 introduction, snowbound, a winter idol. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Paul Tremblay, Snowbound, a winter idol by John Greenleaf Whittier. The inmates of the family at the Whittier Homestead, who are referred to in this poem, were my father, mother, my brother, and two sisters, and my uncle and aunt, both unmarried. In addition, there was the district school master who boarded with us. The not-unfeared, half-welcome guest was Harriet Livermore, daughter of Judge Livermore of New Hampshire, a young woman of fine natural ability, enthusiastic, eccentric, with slight control over her violent temper, which sometimes made her religious profession doubtful. She was equally ready to exhort in the schoolhouse prayer meetings and dance in a Washington ballroom, while her father was a member of Congress. She early embraced the doctrine of the Second Advent and felt it her duty to proclaim the Lord's speedy coming. With this message, she crossed the Atlantic and spent the greater part of a long life traveling over Europe and Asia. She lived some time with Lady Hester Stanhope, a woman as fantastic and mentally strained as herself, on the slope of Mount Lebanon, but finally quarreled with her in regard to two white horses with red marks on their backs, which suggested the idea of saddles, on which her titled hostess expected to ride into Jerusalem with the Lord. A friend of mine found her, when quite an old woman, wandering in Syria with a tribe of Arabs, who with the oriental notion that madness is inspiration, accepted her as their prophetess and leader. At the time referred to in Snowbound, she was boarding at the Rocks village about two miles from us. In my boyhood, in our lonely farmhouse, we had scanty sources of information, few books, and only a small weekly newspaper. Our only annual was the Almanac. Under such circumstances, storytelling was a necessary resource in the long winter evenings. My father, when a young man, had traversed the wilderness to Canada and could tell us of his adventures with Indians and wild beasts and of his sojourn in the French villages. My uncle was ready with his record of hunting and fishing, and it must be confessed, with stories which he at least half believed, of witchcraft and apparitions. My mother, who was born in the Indian haunted region of Summerworth, New Hampshire, between Dover and Portsmouth, had told us of the inroads of the savages and the narrow escape of her ancestors. She described strange people who lived on the Piscata Quay in Kacheco, among whom was Bantam the sorcerer. I have in my possession the wizards conjuring book, which he solemnly opened when consulted. It is a copy of Cornelius Agrippa's Magic, printed in 1651, dedicated to Dr. Robert Child, who, like Michael Scott, had learned, the art of glamourie in Padua, beyond the sea, and who is famous in the annals of Massachusetts, where he was at one time a resident, as the first man who dared petition the general court for liberty of conscience. The full title of the book is Three Books of Occult Philosophy by Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Night Doctor of Both Laws, Counselor to Caesar's Sacred Majesty and Judge of the Paragative Court. As the spirits of darkness be stronger in the dark, so good spirits, which be angels of light, are augmented not only by the divine light of the sun, but also by our common wood fire. And as the celestial fire drives away dark spirits, so also this our fire of wood doth the same. Cornelius Agrippa, Occult Philosophy, Book 1, Chapter 5, announced by all the trumpets of the sky, arrives the snow. And, driving over the fields, seems nowhere to a light. The whiteed air hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven, unveils the farmhouse at the garden's end. The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit around the radiant fireplace and closed in a tumultuous privacy of storm. Emerson, The Snowstorm. End of Introduction, Recording by Paul Tremblay, Louisville, Kentucky. Part 1, Snowbound, A Winter Idol. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit our website LibriVox.org. Recording by Paul Tremblay, Snowbound, A Winter Idol. By John Greenleaf Whittier. The sun that briefed December day rose cheerless over hills of gray, and darkly circled gave at noon a sadder light than waning moon. Slow, tracing down the thickening sky, its mutant ominous prophecy, a portent seeming less than threat, it sang from sight before it set. A chill, no coat, however stout, of homespun staff could quite shut out. A hard, dull bitterness of cold that checked mid-bane, the circling race of lifeblood in the sharpened face, the coming of the snowstorm told. The wind blew east. We heard the roar of ocean on his wintry shore. And felt the strong pulse throbbing there beat with low rhythm our inland air. Meanwhile, we did our nightly chores, brought in the wood from out of doors, littered the stalls and from the mows, raked down the herdsgrass for the cows, heard the horse whining for his corn, and sharply clashing horn on horn, impatient down the stench and rose, the cattle shake their walnut bows. While peering from his early perch upon the scaffold's pole of birch, the cock his