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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Bloomfield

  • Build me a shrine, and I could kneel
  • To rural Gods, or prostrate fall;
  • Did I not see, did I not feel,
  • That one Great Spirit governs all.
  • O heaven, permit that I may lie
  • Where o’er my corse green branches wave;
  • And those who from life’s tumults fly
  • With kindred feelings press my grave.
  • But how unlike to April’s closing days!
  • High climbs the sun, and darts his powerful rays;
  • Whitens the fresh drawn mould and pierces through
  • The cumbrous clods that tumble round the plough.
  • Dear Ellen, your tales are all plenteously stored,
  • With the joy of some bride and the wealth of her lord,
  • Of her chariots and dresses,
  • And worldly caresses,
  • And servants that fly when she’s waited upon:
  • But what can she boast if she weds unbeloved?
  • Can she e’er feel the joy that one morning I proved,
  • When I put on my new gown and waited for John?
  • Fled now the sullen murmurs of the North,
  • The splendid raiment of the Spring peeps forth.
  • Still Twilight, welcome! Rest, how sweet art thou!
  • Now eve o’erhangs the western cloud’s thick brow;
  • The far-stretch’d curtain of retiring light,
  • With fiery treasures fraught; that on the sight
  • Flash from its bulging sides, where darkness lowers,
  • In Fancy’s eye, a chain of mould’ring tow’rs;
  • Or craggy coasts just rising into view,
  • Midst jav’lins dire and darts of streaming blue.
  • Strange to the world, he wore a bashful look,
  • The fields his study, nature was his book.
  • The kindly intercourse will ever prove
  • A bond of amity and social love.
  • The lessons of prudence have charms,
  • And slighted, may lead to distress;
  • But the man whom benevolence warms
  • Is an angel who lives but to bless.
  • Unsparing as the scourge of war,
  • Blasts follow blasts, and groves dismantled roar.
  • When now, unsparing as the scourge of war,
  • Blasts follow blasts and groves dismantled roar;
  • Around their home the storm-pinched cattle lows,
  • No nourishment in frozen pasture grows;
  • Yet frozen pastures every morn resound
  • With fair abundance thund’ring to the ground.
  • Proud-crested fiend, the world’s worst foe, ambition.

    Strange to the world, he wore a bashful look; the field his study, Nature was his book.