Classic Poem

Thy entry is a pleasant field,
Which some mossy fruit trees yield
Partly to a ruddy brook,
By gliding musquash undertook,
And mercurial trout
Darting about.

Cell of seclusion,
Haunt of old time,
Rid of confusion,
Empty of crime,
Landscape! where the richest element
Is a little sunshine innocent;
In thy insidious marsh,
In thy cold opaque wood,
Thy artless meadow,
And forked orchard's writhing mood,
Still Baker Farm!
There lies in them a fourfold charm.

Alien art thou to God and Devil!
Man too forsakes thee,
No one runs to revel
On thy rail-fenced lea,
Save gleaning Silence gray-headed,
Who drains the frozen apple red,
Thin jar of winter's jam,
Which he will with gipsy sugar cram.

And here a Poet builded,
In the completed years,
For behold a trivial cabin
That to destruction steers.
Should we judge it was built?
Rather by kind nature spilt
To interfere with circumstance,
And put a comma to the verse
And west trends blue Fairhaven bay,
O'er whose stained rocks the white pines sway,
And south slopes Nobscot grand,
And north the still Cliffs stand.

Pan of unwrinkled cream,
May some Poet dash thee in his church,
And with thy beauty mad,
Verse thee in rhymes that burn;
Thy beauty,—the beauty of Baker Farm!
In the drying field,
And the knotty tree,
In hassock and bield,
And marshes at sea!

Thou art expunged from to-day,
Rigid in parks of thy own,
Where soberly shifts the play,
And the wind sighs in monotone.
Debate with no man hast thou,
With questions art never perplexed,
As tame at the first sight as now,
In thy plain, russet gabardine dressed.

I would hint et thy religion,
Hadst thou any,
Piny fastness of wild pigeon,
Squirrel's litany,
Never thumbed a gilt Prayer Book,
Here the cawing, sable rook!

Art thou orphan of a deed,
Title that a court can read,
Or dost thou stand
For the entertaining land,
That no man owns,
Pure grass and stones?

Idleness is in the preaching.
Simpleness is all the teaching,
Churches in the steepled woods,
Galleries in green solitudes,
Fretted never by a noise,
Eloquence that each enjoys.

Here humanity may trow,
It is fensible to slough

The corollary of the village,
Lies, thefts, clothes, meats, and tillage!
Come, ye who love,
And ye who hate,
Children of the Holy Dove,
And Guy Faux of the State,
And hang conspiracies,
From the tough rafters of the trees!

Still Baker Farm!
So fair a lesson thou dost set,
Commensurately wise,
Lesson no one may forget.
Consistent sanctity,
Value that cannot be spent,
Volume that cannot be lent,
Passable to me and thee,
For Heaven thou art meant!