THE GOOD OLD PLOUGH.

AS SUNG BY THE HUTCHINSONS.

LET them sing who may of the battle fray,
And the deeds that have long since past;
Let them chant in praise of the tar whose days,
Are spent on the ocean vast.

I would render to these all the worship you please,

I would honor them even now;

But I'd give far more from my heart's full store To the cause of the Good Old Plough.

Let them laud the notes that in music float
Through the bright and glittering hall;
While the amorous twirl of the hair's bright curl
Round the shoulder of beauty fall.
But dearer to me is the song from the tree,
And the rich and blossoming bough;

O, these are the sweets which the rustic greets
As he follows the Good Old Plough!

Full many there be that daily we see,

With a selfish and hollow pride,
Who the ploughman's lot, in his humble cot,
With a scornful look deride;

But I'd rather take, aye, a hearty shake
From his hand than to wealth I'd bow;
For the honest grasp of his hand's rough clasp,
Has stood by the Good Old Plough.

All honor be, then, to these gray old men,
When at last they are bowed with toil!
Their warfare then o'er, they battle no more,
For they've conquered the stubborn soil.
And the chaplet each wears is his silver hairs;
And ne'er shall the victor's brow
With a laurel crown to the grave go down
Like the sons of the Good Old Plough.

ANONYMOUS.

TO THE HARVEST MOON.
PLEASING 't is, O modest Moon !
Now the night is at her noon,
'Neath thy sway to musing lie,
While around the zephyrs sigh,
Fanning soft the sun-tanned wheat,
Ripened by the summer's heat;
Picturing all the rustic's joy
When boundless plenty greets his eye,
And thinking soon,

O modest Moon!
How many a female eye will roam
Along the road,

To see the load,

The last dear load of harvest-home.

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,
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;
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,
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.

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
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,
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,
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,
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
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;
And, true to God, to freedom, to mankind,
If her chained bandogs 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,
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!

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

THE FARMER'S BOY,

WHERE noble Grafton spreads his rich domains, Round Euston's watered vale and sloping plains, Where woods and groves in solemn grandeur rise, Where the kite brooding unmolested flies, The woodcock and the painted pheasant race, And skulking foxes, destined for the chase; There Giles, untaught and unrepining, strayed Through every copse and grove and winding

glade;

No helpmates teach the docile steed his road
(Alike unknown the ploughboy and the goad);
But unassisted, through each toilsome day,
With smiling brow the ploughman cleaves his way,
Draws his fresh parallels, and, widening still,
Treads slow the heavy dale, or climbs the hill.
Strong on the wing his busy followers play,
Where writhing earthworms meet the unwelcome
day,

Till all is changed, and hill and level down
Assume a livery of sober brown;
Again disturbed when Giles with wearying strides
From ridge to ridge the ponderous harrow guides.
His heels deep sinking, every step he goes,
Till dirt adhesive loads his clouted shoes.
Welcome, green headland ! firm beneath his feet:
Welcome, the friendly bank's refreshing seat ;
There, warm with toil, his panting horses browse
Their sheltering canopy of pendent boughs;
Till rest delicious chase each transient pain,
And new-born vigor swell in every vein.
Hour after hour and day to day succeeds,
Till every clod and deep-drawn furrow spreads
To crumbling mould, - a level surface clear,
And strewed with corn to crown the rising year;
And o'er the whole Giles, once transverse again,
In earth's moist bosom buries up the grain.
The work is done; no more to man is given;
The grateful farmer trusts the rest to Heaven.

clined,

That stamps devotion on the inquiring mind.
A little farm his generous master tilled,
Who with peculiar grace his station filled;
By deeds of hospitality endeared,

Served from affection, for his worth revered.
A happy offspring blest his plenteous board,
His fields were fruitful, and his barns well stored,
And fourscore ewes he fed, a sturdy team,
And lowing kine that grazed beside the stream;
Unceasing industry he kept in view,
And never lacked a job for Giles to do.

