The Uptown School Girls

  

                                                         

                                                               (Moodus is the northern, ‘uptown’, section of East Haddam, CT)

                                              Dear maidens of the uptown school,

     A verse to you is due;

Don’t think, I pray, at this far day,

     That I’ve forgotten you.

Ah, no, not one of all that throng

     I knew in boyhood’s day

Has faded from my memory,

     And never will, I pray.

I’ve read your verses o’er and o’er,

     And dreamed again the dreams

That took me back to flowered fields

     And merry, murm’ring streams.

That placed me on the old school green

     To play the old games o’er;

Of “Barbaree”, “I spy” and “tag”,

     And full a dozen more.

A warm spot in my heart still burns

     For that old “uptown” school;

Its teachers, scholars, yard and all,

     Which time can never cool.

It was a school, I love to think,

     Of youthful hearts and true;

And now I’ve grown to think it was

     A school of poets, too!

O, “Shaylor”, I remember where the flag grew tall and green,

Where adown your father’s meadow ran the little brook between;

Where the mighty droves of cattle filled our eyes with wonderment,

Where the woods stretched to the eastward, growing denser as they went.

You did me write of teachers next, ah, that were hard to do,

They all were patient, willing souls, and better than we knew.

I fear we tried them sorely, with our willful tricks each day,

Tho’ of course we all were sorry ere the day had passed away.

Ah, “Sid”, you speak of Allie Cone, you “loved her best of all,”

“Who knew her but to love her?” old or young, or large or small?

Too good for earth, she taught us love, and goodness for a while,

Then joined the purer throng above, beneath the master’s smile.

Rare Lena Brooks, she writes of tricks she played from day to day,

And slyly mentions one of mine, tho’ what she doesn’t say;

I’ve quite forgotten what it was – and just as well; I ween,

For I was none too good, at best, as all of you have seen.

And “Lois” brings some added joy to heap the pile of lore

And send us back in happy dreams to those good days of yore.

I well remember Brainerd’s that boiled so cool and clear

And quenched our thirst from out its depths full many times a year.

O those were careless, happy days! Altho’ we knew it not,

And as the years grind slowly on I long for each old spot

Where you and I, and you and I, and all the other mates

Romped merrily day after day o’er Nature’s fair estates.

Dear maidens of the uptown school

     These lines are writ to you;

Tho’ crude and weak

      They aim to speak

Of feelings staunch and true.

I truly hope, with all of you

     Will come that happy scene

O joy complete,

     When all may meet

Upon the old school green.

May 20, 1903