University of Virginia Library

COUNTRY PHILOSOPHY.

WILLIAM AND JAMES.
WILLIAM.
Good morrow, neighbour, 'tis a tuneful morning:
The birds have jump'd into their singing gear
Most suddenly, and spring, before our thought,
Comes with the wheatear on the fallow side.

JAMES.
I told my wife that I should find you here
On the first blackbird's whistle, and I came
And here I find you: let us chat an hour:
This is no busy season to our hands—
Time to look round, and little else to do
But breathe sound air and broaden like green corn.
What power this March sun shakes upon our path.

WILLIAM.
Lean on this boundary hedgerow of our farms.
We are near enough for talking: I can watch
My beasts at graze, and you can count your stacks,
Your feet upon your holding, mine on mine.

JAMES.
William, I think I've slipped a score of years
Since yesternight: this touch of frost has given
A spice and savour to the calm serene,
And makes the sunshine burnish on the hedge,
Or 'tis my fancy. I'm as fanciful
This morning as a youngster of eighteen—
There goes one: listen, down the lane, to the right:
He whistles, now he sings by breaks, “Fair lips
Whom are ye for, if ye are not for me?”

WILLIAM.
This hawthorn bird is out before the buds
That feed him; for the thorny twigs are bare
That nurture up their blossoms near the tread
Of feet that pause not earthwards for delight,
When blooms of may shower on the clasping hands,
Or blind those eyes from forward-searching care.

JAMES.
Why, friend, you have that from some book of songs.

WILLIAM.
Not I; the air's to blame; if some old thrush
In spring forgets his hoarseness into song.
I shall be mute enough by harvest week,
With other occupation than at ease
To lounge and pipe a careless flourish here.

JAMES.
Each month has office in the farmer's year,
And chief in this I count our calling best,
That nature's scope and change are all our own,
And so we cannot lack variety.
See yonder townsman in his warehouse walls:
What change, except in his thermometer,
With wet or burning pavement, marks his days
Or notes the deeper year; and gives him rest
From that eternal simper at his wares
When customers bite briskly? He shall see,
From zero to the dog-day weather-point,
One patch of sky.

WILLIAM.
And yet this very man
Secure in his importance, holds us cheap
As bumpkins, speaking broad, with swollen hands,
And counts his apeish mincings as the trick
Of true gentility, ‘what clowns are these.’

JAMES.
I would not wear his manners for a week
To be a squire a twelvemonth and a day;
Content to be no better than my father,
And, thank these hands, no worse, to pay my way
And move about my pastures in no fear
Of bailiffs or the rent-day, with a son
To take the old place on when I am gone,
And keep a stranger from the fields where I
Have been a boy and grew a man and died.

WILLIAM.
Your scheme of life is brother to my own;
I shall not change my trade, tho' it has rubs
And stiff ones: now this agent of our squire's,—
The man was born to plague me, and his thought
Comes like a city whiff to taint in smoke
The freshness of the morning,—well this man,
Whose soul is in his pockets, and whose eyes
Purblind to aught but stiff arithmetic,
Would have me square my hedgerows like a rule,
And prune to faultless parallelogram
The wilderness of May-bloom and its nests.
‘Cut straight that curving brook,’ quoth he, ‘it wastes
A good half acre; clear the rubbish growth
That cumbers round its reaches; let it run
In ship-shape current like the squire's main-drain:’
I cannot keep my temper with the man:
We'll change the subject.

JAMES.
O, I let him talk
Above his gases and his phosphate base,
His lime and silicon: it pleases him
And prints well in the ‘Herald’ with this head,
‘The chemistry of farming:’ yet this man
Of mighty theory is but a babe
In practice; I have seen him over-reach'd
By very shallow knaves: this wordy man
Bought at the fair last week a flock of ewes
Not worth a halter.

WILLIAM.
Serve him richly right:
And yet the squire shall keep him after this;
He'll talk him round in his smooth fluent way:
Well it's no gear of mine.

JAMES.
The world flows on,
And in its stream some dregs waft uppermost.
But truce to these discomfortable themes:
Look round, forget them: timid spires of green
Creep thro' the fallowy ridges, frail to bear
One dew-drop's burthen, yet shall these prevail
Weak infants of the harvest to the full
And stately ear, to clothe the upland side
As with a forest-sea, wherein the breeze
Has visible workings, and the cloud is seen
To mask and free the light in gleamy falls.

WILLIAM.
The morning draws, and we have paid enough
In leisure to its freshness. I must set
Some graftings in my orchard, whence my son,
Who knows? shall reap the apples—now—farewell.
But as I go one word—that boy of yours
Is very often at our place of late:
I may not think his early schoolfellow
My son his main attraction; and our Jane
Is smartened up I fancy when he comes.
Well, well, let things fare on: but well I know
If there is aught in this I shall be glad,
And you I think, James, will not take it ill.