Classic Poem

Ah, then, a boy, I rov'd below
The sun that seem'd to go so slow,
While keeping birds beside the hill,
With little wind-blown voice so shrill,
And flapping clacker, seldom still;
And longed to see the snow-white patch
Upon the hedge beside our hatch;
Poor mother's dinner token.

For I, a child, was then too small
To see from home, and out of call;
And my best clock, the shifting shade
Of some high elm-tree on the glade,
Below a cloud would often fade;
And so, at dinner time, beside
The hatch my mother open'd wide
A sheet, her dinner token.

And while the dew-drops dried away
Below the heat of blue-sky'd day,
With thoughts of home, alone and dumb,
I whiled the time a-cutting some
New plaything out for days to come:
Till when, at dinner time, hound-light,
I ran down homeward, catching sight
Of mother's snow-white token.

But when another year came on
My mother, poor dear soul, was gone;
And left behind no hands to spread
Her sheet for me when she was dead.
And so I ate my lonesome bread
Afield, more selfmourn'd now than then;
And never ran down home again,
At mother's dinner token.

And when the Sunday church-peals, toss'd
With swelling winds, were heard and lost;
And when I saw go slowly through
The fields from church, the folk I knew,
Gay maids in white, and lads in blue;
How sadd'ning seem'd the sounds I caught
From o'er her grave, the while I thought
On mother's dinner token.