What memories are yours!  What tales
  Of triumph have your tongues rehearsed,
  Telling how ye have won your first
  Potatoes from the stubborn mead,
  (Almost as many as ye sowed for seed!)
  And how the luscious cabbages and kails
  Have bloomed before you in their bed
  At seven dollars a head! 
  And how your onions took a prize
  For bringing tears into the eyes
  Of a hard-hearted cook!  And how ye slew
  The Dragon Cut-worm at a stroke! 
        And how ye broke,
  Routed, and put to flight the horrid crew
  Of vile potato-bugs and Hessian flies! 
       And how ye did not quail
  Before th’ invading armies of San Jose Scale,
      But met them bravely with your little pail
      Of poison, which ye put upon each tail
  O’ the dreadful beasts and made their courage fail! 
        And how ye did acquit yourselves like men
        In fields of agricultural strife, and then,
        Like generous warriors, sat you down at ease
        And gently to your gardener said, “Let us have Pease!”

  But were there Pease?  Ah, no, dear Farmers, no! 
  The course of Nature is not ordered so. 
      For when we want a vegetable most,
          She holds it back;
          And when we boast
      To our week-endly friends
      Of what we’ll give them on our farm, alack,
  Those things the old dam, Nature, never sends.

  O Pease in bottles, Sparrow-grass in jars,
  How often have ye saved from scars
  Of shame, and deep embarrassment,
  The disingenuous farmer-gent,
      To whom some wondering guest has cried,
      “How do you raise such Pease and Sparrow-grass?”
      Whereat the farmer-gent has not denied
      The compliment, but smiling has replied,
      “To raise such things you must have lots of glass.”

  From wiles like these, true Farmers, hold aloof;
  Accept no praise unless you have the proof. 
  If niggard Nature should withhold the green
  And sugary Pea, welcome the humble Bean. 
  Even the easy Radish, and the Beet,
  If grown by your own toil are extra sweet. 
  Let malefactors of great wealth and banker-felons
  Rejoice in foreign artichokes, imported melons;
  But you, my Farmers, at your frugal board
  Spread forth the fare your Sabine Farms afford. 
  Say to Maecenas, when he is your guest,
  “No peaches! try this turnip, ’tis my best.” 
  Thus shall ye learn from labors in the field
  What honesty a farmer’s life may yield,
  And like G. Washington in early youth,
  Though cherries fail, produce a crop of truth.

  But think me not too strict, O followers of the plough;
  Some place for fiction in your lives I would allow. 
  In January when the world is drear,
  And bills come in, and no results appear,
      And snow-storms veil the skies,