Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18.djvu/196

188 But round the borders of the land

Dwell many neighbors, fond of roving;

With curious eye and prying hand

About my fields I see them moving.

Some tread my choicest herbage down,

And some of weeds would weave a crown,

And bid me wear it, unreproving.

"What trees!" says one; "whoever saw

A grove, like this, of my possessing?

This vale offends my upland's law;

This sheltered garden needs suppressing.

My rocks this grass would never yield,

And how absurd the level field!

What here will grow is past my guessing."

"Behold the slope!" another cries:

"No sign of bog or meadow near it!

A varied surface I despise:

There's not a stagnant pool to cheer it!"

"Why plough at all?" remarked a third,

"Heaven help the man!" a fourth I heard,—

"His farm's a jungle: let him clear it!"

No friendly counsel I disdain:

My fields are free to every comer;

Yet that, which one to praise is fain,

But makes another's visage glummer.

I bow them out, and welcome in,

But while I seek some truth to win

Goes by, unused, the golden summer!

Ah! vain the hope to find in each

The wisdom each denies the other;

These mazes of conflicting speech

All theories of culture smother.

I'll raise and reap, with honest hand,

The native harvest of my land;

Do thou the same, my wiser brother!