Invocation, &c. Seed-time. Harrowing. Morning walks. Milking. The dairy. Suffolk cheese. Spring coming forth. Sheep fond of changing. Lambs at play. The butcher. Sympathy yields to Necessity and Hope. INVOCATION. THE AUTHOR'S INSPIRATION, THE WARMTH OF A HEART FIRED BY SIMPLE, RURAL OBJECTS.-FANCY, TRUTH, AND MEMORY. O COME, blest Spirit! whatsoe'er thou art, Be thou my Muse; and, faithful still to me, And lead my soul to ecstasies of praise GILES, THE FARMER'S BOY, HIS JOYS, SORROWS, AND IDEAS; Live, trifling incidents, and grace my song, "T was thus with GILES: meek, fatherless, and poor : GILES'S HOME AND MASTER. GRAFTON.EUSTON, IN SUFFOLK; SCENES OF GILES'S BOYHOOD. Where noble Grafton spreads his rich domains, GILES'S MASTER; HIS HOUSEHOLD; ESTATE; HABITS. THE COMING OF SPRING; verdure. Or sweets from frequent showers and evening dews; HORSE-PLOUGHING; THE PLOUGHED FIELD BIRDS THAT FOLLOW THE PLOUGH. No wheels support the diving pointed share; No groaning ox is doomed to labor there; No helpmates teach the docile steed his road (Alike unknown the plough-boy and the goad); But, unassisted through each toilsome day, With smiling brow the ploughman cleaves his way, Draws his fresh parallels, and, widening still, Treads slow the heavy dale, or climbs the hill: Strong on the wing his busy followers play, [day; Where writhing earth-worms meet the unwelcome Till all is changed, and hill and level down Assume a livery of sober brown : GILES ENGAGED IN HARROWING AND SOWING. Again disturbed, when Giles with wearying strides From ridge to ridge the ponderous harrow guides; His heels deep sinking every step he goes, Till dirt usurp the empire of his shoes. Welcome, green headland firm beneath his feet; Welcome the friendly bank's refreshing seat; There, warm with toil, his panting horses browse Their sheltering canopy of pendent boughs; Till rest, delicious, chase each transient pain, And new-born vigor swell in every vein. Hour after hour and day to day succeeds; THE FARMER'S TRUST AND HOPES; THE EARLY BLADE. HOW BEST TO GUARD AGAINST THIEVES, ROOKS, AND CROWS; THE BEST SCARECROWS. But still unsafe the big swoln grain below, A favorite morsel with the rook and crow; From field to field the flock increasing goes; To level crops most formidable foes: Their danger well the wary plunderers know, And place a watch on some conspicuous bough; Yet oft the skulking gunner by surprise Will scatter death amongst them as they rise. These, hung in triumph round the spacious field, At best will but a short-lived terror yield: Nor guards of property (not penal law, But harmless riflemen of rags and straw); Familiarized to these, they boldly rove, Nor heed such sentinels that never move. Let, then, your birds lie prostrate on the earth, In dying posture, and with wings stretched forth; Shift them at eve or morn from place to place, And death shall terrify the pilfering race; In the mid air, while circling round and round, They call their lifeless comrades from the ground; With quickening wing, and notes of loud alarm, Warn the whole flock to shun the impending harm. GILES'S WALK AT DAWN; HIS MATINS, AND THOSE Of the MORNING BIRDS; THE BLACKBIRD, WHITE-THROAT, THRUSH. This task had Giles, in fields remote from home; Oft has he wished the rosy morn to come. Yet never famed was he nor foremost found Stopped in her song, perchance, the starting thrush COMPANIONS OF GILES'S MORNING WALK; THE RABBIT, COCK- Or bold cock-pheasant stalked along the road, GILES SENT TO THE MEADOW FOR THE COWS; THEIR LOITERING RETURN. THE MASTER-COW.' His simple errand done, he homeward hies; The clattering dairy-maid immersed in steam, THE COW-YARD IN SPRING. THE MANURE-HEAP.