Scratching a match to light his pipe anew,
With eyes half shut some musing whiffs he drew
And thus began:  ’I give you all my word,
I think this mock-Decameron absurd;
Boccaccio’s garden! how bring that to pass
In our bleak clime save under double glass? 70
The moral east-wind of New England life
Would snip its gay luxuriance like a knife;
Mile-deep the glaciers brooded here, they say,
Through aeons numb; we feel their chill to-day. 
These foreign plants are but half-hardy still,
Die on a south, and on a north wall chill. 
Had we stayed Puritans! They had some heat,
(Though whence derived I have my own conceit,)
But you have long ago raked up their fires;
Where they had faith, you’ve ten sham-Gothic spires. 80
Why more exotics?  Try your native vines,
And in some thousand years you may have wines;
Your present grapes are harsh, all pulps and skins,
And want traditions of ancestral bins
That saved for evenings round the polished board
Old lava fires, the sun-steeped hillside’s hoard. 
Without a Past, you lack that southern wall
O’er which the vines of Poesy should crawl;
Still they’re your only hope:  no midnight oil
Makes up for virtue wanting in the soil; 90
Manure them well and prune them; ’twon’t be France,
Nor Spain, nor Italy, but there’s your chance. 
You have one story-teller worth a score
Of dead Boccaccios,—­nay, add twenty more,—­
A hawthorn asking spring’s most dainty breath,
And him you’re freezing pretty well to death. 
However, since you say so, I will tease
My memory to a story by degrees,
Though you will cry, “Enough!” I’m wellnigh sure,
Ere I have dreamed through half my overture. 100
Stories were good for men who had no books,
(Fortunate race!) and built their nests like rooks
In lonely towers, to which the Jongleur brought
His pedler’s-box of cheap and tawdry thought,
With here and there a fancy fit to see
Wrought in quaint grace in golden filigree,—­
Some ring that with the Muse’s finger yet
Is warm, like Aucassin and Nicolete;
The morning newspaper has spoilt his trade,
(For better or for worse, I leave unsaid,) 110
And stories now, to suit a public nice,
Must be half epigram, half pleasant vice.

’All tourists know Shebagog County:  there
The summer idlers take their yearly stare,
Dress to see Nature In a well-bred way,
As ’twere Italian opera, or play,
Encore the sunrise (if they’re out of bed). 
And pat the Mighty Mother on the head: 
These have I seen,—­all things are good to see.—­
And wondered much at their complacency. 120
This world’s great show, that took in getting-up
Millions of years, they finish ere they sup;
Sights that God gleams through with soul-tingling force
They glance approvingly as things of course. 
Say, “That’s a grand rock,” “This