For my taste the blackberry cone Purpled over hedge and stone; Laughed the brook for my delight, Through the day, and through the night: Whispering at the garden wall, Talked with me from fall to fall; Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond, Mine the walnut slopes beyond, Mine, on bending orchard trees, Apples of Hesperides!
Still, as my horizon grew, Larger grew my riches too, All the world I saw or knew Seemed a complex Chinese toy, Fashioned for a barefoot boy! O, for festal dainties spread, Like my bowl of milk and bread, Pewter spoon and bowl of wood, On the door-stone, gray and rude! O'er me like a regal tent, Cloudy ribbed, the sunset bent, Purple-curtained, fringed with gold, Looped in many a wind-swung fold While for music came the play
Of the pied frogs' orchestra;
And, to light the noisy choir, Lit the fly his lamp of fire. I was monarch; pomp and joy Waited on the barefoot boy!
Cheerily, then, my little man! Live and laugh as boyhood can; Though the flinty slopes be hard, Stubble-speared the new-mown sward, Every morn shall lead thee through Fresh baptisms of the dew; Every evening from thy feet
Shall the cool wind kiss the heat;
All too soon these feet must hide In the prison cells of pride, Lose the freedom of the sod, Like a colt's for work be shod, Made to tread the mills of toil, Up and down in ceaseless moil, Happy if their track be found Never on forbidden ground; Happy if they sink not in
Quick and treacherous sands of sin. Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy, Ere it passes, barefoot boy!
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