_Virgilium vidi tantum_,--I have seen[12] 225 But as a boy, who looks alike on all, That misty hair, that fine Undine-like mien,[13] Tremulous as down to feeling's faintest call;-- Ah, dear old homestead! count it to thy fame That thither many times the Painter came;-- 230 One elm yet bears his name, a feathery tree and tall. Swiftly the present fades in memory's glow,-- Our only sure possession is the past; The village blacksmith died a month ago,[14] And dim to me the forge's roaring blast; 235 Soon fire-new mediaevals we shall see Oust the black smithy from its chestnut-tree, And that hewn down, perhaps, the bee-hive green and vast. How many times, prouder than king on throne, Loosed from the village school-dame's A's and B's, 240 Panting have I the creaky bellows blown, And watched the pent volcano's red increase, Then paused to see the ponderous sledge, brought down By that hard arm voluminous and brown, 224 From the white iron swarm its golden vanishing bees. [Footnote 12: _Virgilium vidi tantum_, I barely saw Virgil, a Latin phrase applied to one who has merely had a glimpse of a great man.] [Footnote 13: Undine is the heroine of a romantic tale by Baron De la Motte Fouque. She is represented as a water-nymph who wins a human soul only by a union with mortality which brings pain and sorrow.] [Footnote 14: The village blacksmith of Longfellow's well-known poem. The prophecy came true as regards the hewing-down of the chestnut-tree which was cut down in 1876.] Dear native town! whose choking elms each year With eddying dust before their time turn gray, Pining for rain,--to me thy dust is dear; It glorifies the eve of summer day, And when the westering sun half sunken burns, 250 The mote-thick air to deepest orange turns, The westward horseman rides through clouds of gold away, So palpable, I've seen those unshorn few, The six old willows at the causey's end (Such trees Paul Potter never dreamed nor drew), 255 Through this dry mist their checkering shadows send, Striped, here and there, with many a long-drawn thread, Where streamed through leafy chinks the trembling red, Past which, in one bright trail, the hangbird's flashes blend. Yes, dearer for thy dust than all that e'er, 260 Beneath the awarded crown of victory, Gilded the blown Olympic charioteer; Though lightly prized the ribboned parchments three, Yet _collegisse juvat_, I am glad[15] That here what colleging was mine I had,-- 265 It linked another tie, dear native town, with thee!