Up in an attic high, so high,
Far above the city roar,
A poet sat when the day was done,
And
pondered a question o’er and o’er.
His hair was long and most unkept,
Bushy
and thick, was the poet’s hair,
His pen lay idle beside his pad,
His
clothes were old and worn threadbare.
“I have written,” said he, of love and
life,
I
have dwelt on nature for weary hours,
I have raved of bees and birds and
sky,
Of trees and woodland and
vine-covered bowers.
Up in an attic high, so high,
The
shadows lengthened at close of day,
But a lingering sunbeam strayed
within,
Right
on the poet’s pad it lay.
It danced about like a thing aflame,
It
sparkled and glittered as though to thrill,
Then softly as thistledown it rose,
And
softly slipped past the window-sill.
Up in an attic high, so high,
A
poet sat in fading light,
He reached for his idle pen nearby,
And
wrote on the pad, “tonight, tonight.”
Then straightway a vision came to him,
No
more he felt alone, forlorn,
As in a dream far, far away,
He
saw the home where he was born..
He wrote of the vine-clad cottage
there,
The
hollyhock beside the wall,
The mother-love, the babbling brook,
The
fern-decked rocks and waterfall.
The tiny window, where the sun,
Each
morn came peepin in,
The light was gone, the room was dark,
But
fame had come to him.
For a little sunbeam filled with joy,
Brought
memories of a sturdy bot,
Of mother-love and bygone friends,
Of
a vine-clad cottage and fern-decked glens.
And swiftly they came in a merry row,
The
joys of the days he used to know,
So he wrote of the flowers and
waterfall,
And
a tiny sunbeam on the wall.
Katherine Carey-Place 1878-1934
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