Classic Poem

INTRODUCTORY TO " SONGS OF NATURE AND LOVE "

On history's page their names do not shine,
For humble and peaceful were they,
And yet I can see their long, long line
Stretching back through the ages gray.
Yes, here in the ancient iron-rich land
They tilled their fields by the river-strand
And smelted the ore in their day.
Neither thralldom nor pomp could they understand,
But, dwelling each like a king in his house,
They quaffed at their festal carouse.
They kissed their sweethearts in springtime's pride,
As husbands their faith they revered,
The king they honored and God they feared,
And calmly they died, satisfied.

My fathers! — in grief, in temptation's hour
I 'm strengthened by thoughts of you.
As you could cherish your lowly dower,
I will smile, though my goods be few.
When Pleasure beckoned with vine-wreathed head,
I thought of your fight for your scanty bread:
Should I covet more than my due?
You revived my soul like a river-bath
When I wearied of battling with lust,
And taught that my flesh I should rather distrust
Than the world and the Evil One's wrath.
I see you in dreams, ye sires of my race,
And my soul becomes faint and afraid;
Like a plant I've been torn from my sprouting-place
And I feel that your cause I 've betrayed.
I 'll tell now of summer and harvest-time
With a merry turn in the play of the rhyme;
'T is the task of a poet to sing.
And should any poem of mine recall
The surge of the storm, the cataract's fall,
Some thought with a manly ring,
A lark's note, the glow of the heath, somehow,
Or the sigh of the woodland vast, —
You sang in silence through ages past
That song by your cart and your plough.