Of dull school-moorings listlessly;
Drifted off on the talking breeze,
All alone with his reveries;
Drifted on, as his fancies wrought--
Out on the mighty gulfs of thought.


II

The farmer came in the evening gray
And took the bars of the pasture down;
Called to the cows in a coaxing way,
"Bess" and "Lady" and "Spot" and "Brown,"
While each gazed with a wide-eyed stare,
As though surprised at his coming there--
Till another tone, in a higher key,
Brought their obeyance lothfully.

Then, as he slowly turned and swung
The topmost bar to its proper rest,
Something fluttered along and clung
An instant, shivering at his breast--
A wind-scared fragment of legal cap,
Which darted again, as he struck his hand
On his sounding chest with a sudden slap,
And hurried sailing across the land.
But as it clung he had caught the glance
Of a little penciled countenance,
And a glamour of written words; and hence,
A minute later, over the fence,