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قراءة كتاب The Barefoot Time
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اللغة: English
الصفحة رقم: 3
anyhow!
They say there they don’t have sunset
Pictures painted on the sky,
There the birds don’t do their courtin’
In the meadows on the sly;
There’s no hide-and-seek, they tell me,
In the hay upon the mow,—
But the old folks in the country
Don’t know nothin’, anyhow!
There they say the folks are worried,
Till their minds they almost lose.
No one stops his horse to ask you,
All a-smilin’, “What’s the news?”
There they don’t have any neighbors,
When they’re sick, as we do now,—
But the old folks in the country
Don’t know nothin’, anyhow!
They say there is so much sorrow,
Crime and trouble, sin and shame;
But as far as I can reckon,
It’s not the city that’s to blame.
They say folks don’t mind the Bible,
That they’re always in a row,—
But the old folks in the country
Don’t know nothin’, anyhow!
Yes; I said I’d leave the country,
But I’m back again, you see;
Neighbors, birds, and flowers, and sunsets,
They are good enough for me.
Hear that whip-poor-will at vespers?
There, he’s almost over now.
Ah, the old folks in the country
Do know somethin’, anyhow!
WORK
QUEER LITTLE HISTORIANS
Just a raindrop loitering earthward,
All alone,
Leaves a tiny “telltale story”
In the stone.
Gravel tossed by teasing water,
Down the hill,
Shows where once in merry laughter
Flowed a rill.
In the coal bed dark and hidden,
Ferns (how queer!)
Left a message plainly saying,
“We’ve been here!”
You may see where tiny ripples,
On the sands,
Leave a history written by their
Unseen hands.
Why, the oak trees, by their bending,
Clearly show
The direction playful winds blew
Years ago!
THEN AND NOW
Said Aaron 1400, a mediæval boy,
“I’ll tell you what I’d like so well to know:
How far the moon is from us, the sun’s diameter,
And how one may predict the rain and snow!
I’d like to know the reason for the lightning in the sky,
What makes the ocean tides to rise and fall,
Why, when you let a body drop, it quickly falls to earth,
And if the world we live on can really be a ball!
Oh, I’d go to school and study every minute in the day;
For all such curious knowledge how I’d strive!
If I could only know these things”—he gave a troubled sigh,—
“I’d really be the happiest boy alive!”
But Willie 1900 said (a present-century lad),
“I wish I’d lived five hundred years ago;
This spending time in school-rooms—oh, I wouldn’t have to do,
For then these things they didn’t have to know!
It’s a nuisance reading history—they didn’t have much then,
And as for science—my! ’twas jolly fun,
For there wasn’t electricity or sound for boys to learn,—
The discoverers weren’t born—or hardly one!
I’d like to live as boys did ten hundred years ago,
’Cause they had nothing else to do but play!
If there wasn’t anything to learn, or more than they had then,
My! wouldn’t I be happy every day!”
BOB’S QUANDARY
FIVE SPINNERS
Seated on the village wharf,
Where the steamers come and go,
Skipper Bailey spins and spins,
Ending always, “Don’t you know?”
By the dear old kitchen hearth,
Briskly walking to and fro,
Grandma, singing, spins and spins,—
Years ago ’twas always so.
O’er a cave in time of Bruce,
Now in attic corners high;
What is it that spins and spins?
Ah, be wary, little fly!
Out along the country road,
Over hills and through the vale,
Brother Johnny spins and spins,