Pastorals
Saturday, 8.
False were the muse, did she not bring
Our village poet’s offering—
Haunts, fields, and groves, weaving his rhymes,
Leaves verse and fame to coming times.
Is it for the reason that rural life here in New England furnishes nothing for pastoral verse, that our poets have as yet produced so little? Yet we cannot have had almost three centuries’ residence on this side of the Atlantic, with old England’s dialect, traditions, and customs still current in our rural districts for perspective, not to have so adorned life and landscape with poetic associations as to have neither honey nor dew for hiving in sweet and tender verse, though it should fall short of the antique or British models. Our fields and rivers, brooks and groves, the rural occupations of country-folk, have not been undeserving of being celebrated in appropriate verse. Our forefathers delighted in Revolutionary lore. We celebrate natural scenery, legends of foreign climes, historic events, but rarely indulge in touches of simple country life. And the idyls of New England await their poet, unless the following verses announce his arrival:—
NEW ENGLAND.
“My country, ’tis for thee I strike the lyre;
My country, wide as is the free wind’s flight,
I prize New England as she lights her fire
In every Prairie’s midst; and where the bright
Enchanting stars shine pure through Southern night,
She still is there the guardian on the tower,
To open for the world a purer hour.
“Could they but know the wild enchanting thrill
That in our homely houses fills the heart,
To feel how faithfully New England’s will
Beats in each artery, and each small part
Of this great Continent, their blood would start
In Georgia, or where Spain once sat in state,
Or Texas, with her lone star, desolate.
“’Tis a New-England thought, to make this land
The very home of Freedom, and the nurse
“Of each sublime emotion; she does stand
Between the sunny South, and the dread curse
Of God, who else should make her hearse
Of condemnation to this Union’s life,—
She stands to heal this plague, and banish strife.
“I do not sing of this, but hymn the day
That gilds our cheerful villages and plains,
Our hamlets strewn at distance on the way,
Our forests and the ancient streams’ domains;
We are a band of brothers, and our pains
Are freely shared; no beggar in our roads,
Content and peace within our fair abodes.
“In my small cottage on the lonely hill,
Where like a hermit I must bide my time,
Surrounded by a landscape lying still
All seasons through as in the winter’s prime,
Rude and as homely as these verses chime,
I have a satisfaction which no king
Has often felt, if Fortune’s happiest thing.
“’Tis not my fortune, which is meanly low,
’Tis not my merit that is nothing worth,
’Tis not that I have stores of thought below
Which everywhere should build up heaven on earth;
Nor was I highly favored in my birth;
Few friends have I, and they are much to me,
Yet fly above my poor society.
“But all about me live New-England men,
Their humble houses meet my daily gaze,—
The children of this land where Life again
Flows like a great stream in sunshiny ways,
This is a joy to know them, and my days
Are filled with love to meditate on them,—
These native gentlemen on Nature’s hem.
“That I could take one feature of their life,
Then on my page a mellow light should shine;
Their days are holidays, with labor rife,
Labor the song of praise that sounds divine,
And better, far, than any hymn of mine;
The patient Earth sets platters for their food,
Corn, milk, and apples, and the best of good.
“See here no shining scenes for artist’s eye,
This woollen frock shall make no painter’s fame;
These homely tools all burnishing deny;
The beasts are slow and heavy, still or tame;
The sensual eye may think this labor lame;
’Tis in the man where lies the sweetest art,
His true endeavor in his earnest part.
“He meets the year confiding; no great throws,
That suddenly bring riches, does he use,
But like Thor’s hammer vast, his patient blows
Vanquish his difficult tasks, he does refuse
To tread the path, nor know the way he views;
No sad complaining words he uttereth,
But draws in peace a free and easy breath.
“This man takes pleasure o’er the crackling fire,
His glittering axe subdued the monarch oak,
He earned the cheerful blaze by something higher
Than pensioned blows,—he owned the tree he stroke,
And knows the value of the distant smoke
When he returns at night, his labor done,
Matched in his action with the long day’s sun.