crested helmet bent, and down his quarrelous challenge sent. Unwarmed by any sunset light, the grey day darkened into night. A night made hoary with the swarm and world-ance of the blinding storm as zigzag wavering to and fro crossed and recrossed the winged snow, and ere the early bedtime came, the white drift piled the window frame, and through the glass the clothesline posts looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts. So all night long the storm roared on. The morning broke without a sun, and tiny spherial traced with lines of nature's geometric signs, and starry flake and pellicle, all day the hoary meteor fell. And, when the second morning shone, we looked upon a world unknown, on nothing we could call our own. Around the glistening wonder-bent, we looked upon a world unknown, on nothing we could call our own. Around the glistening wonder-bent, the blue walls of the firmament, no cloud above, no earth below, a universe of sky and snow. The old familiar sights of ours took marvelous shapes. Strange domes and towers rose up where sty or corncrybs stood, or garden wall, or belt of wood. A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed, a fence-less drift what once was road. The Biddle-post an old man sat with loose-flung coat and high-cocked hat. The well-curb had a Chinese roof, and even the long, sweep-high aloof and its slant splendor seemed to tell of peas' leaning miracle. A prompt, decisive man, no breath our father wasted. Boys, a path. Well-pleased, for when did Farmer Boy count such a summons less than joy? Our buskins on our feet we drew, with mitten hands and caps drawn low, to guard our necks and ears from snow. We cut the solid whiteness through, and where the drift was deepest, made a tunnel, walled and overlaid with dazzling crystal. We had read of rare Aladdin's wondrous cave, and to our own his name we gave. With many a wish the luck were ours, to test his lamp's supernal powers. We reached the barn with married in, and roused the prison-boots within. The old horse thrust his long head out, and grave with wonder gazed about. The cock his lusty greeting said, and forth his speckled harem led. The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked, and mild reproach of hunger looked. The hornet patriarch of the sheep, like Egypt's amon, roused from sleep, shook his sage head with gesture-mute, and emphasized with stamp of foot. All day the gusty north wind bore, the loosening drift its breath before. Low circling round its southern zone, the sun through dazzling snowmists shone. No church bell lent its Christian tone to the savage air. No social smoke curled over woods of snow-hung oak. A solitude made more intense by dreary, voice-ed elements. The shrieking of the mindless wind, the moaning tree-bows swaying blind, and on the glass the unmeaning beat of ghostly fingertips of sleep. Beyond the circle of our hearth, no welcome sound of toil or mirth, unbound the spell, and testified of human life and thought outside. Reminded that the sharpest ear the buried brooklet could not hear. The music of whose liquid lip had been to us companionship, and in our lonely life had grown to have an almost human tone. As night drew on, and from the crest of wooded knolls that ridged the west, the sun, a snow-blown traveler, sank from sight beneath the smothering bank. We piled, with care, our nightly stack of wood against the chimney back. The oaken log, green, huge, and thick, and on its top the stout backstick. The knotty forestick laid apart and filled between with curious art the ragged brush. Then, hovering near, we watched the first red blaze appear. Her, the sharp crackle, caught the gleam of whitewashed wall and sagging beam, until the old, rude furnished room burst flower-like into rosy bloom. While, radiant with a mimic flame, outside the sparkling drift became, and through the bare, barred lilac tree, our own warm hearth seemed blazing free. The crane-impedent trimmels showed the turks' heads on the andirons glowed, while childish fancy, prompt to tell the meaning of the miracle, whispered the old rhyme. Under the tree, when fire outdoors burns merrily, there the witches are making tea. The moon above the eastern wood shone at its full. The hill-range stood transfigured in the silver flood, its blown snows flashing cold and keen, dead white, save where some sharp ravine took shadow, or the sombre green of hemlocks turned to pitchy black against the whiteness at their back. For such a world and such a night, most fitting that unwarming light, which only seemed where ear it fell, to make the coldness visible. Shut in from all the world without, we sat the clean-winged hearth about, content to let the north wind roar, and baffled rage at pain endure. While the red logs before us beat, the frost-line back with tropic heat. And ever, when I loud a blast, shook beam and rafter, as it passed, the merrier up its roaring draught, the great throat of the chimney laughed. The host-dog on his paws outspread, laid to the fire his drowsy head. The cat's dark silhouette on the wall, a couch and tigers seemed to fall. And for the winter fireside meet, between the andirn straddling feet, the mug of cider simmered slow, the apple sputtered