The Old Schoolhouse

By Minnie Reid French

To-day I found a road that led 

To scenes of long ago.

A road down which I often sped

Ere heart and step were slow.

It led me to the schoolhouse door

Unhinged by storm and rain;

And on its threshold worn I stood,

And truant lad, again.

The wind its boist’rous mood had flung

The creaking shutters wide;

The sunbeams with the shadows gray

Played hide-and-seek inside.

The weeds and flowers about the door,

In summer-time array,

Peeped in to see why no one called

The children back from play.

No hum of voices now was heard,

No sound of stern reproof;

The birds were flitting in and out

Beneath the falling roof.

They seemed to know that school was out

And never more would “keep;”

That boys and girls had wandered far—

The master was asleep.

I wondered, as I stood within

The silence and the gloom,

Where they had gone, the merry throng

That once had filled the room.

Where were the gifted and the good,

The dunce, the ne’er-do-well?

What fortune had the long years brought

What changes, who could tell?

And she with whom I first began

That story, all too brief,

Which ended, ere we were aware,

When we had turned the leaf;

I wondered if within her grave,

Were youth and love forgot;

Of all that we had hoped and dreamed,

Was there no fleeting thought?

I turned away, and left the place,

Softly, lest I should break

The slumbers of those early years,

Their saddest echoes wake.

I left it to the birds and flowers,

The shadows and the sun;

And to its memories of these

Whose lessons here are done.