Within, the master's desk is seen,
Deep scarred by raps official;
The warping floor, the battered seats,
The jack-knife's carved initial;

The charcoal frescos on its wall;
Its door's worn sill, betraying
The feet that, creeping slow to school,
Went storming out to playing!

Long years ago a winter sun
Shone over it at setting;
Lit up its western window-panes,
And low eaves' icy fretting.

It touched the tangled golden curls,
And brown eyes full of grieving,
Of one who still her steps delayed
When all the school were leaving.

For near her stood the little boy
Her childish favor singled;

His cap pulled low upon a face

Where pride and shame were mingled.

Pushing with restless feet the snow
To right and left, he lingered;-
As restlessly her tiny hands

The blue-checked apron fingercd.

He saw her lift her eyes; he felt

The soft hand's light caressing, And heard the tremble of her voice, As if a fault confessing.

"I'm sorry that I spelt the word: I hate to go above you, Because," the brown eyes lower fell "Because, you see, I love you!"

IN SCHOOL DAYS

Still memory to a gray-haired man
That sweet child-face is showing.
Dear girl! the grasses on her grave
Have forty years been growing!

He lives to learn, in life's hard school,
How few who pass above him
Lament their triumph and his loss,
Like her, because they love him.

SUGGESTIVE EXERCISES

115

1. Why does he compare the schoolhouse to "a ragged beggar sunning"?

2. On what kind of soil does the sumach especially thrive?

3. Why was the New England schoolhouse placed on such a site? 4. Was the interior of the room in keeping with the exterior?

5. What kind of teachers had been employed in this school? 6. Define "betraying."

7. Why did the feet creep to school?

8. What is the emphatic word in line 12?

9. How would you read "Long years ago"?

10. How had it seemed to the boy Whittier when the sun "Lit

up its western window pane"?

11. What was the fretting of the eaves?

12. What does he wish to impress upon our memory when he

speaks of the low eaves?

13. Why were the boy's feet "restless"?

14. Why did the little girl nervously twitch her apron?

15. Why did pride and shame show on the face of the boy?

16. What was unusual in this incident?

17. In what sense is life's school "hard"?

REFERENCES

YATES: The Old Forsaken Schoolhouse.

ENGLISH: Ben Bolt.

Twenty Years Ago.

MORRIS: We Were Boys Together.

RALPH HOYT: Old.

THE ISLE OF LONG AGO

B. F. TAYLOR

THE flight of time is so

HE flight of time is so soothing and so rapid that

the life of the past loses much of its sombre coloring. The griefs, the disappointments and the betrayals of trust that seemed so hideous at the time of their occurrence are forgotten by the healthy mind and things that are fair and lovely take their place. Even the knowledge of the loss of things most dear, is fraught with a joy that moves the heart as nothing else can. The poet sings, "Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." The broken toy, the vacant chair, the little blue bonnet are baptized with tears that come from "a joy that is almost pain, and resembles sorrow only as the mist resembles rain." Thus Taylor, the poet, gives us a peace and inspiration that is subtle and sweet in the poem here presented.

THE ISLE OF LONG AGO

Oh, a wonderful stream is the river Time,
As it runs through the realm of tears,
With a faultless rhythm and a musical rhyme,
And a boundless sweep and a surge sublime,
As it blends with the ocean of Years.

How the winters are drifting, like flakes of snow,
And the summers like buds between;

And the year in the sheaf-so they come and they go,
On the river's breast, with its ebb and flow,

As it glides in the shadow and sheen.

THE ISLE OF LONG AGO

There's a magical isle up the river of Time,
Where the softest of airs are playing;
There's a cloudless sky and a tropical clime,
And a song as sweet as a vesper chime,

And the Junes with the roses are staying.

And the name of that isle is the Long Ago,
And we bury our treasures there;

There are brows of beauty and bosoms of snow—
There are heaps of dust-but we loved them so-
There are trinkets and tresses of hair;

There are fragments of song that nobody sings,
And a part of an infant's prayer;

There's a lute unswept, and a harp without strings;
There are broken vows and pieces of rings,

And the garments she used to wear.

There are hands that are waved when the fairy shore
By the mirage is lifted in air;

And we sometimes hear, through the turbulent roar,
Sweet voices we heard in the days gone before,
When the wind down the river is fair.

Oh, remembered for aye be the blessed Isle
All the day of our life till night-

When the evening comes with its beautiful smile,
And our eyes are closing to slumber awhile,
May that "Greenwood" of Soul be in sight!

117

SUGGESTIVE EXERCISES

1. Give as many reasons as you can why time is so often alluded to as a river.

2. What is a "realm of tears"?

3. A "faultless rhythm"?

4. What do you see in your mind's eye when you read of the "boundless sweep" of this river?

5. What is "a surge sublime"?

6. What forms the shadow and sheen along the river's course? 7. What is a magical isle?

8. Is the verb playing in line 12, active or passive?

9. Do you understand that there is but one song in this isle? 10. Why should the Long Ago be an isle in the river?

11. What are the "heaps of dust” mentioned in line 19?

12. How can a song that nobody sings be a treasure?

13. A harp without strings?

14. A broken vow?

15. Why are the rings in pieces?

16. What is a mirage?

17. What has the author been doing in the first six stanzas? 18. What has been its effect upon him?

19. Why does he exhort us to remember for aye this isle? 20. What is the beautiful smile of evening?

21. How does the author think of death?

22. What only can make this view possible?

REFERENCES

PROCTER: The Lost Chord. A Doubting Heart.
BROWNING: Abt Vogler. Rabbi Ben Ezra.

COSMO MUNKHOUSE: A Dead March.

MINOT JUDSON SAVAGE: Mystery.

MARSTON: After Many Days.

THOMAS MOORE: The Last Rose of Summer. The Light of Other Days. As Slow Our Ship. Love's Young Dream.

LOUIS CHANDLER MOULTON: Come Back, Dear Days.

RILEY: The Song I Never Sing.

STODDARD: It Never Comes Again.

TENNYSON: Tears, Idle Tears.

WILHELM MUELLER: The Sunken City.

RYAN: Song of the Mystic.