in a row. And, close at hand, the basket stood with nuts from brown October's wood. What matter how the night behaved? What matter how the north wind raved? Blow high, blow low, not all its snow could quench our hearth's fire's rooty glow. Oh, time and change, with hair as gray as was my sires that winter day, how strange it seems with so much gone of life and love to still live on. Ah, brother, only I and thou are left of all that circle now. The dear home faces wear upon that pitful firelight paled and shone. Henceforward, listen as we will, the voices of that hearth are still. Look where we may, the wide earth o'er, those lighted faces smile no more. We tread the paths their feet have worn. We sit beneath their orchard trees. We hear, like them, the hum of bees and the rustle of the bladed corn. We turn the pages that they read. Their written words we linger over. But in the sun they cast no shade, no voices heard, no sign is made, no step is on the conscience floor. Yet love will dream and faith will trust, since he who knows our need is just, that somehow, somewhere, meet we must. Alas for him who never sees, the stars shine through his cypress trees, who, hopeless, lays his dead away, nor looks to see the breaking day across the mournful marble's play, who hath not learned, in hours of faith, the truth to flesh and sense unknown, that life is ever, lord of death, and love can never lose its own. We sped the time with stories old, wrought puzzles out, and riddles told, or stammered, from our schoolbook lore, the chief of Gambia's golden shore. How often since, when all the land was clay in slavery-shaping hand, as if a far-blown trumpet stirred, the languorous, sin-sick air, I heard. Does not the voice of reason cry, claim the first right which nature gave, from the red scourge of bondage to fly, nor dain to live a burdened slave? Our father rode again his ride on Memphamogog's wooded side, set down again to Moose and Samp and Trapper's hut in Indian camp, lived o'er the old idyllic ease beneath St. Francis' hemlock trees. Again for him the moonlight shone, a Norman cap in bottest zone. Again he heard the violin play, which led the village dance away, and mingled in its merry whirl, the grandam and the laughing girl. Or, nearer home, our steps he led, where Salisbury's level marshes spread, mile-wide as fly the laden bee. Where, merry mowers, hail and strong, swept scythe on scythe, their swaths along the low-green prairies of the sea. We shared the fishing off Boar's head, and round the rocky aisles of shoals, the hake-boil on the driftwood coals, the chowder on the sand-beach maid, dipped by the hungry, steaming hot with spoons of clamshell from the pot. We heard the tales of witchcraft old, and dream and sign and marvel told, to sleepy listeners, as they lay, stretched idly on the salted hay, adrift along the winding shores, when favoring breezes stained to blow the square sail of the gundalow, and idly lay the useless oars. Our mother, while she turned her wheel, or run the new knit-stocking hill, told how the Indian hoards came down, at midnight, on Conchico Town, and how her own great-uncle Boar, his cruel scalp-marked two-four score. Recalling, in her fitting phrase, so rich and picturesque and free, the common unrhymed poetry of simple life in country ways, the story of her early days, she made us welcome to her home, old hearths grew wide to give us room, we stole with her a frightened look at the grey wizard's conjuring book. The fame were of, went far and wide, through all the simple countryside. We heard the hawks at twilight play, the boat horn on Piscata Quay, the loon's weird laughter far away. We fished her little trout brook, knew what flowers were, and wood and meadows grew, what sunny hillside autumn-brown she climbed to shake the ripe nuts down. Saw wear and sheltered cove and bay, the duck's black squadron anchored lay, and heard the wild geese calling loud, beneath the grey November cloud. Then, happily, with a look more grave, in sober atone, some tale she gave from painful Seawill's ancient tome, beloved in every Quaker home, a faith fire-winged by Martydom, or a chockly's journal, old and quaint, gentless of skippers, rare sea-saint, who, when the dreary calms prevailed, and water-butt and bread-cask faked, and cool, hungry eyes pursued his portly presence, mad for food, with dark, hints muttered under breath of casting lots for life or death, offered, if heaven withheld supplies, to be himself the sacrifice. Then, suddenly, as if to save the good man from his living grave, a ripple on the water grew, a school of porpoise flashed in view. Take, eat, he said, and be content. These fishes in my stead are ascent by him who gave the tangled ram to spare the child of Abraham, our uncle in a scent of book, was rich in lore of fields and books, the ancient teachers never dumb of nature's unhoused lyceum. In moons and tides and weather-wise, he read the clouds as prophecies, and foul affair could well divine by many an occult hint and sign, holding the cunning man worded keys to all the wood-craft mysteries. Himself to nature's heart so near that all her voices in his ear of beast or bird had meanings clear, like Apollonius of old, who knew