When Love Came Back
Young Love was such a torment
I hid from him my face,
And scorned, and drove him from me
In bitter, deep disgrace.
He fled my primrose garden,
His heart was wounded sore-
I heard him moan, in undertone:
'I will return no more!'
But Love his vow repented,
And came, reluctant back;
I think somebody led him
Along the primrose track;
His face was at my lattice,
His cheek was white and thin;
He spoke in such a pleading way
I could but let him in.
Now Love is such a comfort
I would not have him go
For all the shining treasures
That Fortune can bestow.
And, since his sweet returning,
I bless, with grateful sense,
The day he came, the way he came,
The hand that led him hence.
The Ideal Farmer
The Farmer is the lord of lands,
The birth-right baron of the soil,
Although the callous-badge of toil
He wears upon his brawny hands.
Woods, fields and streams, are his demesne,
The open sky his temple-dome-
The altar of his love the home
Where rules the priestess and the queen.
Like all of Nature's worshippers,
He finds her treasures at his feet,
And feels her warm life-pulses beat,
And makes his life a part of hers.
As Dawn unbars the gates of day,
To ope the highway of the king,
He wakens when the sparrows sing,
And rises with the robin's lay.
He traces in the mellow mold,
Where'er his gleaming plowshare runs
Dark lines for summer rains and suns
To print in characters of gold.
His wheat-fields glow like skies of morn,
And pasture-lands, and meadows green,
And fruitful orchards intervene,
Encircled by the bannered corn.
He watches, as the days go by-
Like grenadiers in single file-
The blossoms blow, the valleys smile;
Or notes the tumult of the sky-
The lightning trim with fiery braid
The foldings of a mantle-cloud,
And thunders rolling far and loud,
Like echoes of a cannonade.
With rosy health, and wealth increased,
The fairest fruits before him spread,
He sits at table at the head-
The proud Macgregor of the feast.
Good genii for him conspire
To foil the troubles that annoy,
And press the wine of every joy
Into the cup of his desire.
The pent up dwellers in the town-
That theater of petty strife-
Know little how his larger life
Keeps many a brood of follies down.
And so I hold, and justly call
This sturdy, independent man
The foremost in the social plan-
The helper, and the hope of all.
