VERSE:  THE SAILOR BOY

My Life you ask of? why, you know
Full soon my little Life is told;
It has had no great joy or woe,
For I am only twelve years old. 
Ere long I hope I shall have been
On my first voyage, and wonders seen. 
Some princess I may help to free
From pirates, on a far-off sea;
Or, on some desert isle be left,
Of friends and shipmates all bereft.

For the first time I venture forth,
From our blue mountains of the north. 
My kinsman kept the lodge that stood
Guarding the entrance near the wood,
By the stone gateway grey and old,
With quaint devices carved about,
And broken shields; while dragons bold
Glared on the common world without;
And the long trembling ivy spray
Half hid the centuries’ decay. 
In solitude and silence grand
The castle towered above the land: 
The castle of the Earl, whose name
(Wrapped in old bloody legends) came
Down through the times when Truth and Right
Bent down to armed Pride and Might. 
He owned the country far and near;
And, for some weeks in every year,
(When the brown leaves were falling fast
And the long, lingering autumn passed,)
He would come down to hunt the deer,
With hound and horse in splendid pride. 
The story lasts the live-long year,
The peasant’s winter evening fills,
When he is gone and they abide
In the lone quiet of their hills.

I longed, too, for the happy night,
When, all with torches flaring bright,
The crowding villagers would stand,
A patient, eager, waiting band,
Until the signal ran like flame—­
“They come!” and, slackening speed, they came. 
Outriders first, in pomp and state,
Pranced on their horses through the gate;
Then the four steeds as black as night,
All decked with trappings blue and white,
Drew through the crowd that opened wide,
The Earl and Countess side by side. 
The stern grave Earl, with formal smile
And glistening eyes and stately pride,
Could ne’er my childish gaze beguile
From the fair presence by his side. 
The lady’s soft sad glance, her eyes,
(Like stars that shone in summer skies,)
Her pure white face so calmly bent,
With gentle greetings round her sent
Her look, that always seemed to gaze
Where the blue past had closed again
Over some happy shipwrecked days,
With all their freight of love and pain: 
She did not even seem to see
The little lord upon her knee. 
And yet he was like angel fair,
With rosy cheeks and golden hair,
That fell on shoulders white as snow: 
But the blue eyes that shone below
His clustering rings of auburn curls,
Were not his mother’s, but the Earl’s.