Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

Now go your ways:- I need not tell The moral of my rhyme;

But, youths and maidens, ponder well, This tale of olden time!

THE PLOUGHMAN.

(ANNIVERSARY OF THE BERKSHIRE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY OCT. 4, 1849.)

CLEAR the brown path, to meet his coulter's gleam!
Lo! on he comes, behind his smoking team,
With toil's bright dew-drops on his sunburnt brow,
The lord of earth, the hero of the plough!

First in the field before the reddening sun,
Last in the shadows when the day is done,
Line after line, along the bursting sod,

Marks the broad acres where his feet have trod⚫
Still, where he treads, the stubborn clods divide,
The smooth, fresh furrow opens deep and wide;
Matted and dense the tangled turf upheaves,
Mellow and dark the ridgy cornfield cleaves;
Up the steep hill-side, where the laboring train
Slants the long track that scores the level plain;

Through the moist valley, clogged with oozing clay,
The patient convoy breaks its destined way;
At every turn the loosening chains resound,
The swinging ploughshare circles glistening round,
Till the wide field one billowy waste appears,
And wearied hands unbind the panting steers.

These are the hands whose sturdy labor brings
The peasant's food, the golden pomp of kings:
This is the page, whose letters shall be seen
Changed by the sun to words of living green;
This is the scholar, whose immortal pen

Spells the first lesson hunger taught to men;
These are the lines that heaven-commanded Toil
Shows on his deed, the charter of the soil!

[ocr errors]

O gracious Mother, whose benignant breast
Wakes us to life, and lulls us all to rest,

How thy sweet features, kind to every clime,

Mock with their smile the wrinkled front of time!

We stain thy flowers, they blossom o'er the dead;

We rend thy bosom, and it gives us bread;

O'er the red field that trampling strife has torn,
Waves the green plumage of thy tasselled corn;

Our maddening conflicts scar thy fairest plain,
Still thy soft answer is the growing grain.
Yet, O our Mother, while uncounted charms
Steal round our hearts in thine embracing arms,
Let not our virtues in thy love decay,

And thy fond sweetness waste our strength away.

No! by these hills, whose banners now displayed
In blazing cohorts Autumn has arrayed:
By yon twin summits, on whose splintery crests
The tossing hemlocks hold the eagle's nests;
By these fair plains the mountain circle screens,
And feeds with streamlets from its dark ravines;
True to their home, these faithful arms shall toil
To crown with peace their own untainted soil;
And, true to God, to freedom, to mankind,
If her chained bandogs Faction shall unbind,
These stately forms, that bending even now
Bowed their strong manhood to the humble plough,
Shall rise erect, the guardians of the land,

The same stern iron in the same right hand,
Till o'er their hills the shouts of triumph run;

The sword has rescued what the ploughshare won!

A POEM.

(DEDICATION OF THE PITTSFIELD CEMETERY, SEPTEMBER 9, 1850.)

ANGEL of Death! extend thy silent reign!
Stretch thy dark sceptre o'er this new domain!
No sable car along the winding road
Has borne to earth its unresisting load;

No sudden mound has risen yet to show
Where the pale slumberer folds his arms below;
No marble gleams to bid his memory live
In the brief lines that hurrying Time can give;
Yet, O Destroyer! from thy shrouded throne
Look on our gift; this realm is all thine own!

Fair is the scene; its sweetness oft beguiled
From their dim paths the children of the wild;
The dark-haired maiden loved its grassy dells,
The feathered warrior claimed its wooded swells,

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »