But this is only a farmer’s criticism,—­a Crispin feeling the bunions on some Phidian statue.  And do I think the less of Goldsmith, because he wantoned with the literalism of the country, and laid on his prismatic colors of romance where only white light lay?  Not one whit.  It only shows how Genius may discard utter faithfulness to detail, if only its song is charged with a general simplicity and truthfulness that fill our ears and our hearts.

As for Goldsmith’s verse, who does not love it?  It is wicked to consume the pages of a magazine with extracts from a poem that is our daily food, else I would string them all down this column and the next, and every one should have a breezy reminder of the country in it.  Not all the arts of all the modernists,—­not “Maud,” with its garden-song,—­not the caged birds of Killingworth, singing up and down the village-street,—­not the heather-bells out of which the springy step of Jean Ingelow crushes perfume,—­shall make me forget the old, sweet, even flow of the “Deserted Village.”

Down with it, my boy, from the third shelf!  G-O-L-D-S-M-I-T-H—­a worker in gold—­is on the back.

And I sit reading it to myself, as a fog comes weltering in from the sea, covering all the landscape, save some half-dozen of the city-spires, which peer above the drift-like beacons.

* * * * *

THE REAPER’S DREAM.

    The road was lone; the grass was dank
    With night-dews on the briery bank
    Whereon a weary reaper sank. 
    His garb was old,—­his visage tanned;
    The rusty sickle in his hand
    Could find no work in all the land.

    He saw the evening’s chilly star
    Above his native vale afar;
    A moment on the horizon’s bar
    It hung,—­then sank as with a sigh: 
    And there the crescent moon went by,
    An empty sickle down the sky.

    To soothe his pain, Sleep’s tender palm
    Laid on his brow its touch of balm,—­
    His brain received the slumberous calm;
    And soon, that angel without name,
    Her robe a dream, her face the same,
    The giver of sweet visions, came.

    She touched his eyes:  no longer sealed,
    They saw a troop of reapers wield
    Their swift blades in a ripened field: 
    At each thrust of their snowy sleeves,
    A thrill ran through the future sheaves,
    Bustling like rain on forest-leaves.

    They were not brawny men who bowed
    With harvest-voices rough and loud,
    But spirits moving as a cloud: 
    Like little lightnings in their hold,
    The silver sickles manifold
    Slid musically through the gold.

    Oh, bid the morning-stars combine
    To match the chorus clear and fine
    That rippled lightly down the line,—­
    A cadence of celestial rhyme,
    The language of that cloudless clime,
    To which their shining hands kept time!