Fled now the sullen murmurs of the north, The splendid raiment of the Spring peeps forth; Her universal green and the clear sky Delight still more and more the gazing eye. Wide o'er the fields, in rising moisture strong, Shoots up the simple flower, or creeps along The mellowed soil, imbibing fairer hues, Orsweets from frequent showers and evening dews; That summon from their sheds the slumbering ploughs,

While health impregnates every breeze that blows. No wheels support the diving, pointed share; No groaning ox is doomed to labor there;

The clattering dairy-maid immersed in steam, Singing and scrubbing midst her milk and cream, Bawls out, "Go fetch the cows!" he hears no

more;

For pigs and ducks and turkeys throng the door,

And sitting hens for constant war prepared, —
A concert strange to that which late he heard.
Straight to the meadow then he whistling goes;
With well-known halloo calls his lazy cows;
Down the rich pasture heedlessly they graze,
Or hear the summons with an idle gaze;
For well they know the cow-yard yields no more
Its tempting fragrance, nor its wintry store.
Reluctance marks their steps, sedate and slow,
The right of conquest all the law they know;
The strong press on, the weak by turns succeed,
And one superior always takes the lead,
Is ever foremost wheresoe'er they stray,
Allowed precedence, undisputed sway;
With jealous pride her station is maintained,
For many a broil that post of honor gained.
At home, the yard affords a grateful scene,
For spring makes e'en a miry cow-yard clean.
Thence from its chalky bed behold conveyed
The rich manure that drenching winter made,

a weed,

A promised nutriment for autumn's seed.
Forth comes the maid, and like the morning smiles;
The mistress too, and followed close by Giles.
A friendly tripod forms their humble seat,
With pails bright scoured and delicately sweet.
Where shadowing elms obstruct the morning ray
Begins the work, begins the simple lay ;

The full-charged udder yields its willing stream
While Mary sings some lover's amorous dream;
And crouching Giles beneath a neighboring tree
Tugs o'er his pail, and chants with equal glee;
Whose hat with battered brim, of nap so bare,
From the cow's side purloins a coat of hair, --
A mottled ensign of his harmless trade,
An unambitious, peaceable cockade.
As unambitious, too, that cheerful aid
The mistress yields beside her rosy maid ;
With joy she views her plenteous reeking store,
And bears a brimmer to the dairy door.
Her cows dismissed, the luscious mead to roam,
Till eve again recall them loaded home.

Beneath the hammer's potent blows?
Clink, clank! — we forge the giant chain,
Which bears the gallant vessel's strain
Midst stormy winds and adverse tides;
Secured by this, the good ship braves
The rocky roadstead, and the waves
Which thunder on her sides.

Anxious no more, the merchant sees
The mist drive dark before the breeze,
The storm-cloud on the hill;
Calmly he rests, though far away,
In boisterous climes, his vessel lay, —
Reliant on our skill.

Say on what sands these links shall sleep,
Fathoms beneath the solemn deep?
By Afric's pestilential shore;
By many an iceberg, lone and hoar;
By many a balmy western isle,
Basking in spring's perpetual smile;
By stormy Labrador.

Say, shall they feel the vessel reel,
When to the battery's deadly peal
The crashing broadside makes reply;
Or else, as at the glorious Nile,

Hold grappling ships, that strive the while
For death or victory?

Hurrah! -cling, clang!-once more, what glows,

Dark brothers of the forge, beneath

The iron tempest of your blows,

The furnace's red breath?

Clang, clang! - a burning torrent, clear
And brilliant of bright sparks, is poured
Around, and up in the dusky air,
As our hammers forge the sword.

The sword!a name of dread; yet when
Upon the freeman's thigh 't is bound,
While for his altar and his hearth,
While for the land that gave him birth,
The war-druns roll, the trumpets sound, -
How sacred is it then!

Whenever for the truth and right
It flashes in the van of fight,
Whether in some wild mountain pass,
As that where fell Leonidas;
Or on some sterile plain and stern,
A Marston, or a Bannockburn ;
Or amidst crags and bursting rills,
The Switzer's Alps, gray Tyrol's hills;
Or as, when sunk the Armada's pride,
It gleams above the stormy tide,