Scattered Blossoms 

I've been sitting recollecting spring-born blossoms, on a slope

Where life's morning sun was shining and I climbed the hills

of hope;

And my eyes looked out before me, and my soul went out along

To be in the teeming city where the forges sang their song;

Where were deeds for strong men's doing, and the furnaces

were white,

And the smokestacks held up blossoms of red flames against

the night.

And she used to stand there with me, in dawn's sloping

meadowlands,

With the blossoms of life's morning falling loosely from her

hands;

With her eyes as blue as heaven, and her soul as white as love--

But her glad heart sort of troubled with the things I whis-

pered of;

For my eyes had seen the glory of the wonder-years to be;

But her soul had looked no further down the life-ways than

to me.

I was barefoot; and two garments were the sum of all I wore;

But my soul wore shining armor; and dream-pages marched

before;

1 would leave the purple clover on the southward looking hill,

I would cross between the alders in the swamp, and cross the

rill,

I would meet the world in battle where life's battle-banners

stir,

I would build a splendid palace full of windows, just for her.

But I never told her of it-of the dream which coursed like

wine

Through my veins; her eyes were looking at a morning-glory

vine,

And red roses by a cottage in the shelter of the trees,

And at purple clover uplands and at hives of honeybees,

And at herself in a doorway, sending far the dinner-call

To the man that I should look like when we both of us were

tall.

So, one morning when the east was putting on a veil of gray,

I dropped from an upstairs window to the ground and went

away;

Left behind the purple clover; left behind the grapevine swing ;

Left behind the hills of morning where the glad birds used to

sing;

Left behind the burbling shallows of the crystal, spring-fed

stream;

Went to where the world was calling-sought, the substance

of a dream.

I had builded me a palace on a purple clover slope;

Such a tall and stately place; and my soul was winged with

hope;

And I went to seek my palace, leaving boyhood's meadowlands,

Leaving eyes as blue as heaven, leaving tender, clasping hands;

Leaving her alone with thoughts of cottage walls and honeybees,

And of morning-glories blooming in the shelter of the trees.

And she waited. And I battled for success with other men ;

But I never built my palace; and I went not home again.

But  I know, away back yonder where I climbed the hills of

hope

They built her a narrow dwelling on a purple clover slope ;

And she waits and always will wait on the hills of used-to-be,

Where I dreamed my dreams of conquest, and she dreamed her

dreams of me.

Were I young, in life's glad morning, standing in dawn's

meadowlands,

And a maiden stood beside me, and I held her clasping hands,

I would look into her blue eyes till I caught their deeper gleam,

And we two should build together, working out her tender

dream

Of a homey little cottage; and I'd have no vision of

Anything in all the wide world but a garden, walled with love.

Poems for Declamation Table of Conten