- THE MILK- At home, the yard affords a grateful scene: For Spring makes e'en a miry cow-yard clean. Thence from its chalky bed behold conveyed The rich manure that drenching Winter made, Which, piled near home, grows green with many a A promised nutriment for Autumn's seed. Forth comes the maid, and like the morning smiles; The mistress too, and followed close by Giles. [weed, THE MILKING; THE MILK-MAID'S SEAT, PAILS; SONG. A friendly tripod forms their humble seat, With pails bright scoured, and delicately sweet. Where shadowing elms obstruct the morning ray, THE DAIRY, CHURNING, BUTTER, WHEY, CURDS. As unambitious, too, that cheerful aid The mistress yields beside her rosy maid: With joy she views her plenteous reeking store, And bears a brimmer to the dairy door; Her cows dismissed, the luscious mead to roam, Till eve again recall them loaded home. And now the dairy claims her choicest care, And half her household find employment there: Slow rolls the churn, its load of clogging cream At once foregoes its quality and name; From knotty particles first floating wide Congealing butter's dashed from side to side; Streams of new milk through flowing coolers stray, And snow-white curd abounds, and wholesome whey. Due north the unglazed windows, cold and clear, For warming sunbeams are unwelcome here. GILES, A SERVANT OF ALL WORK; HOGS; CHICKENS. Brisk goes the work beneath each busy hand, And Giles must trudge, whoever gives command; A Gibeonite, that serves them all by turns: He drains the pump, from him the fagot burns; From him the noisy hogs demand their food; While at his heels run many a chirping brood, Or down his path in expectation stand, With equal claims upon his strewing hand. Thus wastes the morn, till each with pleasure sees The bustle o'er, and pressed the new-made cheese. SUFFOLK SKIM-MILK CHEESE, LONDON THE GRAVE OF PROVISIONS; ITS MARKET AND SUPPLIES. Unrivalled stands thy country cheese, O Giles! Whose very name alone engenders smiles; Whose fame abroad by every tongue is spoke, The well-known butt of many a flinty joke, That pass like current coin the nation through ; And, ah! experience proves the satire true. Provision's grave, thou ever-craving mart, Dependent, huge Metropolis! where Art Her pouring thousands stows in breathless rooms, Midst pois'nous smokes and steams, and rattling Where grandeur revels in unbounded stores; [looms; Restraint, a slighted stranger at their doors! Thou, like a whirlpool, drain'st the countries round, Till London market, London price, resound Through every town, round every passing load, And dairy produce throngs the eastern road : Delicious veal, and butter, every hour, From Essex lowlands, and the banks of Stour; And further far, where numerous herds repose, From Orwell's brink, from Weveny, or Ouse. DESCRIPTION OF THE MANUFACTURE AND QUALITIES OF SKIMMILK CHEESE. Hence Suffolk dairy-wives run mad for cream, And leave their milk with nothing but its name; Its name derision and reproach pursue, And strangers tell of three times skimmed sky-blue.' Neglected now the early daisy lies: Nor thou, pale primrose, bloom'st the only prize : GILES A SHEPHERD; HIS SHEEP FEEDING. A VARIETY OF 1 Suffolk, a county in the eastern part of England, with the North Sea east, Norfolk north, Essex south, and Cambridgeshire west; population in 1851, 337,000. High fences, proud to charm the gazing eye, SYMPATHY WITH INNOCENCE; PLEASURE IN THE GAMBOLS Say, ye that know, ye who have felt and seen Spring's morning smiles, and soul-enlivening green, Say, did you give the thrilling transport way? Did your eye brighten, when young lambs at play Leaped o'er your path with animated pride, Or gazed in merry clusters by your side? Ye who can smile, to wisdom no disgrace, At the arch meaning of a kitten's face; If spotless innocence, and infant mirth, Excites to praise, or gives reflection birth; In shades like these pursue your favorite joy, Midst Nature's revels, sports that never cloy. LAMBKINS AT PLAY. A few begin a short but vigorous race, LAMBS, LIKE SPRING FLORETS, DESTINED TO EARLY DEATH. Pastorals for April. VIRGIL'S "TITYRUS AND MELIBUS." A BUCOLIC. TRANSLATED FROM THE LATIN BY DRYDEN. ARGUMENT. The occasion