I love this modest little flower;—
It comes in desolation’s hour
The barren landscape’s face
to cheer,
When none beside it dares appear.
Just like the friend, whose brightest
smile
Is spared, our sorrows to beguile;
Who like some angel from the sky,
When needed most, is ever nigh—
To pluck vile slander’s envious
dart
From out the wounded, bleeding heart,
And raise from earth the drooping
head
When all our summer friends are
fled.
And shall these humble pages dare
Presume to ask, if they compare
With that fair, fragrant, precious
gem,
Plucked from cold winter’s
diadem?
’Tis true both struggled into
life,
Through scenes of sorrow, care and
strife;
This poor, frail, intellectual flower
Was reared in no elysian bower.
No ray of fortune on it shone,—
It forced its weary way alone;
Up-springing from the barren sod,
Untilled, save by affliction’s
rod.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: A white, fragrant
flower, the earliest
that appears.—Language.—“I
am not a summer friend.”]
MY BIRTH PLACE
Where “old Blue” mountain’s
healthful breeze
Swept o’er the green
hill-side,
My little fragile bark was launched
On life’s uncertain
tide.
There verdant fields and murm’ring
brooks
Invited me to roam;
Old towering trees their heads upreared
Around my quiet home.
When morn unveiled her blushing
face,
The sun came peeping
in;
His quiv’ring beams upon the
wall,
Checked by the leafy
screen.
Oft in some sweet sequestered dell,
The blushing flow’ret
smiled;
And threw around a pleasing spell,
For me, an artless child.
The fragrant blossom peeping up,
From out the mossy sod,
Caused my young thoughts from earth
to rise
And soar to nature’s
God.
In summer, when I wandered forth,
Beneath the deep green
shade,
Or when mild autumn walked the rounds,
In gorgeous robes arrayed—
Music, in nature’s softest
strains,
Stole through my little
breast;—
’Twas something I could not
define,
Nor could it be expressed.
While some admire the pompous pile,
Or glitt’ring,
costly dome,
I’d gaze upon those ancient
trees,
Round that sweet rural
home.
THE OAK AND THE RILL:
Or, indolent wealth and honest labor.
Composed for the Franklin agricultural society.