He sat by me in school. His face is now Vividly in my mind, as if he went From me but yesterday--its pleasant smile And the rich, joyous laughter of his eye, And the free play of his unhaughty lip, So redolent of his heart! He was not fair, Nor singular, nor over-fond of books, And never melancholy when alone. He was the heartiest in the ring, the last Home from the summer's wanderings, and the first Over the threshold when the school was done. All of us loved him. We shall speak his name In the far years to come, and think of him When we have lost life's simplest passages, And pray for him--forgetting he is dead-- Life was in him so passing beautiful! His childhood had been wasted in the close And airless city. He had never thought That the blue sky was ample, or the stars Many in heaven, or the chainless wind Of a medicinal freshness. He had learn'd Perilous tricks of manhood, and his hand Was ready, and his confidence in himself Bold as a quarreller's. Then he came away To the unshelter'd hills, and brought an eye New as a babe's to nature, and an ear As ignorant of its music. He was sad. The broad hill sides seem'd desolate, and the woods Gloomy and dim, and the perpetual sound Of wind and waters and unquiet leaves Like the monotony of a dirge. He pined For the familiar things until his heart Sicken'd for home!--and so he stole away To the most silent places, and lay down To weep upon the mosses of the slopes, And follow'd listlessly the silver streams, Till he found out the unsunn'd shadowings, And the green openings to the sky, and grew Fond of them all insensibly. He found Sweet company in the brooks, and loved to sit And bathe his fingers wantonly, and feel The wind upon his forehead; and the leaves Took a beguiling whisper to his ear, And the bird-voices music, and the blast Swept like an instrument the sounding trees. His heart went back to its simplicity As the stirr'd waters in the night grow pure-- Sadness and silence and the dim-lit woods Won on his love so well--and he forgot His pride and his assumingness, and lost The mimicry of the man, and so unlearn'd His very character till he became As diffident as a girl. 'Tis very strange How nature sometimes wins upon a child. Th' experience of the world is not on him, And poetry has not upon his brain Left a mock thirst for solitude, nor love Writ on his forehead the effeminate shame Which hideth from men's eyes. He has a full, Shadowless heart, and it is always toned More merrily than the chastened voice of winds And waters--yet he often, in his mirth, Stops by the running brooks, and suddenly Loiters, he knows not why, and at the sight Of the spread meadows and the lifted hills