the tales the sparrows told, or Hermes who interpreted what the saint said a simple, guile-less, child-like man content to live where life began, strong only on his native grounds, the little world of sights and sounds whose girdle was the parish bounds, whereof his fondly partial pride, the common features, the common sounds, his fondly partial pride, the common features magnified as surrey hills to mountains grew and white of cell-born's loving view. He told how tale and loon he shot, and how the eagles eggs he got, the feet sun-pawned in river-done, the prodigies of rod and gun, till warming with his tales he told, forgotten was the outside cold, the bitter wind and heated blue, from ripening corn the pigeons flew, the partridge drummed in the woods, the mink went fishing down the river-brink, in fields with bean or clover-gay, the woodchuck, like a hermit-grey, peered from the doorway of his cell, the muskrat plied the mason's trade, in tear by tear his mud-walls laid, and from the shag-bark overhead the grizzled squirrel dropped his shell. Next, the deer-aunt, whose smile of cheer and voice and dreams I see and hear. The sweetest woman, ever fate perverse, denied a household mate, who, lonely, homeless, not the less, found peace and love's unselfishness, and welcomed, where so ere she went, a calm and gracious element, whose presence seemed the sweet income and womanly atmosphere of home. Called up her girlhood memories, the huskings and the apple-bees, the sleigh rides and the summer sails, weaving through all the poor details and homespun warp of circumstance, a golden wolf-thread of romance. For, well, she kept her genial mood in simple faith of maidenhood. Before her still a cloud-land lay, the mirage loomed across her way, the morning dew that dries so soon with others, glistened at her noon, through years of toil and soil and care, from glossy tress to thin gray hair, all unprofane she held apart, the virgin fancies of the heart, be shame to him of woman-born, who hath for such but thought of scorn. End of Part One Snowbound, A Winter Idol Recording by Paul Tremblay Louisville, Kentucky Part Two Snowbound, A Winter Idol This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Paul Tremblay Snowbound, A Winter Idol by John Greenleaf Whittier There, too, our elder sister applied her evening task the stand beside. A full, rich nature, free to trust, truthful and almost sternly just. Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act and make her generous thought a fact, keeping with many a light disguise the secret of self-sacrifice. Oh, heart sore-tried, thou hast the best that heaven itself could give thee. Rest. Rest from all bitter thoughts and things. How many a poor one's blessings went with thee beneath the low green tent whose curtain never outward swings. As one who held herself a part of all she saw and let her heart against the household bosom lean, upon the motley braided mat our youngest and our dearest sat, lifting her large, sweet-asking eyes now bathed in the unfading green and holy peace of paradise. Oh, looking from some heavenly hill or from the shade of saintly palms or silver reach of river-combs, do those large eyes behold me still? With me one little year ago the chill-weight of the winter snow for months upon her grave has lain. And now, when summer-south winds blow and briar and hair-bell bloom again, I tread the pleasant paths retrod. I see the violet-spinkled sod whereon she leaned, too frail and weak the hillside flowers she loved to seek. Yet, following me where ere I went with dark eyes full of love's content, the birds are glad, the briar rose fills the air with sweetness. All the hills stretched green to dunes and clouded sky, but still I wait with ear and eye for something gone which should be nigh, a loss in all familiar things and flower that blooms and bird that sings. And yet, dear heart, remembering thee, am I not richer than of old? Safe in thy immortality the change can reach the wealth I hold. What change can mar the pearl in gold thy love hath left in trust with me? And while in life's late afternoon where cool and long the shadows grow, I walk to meet the night that soon shall shape the shadow overflow. I cannot feel that thou art far from me the angels are. And when the sunset gates unbar, shall I not see thee waiting stand and, wide against the evening star, the welcome of thy beckoning hand, brisk wielder of the birch and rule, the master of the local school held at the fire his favored place, its warm glow lit a laughing face, fresh-hued and fair, where scarce appeared the uncertain prophecy of beard. He teased the mitten-blinded cat, played cross-pins on my uncle's hat, sang songs and told us what befalls in classic Darmeth's college halls. Born the wild northern hills among, from whence his yeoman father rung by patient toil subsistence scant, not competence and yet not want, he early gained the power to pay his cheerful self-reliant way. Could doth at ease his scholar's gown to peddle wares from town to town, or through the long vacations reach of the newly lowlands districts teach, where all the droll experience found at stranger hearths and boarding-round the moonlit skaters keen delight, the