Ere we reached our home, The plans for study were matured, and I, Who, with an aptitude beyond my years, Had gathered learning's humbler rudiments From her to whom I owed my earliest words, Was, when another day should rise, to pass To rougher teaching, and society Of the rude youth whose wild and boisterous ways Had scared my childish life. I nerved my heart To meet the change; and all the troubled night I tossed upon my pillow, filled with fears, Or fired with hot ambitions; shrinking oft With girlish sensitiveness from the lot My manly heart had chosen; rising oft Above my cowardice, well panoplied By fancy to achieve great victories O'er those whose fellows I should be. At last, The dawn looked in upon me, and I rose To meet its golden coming, and the life Of golden promise whose wide-open doors Waited my feet. The lingering morning hours Seemed days of painful waiting, as they fell In slowly filling numbers from the tower Of the old village church; but when, at length, My eager feet had touched the street, and turned To climb the goodly eminence where he In whose profound and stately pages live His country's annals, ruled his youthful realm, My heart grew stern and strong; and nevermore Did doubt of excellence and mastery Drag down my soaring courage, or disturb My purposes and plans. What boots it here To tell with careful chronicle the life Of my novitiate? Up the graded months My feet rose slowly, but with steady step, To tall and stalwart manliness of frame, And ever rising and expanding reach Of intellection and the power to call Forth from the pregnant nothingness of words The sphered creations of my chosen art. What boots it to recount my victories Over my fellows, or to tell how all, Contemptuous at first, became at length Confessed inferiors in every strife When brain or brawn contended? Victories Were won too easily to bring me pride, And only bred contempt of the low pitch And lower purpose of the power which strove So feebly and so clumsily. When won, They fed my mother's passion, and she praised; And her delight was all the boon they brought. My fierce ambition, ever reaching up To higher fields and nobler combatants, Trampled its triumphs underneath its feet; And in my heart of hearts I pitied her To whose deep hunger of maternal pride They bore ambrosial ministry.