News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1894-08-16
STOWE CENTENNIAL POEM.
BY MRS. MARY A. JENxEY.

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BY MRS. MARY A. JENNEY.
Among the thoughts that cluster round
A century of time,
IT'S hard to choose aud clothe in words,
And weave the words in r5yms.
What are the beautiful lessons
That from the years we seek
Unto the hills whence cometh strength
Look up and let them speak.
Grand lessons from their heights been
drawn;
Still to our ewes they seem the same,
With nothing from their beauty gone.
They have yielded of their forests
To shelter and to warm,
And still enough remains to shield
From centuries of storm.
Then be steadfast as the mountains,
Pure as the mountain air,
And freely, as blessings are sent,
With Others freely share.
With the flower that only blossoms
Once in a hundred years,
We do not deck the fair young bride,
Or bend above with tears.
1t is the flower that daily yields
Its fragrance and its bloom.
That brightens all the way between
The cradle and the tomb.
And so tits not the days that lie
A hundred years apart,
That have the greatest power to warm
And touch and stir the heart
IT'S the oft recurring birthday,
Or time OF Christmas bells,
Or the day of hearts united,
The sweetest story tells.
But at the century's close tits well
That we assemble and recall
The days and times our fathers knew
A wholesome lesson for us all.
If for day some thing we miss,
We fret and make the whole house blue,
But what we cannot live without,
In those far days they never knew.
Then, necessary things must wait
Till the mild OK, with patient feet,
Could slowly come and go between
Us and the distant city street.
And messages to absent friends
The post-boy took on trusty steed;
This was the swiftest mail express,
To meet the sorest time of need.
No railway then in all the land
Untamed the lightninRs freely go,
And boiling kettles lift their lids,
Yet none the secret seem to know.
Now Daniel has arisen
And the electric button pressed
Still no returning current comes,
Revealing who will do the rest.
But possess your souls in patience;
A greater prophet shall declare
In days to come, some wOndrous way
In which to navigate the air.
Then swiftly through the air shall sail
The real, ideal machine,
Of poor Darius Green,
And once delightful trips by rail
Compared with those will seem as tame
As rides before the railroad came.
In olden times girls run wheel,
That they might have gown;
But now a gown they have that they
May run wheel through town.
And so, perhaps, me day they'll have
A wheel within a wheel,
Whereby their gowns will grow, and they
No growing pains will feel.
1t matters not, in a hundred years,
The thing we say or do to-day,
We often hear lips lightly say;
Yet some will reap with smiles or tears.
What have we reaped from seed once sown
BY hands that sgnalled the old bell,
Through all the land the news to tell,
That free, henceforth, it should be known?
A ship came sailing DER the sea,
Laden with human merchandise;
But who could tell of tear-dimmed eyes,
And the blOod-stained land of wears to he?
Or who could tell of that high day
When Lincoln's hand his name should
write,
Making the black free as the white,
When brothers fought in blue and grey?
Our State is small, but yet her sons,
With steady nerve and sturdy arm,
As soldier, and as statesman, too,
Have stood between our land and harm.
Our town is small,
Yet mountains call
Us daily some new height to gain,
And as the summit we attain,
And on the firm foundation stand,
Beyond behold lairer land
And if, responding to the voice
Calling ever to come higher,
We leave behind all low desire,
Make work for human need our choice,
Then in the lives that follow ours,
We need not fear the seed we SOW
Will into noxious fruitage grow,
Or only bear sins blghted flowers.
And in the hundred years to come,
Somewhere, our souls shall know
The earth is better that we lived
hundred years ago.