sleigh-drive through the frosty night, the rustic party with its rough accompaniment of blind man's bluff and whirling plate and forfeits paid, his winter task a pastime made. Happy the snow-locked homes wherein he tuned his merry violin, or played the athlete in the barn, or held the good dame's winding yarn, or mirth-provoking versions told of classic legends rare and old, wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome held all the commonplace of home, and little seemed at best the odds to ex-janky peddlers and old gods, where appendice-born Aractus took the guise of any grist-mill brook and dread Olympus at his will became a huckleberry hill. A careless boy that night he seemed, but at his desk he had the look and air of one who wisely schemed and hostage from the future took and trained thought and lore of book. Large-brained, clear-eyed, of such as he shall freedom's young apostles be, who, following in war's bloody trail, shall every lingering wrong assail, all chains from limb and spirit strike, uplift the black and white alike, scatter before their swift advance, the darkness and the ignorance, the pride, the lust, the squalid sloth, which nurtured treason's monstrous growth, made murder pastime, and the hell of prison torture possible. The cruel lie of caste refute, old forms remold, and substitute for slavery's lash, the freeman's will, for blind routine, wise-handed skill. A schoolhouse plant on every hill, stretching in radiant nerve-lines vents, the quick wires of intelligence, till north and south, together brought, shall own the same electric thought, and piece a common-flag salute, and, side by side in labor's free and unresentful rivalry, harvest the fields wherein they fought. Another guest that winter night flashed back from lustrous eyes the light, unmarked by time, and yet not young, the hunted music of her tongue and words of weakness scarcely told, a nature, passionate and bold, strong, self-concentred, spurning guide, its milder feaches, dwarfed beside her unbent will's majestic pride. She sat among us, at the best, a not-unfear, half-welcome guest, rebuking with her cultured phrase our homeliness of words and ways. A certain pard-like, treacherous grace swayed the lithe limbs and dropped the lash, lent the white teeth their dazzling flash, and under low-brows, black with night, braid out at times a dangerous light. The sharp, heat-lightnings of her face presaging ill to him whom fate condemned to share her love or hate. A woman tropical, intense in thought and act, in soul and sense, she blended in a light degree the vixen and the devotee, revealing with each freak or faint the temper of Pertugio's Kate, the raptures of Siena's Saint. Her tapering hand and rounded wrist had vassal power to form a fist. The warm, dark languish of her eyes was the light of her eyes languish of her eyes was never safe from wrath's surprise. Brow saintly calm and lips devout knew every change of scowl and pout and the sweet voice had notes more high in shrill for social battle cry. Since then what old cathedral town pilgrims' staff and gown what convent gate has held its lock against the challenge of her knock. Through Smyrna's plague-hushed thoroughfares up sea-set malt as rocky stair gray olive slopes of hills that hem thy tombs and shrines, Jerusalem or startling on her desert throne the crazy queen of Lebanon with claims fantastic as her own her tireless feet have held their way and still unrestful bowed and gray she watches under eastern skies with hopes each day renewed and fresh the Lord's quick coming in the flesh whereof she dreams and prophecies where ere her troubled path may be the Lord's sweet pity with her go the outward wayward life we see the hidden springs we may not know nor is it given us to discern what threads the fatal sisters spun through what ancestral years has run the sorrow with the woman born what forged her cool chain of moods what set her feet in solitudes and held the love within her mute what mingled madness in the blood a life long-discord and annoy water of tears with oil of joy and hid within the folded bud perversities of flower and fruit it is not ours to separate the tangled scheme of will and fate to show what meets and bounds should stand upon the soul's debatable land and between choice and providence divide the circle of events but he who knows our frame is just merciful and compassionate and full of sweet assurances and hope for all the language is that he bemembereth we are dust at last the great logs crumbling low sent out a dull and duller glow the bull's eye watch that hung in view ticking its weary circuit through pointed with mutely warning sign its black hand to the hour of nine that sign the pleasant circle broke my uncle ceased his pipe to smoke knocked from its bull the refuse gray and laid it tenderly away then roused himself to safely cover the dull red brands with ashes over and while with care our mother laid the work aside her steps she stayed one moment seeking to express her grateful sense of happiness for food and shelter warmth and health and love's contentment more than wealth with simple wishes not the weak vain prayers which no fulfillment seek but such as warm the generous heart or