My years were hardly ten when father died.
Sole tenants of our humble cottage home
My sorrowing mother and myself remained;
But she was all economy, and kept
With my poor aid a comfortable house.
I was her idol and she wrought at night
To keep me at my books, and used to boast
That I should rise above our humble lot.
How oft I listened to her hopeful words--
Poured from the fountain of a mother's heart
Until I longed to wing the sluggard years
That bore me on to what I hoped to be.
"We had a garden-plat behind the house--
Beyond, an orchard and a pasture-lot;
In front a narrow meadow--here and there
Shaded with elms and branching butternuts.
In spring and summer in the garden-plat
I wrought my morning and my evening hours
And kept myself at school--no idle boy.
"One bright May morning when the robins sang
There came to school a stranger queenly fair,
With eyes that shamed the ethereal blue of heaven,
And golden hair in ringlets--cheeks as soft,
As fresh and rosy as the velvet blush
Of summer sunrise on the dew-damp hills.
Hers was the name I muttered in my dreams.
For days my bashful heart held me aloof
Although her senior by a single year;
But we were brought together oft in class,
And when she learned my name she spoke to me,
And then my tongue was loosed and we were friends.
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