 | Poetry of the Farm and Rural Life |  |
For hours not a soul had I seen on my way.
If 'twere ever man-haunted, it wasn't that day;
And with the exception, in one or two cases,
Of rain-shedding hovels in out of way places,
With a phiz at the panes like to that of a woman,
I had counted myself there the only thing human.
Tho' the “hills were a thousand,” my vision could scan,
The Lord had no ‘cattle’ there, neither had man;
Unless I except one forlorn looking cow,
That man must have owned,—not the Lord, any how.
As she stood by the side of a ramshackle shed,
Her feet in a half-bushel measure could tread;
Her caudal curl'd under her ribs and her bones,
As plain to be seen as the big bowlder stones,
With a sort of hysterical grin on her face,
That moved me to laughter, tho' sad was my case;
That face was a tableau, most striking, thought I,
Of Job's wife's, when she told him to “curse God and die!”
If 'twere ever man-haunted, it wasn't that day;
And with the exception, in one or two cases,
Of rain-shedding hovels in out of way places,
With a phiz at the panes like to that of a woman,
I had counted myself there the only thing human.
Tho' the “hills were a thousand,” my vision could scan,
The Lord had no ‘cattle’ there, neither had man;
Unless I except one forlorn looking cow,
That man must have owned,—not the Lord, any how.
As she stood by the side of a ramshackle shed,
Her feet in a half-bushel measure could tread;
Her caudal curl'd under her ribs and her bones,
As plain to be seen as the big bowlder stones,
70
That moved me to laughter, tho' sad was my case;
That face was a tableau, most striking, thought I,
Of Job's wife's, when she told him to “curse God and die!”
| Poetry of the Farm and Rural Life | |