of this first pastoral was this: When Augustus had settled himself in the Roman empire, that he might reward his veteran troops for their past service, he distributed among them all the lands that lay about Cremona and Mantua,- turning out the right owners for having sided with his enemies. Virgil was a sufferer among the rest, who afterwards recovered his estate by Mecanas's intercession, and, as an instance of his gratitude, composed the following pastoral, where he sets out his own good fortune in the person of Tityrus, and the calamities of his Mantuan neighbors in the character of Melibus. MELIBUS. BENEATH the shade which beechen boughs diffuse, You, Tityrus, entertain your sylvan muse; Round the wide world in banishment we roam, Forced from our pleasing fields and native home; While, stretched at ease, you sing your happy loves; And Amaryllis fills the shady groves. TITYRUS. These blessings, friend, a deity bestowed ; For never can I deem him less than god. The tender firstlings of my woolly breed Shall on his holy altar often bleed. He gave my kine to graze the flow'ry plain, And to my pipe renewed the rural strain. MELIBEUS. I envy not your fortune, but admire, That while the raging sword and wasteful fire Destroy the wretched neighborhood around, No hostile arms approach your happy ground. Far different is my fate; my feeble goats With pains I drive from their forsaken cots; And this you see I scarcely drag along, Who yeaning on the rocks has left her young (The hope and promise of my failing fold). My loss, by dire portents, the gods foretold ; For, had I not been blind, I might have seen Yon riven oak, the fairest of the green, And the hoarse raven, on the blasted bough, By croaking from the left presaged the coming blow. But tell me, Tityrus, what heavenly power Preserved your fortunes in that fatal hour? TITYRUS. Fool that I was! I thought imperial Rome Like Mantua, where on market-days we come, And thither drive our tender lambs from home. So kids and whelps their sires and dams express; And so the great I measured by the less. MELIBUS. What great occasion called you hence to Rome? TITY RUS. Freedom, which came at length, though slow to Nor did my search of liberty begin, [come. Till my black hairs were changed upon my chin: Nor Amaryllis would vouchsafe a look, Till Galatea's meaner bonds I broke. Till then a helpless, hopeless, homely swain, I sought not freedom, nor aspired to gain ; Though many a victim from my folds was bought, And many a cheese to country markets brought, Yet all the little that I got I spent, And still returned as empty as I went. MELIBUS. We stood amazed to see your mistress mourn; Unknowing that she pined for your return: We wondered why she kept her fruit so long, For whom so late the ungathered apples hung. But now the wonder ceases, since I see She kept them only, Tityrus, for thee. For thee the bubbling springs appeared to mourn, And whispering pines made vows for thy return. TITYRUS. What should I do? while here I was enchained; No glimpse of godlike liberty remained; Nor could I hope in any place but there To find a god so present to my prayer. There first the youth of heavenly birth I viewed, For whom our monthly victims are renewed. He heard my vows, and graciously decreed My grounds to be restored, my former flocks to feed. MELIBUS. [fields, O, fortunate old man! whose farm remains For you sufficient, and requites your pains, Though rushes overspread the neighboring plains. Though here the marshy grounds approach your And there the soil a stony harvest yields. Your teeming ewes shall no strange meadows try, Nor fear a rot from tainted company. Behold, yon bordering fence of sallow trees [bees; Is fraught with flowers, the flowers are fraught with The busy bees, with a soft, murmuring strain, Invite to gentle sleep the laboring swain ; While from the neighboring rock, with rural songs, The pruner's voice the pleasing dream prolongs; |