Classic Poem

Now, doth it give the corn a start,
Or cause the cotton grow?
They mock the minstrel's idle art,
My neighbors of the hoe;
With rumble of the tumble cart,
And lyric of " Gee-Whoa! "

Their legends are of doughty teams,
Of oxen and of sheep;
I hear them driving in their dreams
And counting in their sleep.

And yet their wit is rich in speech,
The wisest, uninspired;
Their limbs unto the fiddle screech
Right rhythmically wired.

Within these fields of care and strife
A man may come, no doubt,
To be a poet, all his life,
And never find it out.

To dwell among his woolly flocks,
His herds of hoof and horn,
Less happy than the licensed " ox
That treadeth out the corn! "

To hold the sky in all its scope
As one great weather-sign,
To toil athwart the vineyard's slope
And never taste the wine!

The day must have its dinner-gong,
The nation must be fed,
Yet one will weary of a song
With one sole burden, bread.

And one must count his labor " naught, "
His harvest quite in vain,
Who reared no blossom when he wrought
With summer on the plain,
No garland of a golden thought
To glorify his grain.