He goes on Sunday to the church,
And sits among his boys;

He hears the parson pray and preach,
He hears his daughter's voice
Singing in the village choir,

And it makes his heart rejoice.

It sounds to him like her mother's voice
Singing in Paradise!

He needs must think of her once more,
How in the grave she lies;

And with his hard, rough hand he wipes
A tear out of his eyes.

Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close;

Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night's repose.

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,

For the lesson thou hast taught!

Thus at the flaming forge of life

Our fortunes must be wrought;

Thus on its sounding anvil shaped

Each burning deed and thought.

The blacksmith shop, shaded by the chestnut-tree, stood in Brattle Street, Cambridge, near Longfellow's home. Longfellow often visited with the children in the shade of the tree. When the tree was cut down the children of Cambridge contributed their pennies and had the wood made into a beautiful armchair which they presented to Longfellow on his seventy-second birthday. The chair was placed in his study and all the children were invited to come to see it.

This incident might be dramatized by the pupils.

FROM MY ARM-CHAIR

TO THE CHILDREN OF CAMBRIDGE

Who presented to me, on my seventy-second birthday, February 27, 1879, this chair made from the wood of the village blacksmith's chestnut tree.

(Mr. Longfellow had this poem, which he wrote on the same day printed on a sheet, and was accustomed to give a copy to each child who visited him and sat in the chair.)

Am I a king, that I should call my own
This splendid ebon throne?

Or by what reason, or what right divine,
Can I proclaim it mine?

Only, perhaps, by right divine of song
It may to me belong;

Only because the spreading chestnut tree
Of old was sung by me.

Well I remember it in all its prime,

When in the summer-time

The affluent foliage of its branches made

A cavern of cool shade.

There, by the blacksmith's forge, beside the street, Its blossoms white and sweet

Enticed the bees, until it seemed alive,

And murmured like a hive.

And when the winds of autumn, with a shout,

Tossed its great arms about,

The shining chestnuts, bursting from the sheath,
Dropped to the ground beneath.

And now some fragments of its branches bare,
Shaped as a stately chair,

Have by my hearthstone found a home at last,
And whisper of the past.

The Danish king could not in all his pride
Repel the ocean tide,

But, seated in this chair, I can in rhyme
Roll back the tide of Time.

I see again, as one in vision sees,

The blossoms and the bees,

And hear the children's voices shout and call
And the brown chestnuts fall.

I see the smithy with its fires aglow,

I hear the bellows blow,

And the shrill hammers on the anvil beat

The iron white with heat!

And thus, dear children, have ye made for me
This day a jubilee,

And to my more than three score years and ten
Brought back my youth again.

The heart hath its own memory, like the mind,
And in it are enshrined

The precious keepsakes, into which is wrought
The giver's loving thought.

Only your love and your remembrance could
Give life to this dead wood,

And make these branches, leafless now so long,
Blossom again in song.

THE CHILDREN

Come to me, O ye children!
For I hear you at your play,

And the questions that perplexed me
Have vanished quite away.

Ye open the eastern windows,
That look toward the sun,

Where thoughts are singing swallows
And the brooks of morning run.

In your hearts are the birds and the sunshine,
In your thoughts the brooklet's flow,
But in mine is the wind of autumn

And the first fall of the snow.

Ah! what would the world be to us
If the children were no more?
We should dread the desert behind us
Worse than the dark before.

What the leaves are to the forest,
With light and air for food,
Ere their sweet and tender juices
Have been hardened into wood,-

That to the world are children;
Through them it feels the glow
Of a brighter and sunnier climate
Than reaches the trunks below.

Come to me, O ye children!
And whisper in my ear

What the birds and the winds are singing
In your sunny atmosphere.

For what are all our contrivings

And the wisdom of our books,

When compared with your caresses,
And the gladness of your looks?

Ye are better than all the ballads
Than ever were sung or said;
For ye are living poems,

And all the rest are dead.

FLOWERS

Spake full well, in language quaint and olden,
One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine,
When he called the flowers, so blue and golden,
Stars, that in earth's firmament do shine.

Wondrous truths, and manifold as wondrous,
God hath written in those stars above;
But not less in the bright flowerets under us
Stands the revelation of His love.

Bright and glorious is that revelation,

Written all over this great world of ours; Making evident our own creation,

In these stars of earth, these golden flowers.

Everywhere about us are they glowing,

Some like stars, to tell us Spring is born; Others, their blue eyes with tears o'erflowing, Stand like Ruth amid the golden corn;

Not alone in Spring's armorial bearing,
And in suminer's green-emblazoned field,
But in arms of brave old Autumn's wearing,
In the center of his blazon shield;

Not alone in meadows and green alleys,
On the mountain-top, and by the brink
Of sequestered pools in woodland valleys,
Where the slaves of nature stoop to drink;

Not alone in her vast dome of glory,

Not on graves of bird and beast alone, But in old cathedrals, high and hoary,

On the tombs of heroes, carved in stone;

In the cottage of the rudest peasant,

In ancestral homes, whose crumbling towers, Speaking of the Past unto the Present,

Tell us of the ancient Games of Flowers;

In all places, then, and in all seasons,

Flowers expend their light and soul-like wings, Teaching us, by most persuasive reasons, How akin they are to human things.

And with childlike, credulous affection,
We behold their tender buds expand;
Emblems of our own great resurrection,
Emblems of the bright and better land.