A Picture - A poem by Mrs. Nancy B. Jones

A Picture.

Among all of the beautiful pictures
   That hang on memory's wall,
Is one of a quiet home scene
   That seemeth the fairest of all.

An old farmhouse on a hillside,
   Its walls with ivy o'ergrown;
The broad sweep of meadows below it,
   Enclosed with a rude wall of stone.

The yard filled with old-fashioned flowers-
   The flowers that our grandmothers love;
Tall lilies swayed by the breezes,
   Sweet Williams, jonquils and fox-glove.

At the foot of the hill is the spring,
   Rock-bound, deep, sparkling and wide:
And musically murmurs the water,
   In the fall o'er its moss-grown side.

Rippling on with bubble and sparkle,
   And kissed by the gentle breeze,
Gliding softly o'er the dark mosses,
   'Round the roots of the gnarled old tree,

Until when it reaches the meadow.
   The tiny streamlet has grown
To a brook, and its clear sparkling waters
   Gurgle sweetly o'er pebble and stone.

There oft when a child I have wandered,
   In the springtime glad and sweet;
And bathed in the clear, limpid water,
   My tired and dimpled brown feet.

And oft as day was declining,
   I've watched the rose-tinted west;
While each feathered mother was hushing
   Her dear little brood to rest.

Alone I have sat in the gloaming,
   On the bank of the babbling rill;
While over the purpling hill-tops
   Came the cry of thc lone whip-poor-will.

There with Nature I've held communion,
   Afar from the busy strife
Of men in their ceaseless jostling,
   To win in the battle of life.

But time in its many changes,
   Has carried me far from that scene;
But it stands among memory's pictures,
   Unrivaled in its beauty serene.

^__Mrs. Nancy B. Jones.

Poets and Poetry of Kansas
Edited by Thomas W. Herringshaw
(Chicago: American Publishers' Association. 1894)
Page 251