POETRY.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1939, 12 May 1880, Page 3

POETRY.

THE OLD SCHOOLMASTER. He sat at his desk at the close of day ; For ho felt the weight of his many years; His form was bent and his hair was gray, And his eyes were dim with the falling tears. The school was out and his task was done, And the house seemed now so otrangely still. As the rod beam of the sotting sun Stole silently over the window-sill. Stole silently into the twilight gloom ; And the deepening shadows fell athwart The vacant seats and vacant room. And the vacant place in the old man’s heart ; For his school had been all in all to him, Who had no wife, no children, no land, no gold, But his frame was weak and his eyes were dim, And the fiat was issued at last —“ Too old. 1 '

He bowed his head on his trembling hands A moment, as one might bend to pray ; “Too old!” they say, and the school demands A wiser and younger head to-day. “Too old! too old !” these men forget lb was I who guided their tender years; Their hearts were hard and they pitied not My trembling lips and my falling tears.

“ Too old ! too old!” it was all they said, I looked in their faces one by one, But they turned away, and my heart was lead ; "Dear Lord, it is hard, but Thy will be done.” The night stole on, and a blacker gloom ft' Wo! over the vacant benches cast; The master sat in the silent room, But his mind was back in the days long past. And the shadows took, to his tear dimmed sight, Dear well-known forms ; his heart was thrilled With the blessed sense ot its own delight. For the benches all were filled ; And he slowly rose at his desk and took His well-worn Bible that lay within, And he said as he lightly tapped the book : “ It is the hour—let school begin.” And ho smiled as kindly glances fell On the well-beloved faces there— John, Rob, and Will, and laughing Nell, And blue-eyed Bess, with the golden hair, And Tom, and Charley, and Ben, and Paul Who stood at the head of the spelling class— All in their places—and yet they all Were lying under the graveyard grass. Ho read the book and he knelt to pray, And he called the classes to recite, For the darkness all hjid rolled away From a soul that saw by an inward light. With words of" praise for a word of care, With a kind reproof for a broken rule, The old man tottered, now here, now there, Through the spectral ranks of his shadow school. r Thus all night long, till the morning came, And darkness ioldod her robe of gloom, " And the sun looked in, with his eye of flame, On the vacant seats of the silent room. The wind stole over the window-sill, And swept through the aisles in a merry rout, t But the face of the master was white and still ; His work was finished, and his school was out.