Here we are, then, in the midst of various domestic animals. Yonder, a couple of black colts are chasing each other in play, while their venerable mother (for they are brothers, though not twins) is standing a little way off, watching their antics, and twisting about her ears, as she remembers the happy days of her own colthood. Here are some half dozen hearty cows, lying down and grazing, each one with a “pledge of affection” sporting about her. There are six or eight oxen, eating away as fast as they can, while one, who seems to be a sentinel, occasionally rolls up his eye to see if the farmer is coming to renew his song of “haw! gee! gee! haw!” Under the shadow of that old oak is a flock of sheep, with their lambs bounding beside them, as to the “tabor’s sound;” but to me there comes no “thought of grief” at the sight, wherein I must be suffered to disagree with Wordsworth, to whom I have already alluded once or twice, and whose celebrated and most wonderful Ode has been echoing in my heart all the day long. Some of the lines in it are appropriate to the day, the charms of which I am attempting to make you feel, reader, and you will oblige me by reading and inwardly digesting, the following fragments of a whole, and yet really complete poems:—
“The winds come to me from the fields of sleep.”
“And the babe leaps up on his mother’s arm.”
“Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own.”
“Full soon thy soul shalt have her earthly freight, And custom lie upon thee with a weight, Heavy as fate, and deep almost as life.”
“O joy, that in our embers Is something that doth live, That nature yet remembers What was so fugitive.”
“To me, the meanest flower that blows, can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”
Strange, that a rational man, after dwelling upon such poetry, should be willing to go into a poultry-yard. But why not? I would rather do this willingly than be compelled, as I have been, and may be again, to hear a man say, after reading to him Wordsworth’s great Ode—“Why! of what use is such stuff? what does it prove? will it furnish a man with bread and butter? will it make the pot boil?” The people of the poultry-yard have been in such glee to-day, and contributed so much to the gladness of the day, that I must pay them a passing tribute.