And I stamp and I claw at the air,
And rave at myself for a spell;
For it isn't the girl, after all,
That I met at the Newport hotel.
Puck.
THE HOUSE IN THE MEADOW.
It stands in a sunny meadow,
The house so mossy and brown,
With its cumbrous old stone chimneys,
And the gray roof sloping down.
The trees fold their green arms round it,—
The trees a century old;
And the winds go chanting through them,
And the sunbeams drop their gold.
The cowslips spring in the marshes,
The roses bloom on the hill,
And beside the brook in the pasture
The herds go feeding at will.
Within, in the wide old kitchen
The old folks sit in the sun
That creeps through the sheltering woodbine
Till the day is almost done.
Their children have gone and left them;
They sit in the sun alone,
And the old wife's ears are failing
As she harks to the well-known tone
That won her heart in her girlhood,
That has soothed her in many a care,
And praises her now for the brightness
Her old face used to wear.
She thinks again of her bridal,—
How, dressed in her robe of white,
She stood by her gay young lover
In the morning's rosy light.
