A little farm his generous master tilled,
Who with peculiar grace his station filled;
By deeds of hospitality endeared,
Served from affection, for his worth revered,
A happy offspring blest his plenteous board,
His fields were fruitful, and his barns well stored,
And fourscore ewes he fed, a sturdy team,
And lowing kine that grazed beside the stream;
Unceasing industry he kept in view,
And never lacked a job for Giles to do.
Fled now the sullen murmurs of the north,
The splendid raiment of the Spring peeps forth;
Her universal green and the clear sky
Delight still more and more the gazing eye.
Wide o'er the fields, in rising moisture strong,
Shoots up the simple flower, or creeps along
The mellowed soil, imbibing fairer hues
Or sweets from frequent showers and evening dews
That summon from their sheds the slumbering
plows,
While health impregnates every breeze that blows.
No wheels support the diving, pointed share;
No groaning ox is doomed to labor there;
No helpmates teach the docile steed his road
(Alike unknown the plowboy and the goad):
But unassisted, through each toilsome day,
With smiling brow the plowman cleaves his way,
Draws his fresh parallels, and, widening still,
Treads slow the heavy dale, or climbs the hill.
Strong on the wing his busy followers play,
Where writhing earth-worms meet the unwelcome
day,
Till all is changed, and hill and level down
Assume a livery of sober brown;
Again disturbed, when Giles with wearying strides
From ridge to ridge the ponderous harrow guides,
His heels deep sinking, every step he goes,
Till dirt adhesive loads his clouted shoes.
Welcome, green headland ! firm beneath his feet:
Welcome, the friendly bank's refreshing seat;
There, warm with toil, his panting horses browse
Their sheltering canopy of pendent boughs;
Till rest delicious chase each transient pain,
And new-born vigor swell in every vein.
Hour after hour and day to day succeeds,
Till every clod and deep-drawn furrow spreads
To crumbling mold, - a level surface clear,
And strewed with corn to crown the rising year;
And o'er the whole Giles, once transverse again,
In earth's moist bosom buries up the grain.
The work is done; no more to man is given;
The grateful farmer trusts the rest to Heaven.
His simple errand done, he homeward hies; Another instantly its place supplies. The clattering dairy-maid, immersed in steam, Singing and scrubbing midst her milk and cream,
Bawls out, "Go fetch the cows!" he hears no
For pigs and ducks and turkeys throng the door,
And sitting hens for constant war prepared,
A concert strange to that which late he heard.
Straight to the meadow then he whistling goes;
With well-known halloo calls his lazy cows;
Down the rich pasture heedlessly they graze,
Or hear the summons with an idle gaze,
For well they know the cow-yard yields no more
Its tempting fragrance, nor its wintry store.
Reluctance marks their steps, sedate and slow,
The right of conquest all the law they know ;
The strong press on, the weak by turns succeed,
And one superior always takes the lead,
Is ever foremost wheresoe'er they stray,
Allowed precédence, undisputed sway :
With jealous pride her station is maintained,
For many a broil that post of honor gained.
At home, the yard affords a grateful scene,
For spring makes e'en a miry cow-yard clean.
Thence from its chalky bed behold conveyed
The rich manure that drenching winter made,
Which, piled near home, grows green with many
a weed,
A promised nutriment for autumn's seed.
Forth comes the maid, and like the morning
smiles;
The mistress too, and followed close by Giles.
A friendly tripod forms their humble seat,
With pails bright scoured and delicately sweet.
Where shadowing elms obstruct the morning ray
Begins the work, begins the simple lay;
The full-charged udder yields its willing stream
While Mary sings some lover's amorous dream;
And crouching Giles, beneath a neighboring tree,
Tugs o'er his pail, and chants with equal glee;
Whose hat with battered brim, of nap so bare,
From the cow's side purloins a coat of hair,
A mottled ensign of his harmless trade,
An unambitious, peaceable cockade.
As unambitious, too, that cheerful aid
The mistress yields beside her rosy maid ;
With joy she views her plenteous reeking store,
And bears a brimmer to the dairy door;
Her cows dismissed, the luscious mead to roam,
Till eve again recall them loaded home.
A WHITE pine floor and a low-ceiled room, A wheel and a reel and a great brown loom, The windows out and the world in bloom
A pair of "swifts" in the corner, where
The grandmother sat in her rush-wrought chair,
And pulled at the distaff's tangled hair;
Sinks on the anvil, all about the faces fiery grow.
"Hurrah!" they shout, "leap out, leap out"; bang, bang, the sledges go;
Hurrah! the jetted lightnings are hissing high and low;
A hailing fount of fire is struck at every squashing blow;
The leathern mail rebounds the hail; the rattling cinders strew
The ground around; at every bound the sweltering fountains flow;
In livid and obdúrate gloom, he darkens down at last :
A shapely one he is, and strong as e'er from cat was cast.
O trusted and trustworthy guard, if thou hadst life like me,
What pleasures would thy toils reward beneath the deep green sea!
O deep-sea diver, who might then behold such sights as thou?
And thick and loud the swinking crowd, at every The hoary monsters' palaces! methinks what joy
To go plump plunging down amid the assembly of the whales,
And feel the churned sea round me boil beneath their scourging tails!
For a heart of oak is hanging on every blow, I Then deep in tangle-woods to fight the fierce sea bode,
And I see the good ship riding, all in a perilous And send him foiled and bellowing back, for all
Shell-strewn, and consecrate of old to some Undine's love,
To find the long-haired mermaidens; or, hard by icy lands,
To wrestle with the sea-serpent upon cerulean sands.
O broad-armed fisher of the deep, whose sports can equal thine?
The Dolphin weighs a thousand tons that tugs thy cable line;
And night by night 't is thy delight, thy glory day by day,
Through sable sea and breaker white, the giant game to play;
But, shamer of our little sports! forgive the name I gave,
A fisher's joy is to destroy, thine office is to save. O lodger in the sea-king's halls, couldst thou but understand
Whose be the white bones by thy side, or who that dripping band,
Slow swaying in the heaving waves that round about thee bend,
With sounds like breakers in a dream, blessing
O, couldst thou know what heroes glide with larger steps round thee,
Thine iron side would swell with pride; thou 'dst leap within the sea!
Give honor to their memories who left the pleasant strand
To shed their blood so freely for the love of fatherland,
Who left their chance of quiet age and grassy churchyard grave
So freely for a restless bed amid the tossing wave;
O, though our anchor may not be all I have fondly sung,
Honor him for their memory whose bones he goes among!
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