Poetry of the Farm and Rural Life :: :: University of Virginia Library

Wild is the night! for winter reigns;
The north-wind sounds its fiercest strains:
The shaking doors and window-panes
Make furious din;
And through the chinks the powdery grains
Come sifting in.

I'll mend the fire ere it decays,
Pile on the wood, and make it blaze:
This is one, surely, of the days
Of which we've read,
Or rather nights, when the Fiend strays
On errands dread!

There lies my dog, his brains a-baking,
And fierce gesticulations making;
In dreams the Snow-hill fox he's shaking
With mortal spite;
Or else he's giving or is taking
“Fits” in a fight.

Strange voices out-of-doors I hear:
The shout of rage, the howl of fear;
As if mad fiends from regions drear
In furious haste
Have broken loose, on wild career
To lay earth waste.

Some seem an awful organ thrumming;
Some on the roofs and walls are drumming;
And one, smoke-choked or singed in coming
Down the hot flue,
Is off, and sets the chimney humming
With angry w-h-e-w!

I'll whittle to a pen this quill,
And though the thing be fashioned ill,
Yet o'er this paper with such skill
I'll haply scratch it,
That he who dates “Up River” will,
He only, match it!

I've sometimes thought 't would be great pleasure
To have more learning and more leisure,
And give my muse fair chance to measure
Herself with others,
Who, though they deem such kin no treasure,
Are yet my brothers.

But how should I obtain a living,
And half my time to letters giving?
Translating from strange tongues, and thieving
What's not well known,
And set admiring fools believing
Its all my own?

I might as well just launch a shingle
Upon the brook whose waters jingle
Through my domain, on down the dingle,
The flood to greet,
And dream the chip will reach and mingle
With ocean's fleet.

That God whose lamp illumes the heaven,
Who breaks to us the vital leaven,
I feel and know to me has given
Light from His light;
But toils of common life have striven
To quench it, quite.

“There's poetry in farming.” True
But I have read, and so have you,
That “distance lends unto the view
Enchantment fair.”
For instance: digging gold will do
Till one gets there.

In summer planting, weeding, hoeing,
And practising “Knick's knack” at mowing,
(That science which you boast of knowing
So very well,)
The scorching sun no mean type showing
Of what's called hell.

In winter tugging with the flail,
Or sledding in a cutting gale,
Such as would send a gallant sail
In bare-poles seaward,
And blows your fore-nag's lusty tail
Straight out to leeward.

In place of literary talk,
With compeers in your daily walk,
It's “Shall you top, or cut the stalk
Of that 'ere crop?”
Or, “Sold yer cattle—how'll ye chalk
To sell, or swop?”

Not half the prose may well be told
Which farmers every day behold
In summer hot and winter cold,
Dull as 't is real;
Yet we've incentives manifold
To the ideal.

The pictures in the book of June;
The glorious dawn, the balmy noon;
“The dewy eve, the rising moon;”
All these are ours,
And all the recompensing boon
Of birds and flowers.

When Winter hurls his storms apace,
Oft piteous is the farmer's case:
Night comes—the blazing chimney-place
Stills all complaints;
Thaws out his features, till his face
Shines like a saint's.

There, while his cheer reeks to the ceiling,
He gets most comfortably feeling,
Thinking how barn and battened shieling,
Secure and warm,
His poor dependents safe are shielding
From the wild storm.

There he may read, and muse, and ponder
Upon this life, this world of wonder;
There, judge-like, he may set asunder
The truth from error,
And see in men of “blood and thunder”
No cause for terror.

There he may form just estimate
Of those the world calls good and great;
See fortune, circumstance, and fate
Create renown,
And give a knave a chair of state,
An ass a crown.

An old divine —he's been away
In “kingdom come” this many a day—
Once said, “Say what you have to say,
And then have done.”
The sum of that will I obey,
And carry one.

Adieu, dear Knick! Peace make your bed!
You, too, were country-born and bred,
And can appreciate all I've said,
And dare to print it.
Green be the laurel round your head,
And glory tint it!

Rev. Dr. Witherspoon of New Jersey, one of “the Signers.”