“I love these homely mansions, and to me
A farmer’s house seems better than a king’s;
The palace boasts its art, but liberty
And honest pride and toil are splendid things;
They carved this clumsy lintel, and it brings
The man upon its front; Greece hath her art,—
But this rude homestead shows the farmer’s heart.
“I love to meet him on the frozen road,
How manly is his eye, as clear as air;—
He cheers his beasts without the brutal goad,
His face is ruddy, and his features fair;
His brave good-day sounds like an honest prayer;
This man is in his place and feels his trust,—
’Tis not dull plodding through the heavy crust.
“And when I have him at his homely hearth,
Within his homestead, where no ornament
Glows on the mantel but his own true worth,
I feel as if within an Arab’s tent
His hospitality is more than meant;
I there am welcome, as the sunlight is,
I must feel warm to be a friend of his.
“How many brave adventures with the cold,
Built up the cumberous cellar of plain stone;
How many summer heats the bricks did mould,
That make the ample fireplace, and the tone
Of twice a thousand winds sing through the zone
Of rustic paling round the modest yard,—
These are the verses of this simple bard.
“Who sings the praise of Woman in our clime?
I do not boast her beauty or her grace;
Some humble duties render her sublime,
She the sweet nurse of this New-England race,
The flower upon the country’s sterile face,
The mother of New England’s sons, the pride
Of every house where these good sons abide.
“There is a Roman splendor in her smile,
A tenderness that owes its depth to toil;
Well may she leave the soft voluptuous wile
That forms the woman of a softer soil;
She does pour forth herself a fragrant oil
Upon the dark austerities of Fate,
And make a garden else all desolate.
“From early morn to fading eve she stands,
Labor’s best offering on the shrine of worth,
And Labor’s jewels glitter on her hands,
To make a plenty out of partial dearth,
To animate the heaviness of earth,
To stand and serve serenely through the pain,
To nurse a vigorous race and ne’er complain.
“New-England women are New-England’s pride,
’Tis fitting they should be so, they are free,—
Intelligence doth all their acts decide,
Such deeds more charming than old ancestry.
I could not dwell beside them, and not be
Enamored of them greatly; they are meant
To charm the Poet, by their pure intent.
“A natural honest bearing of their lot,
Cheerful at work, and happy when ’tis done;
They shine like stars within the humblest cot,
And speak for freedom centred all in one.
From every river’s side I hear the son
Of some New-England woman answer me,
‘Joy to our Mothers, who did make us free.’
“And when those wanderers turn to home again,
See the familiar village, and the street
Where they once frolicked, they are less than men
If in their eyes the tear-drops do not meet,
To feel how soon their mothers they shall greet:
Sons of New England have no dearer day,
Than once again within those arms to lay.
“These are her men and women; this the sight
That greets me daily when I pass their homes;
It is enough to love, it throws some light
Over the gloomiest hours; the fancy roams
No more to Italy or Greece; the loams
Whereon we tread are sacred by the lives
Of those who till them, and our comfort thrives.
“Here might one pass his days, content to be
The witness of those spectacles alway;
Bring if you may your treasure from the sea,
My pride is in my Townsmen, where the day
Rises so fairly on a race who lay
Their hopes on Heaven after their toil is o’er,
Upon this rude and bold New-England shore.
“Vainly ye pine woods rising on the height
Should lift your verdant boughs and cones aloft;
Vainly ye winds should surge around in might,
Or murmur o’er the meadow stanzas soft;
To me should nothing yield or lake or crost,
Had not the figures of the pleasant scene
Like trees and fields an innocent demean.
“I feel when I am here some pride elate,
Proud of your presence who do duty here,
For I am some partaker of your fate,
Your manly anthem vibrates in my ear;
Your hearts are heaving unconsumed by fear;
Your modest deeds are constantly supplied;
Your simpler truths by which you must abide.
“Therefore I love a cold and flinty realm,
I love the sky that hangs New England o’er,
And if I were embarked, and at the helm
I ran my vessel on New England’s shore,
And dashed upon her crags, would live no more,
Rather than go seek those lands of graves
Where men who tread the fields are cowering slaves.”
W. Ellery Channing.