SKETCH OF A SCHOOLFELLOW.

He sat by me in school. His face is now

Vividly in my mind, as if he went

From me but yesterday — its pleasant smile

And the rich, joyous laughter of his eye,

And the free play of his unhaughty lip,

So redolent of his heart! He was not fair,

Nor singular, nor over-fond of books,

And never melancholy when alone.

He was the heartiest in the ring, the last

Home from the summer's wanderings, and the first

Over the threshold when the school was done.

All of us loved him. We shall speak his name

In the far years to come, and think of him

When we have lost life's simplest passages,

And pray for him — forgetting he is dead —

Life was in him so passing beautiful!

His childhood had been wasted in the close

And airless city. He had never thought

That the blue sky was ample, or the stars

Many in heaven, or the chainless wind

Of a medicinal freshness. He had learn'd

Perilous tricks of manhood, and his hand

Was ready, and his confidence in himself

Bold as a quarreller's. Then he came away

To the unshelter'd hills, and brought an eye

New as a babe's to nature, and an ear

As ignorant of its music. He was sad.

The broad hill sides seem'd desolate, and the woods

Gloomy and dim, and the perpetual sound

Of wind and waters and unquiet leaves

Like the monotony of a dirge. He pined

For the familiar things until his heart

Sicken'd for home!— and so he stole away

To the most silent places, and lay down

To weep upon the mosses of the slopes,

And follow'd listlessly the silver streams,

Till he found out the unsunn'd shadowings,

And the green openings to the sky, and grew

Fond of them all insensibly. He found

Sweet company in the brooks, and loved to sit

And bathe his fingers wantonly, and feel

The wind upon his forehead; and the leaves

Took a beguiling whisper to his ear,

And the bird-voices music, and the blast

Swept like an instrument the sounding trees.

His heart went back to its simplicity

As the stirr'd waters in the night grow pure —

Sadness and silence and the dim-lit woods

Won on his love so well — and he forgot

His pride and his assumingness, and lost

The mimicry of the man, and so unlearn'd

His very character till he became

As diffident as a girl.

‘ Tis very strange

How nature sometimes wins upon a child.

Th’ experience of the world is not on him,

And poetry has not upon his brain

Left a mock thirst for solitude, nor love

Writ on his forehead the effeminate shame

Which hideth from men's eyes. He has a full,

Shadowless heart, and it is always toned

More merrily than the chastened voice of winds

And waters — yet he often, in his mirth,

Stops by the running brooks, and suddenly

Loiters, he knows not why, and at the sight

Of the spread meadows and the lifted hills

Feels an unquiet pleasure, and forgets

To listen for his fellows. He will grow

Fond of the early star, and lie awake

Gazing with many thoughts upon the moon,

And lose himself in the deep chamber'd sky

With his untaught philosophies. It breeds

Sadness in older hearts, but not in his;

And he goes merrier to his play, and shouts

Louder the joyous call — but it will sink

Into his memory like his mother's prayer,

For after years to brood on.

Cheerful thoughts

Came to the homesick boy as he became

Wakeful to beauty in the summer's change,

And he came oftener to our noisy play,

Cheering us on with his delightful shout

Over the hills, and giving interest

With his keen spirit to the boyish game.

We loved him for his carelessness of himself,

And his perpetual mirth, and tho’ he stole

Sometimes away into the woods alone,

And wandered unaccompanied when the night

Was beautiful, he was our idol still,

And we have not forgotten him, tho’ time

Has blotted many a pleasant memory

Of boyhood out, and we are wearing old

With the unplayfulness of this grown up world.