“You want to see my Pa, I s’pose?” 65
      “Wal ... no ...  I come designin’”
    “To see my Ma?  She’s sprinklin’ clo’es
      Agin to-morrer’s i’nin’.”

    To say why gals acts so or so,
      Or don’t, would be presumin’; 70
    Mebby to mean yes an’ say no
      Comes nateral to women.

    He stood a spell on one foot fust,
      Then stood a spell on t’other,
    An’ on which one he felt the wust 75
      He could n’t ha’ told ye nuther.

    Says he, “I’d better call agin;”
      Says she, “Think likely, Mister:” 
    That last word pricked him like a pin,
      An’ ...  Wal, he up an’ kist her. 80

    When Ma bimeby upon ’em slips,
      Huldy sot pale ez ashes,
    All kin’ o’ smily roun’ the lips
      An’ teary roun’ the lashes.

    For she was jist the quiet kind 85
      Whose naturs never vary,
    Like streams that keep a summer mind
      Snowhid in Jenooary.

    The blood clost roun’ her heart felt glued
      Too tight for all expressin’, 90
    Tell mother see how metters stood. 
      An’ gin ’em both her blessin’.

    Then her red come back like the tide
      Down to the Bay o’ Fundy,
    An’ all I know is they was cried 95
      In meetin’ come nex’ Sunday.

ODE RECITED AT THE HARVARD COMMEMORATION

JULY 21, 1865

I

        Weak-winged is song,
      Nor aims at that clear-ethered height
      Whither the brave deed climbs for light: 
        We seem to do them wrong,
    Bringing our robin’s-leaf to deck their hearse 5
    Who in warm life-blood wrote their nobler verse,
    Our trivial song to honor those who come
    With ears attuned to strenuous trump and drum,
    And shaped in squadron-strophes their desire,
    Live battle-odes whose lines were steel and fire:  10
      Yet sometimes feathered words are strong,
    A gracious memory to buoy up and save
    From Lethe’s dreamless ooze, the common grave
        Of the unventurous throng.

II

    To-day our Reverend Mother welcomes back 15
      Her wisest Scholars, those who understood
    The deeper teaching of her mystic tome,
      And offered their fresh lives to make it good: 
        No lore of Greece or Rome,
    No science peddling with the names of things, 20
    Or reading stars to find inglorious fates,
        Can lift our life with wings
    Far from Death’s idle gulf that for the many waits,