Spring Arbor, July, 1860.
O! beautiful spot where the hill and the vale
Are blooming with mullen and thistle,
While over the hills comes the low, gentle sound
Of the cow-boy's unmusical whistle.
The moonbeams fall soft on that cobble-stone wall
Beside which those pigs are reposing,
While calmly I sit on this half-rotten log,
This eloquent poem composing.
Those cows over there, Gray would call "lowing herd,"
And sing of their voices so mellow,
Well, perhaps they did low in the days that he wrote,
But those animals, certainly bellow.
Those sheep in the road add their share to the sounds
That evening of quiet is cheating;
Their utterance I'm sure 's an unqualified ba-a,
Instead of soft, gentle bleating.
There's a lake just in sight, and its waters lie there
As calm as the slumber of childhood;
But alas, all around it is growing marsh hay
Instead of a shadowy wildwood!
The brook that runs by, in the days that are past
May have ahd some romance in its winding,
But a Yankee mill-dam has now sobered its song,
And turned its attention to grinding.
O life in the country! O rural retreat!
No wonder I'm growing poetic;
For if streamlet and lake fail to waken my muse,
Those mosquitos would make me romantic.
O beautiful spot! I must bid thee adieu;
Farewell to thy pigweed and clover;
May no one who enters these hallowed abodes,
Ever fail all thy charms to discover.
