MY PLAYMATE
by: John Greenleaf Whittier
(1807-1892)
- HE pines were dark on Ramoth hill,
- Their song was soft and low;
- The blossoms in the sweet May wind
- Were falling like the snow.
-
- The blossoms drifted at our feet,
- The orchard birds sang clear;
- The sweetest and the saddest day
- It seemed of all the year.
-
- For, more to me than birds or flowers,
- My playmate left her home,
- And took with her the laughing spring,
- The music and the bloom.
-
- She kissed the lips of kith and kin,
- She laid her hand in mine;
- What more could ask the bashful boy
- Who fed her father's kine?
-
- She left us in the bloom of May:
- The constant years told o'er
- Their seasons with as sweet May morns,
- But she came back no more.
-
- I walk, with noiseless feet, the round
- Of uneventful years;
- Still o'er and o'er I sow the spring
- And reap the autumn ears.
-
- She lives where all the golden year
- Her summer roses blow;
- The dusky children of the sun
- Before her come and go.
-
- There haply with her jewelled hands
- She smooths her silken gown,--
- No more the homespun lap wherein
- I shook the walnuts down.
-
- The wild grapes wait us by the brook,
- The brown nuts on the hill,
- And still the May-day flowers make sweet
- The woods of Follymill.
-
- The lilies blossom in the pond,
- The bird builds in the tree,
- The dark pines sing on Ramoth hill
- The slow song of the sea.
-
- I wonder if she thinks of them,
- And how the old time seems,
- If ever the pines of Ramoth wood
- Are sounding in her dreams.
-
- I see her face, I hear her voice,
- Does she remember mine?
- And what to her is now the boy
- Who fed her father's kine?
-
- What cares she that the orioles build
- For other eyes than ours,--
- That other hands with nuts are filled,
- And other laps with flowers?
-
- O playmate in the golden time!
- Our mossy seat is green,
- Its fringing violets blossom yet,
- The old trees o'er it lean.
-
- The winds so sweet with birch and fern
- A sweeter memory blow,
- And there in spring the veeries sing
- A song of long ago.
-
- And still the pines of Ramoth wood
- Are moaning like the sea,--
- The moaning of the sea of change
- Between myself and thee!
"My Playmate" is reprinted
from The Little Book of American Poets: 1787-1900. Ed.
Jessie B. Rittenhouse. Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1915. |
MORE POEMS BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER |
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