False were the muse, did she not bring
Our village poet's offering--
Haunts, fields, and groves, weaving his rhymes,
Leaves verse and fame to coming times.
Is it for the reason that rural life here in New England furnishes
nothing for pastoral verse, that our poets have as yet produced so
little? Yet we cannot have had almost three centuries' residence on
this side of the Atlantic, with old England's dialect, traditions, and
customs still current in our rural districts for perspective, not to
have so adorned life and landscape with poetic associations as to have
neither honey nor dew for hiving in sweet and tender verse, though it
should fall short of the antique or British models. Our fields and
rivers, brooks and groves, the rural occupations of country-folk,
have not been undeserving of being celebrated in appropriate verse.
Our forefathers delighted in Revolutionary lore. We celebrate natural
scenery, legends of foreign climes, historic events, but rarely indulge
in touches of simple country life. And the idyls of New England await
their poet, unless the following verses announce his arrival:--