The winds so sweet with birch and fern
A sweeter memory blow;
And there in spring the veeries sing
The song of long ago.
And still the pines of Ramoth wood
Are moaning like the sea,--
The moaning of the sea of change
Between myself and thee!
1860.
COBBLER KEEZAR'S VISION.
This ballad was written on the occasion of a Horticultural Festival.
Cobbler Keezar was a noted character among the first settlers in the
valley of the Merrimac.
THE beaver cut his timber
With patient teeth that day,
The minks were fish-wards, and the crows
Surveyors of highway,--
When Keezar sat on the hillside
Upon his cobbler's form,
With a pan of coals on either hand
To keep his waxed-ends warm.
And there, in the golden weather,
He stitched and hammered and sung;
In the brook he moistened his leather,
In the pewter mug his tongue.
Well knew the tough old Teuton
Who brewed the stoutest ale,
And he paid the goodwife's reckoning
In the coin of song and tale.
The songs they still are singing
Who dress the hills of vine,
The tales that haunt the Brocken
And whisper down the Rhine.
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