Classic Poem

The busy city or the heated car,
The unthinking crowd, the depot's deafening jar,
These me befit not, but the snow-clad hill
From whose white steeps the rushing torrents fill
Their pebbly beds, and as I look content
At the red Farmhouse to the summit lent,
There, — underneath tree, that is the helm,
The broad ancestral tree, that is the helm
To sheltered hearts, — not idly ask in vain,
Why was I born, — the heritage of pain?

The gliding trains desert the slippery road,
The weary drovers wade to their abode;
I hear the factory bell, the cheerful peal
That drags cheap toil from many a hurried meal.
How dazzling on the hill-side shines the crust,
A sheen of glory unprofaned by dust!
And where thy wave, Stillriver, glides along,
A stream of Helicon unknown in song,
The pensive rocks are wreathed in snow-drifts high
That glance through thy soft tones like witchery.

To Fancy we are sometimes company,
And Solitude 's the friendliest face we see.
Some serious village slowly through I pace,
No form of all its life mine own to trace;
Where the cross mastiff growls with blood-shot eye,
And barks and growls and waits courageously;
Its peaceful mansions my desire allure
Not each to enter and its fate endure, —
But Fancy fills the window with its guest;
The laughing maid, — her swain who breaks the jest;
The solemn spinster staring at the fire,
Slow fumbling for his pipe, her solemn sire;
The loud-voiced parson, fat with holy cheer,
The butcher ruddy as the atmosphere;
The shop-boy loitering with his parcels dull,
The rosy school-girls of enchantment full.

Away from these the solitary farm
Has for the mind a strange domestic charm,
On some keen winter morning when the snow
Heaps roof and casement, lane and meadow through.
Yet in those walls how many a heart is beating,
What spells of joy, of sorrow, there are meeting!
One dreads the post, as much the next, delay,
Lest precious tidings perish on their way.
The graceful Julia sorrows to refuse
Her teacher's mandate, while the boy let loose
Drags out his sled to coast the tumbling hill,
Whence from the topmost height to the low rill,
Shot like an arrow from the Indian's bow,
Downward he bursts, life, limb, and all below
The maddening joy his dangerous impulse gives;
In age, how slow the crazy fact revives!

Afar I track the railroad's gradual bend,
I feel the distance, feel the silence lend
A far romantic charm to farmhouse still,
And spurn the road that plods the weary hill, —
When like an avalanche the thundering car
Whirls past, while bank and rail deplore the jar.
The wildly piercing whistle through my ear
Tells me I fright the anxious engineer;
I turn, — the distant train and hurrying bell
Of the far crossing and its dangers tell.
And yet upon the hill-side sleeps the farm,
Nor maid or man or boy to break the charm.

Delightful Girl! youth in that farmhouse old,
The tender darling in the tender fold, —
Thy promised hopes fulfilled as Nature sought,
With days and years, the income of thy thought;
Sweet and ne'er cloying, beautiful yet free,
Of truth the best, of utter constancy;
Thy cheek whose blush the mountain wind laid on,
Thy mouth whose lips were rosebuds in the sun;
Thy bending neck, the graces of thy form,
Where art could heighten, but ne'er spoil the charm;
Pride of the village school for thy pure word,
Thy pearls alone those glistening sounds afford;
Sure in devotion, guileless and content,
The old farmhouse is thy right element.
Constance! such maids as thou delight the eye,
In all the Nashua's vales that round me lie!

And thus thy brother was the man no less, —
Bred of the fields and with the wind's impress.
With hand as open as his heart was free,
Of strength half-fabled mixed with dignity.
Kind as a boy, he petted dog and hen,
Coaxed his slow steers, nor scared the crested wren.
And not far off the spicy farming sage,
Twisted with heat and cold, and cramped with age,
Who grunts at all the sunlight through the year
And springs from bed each morning with a cheer.
Of all his neighbors he can something tell, —
'Tis bad, whate'er, we know, and like it well! —
The bluebird's song he hears the first in spring,
Shoots the last goose bound South on freezing wing.

Ploughed and unploughed the fields look all the same,
White as the youth's first love or ancient's fame;
Alone the chopper's axe awakes the hills,
And echoing snap the ice-encumbered rills;
Deep in the snow he wields the shining tool,
Nor dreads the icy blast, himself as cool.
Seek not the parlor, nor the den of state
For heroes brave; make up thy estimate
From these tough bumpkins clad in country mail,
Free as their air and full without detail.

No gothic arch our shingle Paestum boasts, —
Its pine cathedral is the style of posts, —
No crumbling abbey draws the tourist there
To trace through ivied windows pictures rare,
Nor the first village squire allows his name
From aught illustrious or debauched by fame.

That sponge profane who drains away the bar
Of yon poor inn extracts the mob's huzza;
Conscious of morals lofty as their own,
The glorious Democrat, — his life a loan.
And mark the preacher nodding o'er the creed,
With wooden text, his heart too soft to bleed.
The Æsculapius of this little State,
A typhus-sage, sugars his pills in fate,
Buries three patients to adorn his gig,
Buys foundered dobbins or consumptive pig;
His wealthy pets he kindly thins away.
Gets in their wills, — and ends them in a day.
Nor shall the strong schoolmaster be forgot,
With fatal eye, who boils the grammar-pot:
Blessed with large arms he deals contusions round,
While even himself his awful hits confound.

Pregnant the hour when at the tailor's store,
Some dusty Bob a mail bangs through the door.
Sleek with good living, virtuous as the Jews,
The village squires look wise, desire the news.
The paper come, one reads the falsehood there,
A trial lawyer, lank-jawed as despair.
Here, too, the small oblivious deacon sits,
Once gross with proverbs, now devoid of wits,
And still by courtesy he feebly moans,
Threadbare injunctions in more threadbare tones.
Sly yet demure, the eager babes crowd in,
Pretty as angels, ripe in pretty sin.
And the postmaster, suction-hose from birth,
The hardest and the tightest screw on earth;
His price as pungent as his hyson green,
His measure heavy on the scale of lean.

A truce to these aspersions, as I see
The winter's orb burn through yon leafless tree,
Where far beneath the track Stillriver runs,
And the vast hill-side makes a thousand suns.
This crystal air, this soothing orange sky,
Possess our lives with their rich sorcery.
We thankful muse on that superior Power
That with his splendor loads the sunset hour,
And by the glimmering streams and solemn woods
In glory walks and charms our solitudes.

O'er the far intervale that dimly lies
In snowy regions placid as the skies,
Some northern breeze awakes the sleeping field,
And like enchanted smoke the great drifts yield
Their snowy curtains to the restless air;
Then build again for architect's despair
The alabaster cornice or smooth scroll
That the next moment in new forms unroll.