Читать книгу The Life, Travels, and Literary Career of Bayard Taylor онлайн

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And the garden-beds, as smooth as a counterpane is laid,

Were dotted and striped with green, where the peas and the radishes grew,

With elecampane at the foot, and comfrey, and sage, and rue.

From the knoll where stood the house, the fair fields pleasantly rolled,

To dells where the laurels hung, and meadows of buttercup gold.”

Such was the farm when he left it, in words of the poet’s choosing, and what he found when, after a quarter of a century of wanderings, he can best describe.

“Here are the fields again, the soldierly maize in tassel

Stands on review, and carries the scabbarded ears in its armpits.

Rustling, I part the ranks,—the close, engulfing battalions

Shaking their plumes overhead,—and, wholly bewildered and heated,

Gain the top of the ridge, where stands, colossal, the pin-oak.

Yonder, a mile away, I see the roofs of the village,—

See the crouching front of the meeting-house of the Quakers,

Oddly conjoined with the whittled Presbyterian steeple.

Right and left are the homes of the slow, conservative farmers,