Page:What cheer, or, Roger Williams in banishment (1896).pdf/129

 XI.

His cottage finished, he proceeds to rear A strong rude paling round that verdant glade His field and garden soon will flourish there, And wild marauders may their fruits invade; His maize may be a banquet for the bear, And herds of deer may on his herbage tread; But little thinks he that intruders worse Than these will enter and his labors curse.

XII.

Now milder spring ushers its April showers, And up fair Seekonk woos the southern breeze; The birds are singing in their woodland bowers, Green grows the ground and budding are the trees The purple violets and wild strawberry flowers Invite the visits of the murmuring bees; And down the glade the twittering swallow slips, And in the stream her nimble pinions dips.

XIII.

And now, with vigor and redoubled haste, Our Founder delves to plant the foodful maize; He turns the glebe, does nature's rankness waste, The boscage burn, and noxious brambles raze; Then o'er the seed, on earth's brown bosom placed, The fertile mould with careful hand he lays; Nor yet content,—still labors, other whiles, The glade to gladden with a garden's smiles.

XIV.

Then in the woods he carved the deep alcove, And led the climbing vines from tree to tree; But near the cottage left the birchen grove, Its tassels waving in the breezes free;