Barefoot Time
ADELBERT FARRINGTON CALDWELL
The Barefoot Time
Adelbert Farrington Caldwell
Boston: Richard G. Badger
The Gorham Press
1903
Copyright 1903 by Adelbert F. Caldwell
All Rights Reserved
Printed at
The Gorham Press
Boston
To My Mother
Whose sharing my pleasures then, makes cherished
the memories of childhood now.
[PREFACE]
Many of the selections of this little volume of child’s verse have appeared from time to time in “The Youth’s Companion”, “Ladies’ World”, “Farm and Home”, “Outlook”, “Sunday School Times”, “Forward”, and “The Independent”; and if, in bringing them together, occasionally here and there verses a trifle beyond “the barefoot time” have crept in, perhaps they were not unintentionally admitted for “children of a larger growth”.
A. F. C.
CONTENTS
[THE BAREFOOT TIME]
Oh, the golden age of the barefoot time,
While life was a fairy tale sung in rhyme,
When phantoms grim of a future day
Were hid in the mists of the far away;
When we carved for ourselves from our June daydreams
(Only yesterday now it seems),
Statues of greatness, Jim and I,
In the mystical realm of the By-and-By!
Off for a swim on an afternoon,—
The moments—why would they fly so soon!
At the gate stood mother, who never was strong:
“I shall worry, boys, if you stay too long.”
Gone are the days of the long ago,—
O lagging Time, now you move so slow!
The rosy skies of our barefoot days
Lie hidden from view by a misty haze.
Jim he got tired and slipped away,—
Left me alone to swim and play;
The statues of greatness—in vain we planned,—
Never appeared from the sculptor’s hand!
And there came a day, I its reckoning keep,
When mother, worn out, just dropped asleep,—
Her voice melting into an angel’s song:
“I shall wait at the Gate, so don’t stay too long.”
[THE OLD FOLKS IN THE COUNTRY]
I’m a-goin’ to leave the country,—
Old folks say ’tis nice and clean,
Nothin’ like its air and sunshine
In the city’s ever seen.
Only filth and smoke and odors,
In the city, they allow,—
But the old folks in the country
Don’t know nothin’, 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]
Work, like a giant, blocked the path,—
I trembled in dismay,
Till Method urged, “Attack in parts!”
Work’s but a dwarf to-day.
[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!
So our habits tell us, little
Maids and men,
What the history of our whole past
Life has been!
[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]
I s’pose my head is like a chest,
With drawers and things inside;
Some small for dates and words to spell,—
The rest just deep and wide,
For states ’bout which I’ll have to learn,
And products, grain and wool!
But what I’ll do I’d like to know,—
When every drawer is full!
[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,
In the early morning pale.
’Mid balls and blocks and Noah’s Ark,
Playing on the parlor floor,
Willie, laughing, spins and spins,—
Round it turns, then tumbles o’er.
Think now of these outs and ins,
Then tell what each spins and spins.
[THE TENEMENT BABIES]
Shut off from the world with its light and love,
A joyless prison-house save in name,
With waves of sweltering heat from above,—
From around each corner one meets the same!
Only ill-smelling and fetid air
Is breathed by the babies God leases there!
Not a butterfly blown from the hills of green,
Gives a hint of the wonderful life without;
Not a rainbow of promise is ever seen,—
Nothing but crime and disease about!
No vesper bell calls to praise and prayer,—
Poor little dwarf souls starving there!
Never a carol or note of bird,
As he melts away in the azure blue,
From the tenement house is ever heard;
Nor is felt the wealth of diamond dew,—
Only curses and oaths fill the smoky air,
To poison the babies God leases there!
Poor little tenement souls that grow
Away from the flowers—by bricks shut in;
Never the sweetness of life to know,
Only surrounded by crime and sin!
The pleasures of living you sure should share,—
Dear little babies God leases there!
[A FISHING SEER]
He sat for hours on the bank that day,
With a serious look—most fishermen’s way,—
Just a waif of a lad with a brimless hat,
And pantaloons even much worse than that.
Dangling legs, without stockings on,
Showed many a mark of brier and thorn,
But indifferent he to trifles like these,
As he sat and fished in the teasing breeze.
I paused as I passed on my way to town,
And set for a moment my burden down:
“Aren’t you discouraged,” I said with zest,
“Fishing so long here without success?”
“Oh, no! such fishing just pleases me,”
The lad said slowly, “for don’t you see,
We can’t all catch—and I for one,
In just a-trying get lots of fun!”
I picked up my burden and walked away,
Wise with the lesson I’d learned that day,
And silently blessed my new-found seer,—
This ragged, fishing philosopher!
[JUST A-WISHING]
The boy who’s always wishing,—
Why, we pass him on the street,
We see him in the office,
On the gridiron we meet;
It may be in the morning,
It’s just the same at night,
He’s wishing things would change a bit;
They’re not exactly right.
He wishes he were smart like Tom,
But then, Tom has a “snap”,—
To him things are so easy;
He doesn’t care a “rap”
How long and hard the lesson.
But isn’t this the way:
While Tom is hard a-grinding,
He is wasting time in play?
He wishes he had money,
Just enough to treat a friend;
He cannot see how Henry
Has all he wants to spend.
But while he’s idly wishing
He were rich like Carl or Bob,
Henry has his coat off working,—
He has found an honest job.
He wishes he could bat the ball,
Or kick a goal like Dick,
But when it’s time for practice,
He feels a trifle sick.
And thus he keeps a-wishing,
Never thinks “I can”, and “will”;
So where’er you chance to meet him,
You will find him wishing still.
[A PRISON HOUSE]
High are its walls so you can’t see o’er,
And so narrow are they that one can’t get in;
Nor outward swings its close-barred door
Of Love, to welcome one’s kith and kin.
The shutter of Sympathy’s never drawn
To send forth a message of hope and cheer;
The flag on the tower, from eve till dawn,
Reads, “I live alone; please don’t come near.”
“And who is the inmate,—some witch or elf?
And the name of the house? I cannot guess!”
The inmate’s a shriveled-up dwarf called Self,
And the narrow house is Selfishness!
[THE LITTLE HAIR TRUNK]
There’s a little hair trunk in the attic stored,
Under the rafters packed away;
With a heart nigh broken, a mother’s hands
Tenderly carried it there one day.
The tears fell fast as she closed the lid
On the homely trinkets—you’ll call them so,—
That her baby loved, then with one more kiss
On the little hair trunk, she turned to go.
Now on the lid is the dust of years,—
I wonder what think all the toys within!
Do they wish for the baby voice, still so long,
To arouse them once more with its boyish din?
In the attic I happened to be one day,
I couldn’t help taking a tiny peep,—
They were just as he left them, every one,—
Oh, well, perhaps it was foolish to weep!
A bottle of beans (they were yellow and black);
He called them his “stock,” which he bought and sold;
A “Mother Goose Rhymes”—and his finger prints
Were still on its covers, now ragged and old!
A “Dinah” doll, without any hair,—
All these I found—the others you know,
For perhaps a like little trunk you placed
Under the rafters, too, long ago!