Читать книгу The Life, Travels, and Literary Career of Bayard Taylor онлайн

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At the time of Bayard’s birth, his parents had been married seven years. Their life had already been subject to many trials, and was fated to meet many more. Of a family of ten children, only one-half the number survived to see mature years. The losses by mercantile ventures, by failing crops, by sickness and accidents, often swept away the hard earnings of many a month. Yet they struggled on, industrious and cheerful, keeping themselves and their children ever busy.

When Bayard was two or three years old, his father purchased a farm about a mile from the village, and giving up his mercantile avocations, turned his whole attention to farming. On that farm Bayard spent the opening years of his life, and on one section of it did he build his beautiful home of “Cedarcroft.”

“The beginning and the end is here—

The days of youth; the silvered years.”

How deeply he loved his home, how sincere his affection for the rolling fields, the chestnut and the walnut woodland, the old stone farm-house, the clumsy barn, the old highway, the acres of corn and wheat, the distant village and its quaint old church, can be seen in a thousand expressions finding place in his published works. His poetical nature opened to his view beautiful landscapes and charming associations which others would not detect. The birds sang in an intelligible language; the leaves on the corn entered into conversation; the lowing of the cows could be interpreted; and the rocks were romantic story-tellers. He loved them all. That farm was his Mecca in all his travels. When he left, he says he promised bird, beast, trees, and knolls, that he would return to them. To the writer, who went to Cedarcroft after the poet’s death, and who has so long loved and admired his poetry, it seemed as if the trees patiently awaited his return. All things in nature must have loved and trusted him, or they would not have confided to him so many of their secrets.