Classic Poem

The elms were old, and gnarled, and bent—
The fields, untilled, were choked with weeds,
Where every year the thistles sent
Wider and wider their winged seeds.

Farther and farther the nettle and dock
Went colonizing o'er the plain,
Growing each season a plenteous stock
Of burrs to protect their wild domain.

The last who ever had ploughed the soil
Now in the furrowed churchyard lay—
The boy who whistled to lighten his toil
Was a sexton somewhere far away.

Instead, you saw how the rabbit and mole
Burrowed and furrowed with never a fear;
How the tunnelling fox looked out of his hole,
Like one who notes if the skies are clear.

No mower was there to startle the birds
With the noisy whet of his reeking scythe;
The quail, like a cow-boy calling his herds,
Whistled to tell that his heart was blithe.

Now all was bequeathed with pious care—
The groves and fields fenced round with briers—
To the birds that sing in the cloisters of air,
And the squirrels, those merry woodland friars.