| |
| CLEAR the brown path to meet his coulter’s gleam! | |
| Lo! on he comes, behind his smoking team, | |
| With toil’s bright dew-drops on his sunburnt brow, | |
| The lord of earth, the hero of the plough! | |
| |
| First in the field before the reddening sun, | 5 |
| Last in the shadows when the day is done, | |
| Line after line, along the bursting sod, | |
| Marks the broad acres where his feet have trod. | |
| Still where he treads the stubborn clods divide, | |
| The smooth, fresh furrow opens deep and wide; | 10 |
| Matted and dense the tangled turf upheaves, | |
| Mellow and dark the ridgy cornfield cleaves; | |
| Up the steep hillside, where the laboring train | |
| Slants the long track that scores the level plain, | |
| Through the moist valley, clogged with oozing clay, | 15 |
| The patient convoy breaks its destined way; | |
| At every turn the loosening chains resound, | |
| The swinging ploughshare circles glistening round, | |
| Till the wide field one billowy waste appears, | |
| And wearied hands unbind the panting steers. | 20 |
| |
| These are the hands whose sturdy labor brings | |
| The peasant’s food, the golden pomp of kings; | |
| This is the page whose letters shall be seen, | |
| Changed by the sun to words of living green; | |
| This is the scholar whose immortal pen | 25 |
| Spells the first lesson hunger taught to men; | |
| These are the lines that heaven-commanded Toil | |
| Shows on his deed,—the charter of the soil! | |
| |
| O gracious Mother, whose benignant breast | |
| Wakes us to life, and lulls us all to rest, | 30 |
| How thy sweet features, kind to every clime, | |
| Mock with their smile the wrinkled front of Time! | |
| We stain thy flowers,—they blossom o’er the dead; | |
| We rend thy bosom, and it gives us bread; | |
| O’er the red field that trampling strife has torn, | 35 |
| Waves the green plumage of thy tasselled corn; | |
| Our maddening conflicts scar thy fairest plain, | |
| Still thy soft answer is the growing grain. | |
| Yet, O our Mother, while uncounted charms | |
| Steal round our hearts in thine embracing arms, | 40 |
| Let not our virtues in thy love decay, | |
| And thy fond sweetness waste our strength away. | |
| |
| No, by these hills whose banners now displayed | |
| In blazing cohorts Autumn has arrayed; | |
| By yon twin summits, on whose splintery crests | 45 |
| The tossing hemlocks hold the eagles’ nests; | |
| By these fair plains the mountain circle screens, | |
| And feeds with streamlets from its dark ravines,— | |
| True to their home, these faithful arms shall toil | |
| To crown with peace their own untainted soil; | 50 |
| And, true to God, to freedom, to mankind, | |
| If her chained ban-dogs Faction shall unbind, | |
| These stately forms, that, bending even now, | |
| Bowed their strong manhood to the humble plough, | |
| Shall rise erect, the guardians of the land, | 55 |
| The same stern iron in the same right hand, | |
| Till o’er their hills the shouts of triumph run,— | |
| The sword has rescued what the ploughshare won! | |
| |
