Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14.djvu/31

1864.] Amid what friendly greetings and caresses,

What households, though not alien, yet not mine,

What bowers of rest divine;

To what temptations in lone wildernesses,

What famine of the heart, what pain and loss,

The bearing of what cross!

I do not know; nor will I vainly question

Those pages of the mystic book which hold

The story still untold,

But without rash conjecture or suggestion

Turn its last leaves in reverence and good heed,

Until "The End" I read.

" the wealthy and great

Roll in splendor and state,

I envy them not, I declare it;

I eat my own lamb,

My own chickens and ham,

I shear my own fleece, and I wear it;

I have lawns, I have bowers,

I have fruits, I have flowers,

The lark is my morning alarmer;

So, jolly boys, now.

Here's God speed the plough,

Long life and success to the farmer!"

So sings a certain venerable pitcher its untiring song. A brave pitcher it was in its day. A well-ordered farm lies along its swelling sides. A purple man merrily drives his purple team afield. Gold and purple milkmaids are milking purple and golden cows. Young boys bind the ripened sheaves, or bear mugs of foaming cider to the busy hay-makers, with artistic defiance of chronology. There are ploughs and harrows, hoes and spades, beehives and poultry-houses, all in the best repair, and all resplendent in purple and gold. Alas! Ilium fuit. The gold is become dim, the purple is dingy, the lucent whiteness has gone gray; a very large, brown, zigzag fissure has rent its volcanic path through the happy home, dividing the fair garden, cutting the plough in two, narrowly escaping the ploughman; and, indeed, the whole structure is saved from violent disruption only by the unrelaxing clasp of a string of blue yarn. Thus passes away the glory of the world!

Is it not too often typical of the glory of our rural dreams? To live in the country; to lie on green lawns, or under bowers of roses and honeysuckle; to watch the procession of the flowers, and bind upon our brows the sweetest and the fairest; to take largess of all the fruits in their season; to be entirely independent of the world, dead to its din, alive only to its beauty; to feed upon butter and honey, and feast upon strawberries and cream, all found within your own garden-wall; to be wakened by the lark, and lulled asleep by the cricket; to hear the tinkling of the cow-bell as you walk, and to smell the new-mown hay: surely we have found Arcadia at last. Cast away day-book and ledger, green bag and yardstick; let us go straightway into the country and buy a farm.

But before the deeds are actually delivered, before your feet have finally deserted the pavement to make life-long acquaintance with the dew, it will be worth while to ascertain whether the pitcher's word is as good as its bond. If