician, and connected with the health department of the city of Philadelphia; another, William W. Taylor, is a most skilful civil engineer; while a third, Col. Frederick Taylor, was killed at the battle of Gettysburg, when leading the celebrated Bucktail Regiment of Pennsylvania. Two sisters are living,—Mrs. Annie Carey, wife of a Swiss gentleman; and Mrs. Lamborn, wife of Col. Charles B. Lamborn, of Colorado. Growing up in such a family, as an elder brother, involved much patient toil, and great responsibility. The best tribute to him, in those days, was paid by an old lady, of Reading, Penn., who knew him in his youth, and who summed up her evidence to the writer in the words, “He did all he could.”