Listening with quickened heart and ear intent To each sharp clause of that stern argument, I still can hear at times a softer note Of the old pastoral music round me float, Drops the old bucket in the homestead well, The country doctor in the foreground seems, I could not paint the scenery of my song, Mindless of one who looked thereon so long; Who, night and day, on duty's lonely round, Made friends o' the woods and rocks, and knew the sound Of each small brook, and what the hillside trees Said to the winds that touched their leafy keys; Who saw so keenly and so well could paint The village-folk, with all their humors quaint, The parson ambling on his wall-eyed roan, Grave and erect, with white hair backward blown ; The tough old boatman, half amphibious grown ; OVER the wooded northern ridge, To the dark tunnel of the bridge The street comes straggling down. You catch a glimpse through birch and pine Of gable, roof, and porch, The tavern with its swinging sign, The sharp horn of the church. The river's steel-blue crescent curves To meet, in ebb and flow, The single broken wharf that serves For sloop and gundelow. With salt sea-scents along its shores The heavy hay-boats crawl, The long antennæ of their oars In lazy rise and fall. Along the gray abutment's wall The idle shad-net dries; The toll-man in his cobbler's stall Sits smoking with closed eyes. You hear the pier's low undertone You start, a skipper's horn is blown To raise the creaking draw. At times a blacksmith's anvil sounds With slow and sluggard beat, Or stage-coach on its dusty rounds A place for idle eyes and ears, A cobwebbed nook of dreams; Left by the stream whose waves are years The stranded village seems. And there, like other moss and rust, The native dweller clings, And keeps, in uninquiring trust, The old, dull round of things. The fisher drops his patient lines, The farmer sows his grain, Content to hear the murmuring pines Instead of railroad-train. Go where, along the tangled steep In still profounder rest. Throw back the locust's flowery plume, The birch's pale-green scarf, And break the web of brier and bloom From name and epitaph. |