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A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)
·
Lucy Larcom
34
This
dim
half-memory,
which
perhaps
comes
to
all
children,
I
had
felt
when
younger
still,
almost
before
I
could
walk.
Sitting
on
the
floor
in
a
square
of
sunshine
made
by
an
open
window,
the
leaf-shadows
from
great
boughs
outside
dancing
and
wavering
around
me,
I
seemed
to
be
talking
to
them
and
they
to
me
in
unknown
tongues,
that
left
within
me
an
ecstasy
yet
unforgotten.
These
shadows
had
brought
a
message
to
me
from
an
unseen
Somewhere,
which
my
baby
heart
was
to
keep
forever.
The
wonder
of
that
moment
often
returns.
Shadow-traceries
of
bough
and
leaf
still
seem
to
me
like
the
hieroglyphics
of
a
lost
language.
The
stars
brought
me
the
same
feeling.
I
remember
the
surprise
they
were
to
me,
seen
for
the
first
time.
One
evening,
just
before
I
was
put
to
bed,
I
was
taken
in
somebody's
arms--my
sister's,
I
think--outside
the
door,
and
lifted
up
under
the
dark,
still,
clear
sky,
splendid
with
stars,
thicker
and
nearer
earth
than
they
have
ever
seemed
since.
All
my
little
being
shaped
itself
into
a
subdued
delighted
"Oh!"
And
then
the
exultant
thought
flitted
through
the
mind
of
the
reluctant
child,
as
she
was
carried
in,
"Why,
that
is
the
roof
of
the
house
I
live
in."
After
that
I
always
went
to
sleep
happier
for
the
feeling
that
the
stars
were
outside
there
in
the
dark,
though
I
could
not
see
them.
I
did
firmly
believe
that
I
came
from
some
other
country
to
this;
I
had
a
vague
notion
that
we
were
all
here
on
a
journey,--that
this
was
not
the
place
where
we
really
belonged.
Some
of
the
family
have
told
me
that
before
I
could
talk
plainly,
I
used
to
run
about
humming
the
sentence--
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