Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.

At Sundown

An Outdoor Reception

The substance of these lines, hastily pencilled several years ago. I find among such of my unprinted scraps as have escaped the waste-basket and the fire. In transcribing it I have made some changes, additions, and omissions.

ON these green banks, where falls too soon

The shade of Autumn’s afternoon,

The south wind blowing soft and sweet,

The water gliding at my feet,

The distant northern range uplit

By the slant sunshine over it,

With changes of the mountain mist

From tender blush to amethyst,

The valley’s stretch of shade and gleam

Fair as in Mirza’s Bagdad dream,

With glad young faces smiling near

And merry voices in my ear,

I sit, methinks, as Hafiz might

In Iran’s Garden of Delight.

For Persian roses blushing red,

Aster and gentian bloom instead;

For Shiraz wine, this mountain air;

For feast, the blueberries which I share

With one who proffers with stained hands

Her gleanings from yon pasture lands,

Wild fruit that art and culture spoil,

The harvest of an untilled soil;

And with her one whose tender eyes

Reflect the change of April skies,

Midway ’twixt child and maiden yet,

Fresh as Spring’s earliest violet;

And one whose look and voice and ways

Make where she goes idyllic days;

And one whose sweet, still countenance

Seems dreamful of a child’s romance;

And others, welcome as are these,

Like and unlike, varieties

Of pearls on nature’s chaplet strung,

And all are fair, for all are young.

Gathered from seaside cities old,

From midland prairie, lake, and wold,

From the great wheat-fields, which might feed

The hunger of a world at need,

In healthful change of rest and play

Their school-vacations glide away.

No critics these: they only see

An old and kindly friend in me,

In whose amused, indulgent look

Their innocent mirth has no rebuke.

They scarce can know my rugged rhymes,

The harsher songs of evil times,

Nor graver themes in minor keys

Of life’s and death’s solemnities;

But haply, as they bear in mind

Some verse of lighter, happier kind,—

Hints of the boyhood of the man,

Youth viewed from life’s meridian,

Half seriously and half in play

My pleasant interviewers pay

Their visit, with no fell intent

Of taking notes and punishment.

As yonder solitary pine

Is ringed below with flower and vine,

More favored than that lonely tree,

The bloom of girlhood circles me.

In such an atmosphere of youth

I half forget my age’s truth;

The shadow of my life’s long date

Runs backward on the dial-plate,

Until it seems a step might span

The gulf between the boy and man.

My young friends smile, as if some jay

On bleak December’s leafless spray

Essayed to sing the songs of May.

Well, let them smile, and live to know,

When their brown locks are flecked with snow,

’T is tedious to be always sage

And pose the dignity of age,

While so much of our early lives

On memory’s playground still survives,

And owns, as at the present hour,

The spell of youth’s magnetic power.

But though I feel, with Solomon,

’T is pleasant to behold the sun,

I would not if I could repeat

A life which still is good and sweet;

I keep in age, as in my prime,

A not uncheerful step with time,

And, grateful for all blessings sent,

I go the common way, content

To make no new experiment.

On easy terms with law and fate,

For what must be I calmly wait,

And trust the path I cannot see,—

That God is good sufficeth me.

And when at last on life’s strange play

The curtain falls, I only pray

That hope may lose itself in truth,

And age in Heaven’s immortal youth,

And all our loves and longing prove

The foretaste of diviner love!

The day is done. Its afterglow

Along the west is burning low.

My visitors, like birds, have flown;

I hear their voices, fainter grown,

And dimly through the dusk I see

Their ’kerchiefs wave good-night to me,—

Light hearts of girlhood, knowing nought

Of all the cheer their coming brought;

And, in their going, unaware

Of silent-following feet of prayer:

Heaven make their budding promise good

With flowers of gracious womanhood!