The Cripple-Boy

Upon an Indian rush-mat, spread
Where burr-oak boughs a coolness shed,
Alone he sat, a cripple-child,
With eyes so large, so dark and wild,
And fingers, thin and pale to see,
Locked upon his trembling knee.
A-gathering nuts so blithe and gay,
The children early tripp'd away;
And he his mother had besought
Under the oak to have him brought; —
It was ever his seat when blackbirds sung
The wavy, rustling tops among; —
They calm'd his pain,— they cheer'd his loneliness —
The gales, — the music of the wilderness.
Upon a prairie wide and wild
Look'd off that suffering cripple-child:
The hour was breezy, the hour was bright ;-
O, 'twas a lively, a lovely sight!
An eagle sailing to and fro
Around a flitting cloud so white —
Across the billowy grass below
Darting swift their shadows' light: —
And mingled noises sweet and clear,
Noises out of the ringing wood,
Were pleasing trouble in his ear,
A shock how pleasant to his blood:
O, happy world! — Beauty and Blessing slept
On everything but him — he felt, and wept.
Humming a lightsome tune of yore,
Beside the open log-house door,
Tears upon his sickly cheek
Saw his mother, and so did speak; —
"What makes his mother's Henri weep?
You and I the cottage keep;
They hunt the nuts and clusters blue,
Weary lads for me and you;
And yonder see the quiet sheep; —
Why, now — I wonder why you weep!" —
"Mother, I wish that I could be
A sailor on the breezy sea!"
"A sailor on the stormy sea, my son! —
What ails the boy! — what have the breezes done!"
IT.
"I do! — I wish that I could be
A sailor on the rolling sea:
In the shadow of the sails
I would ride and rock all day,
Going whither blow the gales,
As I have heard a seaman say:
I would, I guess, come back again
For my mother now and then;
And the curling fire so bright,
When the prairie burns at night;
And tell the wonders I had seen
Away upon the ocean green;" —
"Hush! hush! talk not about the ocean so;
Better at home a hunter hale to go."
Between a tear and sigh he smiled;
And thus spake on the cripple-child: —
"I would I were a hunter hale,
Nimbler than the nimble doe,
Bounding lightly down the dale,
But that will never be, I know!
Behind the house the woodlands lie;
A prairie wide and green before;
And I have seen them with my eye
A thousand times or more;
Yet in the woods I never stray'd,
Or on the prairie-border play'd; —
O, mother dear, that I could only be
A sailor-boy upon the rocking sea!"
TI.
You would have turned with a tear,
A tear upon your cheek;
She wept aloud, the woman dear,
And further could not speak:
The boy's it was a bitter lot
She always felt, I trow;
Yet never till then its bitterness
At heart had grieved her so.
Nature had waked the eternal wish;
— Liberty, far and wide! —
And now, to win him health, with joy,
She would that morn have died.
Till noon, she kept the shady door-way chair,
But never a measure of that ancient air.
Piped the March-wind; pinch'd and slow
The deer were trooping in the snow;
He saw them out of the cottage-door,
The lame boy sitting upon the floor:
"Mother, mother, how long will it be
Till the prairie go like a waving sea?
Will the baTe woods ever be green, and when?
O, will it ever be summer again?" —
She look'd in silence on her child:
That large eye, ever so dark and wild,
O me, how bright! — it may have been
That he was grown so pale and thin.
It came, the emerald month, and sweetly shed
Beauty for grief, and garlands for the dead.