# Littell's Living Age/Volume 144/Issue 1856/Teaching Grandmother

Originally published in Cornhill Magazine.
Teaching Grandmother
Grandmother dear, you do not know; you have lived the old-world life, Under the twittering eaves of home, sheltered from storm and strife; Rocking cradles, and covering jams, knitting socks for baby feet, Or piecing together lavender bags for keeping the linen sweet: Daughter, wife, and mother in turn, and each with a blameless breast, Then saying your prayers when the nightfall came, and quietly dropping to rest.
You must not think, Granny, I speak in scorn, for yours have been well-spent days, And none ever paced with more faithful feet the dutiful ancient ways. Grandfather's gone, but while he lived you clung to him close and true, And mother's heart, like her eyes, I know, came to her straight from you. If the good old times, at the good old pace, in the good old grooves would run, One could not do better, I'm sure of that, than do as you all have done.
But the world has wondrously changed, Granny, since the days when you were young; It thinks quite different thoughts from then, and speaks with a different tongue. The fences are broken, the cords are snapped, that tethered man's heart to home; He ranges free as the wind or the wave, and changes his shore like the foam. He drives his furrows through fallow seas, he reaps what the breakers sow, And the flash of his iron flail is seen mid the barns of the barren snow.
He has lassoed the lightning and led it home, he has yoked it unto his need, And made it answer the rein and trudge as straight as the steer or steed. He has bridled the torrents and made them tame, he has bitted the champing tide, It toils as his drudge and turns the wheels that spin for his use and pride. He handles the planets and weighs their dust, he mounts on the comet's car, And he lifts the veil of the sun, and stares in the eyes of the uttermost star.
'Tis not the same world you knew, Granny; its fetters have fallen off; The lowliest now may rise and rule where the proud used to sit and scoff. No need to boast of a scutcheoned stock, claim rights for an ancient wrong; All are born with a silver spoon in their mouths whose gums are sound and strong. And I mean to be rich and great, Granny; I mean it with heart and soul: At my feet is the ball, I will roll it on, till it spins through the golden goal.
Out on the thought that my copious life should trickle in trivial days, Myself but a lonelier sort of beast, watching the cattle graze Scanning the year's monotonous change, or gaping at wind and rain, And hanging with meek, solicitous eyes on the whims of a creaking vane; Wretched if ewes drop single lambs, blest so is oilcake cheap, And growing old in a tedious round of worry, surfeit and sleep.
You dear old Granny, how sweet your smile, and how soft your silvery hair! But all has moved on while you sate still in your cap and easy-chair. The torch of knowledge is lit for all, it flashes from hand to hand; The alien tongues of the earth converse, and whisper from strand to strand. The very churches are changed and boast new hymns, new rites, new truth; Men worship a wiser and greater God than the half-known God of your youth.
What! marry Connie and set up house, and dwell where my fathers dwelt, Giving the homely feasts they gave, and kneeling where they knelt? She is pretty, and good, and void I am sure of vanity, greed, or guile; But she has not travelled nor seen the world, and is lacking in air and style. Women now are as wise and strong as men, and vie with men in renown; The wife that will help to build my fame was not bred near a country town.
What a notion! to figure at parish boards, and wrangle o'er cess and rate, I, who mean to sit for the county yet, and vote on an empire's fate; To take the chair at the farmers' feasts, and tickle their bumpkin ears, Who must shake a senate before I die, and waken a people's cheers! In the olden days was no choice, so sons to the roof of their fathers clave: But now! 'twere to perish before one's time, and to sleep in a living grave.
I see that you do not understand. How should you? Your memory clings To the simple music of silenced days and the skirts of vanishing things. Your fancy wanders round ruined haunts, and dwells upon oft-told tales; Your eyes discern not the widening dawn, nor your ears catch the rising gales. But live on, Granny, till I come back, and then perhaps you will own The dear old past is an empty nest, and the present the brood that is flown.