Classic Poem

Tis autumn now & harvests reign
Brown swelling hills & hollow vales
The sudden shower sweeps oer the plain
& health breaths in the shivering gales
The coveys rise — the sportsman joys
& in the stubbles bleeding fall
The hunters face glows in the chase
He loves to hear the bugle call
That loud through wood & dingle rings
As oer the fence the courser springs.

The songs of home in every field
From merry harvesters is heard
The hare as yet from harm will shield
Where barley waves its tawney beard
Some sing & blink oer kegs of drink
& love the drunkards brawls to own —
I love to dream by valleys stream
& live with quiet peace alone
The brook & wood the vale & tree
Are the green homes of joy to me.

Some love to drink adieu to care
I love the solitude of rest
Some meet with woman false & fair
& think it joy to be distrest
The hazle nook the mossy brook
I love from feelings of the boy
The broad topt oak the ravens croak
& all of nature brings me joy
There solitude of sun & shade
A paradise on earth hath made.

& yet the love of woman still
Hath been my sunshine all along
Her voice along the upland hill
Was music in my early song
Her love confest is still the best
To comfort every care & thrall
In poesys page her heritage
Reigns still the empress over all
Theres not a land where life hath been
But looks on woman as its queen.

I long to forget them — the love of my life —
To forget them, and keep this lorn being my own;
The honey is cell'd in such changeable strife,
I long to keep sorrow and trouble my own —
To live in myself, and to be what I am,
And to leave earth's delusions and shadows behind,
Where love may not cheat, nor its happiness damn:
The shadows of hope I with nature may find.

O, bear me away from this changeable strife,
To the childhood of nature, the linnet and bee!
Let her flowers be my children, her freedom my wife,
Where God, my Creator, is constant and free.
The flower on the white bush, the nest in the ground,
Which my own happy childhood once shouted to find;
Let me live in those scenes, with the wind blowing round,
And I shall be happy to bear it in mind,

To think of the joys of that once-happy spot
Where I lived with my children the whole summer long —
The mother, the garden, the books and the cot,
The theme and affection of many a song.
The snowdrop and crocus are first in the year,
And there the tall foxglove its red-freckled bell
To the summer and bee was delicious and dear;
And down in the homestead, the pond and the dell.

Would hide me an hour in its hazel so green,
While the world and its troubles kept far, far away;
And there silent solitude kept me unseen,
With love-ties around me the whole of the day.
And there was the robin, perch'd on the ash tree,
Would sing me a tune, and then drop for a worm;
And there the coy thrush my companion would be,
While the hazel-bush sheltered my seat from a storm.

And there came the linnet, with wool in its bill,
To build its new nest in the hedge or the thorn;
And there I could see the black sails of the mill,
And the spire in the gray, sleeping light of the morn.
And there came the heavy-wing'd kite o'er the lea,
And the old hens they call'd for their chickens aloud;
And there the black crow came and perch'd on the tree,
And the lark hid itself in the black-bosom'd cloud.

O, bear me away from this tumult and strife
Where woman or falsehood is not to be found —
To the scenes which I loved in the childhood of life,
In the fields which the thorn-hedges sheltered around;
Where trees without order in spinney clumps stand,
And in corners the aged or the whattled sheep pen;
O bear me to those dearest spots in the land,
And the peace of my lowly thatch'd cottage again!