Classic Poem

What pleasant memories cluster round these volumes old and worn,
With covers smirched and bindings creased, and thumbed and torn!
These are the books we used to con, I and poor brother Will,
When we were boys together in the school-house on the hill!
Well I recall the nights at home, when side by side we sat
Before the fire, and o'er these books indulged in whispered chat.
And how, when father chided us for idling time away,
Our eyes bent to the task as though they'd never been astray.
The old-time proverbs scribbled here, the caution to beware
(“Steal not this book, my honest friend”) scrawled roughly here and there,
The blurs, the blots, the luncheon spots, the numberless dog's ears,
The faded names, the pictures, and, alas! the stains of tears—
All take me back in mind to days when cloudless was the sky,
When grief was so short-lived I smiled before my tears were dry;
When, next to father's angry frown, I feared the awful nod
That doomed me, trembling, to advance and humbly kiss the rod.
How bright those days! Our little cares, our momentary fears,
And e'en our pains, evanished with a burst of sobs and tears,
And every joy seemed great enough to balance all our woe;
What pity that, when griefs are real, they can't be balanced so!
The school-house stands in ruins now, the boys have scattered wide;
A few are old and grey like me, but nearly all have died;
And brother Will is one of these; his curly head was laid
Down by the brook, at father's side, beneath the willow's shade.
These books, so quaint and queer to you, to me are living things;
Each tells a story of the past, and each a message brings.
Whene'er I sit, at eventide, and turn their pages o'er,
They seem to speak in tones that thrilled my heart in days of yore.
The school-boy of to-day would laugh, and throw these old books by:
But, think you, neighbour, could his heart consent if he were I?