Mind Wanders Back
Mind Wanders Back ...
New doors for the Bill Lloyd Building of Holy Nativity Episcopal School. Beautiful. Very great thanks to the Lloyd family and San Juan family. Beloved Cove School.
1941-1949. Teachers, classrooms, playground, friends and fellow students, school building, hall, classrooms. Math, history, geography, language, penmanship. Bible verses. Schwinn bicycle, bicycle rack. Morning devotional, Bible verse, prayer, pledge of allegiance, song “Let’s Remember Pearl Harbor.” Air raid drills. Story time after lunch. Warren reciting “If...” Rudyard Kipling’s poem that characterized Warren’s life. Principals. Drawing cars during math lesson. Gail singing “My Sweet Little Alice Blue Gown.” Slow to school faster home on dirt roads, now Hamilton Avenue, then Linda Avenue. Someone annually reciting “The Highwayman” by Alfred Noyes, Bess, the landlord’s daughter, plaiting a dark red love knot into her long black hair. Gazing out the open window. Lunchroom, recess, classrooms. Poems memorized.
In School-Days
Still sits the school-house by the road,
A ragged beggar sleeping;
Around it still the sumachs grow,
And blackberry-vines are creeping.
Within, the master's desk is seen,
Deep-scarred by raps official;
The warping floor, the battered seats,
The jack-knife's carved initial;
The charcoal frescoes on its wall;
Its door's worn sill, betraying
The feet that, creeping slow to school,
Went storming out to playing!
Long years ago a winter sun
Shone over it at setting;
Lit up its western window-panes,
And low eaves' icy fretting.
It touched the tangled golden curls,
And brown eyes full of grieving,
Of one who still her steps delayed
When all the school were leaving.
For near it stood the little boy
Her childish favor singled;
His cap pulled low upon a face
Where pride and shame were mingled.
Pushing with restless feet the snow
To right and left, he lingered;---
As restlessly her tiny hands
The blue-checked apron fingered.
He saw her lift her eyes; he felt
The soft hand's light caressing,
And heard the tremble of her voice,
As if a fault confessing.
"I'm sorry that I spelt the word:
I hate to go above you,
Because,"---the brown eyes lower fell,---
"Because, you see, I love you!"
Still memory to a gray-haired man
That sweet child-face is showing.
Dear girl! the grasses on her grave
Have forty years been growing!
He lives to learn, in life's hard school,
How few who pass above him
Lament their triumph and his loss,
Like her, because they love him.
John Greenleaf Whittier 1807-1892
Bit sentimental for modern tastes, Whittier is out of fashion.
“Dear Lord and Father of mankind, Forgive our foolish ways; Reclothe us in our rightful mind, In purer lives Thy service find, In deeper reverence, praise." John Greenleaf Whittier 1872
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