The harp and plow :: :: University of Virginia Library

Dear Buckeye:—Are you hale and well,
And have you time on this to dwell?—
Had I but wings, my feet to spell
With flying power,
My knuckles on your door should tell
In half an hour!

The time will come, I'll bet the flip,
When one may take a match, a chip,
And mount a broomstick, with his hip
Astride a kettle,
And up steam, till his speed outstrip
The wind, a little.

In this our day and generation,
In this our mighty Yankee nation,
We 've but to make a ‘calculation,’
And next we hear
E'en red-haired, sanguine Expectation,
Is distanced, clear.

158

We write by lightning; next to wonder
If we should talk by means of thunder;
Cotton will now rend rocks asunder,
But, bye and bye,
A cat-tail, thrust a mountain under,
Will blow 't sky high!

O, mighty land!—including Texas!
Star-gazing statesmen soon will vex us:—
The moon they'll say, cries out, ‘Annex us,
And make us one;’
And other nations will expect us
To hitch 'em on.

But sir, since you are pleased to care
What my ‘designs and prospects’ are,
And wish ‘biography’ to share
My brief epistle,—
There must be blown, you're well aware,
Ego's own whistle.

Here, on the spot from whence I write,
My eyes first opened to the light;
Whether a rhyme was squealed on sight—
'T is safe to doubt it;
My recollection is not quite
Distinct about it.

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Still, sir, 't is hard to note the time
When first I perpetrated rhyme;
A whisper of the art sublime
Aye hung around me;
The same in ‘slips’ and youthful prime
The muses found me.

Down Nature's lanes I loved to stray,
Her lamp poured light around my way,
Art, with her polish-giving ray,
Shone not upon it;
To her I'll never to have to pay
For one poor sonnet.

If Nature does not make the man,
No famous school or college can;
Though parrot-like he learns to scan
His Latin grammar,
His knowledge goes no farther than
The tutor's hammer.

When in my teens, by Fancy led,
Far westward ho! I ‘drew my sled;’
There hunter-clad, and hunter-fed,
I roved and learned;
Shot deer, wild western romance read,
And prairies burned.

160

Your lakes, like shoreless seas, in-land;
Your prairies that like space expand;
Your streams, and mighty woods, are grand
Beyond my praise;
But dear New England will command
My heart and lays.

Her mountains bleak, her sheltered dales,
Her Borean blasts, and heathful gales,
Her brooks, her fertile river-vales,
Her ocean-coast;
These, till the lamp of nature fails,
Inspire me most.

Here, too, was given to the light
The rural lays these scenes incite;
Hence, lately that Thanksgiving Night
Was blown abroad,
About which you were pleased to write
And kindly laud.

I may not like Longfellow chime
A ‘Psalm of life,’ in strains sublime;
Or reach that high poetic clime
Where Bryant flies;
Where Drake, with his bold bannered rhyme,
Neglected lies.

161

I may not paint with sweet Nat. Willis
The beauty of exquisite Phillis;
Or vie with any bard whose skill is
In flowery diction;
You know their soul inspiring rill is
Fount, Classic Fiction.

Without the power if not desire,
With these to tempt the regions higher,
My coat of arms the rural lyre
And good old plough;
These, bright with patriotic fire,
Will serve me, now.

'Gainst Fame I may not breathe a ban;
She 's dear to the poetic clan,
More so by far, it may be, than
To Clays and Catos;
But fame will never give a man
Pork and potatoes.

So round and round the furrowed plain
Anon I'll chase the plough again;
And dropping egotistic strain,
Now sign my card;
Meanwhile, yours truly will remain
The ‘Peasant Bard.’

Vide “The American Flag”— J. R. Drake.