Meditações - Careless of summoning bell, or clocks that strike

How oft in schoolboy-days, from the school’s sway”

How oft in schoolboy-days, from the school’s sway

Have I run forth to Nature as to a friend,—

With some pretext of o’erwrought sight, to spend

My school-time in green meadows far away!

Careless of summoning bell, or clocks that strike,

I marked with flowers the minutes of my day:

For still the eye that shrank from hated hours,

Dazzled with decimal and dividend,

Knew each bleached alder-root that plashed across

The bubbling brook, and every mass of moss;

Could tell the month, too, by the vervain-spike,—

How far the ring of purple tiny flowers

Had climbed; just starting, may-be, with the May,

Half-light, or tapering off at Summer’s end.

Frederick Goddard Tuckerman