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Rickety, shingleless, old and gray,
Scathed by the storms of many a day,
In a wayside spot where the wild weeds grow,
Stands the old log cabin of long ago.
Loftily, haughtily round it stand
Lordly mansions on every hand,
Deigning never a look to cast
On the ruined roof of the humble past.
Rarely a foot o'er its threshold falls,
Rarely a look at its old gray walls
By a friend or a stranger is cast, I trow –
Nobody cares for the old house now.
Rotting away is its rough, rude wall,
Tottering and tumbling and like to fall ;
And the rafters round, which its roof uprears,
Are bent by the burden of fourscore years.
The winter wind and the summer sun
On roof and gable their work have done ;
And crumbled down, since many a day,
The quaint old chimney of "clat and clay.''
On every side, within and without,
The chinking and plaster are falling out,
And the sagging sash with its broken pane
Is a fence no more 'gainst the wind and rain.
In and out through its drooping door
The feet of the fathers will fall no more,
As back and forth on their weary way
They went to their work with the waking day.
Through that mouldering doorway I entered in,
And I stood by the spot where the hearth had been;
Where the backlog fire with its ruddy light
Had burned and blazed through the livelong night.
But the fires were out and the lug-pole gone,
All cracked and crumbling the old hearthstone,
And fallen the jambs by the fireplace wall,
Where the weird night shadows had loved to fall.
Silent I stood on the rotting floor,
While I looked the old house o'er and o'er,
And my eyes with the burning tears filled fast
As my heart went back to the vanished past.
Oh ! many a year has the grass grown green,
And many a winter's snows have been,
Since, a barefoot boy, I used to roam,
And that old house was my childhood's home !
No sky so bright as its sky o'erhead,
No couch so soft as its humble bed,
No face so fair to my childish sight
As her's whose kiss we my last good-night.
Again 'mid the bygone years I seem,
And the past comes back like a waking dream,
Till the ruined walls no more I see,
But the old house stands as it used to be.
Once more by the hearth of my early days
All the home faces are met by the blaze,
And loving eyes bright as when
In my childhood's years I saw them then.
But the years roll by and the faces fade,
And one by one in the dust are laid,
Till the last from the empty hearth has gone,
And I stand 'neith its ruined roof - alone.
Alas for the wreck of the robber years !
Alas for our unavailing tears
O'er the withered leaves of the past, that lie
Strewn thick on the pathway of memory !
Like a dream we come, like a dream we go
'Mid the ceaseless years, in their ebb and flow :
And the crumbling things of the sad today
Were the idols we worshipped yesterday.
Yet, mouldering away though its walls, to me
Forever green will the memory be
Of the dear old house that I used to know
Where I lived and loved in the Long Ago.
THOMAS SPARKS
St. Marys, Ont.
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O auld hoose ! O auld hoose !
Deserted tho' ye be,
There ne'er wull be a new hoose
Ae half sae dear tae me.
- Scottish Song.
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