Myself.

WELL, once I was a little girl,

A-dwelling far away;

My mother made the butter,

And my father made the hay.

And I-I wandered, out of school,
Amid the woodlands wild,

H. E. G. Arey.

And scorned the teacher's measured rule

A harum-scarum child.

Of thorny lane, and meadow fair,
My frock bore token still;
The wind would catch my yellow hair,
And braid it at its will.

The sun was busy with my face—

And still it shows it some;

And, on my neck, I know how high.
My dresses used to come.

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H. E. G. AREY.

And I was smart, and all the springs
On all the hills could show;

And, if there were some grammar things
I didn't care to know,

I always knew how many boughs
The latest tempest broke,
And just how far the woodpecker
Had girdled round the oak.

I knew the tree where slept the crows:
And, on the water's brim,

I climbed among the hemlock boughs,
To watch the fishes swim.

I knew, beside the swollen rill,

What flowers to bloom would burst; And where, upon the south-sloped hill, The berries ripened first.

Each violet tuft, each cowslip green,
Each daisy on the lea,

I counted one by one-for they
Were kith and kin to me.

I knew the moles that dared to claim

The vanished beavers' huts;

And sat on mossy logs to watch

The squirrels crack their nuts:

MYSELF.

And they winked slyly at me, too,
But never fled away,

For in their little hearts they knew
That I was wild as they.

And always in the Winter, too,
Before the breakfast time,

I wandered o'er the crusted snow,
To hear the waters chime.

To see how thick the ice had grown,
And where the hasty spray

Its jewels o'er the shrubs had thrown
In such a curious way.

And in a little cavern, where

The waters trickled through,

The shape of every icicle

That gemmed its sides I knew;

For there were hermits' huts, and towers,
And cities grand and gay,
And Alpine peaks and tropic flowers,
And fairer things than they:

For oft the sun came glinting through

The chinks some ice lens spanned,

And decked in many a rainbow hue

Those scenes of fairy land.

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156

H. E. G. AREY.

And now, when to my roving brain

There starts some fancy, shrined

In tints more bright than earth can claim,
That cavern comes to mind.

When Winter to the Spring-tide wore,

Through slumps and sloughs I strayed,

To list the splashing and the roar
The mountain torrents made.

Oh! that was glee; and oft I turned
In rapture from the shore,
And said (I know not where I learned)
The lines about "Lodore."

There was a well-filled garret, where
I hid on stormy days,
And built bright castles in the air,
And conned most ancient lays;

And through the snares that Scott has set,
For fancy roamed with joy,

Or, from some old and worn gazette,
I hacked the rhymes of "Roy."

In mouse-holes rare I hid with care
Those relics of the Muse,

And wondered who the Poets were

That scribbled for the News.

MYSELF.

But when once more the skies were fair,

And I the woods could win,

For books and rhymes that charmed me there
I did not care a pin.

My mother saw my garments soiled,

And thought it hardly right;

But, when I wished to go again,
My father said I might.

And now I am a woman grown,
And strive to keep my hair

Beneath the guidance of my comb,
And bind my dress with care.

Through slumps and drifts I do not roam,
Nor climb the hemlock trees,

Nor hide 'mid cobwebbed trunks at home-
For fear 'twill raise a breeze.

I thread the world's unchanging maze,

Through all Life's fettered span,

And seek to be in all my ways

As "proper" as I can.

I never liked the ways of men,

Or wished more old to grow,

For life was wondrous curious then,

And isn't curious now.

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