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Title: Sketch Of A Schoolfellow
Author: Nathaniel Parker Willis [
More Titles by Willis]
He sat by me in school. His face is now
Vividly in my mind, as if he went
From me but yesterday--its pleasant smile
And the rich, joyous laughter of his eye,
And the free play of his unhaughty lip,
So redolent of his heart! He was not fair,
Nor singular, nor over-fond of books,
And never melancholy when alone.
He was the heartiest in the ring, the last
Home from the summer's wanderings, and the first
Over the threshold when the school was done.
All of us loved him. We shall speak his name
In the far years to come, and think of him
When we have lost life's simplest passages,
And pray for him--forgetting he is dead--
Life was in him so passing beautiful!
His childhood had been wasted in the close
And airless city. He had never thought
That the blue sky was ample, or the stars
Many in heaven, or the chainless wind
Of a medicinal freshness. He had learn'd
Perilous tricks of manhood, and his hand
Was ready, and his confidence in himself
Bold as a quarreller's. Then he came away
To the unshelter'd hills, and brought an eye
New as a babe's to nature, and an ear
As ignorant of its music. He was sad.
The broad hill sides seem'd desolate, and the woods
Gloomy and dim, and the perpetual sound
Of wind and waters and unquiet leaves
Like the monotony of a dirge. He pined
For the familiar things until his heart
Sicken'd for home!--and so he stole away
To the most silent places, and lay down
To weep upon the mosses of the slopes,
And follow'd listlessly the silver streams,
Till he found out the unsunn'd shadowings,
And the green openings to the sky, and grew
Fond of them all insensibly. He found
Sweet company in the brooks, and loved to sit
And bathe his fingers wantonly, and feel
The wind upon his forehead; and the leaves
Took a beguiling whisper to his ear,
And the bird-voices music, and the blast
Swept like an instrument the sounding trees.
His heart went back to its simplicity
As the stirr'd waters in the night grow pure--
Sadness and silence and the dim-lit woods
Won on his love so well--and he forgot
His pride and his assumingness, and lost
The mimicry of the man, and so unlearn'd
His very character till he became
As diffident as a girl.
'Tis very strange
How nature sometimes wins upon a child.
Th' experience of the world is not on him,
And poetry has not upon his brain
Left a mock thirst for solitude, nor love
Writ on his forehead the effeminate shame
Which hideth from men's eyes. He has a full,
Shadowless heart, and it is always toned
More merrily than the chastened voice of winds
And waters--yet he often, in his mirth,
Stops by the running brooks, and suddenly
Loiters, he knows not why, and at the sight
Of the spread meadows and the lifted hills
Feels an unquiet pleasure, and forgets
To listen for his fellows. He will grow
Fond of the early star, and lie awake
Gazing with many thoughts upon the moon,
And lose himself in the deep chamber'd sky
With his untaught philosophies. It breeds
Sadness in older hearts, but not in his;
And he goes merrier to his play, and shouts
Louder the joyous call--but it will sink
Into his memory like his mother's prayer,
For after years to brood on.
Cheerful thoughts
Came to the homesick boy as he became
Wakeful to beauty in the summer's change,
And he came oftener to our noisy play,
Cheering us on with his delightful shout
Over the hills, and giving interest
With his keen spirit to the boyish game.
We loved him for his carelessness of himself,
And his perpetual mirth, and tho' he stole
Sometimes away into the woods alone,
And wandered unaccompanied when the night
Was beautiful, he was our idol still,
And we have not forgotten him, tho' time
Has blotted many a pleasant memory
Of boyhood out, and we are wearing old
With the unplayfulness of this grown up world.
[The end]
Nathaniel Parker Willis's poem: Sketch Of A Schoolfellow
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