Page:The Hasty-Pudding.djvu/17

Rh :Now the strong foliage bears the standards high, And shoots the tall top-gallants to the sky; The suckling ears their silky fringes bend, And pregnant grown, their swelling coats distend; The loaded stalk, while still the burthen grows, O’erhangs the space that runs between the rows; High as a hop-field waves the silent grove, A safe retreat for little thefts of love, When the pledg’d roasting-ears invite the maid, To meet her swain beneath the new-form’d shade; His gen’rous hand unloads the cumbrous hill, And the green spoils her ready basket fill; Small compensation for the twofold bliss, The promised wedding, and the present kiss.


 * Slight depredations these; but now the moon

Calls from his hollow tree the sly raccoon; And while by night he bears his prize away, The bolder squirrel labours thro’ the day. Both thieves alike, but provident of time, A virtue, rare, that almost hides their crime. Then let them steal the little stores they can, And fill their gran’ries from the toils of man; We’ve one advantage where they take no part,— With all their wiles they ne’er have found the art To boil the Hasty-Pudding; here we shine Superior far to tenants of the pine; This envied boon to man shall still belong, Unshar’d by them in substance or in song.


 * At last the closing season browns the plain,

And ripe October gathers in the grain; Deep-loaded carts the spacious corn-house fill, The sack distended marches to the mill; The lab’ring mill beneath the burthen groans, And showers the future pudding from the stones; Till the glad house-wife greets the powder’d gold, And the new crop exterminates the old.

To the glad swain proclaims his day’s work done,