His form is bent, his head is gray,
His limbs are long and slender;
But still beneath his woolen vest,
The heart is true and tender.
His comrades long are in the clay;
Their wooden head-boards rotten;
And in the modern neighborhood,
Their very names forgotten.
He walks serenely thro' the fields;
Old shadows seem to follow,
Again he sees the tawny deer
Go leaping down the hollow.
He hears once more the rifle's ring,
The hunters shouting gladly;
On yonder hill the wounded bear
Again gives battle madly.
He hears the pheasant's booming drum,
He hears the turkey calling;
The thudding maul, the ringing axe,
The crash of timber falling.
He sees the little cabin home,
The tiny patch of clearing,
Where once he dwelt with wife and boys,
No breath of evil fearing.
"Ah, well!" he sighs; "she's sleeping now;
The eldest boys are with her:
I very soon shall go to them,
Since they may not come hither."
The tear that glistens in his eye
Falls down a moment after;
For, silvery, echoing up the lane,
He hears his grandchild's laughter.
The past and present strangely blend
Before his mental vision;
Yet love, that makes the dreary wolds
Appear like fields elysian,
Still paints along his early days
The fairest scenes of pleasure,
And garners stores of happy thought
No rhythmic art can measure.
No words bespeak his heart so warm
As did the backwoods greeting;
No preacher has such power as he
Who held the backwoods meeting.
He knows of many a merry time
At reaping, rolling, raising,
Or, on the jolly husking nights,
With cheerful torches blazing.
From many a good wife's quilting bout
He treasures home-spun blisses,
Where old folks talked, and young folks played
Their games of forfeit kisses.
The lazy Indian still he scorns,
His squaws and his papooses;
He thinks, God made them; but, no doubt,
For undiscovered uses.
Where now a dozen turnpikes stretch
Stiff lines between the meadows,
He knew a single Indian trail
That wound thro' forest shadows.
A dozen villages he sees
Beside their railroad stations,
Where once a single trading post
Supplied the settlers' rations.
A hundred rushing trains go by;
He hears them scream and thunder,
And laughs to think how they'd have stormed
His backwoods world with wonder.
"How strange the ways they practice now,
This new time emphasizing,"
He says, and with the uttered thought,
Grows loud soliloquizing:
"With chattering instruments at church,
And dapper youngsters preaching,
And for the congregation's hymn,
A dozen lassies screeching.
"And then for all our social joys,
And good old-fashioned greetings,
The sinners mask at fancy balls,
The saints at bible meetings.
"You rest at ease in fancy homes,
Your thoughts on high careering;
But give me back my wife and boys,
And give me back my clearing,
"And give me back my rifle gun,
My forests, deer, and pheasants
And I will prove you, any day,
As tame as British peasants.
"Your girls grow fine; your boys grow proud
And vain; oh, more's the pity!
There's scarce a youth in all the land
But's crazy 'bout the city.
"It's true some boys who grow up now—
Pale, thin, unlikely creatures,
With foreheads broad and dwindled limbs,
And strange, thought-sicklied features,
"Might well be doctors, if they would,
Or preach without much harming,
But all the stoutest, brightest ones
Should steady stick to farming.
"Give me the lad with sinewy arm
For box or wrestle, ready
To lift his share at hand-spike end,
Or hold a rifle steady,
"And I will after show a man
Whose heart is tender, human,
And brave in every hour of need,
And true as steel to woman.
"But I, why should I moralize?
I'm but a dotard growing,
And death cuts now a reaper's swath
Beside his ancient mowing.
"It seems so strange, the forests gone;
The very stumps are rotten,
And half the fields I helped to clear
I've really now forgotten.
"The post-horse, lagging with his load,
Across th' unbridged morasses,
He reached us once or twice a month
With letters for the lassies.
"But now they run on flying wheels,
Or fly on lightning pinions,
And in the twinkling of an eye
Arrive from far dominions.
"For church and school-house, once a hut
Of logs did half the county,
But heaven as freely then as now
Dispensed her largest bounty.
"We flailed the wheat with twisted sticks;
By steam you thresh and clean it,
And rush your four- horse reapers where
We used to hook and glean it.
"But why go on this cat'logue style
With what we did, and you do;
We did the best we could, and that's
The way in knowledge you grew.
"The old folks labored long and well
To build the rude foundation,
And you have wro't no more than we
With all your cultivation.
"We conquered forests, cleared the land;
Our work, let no man scorn it;
But you who follow, follow well;
Complete, refine, adorn it.
"The olden music, olden songs,
The pioneer rejoicings,
Still linger on my listening ear
With myriad happy voicings.
"No wives are like our dear old wives,
No neighbors like our neighbors,
No boys are half so bold as ours,
So cheerful at their labors.
"No ladies in their rustling silks
And gimcracks half so winning,
As were our girls in linsey frocks
From yarn of their own spinning.
Full many a rough, unseemly man
Who shared my early labor,
Looks noble through the mist of years,
For was he not my neighbor?
"And so when all your heads are white,
And death comes creeping nearer,
You'll deem the old ways, perfect ways,
And hold your old friends dearer."
A partridge whistled by the way,
A blackbird trilled above it,
A redbird sang "O, sunny day,"
The robin "How I love it!"
"Ho!" cried the pioneer, "you birds
Are bent on early pillage,"
And so, his musings spoiled, he walked
Quite briskly toward the village.