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Ebook has 746 lines and 17381 words, and 15 pages

IN VARIOUS MOODS

Poems And Verses

MCMX

IN VARIOUS MOODS

THE SOWERS

I know the hills that lift the distant plain,

The college hall--the spirit of its throngs,

The meadows and the waving fields of grain,

Full well I know their colors and their songs.

I know the storied gates where love was told,

The grove where walked the muses and the seers,

The river, dark or touched with light of gold,

Or slow, or swift so like the flowing years.

I know not these who sadly sit them down

And while the night in half-forgotten days;

I know not these who wear the hoary crown

And find a pathos in the merry lays.

Here Memory, with old wisdom on her lips,

A finger points at each familiar name--

Some writ on water, stone or stranded ships,

Some in the music of the trump of fame.

Here oft, I think, beloved voices call

Behind a weathered door 'neath ancient trees.

I hear sad echoes in the empty hall,

The wide world's lyric in the harping breeze.

It sings of them I loved and left of old,

Of my fond hope to bring a worthy prize--

Some well-earned token, better far than gold,

And lay it humbly down before their eyes.

And tell them it were rightly theirs--not mine,

An harvest come of their own word and deed;

I strove with tares that threatened my design

To make the crop as noble as the seed.

So they might see it paid--that life they knew--

A toilsome web and knit of many a skein,

With love's sweet sacrifice all woven through,

And broken threads of hope and joy and pain.

On root-bound acres, pent with rocks and stones,

Their hope of wealth and leisure slowly died.

They gave their strength in toil that racked their bones,

They gave their youth, their beauty, and their pride.

Ere Nature's last defence had been withdrawn

That those they loved might have what they could not--

The power of learning wedded to their brawn

And to the simple virtue there begot.

My college! Once--it was a day of old--

I saw thy panes aglow with sunset fire

And heard the story of thy purpose told

And felt the tide of infinite desire.

In thee I saw the gates of mystery

That led to dream-lit, vast, inviting lands--

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