When suddenly some shadow-bird
  Goes wavering beneath the gaze,
And through the hedge the moan is heard
    Of kine that fain would graze
  In grasses new, I smile and say,
  The Spring is coming round this way.

When knotted horse-tails are untied,
  And teamsters whistle here and there. 
And clumsy mitts are laid aside
    And choppers’ hands are bare,
  And chips are thick where children play,
  The Spring is coming round this way.

When through the twigs the farmer tramps,
  And troughs are chunked beneath the trees,
And fragrant hints of sugar-camps
    Astray in every breeze,—­
  When early March seems middle May,
  The Spring is coming round this way.

When coughs are changed to laughs, and when
  Our frowns melt into smiles of glee,
And all our blood thaws out again
    In streams of ecstasy,
  And poets wreak their roundelay,
  The Spring is coming round this way.

A TALE OF THE AIRLY DAYS

Oh! tell me a tale of the airly days—­
  Of the times as they ust to be;
“Piller of Fi-er” and “Shakespeare’s Plays”
  Is a’ most too deep fer me! 
I want plane facts, and I want plane words,
  Of the good old-fashioned ways,
When speech run free as the songs of birds
  ’Way back in the airly days.

Tell me a tale of the timber-lands—­
  Of the old-time pioneers;
Somepin’ a pore man understands
  With his feelins’s well as ears. 
Tell of the old log house,—­about
  The loft, and the puncheon flore—­
The old fi-er-place, with the crane swung out,
  And the latch-string thrugh the door.

Tell of the things jest as they was—­
  They don’t need no excuse!—­
Don’t tech ’em up like the poets does,
  Tel theyr all too fine fer use!—­
Say they was ’leven in the fambily—­
  Two beds, and the chist, below,
And the trundle-beds that each helt three,
  And the clock and the old bureau.

Then blow the horn at the old back-door
  Tel the echoes all halloo,
And the childern gethers home onc’t more,
  Jest as they ust to do: 
Blow fer Pap tel he hears and comes,
  With Tomps and Elias, too,
A-marchin’ home, with the fife and drums
  And the old Red White and Blue!

Blow and blow tel the sound draps low
  As the moan of the whipperwill,
And wake up Mother, and Ruth and Jo,
  All sleepin’ at Bethel Hill: 
Blow and call tel the faces all
  Shine out in the back-log’s blaze,
And the shadders dance on the old hewed wall
  As they did in the airly days.

OLD MAN’S NURSERY RHYME

I

In the jolly winters
  Of the long-ago,
It was not so cold as now—­
  O!  No!  No! 
Then, as I remember,
  Snowballs to eat
Were as good as apples now. 
  And every bit as sweet!