prompt to do with heaven its part that none might lack that bitter night for bread and clothing warmth and light within our beds a while we heard the wind that round the gables roared with now and then a rudder shock which made our very bedsteads rock we heard the loosing clavards tossed the board nails snapping in the frost and on us through the unplastered wall felt the light sifted snowflakes fall but sleep still on as sleep will do when hearts are light and life is new faint and more faint the murmurs grew till in the summer land of dreams they soften to the sound of streams low stir of leaves and dip of oars and lapsing waves on quiet shores next morning we wakened with the shout of merry voices high and clear and saw the teamsters drawing near the drifted highways out down the long hillside treading slow we saw the half buried oxen go shaking the snow from heads up tossed their straining nostrils white with frost before our door the struggling train drew up and added team to gain the elders thrashed their hands a cold past with the cider mug their jokes from lip to lip the younger folks down the loose snow banks wrestling rolled then toiled again the calvocade or were windy hill through clog ravine and woodland pass that wound between low drooping pine vows winter wade from every barn a team of foot at every house a new recruit where drawn by nature's subtlest law happily the watchful young men saw sweet doorway pictures of the curls and curious eyes of merry girls lifting their hands in mock defense against the snowball's compliments and reading in each missive tossed the charm with Eden never lost we heard once more the sleighbell sound and following where the teamsters led the wise old doctor went his round just pausing at our door to say in the brief autocratic way of one who prompt at duty's call was free to urge her claim on all that some poor neighbor sick a bed at night our mother's aid would need for one ingenuous thought indeed what mattered in the sufferer's sight the quaker matrons inward light the doctor's meal of kelvin's creed all hearts confess the saint's elect who twain in faith and love agree and melt not in an acid sect the christian pearl of charity so days went on a week had passed since the great world was heard from last the almanac we studied over read and reread our little store of books and pamphlets scarce a score one harmless novel mostly hid from younger eyes a book forbid in poetry or good or bad a single book was all we had where elwood's meek drabs skirted muse a stranger to the heathen nine sang with a somewhat nasal whine the wars of david and the jews at last the floundering carrier bore the village paper to our door low broadening outward as we read to warmer zones the horizon spread and panoramic length and rolled we saw the marvels that it told before us passed the painted creeks and daff McGregor on his raids and costa rica's everglades an uptake got us winding slow where ypsilante's mayonet creeks a turks head on each saddlebow welcome to us it's week old news it's corner for the rustic muse it's monthly gauge of snow and rain it's rugged mingling at a breath the wedding bell in dirge of death jest, anecdote, and love lorn tale the latest culprit sent to jail it's hue and cry of stolen and lost it's vendu seals in goods at cost and traffic calling loud for gain we felt the stirrer of hall in street the pulse of life that round us beat the chill embargo of the snow was melted in the genial glow wide swung again our ice locked door and all the world was ours once more clasp, angel of the backward look and folded wings of ashen gray and voice of echoes far away the brazen covers of thy book the weird palm sets old and vast wherein thou hidst the spectral past where closely mingling pale and glow the characters of joy and woe the monographs of outlived years or smile allumed or dim with tears green hills of life that slope to death and haunts of home whose visted trees shade off to mournful sippuses with the white emirants underneath even while I look I can but heed the restless sands incessant fall impetunate ours that ours succeed each clamorous with its own sharp need and duty keeping pace with all shut down and clasp with heavy lids I hear again the voice that bids the dreamer leave his dream midway for a larger hopes engraver fares life greatens in these later years the centuries elo flowers today yet happily in some lull of life some truce of God which breaks its strife the wordlings I shall gather do dreaming in throngful city ways of winter joys his boyhood knew and dear and early friends the few who yet remain shall pause to view these flemish pictures of old days sit with me by the homestead hearth and stretch the hands of memory forth and warm them in the wood fires blaze and thanks untrace to lips unknown shall greet me like the odors blown from unseen meadows newly moan or lilies floating in some pond wood fringed the wayside gaze beyond the traveler owns the grateful sense of sweetness near the winds and pausing takes with forehead bear the benediction of the air end of part two snowbound a winter idle recording by Paul Tremblay Louisville Kentucky end of snowbound a winter idle by John Greenleaf Whittier