THE SCHOOLHOUSE WINDOWS 207

There one had leaned and listened,

And heard in the empty air Invisible armies marching

To the soundless trumpet's blare.

And one had caught the motion

Of the great world round the sun, Till he felt on his face the rush of space As the whirling Earth-ball spun.

The dream and the aspiration;

The glimpse of the higher home; The noble scorn of the world that is, And the worship of that to come:

The thirst for a life diviner,

And the sigh of self-despair,

That rose through the blue to the gate of heaven And was answered like a prayer.

Ah, for him the panes are crowded
With the volumes of such lore,
And the children will catch, to-morrow,
The glimmers of days before;

Till the dry and dreary lesson

In luminous letters shines,

Where the magical schoolhouse windows

Have written between the lines.

208 THE SCHOOLHOUSE WINDOWS

But the brightest of all the windows

In the palace of Hope so fair,

Are the eyes where merry thoughts climb up
And beckon each other there.

There are clear and sea-blue windows

Behind whose pencilled bars

The bright hours are all sunshine,

And the dark ones lit with stars:

And there are shady casements,
That gentle secrets keep,

And you seek in vain through the clouded pane

If the spirit wake or sleep:

And oriels gray, where, cool and still,

The soul leans out to see,

As you shape for the prince the sword and crown

Of the king that is to be.

The years of the unknown future
Even now are on the wing,
Like a flight of beautiful singing birds
From the distance hastening.

O children, O blind musicians,
With powers beyond your ken,
Moulding, but guessing not, the souls
That shall wear your faces then

THE SCHOOLHOUSE WINDOWS

Shall the look be clear with truth, or drear
And hollow with mocking days?

Shall the eyes be sweet with the love of man,
Or shrunk with the lust of praise?

And what, from those future windows,
Shall the magical pictures be?—
The scattered wrecks of fleets of care,
Or a blessed argosy ?

Perchance when ye come and stand and muse
On the years that were half in vain,

A mist that is not of the ocean born
May be blurring the window-pane.

And one may sigh to remember
The old-time wishes there,
And the bows of empty promise
That have broken in the air.

And some shall wonder and wonder,
As they think of the days of old,

209

How their world from the schoolhouse windows Could have looked so bare and cold:

For the mist that was thick at morning,
From the noon shall have risen and fled,
And the air shall be full of fragrance now,
From the blossoms that it fed.

210

THE SCHOOLHOUSE WINDOWS

O friends, have the paths grown empty?

Do the winds play out of tune?
Have the early gleams of glory gone
From the sober afternoon?

Then follow the little footprints

Out from your care and pain,

And the world from the schoolhouse windows
Will look all young again.

Oh, the never-forgotten schooldays!
Whose music, fresh and pure,

Is woven of hints of songs to come,

Like a beautiful overture

When the spirit had not touched its bounds
Of weakness or of sin,

But the nebulous light was round it still

Of the soul it might have been.

Oh, the old earth will be Eden,

Fairer than that of yore,

When the young hearts all shall grow to be
What the good God meant them for!

We are all but His schoolchildren,
And earth is our schoolhouse now,
Where duties are set for lessons

Whose windows are midnight's blue.

THE SCHOOLHOUSE WINDOWS 2II

And out through that starry casement,

Some night when the skies are clear, We shall watch the mists of time lift up And the hills of heaven appear.