First meridian of the school-
Which all the scholars toe by rule.
Ranged along in rigid row,
Inky, golden, brown and tow,
Are heads of spellers high and low,
Like notes in music sweet as June,
Dotting off a dancing tune..

Boy of Bashan takes the lead,-
Roughly thatched his bullet head;-
At the foot an eight-year-old,
Stands with head of trembling gold;
Watch her when the word is missed!
Her eyes are like an amethyst,
Her fingers dove-tailed, lips apart;
She knows that very word by heart!
And swings like any pendulum,
Trembling lest it fail to come.
Runs the word along the line,
Like the running of a vine,
Blossoms out from lip to lip-

Aproned urchin, aged five,
Youngest in the humming hive,
Standing by the Master's knee,
Calls the roll of A, B, C.
Frightened hair all blown about,
Buttered lips in half a pout,
Knuckle boring out an eye,
Saying "P" and thinking "pie,"
Feeling for a speckled bean,
'Twixt each breath a dumb ravine,
Like clock unwound, but going yet,
He slowly ticks the alphabet :
"A-ah-B-ah-C-ah-D,"
Finds the bean and calls for "G."

See that crevice in the floorSlender line from desk to door,

Till the girl in azure slip,
Catches breath and spells the word,
Flits up the class like any bird,
Cheeks in bloom with honest blood,
And proudly stands where Bashan stood !

Evening reddens on the wall-
"Attention!" Now-"Obeisance all !"
The girls' short dresses touch the floor,
They drop their courtesies at the door;
The boys jerk bows with jack-knife springs,
And out of doors they all take wings!

Vanished all-all change is death;
Life is not the counted breath.
The slanting sun low in the West,
Brings to the Master blessed rest.
See where it bridges afternoon,
And slopes the golden day-time down,
As if to him at last was given,
An easy grade to restful Heaven!
His hair is silver-not with light,
His heart is heavy-not with night.

It is ring, ring, ring, to the swinging gait,
Then the teams break trot, for the hour is late,
At a ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling, galloping rate!

Now over the ridges they ride,
And down through the valley they glide,
And bring up at the school-house door,
With bundled girls in the quilted hood,
And its edging of down, as of yore.
Their hearts are as sweet as the cedar wood,
Their gowns without gusset or gore,
And Vandykes with a peak before,

And their hair is glossed down like a blackbird's wings,

And their shoes are laced up, and with leather strings!

They laugh and they leap to the ground,
In woolen, all mittened and gowned,

Lit up with a ribbon blue,

With a breath of cloves or of sassafras,
Faces like Ruth's and as true

As ever smiled in a looking-glass,

And cheeks with the roses through!
All look like flowers that are newly blown,

In the zoneless grace of their " London brown,"
Not a charm in bonds, nor a beauty laced,
Cestus of Venus would girdle the waist.

A chorusing crew comes last
In the Family Ark of the past,
Packing it full, and in pairs-

The rude old sleigh, so roomy and red,
All strewn with straw, like Poverty's bed,
Millenial lambs in their lairs!

Like an emigrant ship is the lumbering craft,
Crowded and laden both forward and aft,
With a wooden heart surmounting the stern,
Where the teamsters of old gave the reins a turn.

Ah, the hearts that throbbed with their youthful blood

Were as free from care as the sculptured wood!

Oh, Covenant Ark of the snow,

Freighted for church at the door!
Two, side by side, on the sheep-skin seat,
Are bound for Canaan's shore;

The square foot-stove is under their feet,
A buffalo robe before.

In the two flag chairs that are side by side,
Are the the gray old man and his silver bride.
Still she carries one for the added ten,
May follow the rule and carry again!
Then the boys and girls in their Sunday clothes,
And the rank slopes down as it farther goes,
To three in a row, for the last are least,
Like the sparks of stars in the early East!
Ah, the old red sleigh, be it ever bĺest!

It has borne the dead to their silent rest,-
The bearers, by twos, as they rode abreast,-

Has carried the brides, their bedding and "things,"
When the girls were queens and the bridegrooms

kings,

To the splay-foot jog of the olden time,

And the clang, clang, clang, of the sleigh-bells' chime.

Ah, necklace of melody old,

With apples and walnuts of gold

That danced to the horses' feet!

The mother bell in the middle hung,

As big as a "Golden Sweet,"

Then small each way till the string was strung, And two filbert bells did meet,

And two rhyming hearts did beat.

Ah, the string is dumb, and as green with rust, As the dimpled graves of the maidens' dust!