Songs Ysame

If it be so that common things
Can fledge your fancy with fast wings;
If you the language can translate
Of lowly life, and make it great,
And can the beauty understand
That dignifies a toil-worn hand,
Look in this halo, and see how
The homely seems transfigured now
At early candle-lighting.

A fire-place where the great logs roar
And shine across the puncheon floor,
And through the chinked walls, here and there,
The snow steals, and the frosty air.
Meager and bare the furnishings,
But hospitality that kings
Might well dispense, transmutes to gold,
The welcome given young and old.
Plain and uncouth in speech and dress,
But richly clad in kindliness,
The neighbors gather, one by one,
At rustic rout when day is done.
Vanish all else in this soft light, —
The past is ours again tonight;
'Tis early candle-lighting.

Oh, well-remembered scenes like these:
The candy-pullings, husking-bees —
The evenings when the quilting frames
Were laid aside for romping games;
The singing school! The spelling match!
My hand still lingers on the latch,
I fain would wider swing the door
And enter with the guests once more.
Though into ashes long ago
That fire faded, still the glow
That warmed the hearts around it met,
Immortal, burns within me yet.
Still to that cabin in the wood
I turn for highest types of good
At early candle-lighting.

How fast the scenes come flocking to
My mind, as white sheep jostle through
The gap, when pasture bars are down,
And pass into the twilight brown.
Grandmother's face and snowy cap,
The knitting work upon her lap,
The creaking, high-backed rocking-chair;
The spinning-wheel, the big loom where
The shuttle carried song and thread;
The valance on the high, white bed
Whose folds the lavender still keep.
Oh! nowhere else such dreamless sleep
On tired eyes its deep spell lays,
As that which came in those old days
At early candle-lighting.

A kitchen lit by one dim light,
And 'round the table in affright,
A group of children telling tales.
Outside, the wind – a banshee – wails.
Even the shadows, that they throw
Upon the walls, to giants grow.
The hailstones 'gainst the window panes
Fall with the noise of clanking chains,
Till, glancing back, they almost feel
Black shapes from out the corners steal,
And, climbing to the loft o'erhead,
The witches follow them to bed.
The low flame flickers. Snuff the wick!
For ghosts and goblins crowd so thick
At early candle-lighting.

An orchard path that tramping feet
For half a century have beat;
Here to the fields at sun-up went
The reapers. Here, on errands sent,
Small bare-feet loitered, loath to go.
Here apple-boughs dropped blooming snow,
Through garden borders gaily set
With touch-me-nots and bouncing Bet;
Here passed at dusk the harvester
With quickened step and pulse astir
At sight of some one's fluttering gown,
Who stood with sunbonnet pulled down
And called the cows. Ah, in a glance
One reads that simple, old romance
At early candle-lighting.

One picture more. A winter day
Just done, and supper cleared away.
The romping children quiet grow,
And in the reverent silence, slow
The old man turns the sacred page,
Guide of his life and staff of age.
And then, the while my eyes grow dim,
The mother's voice begins a hymn:
"Sweet hour of prayer, sweet hour of prayer
That calls me from a world of care!"