C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Bloomfield

Build me a shrine, and I could kneel

To rural Gods, or prostrate fall;

Did I not see, did I not feel,

That one Great Spirit governs all.

O heaven, permit that I may lie

Where o’er my corse green branches wave;

And those who from life’s tumults fly

With kindred feelings press my grave.

But how unlike to April’s closing days!

High climbs the sun, and darts his powerful rays;

Whitens the fresh drawn mould and pierces through

The cumbrous clods that tumble round the plough.

Dear Ellen, your tales are all plenteously stored,

With the joy of some bride and the wealth of her lord,

Of her chariots and dresses,

And worldly caresses,

And servants that fly when she’s waited upon:

But what can she boast if she weds unbeloved?

Can she e’er feel the joy that one morning I proved,

When I put on my new gown and waited for John?

Fled now the sullen murmurs of the North,

The splendid raiment of the Spring peeps forth.

Still Twilight, welcome! Rest, how sweet art thou!

Now eve o’erhangs the western cloud’s thick brow;

The far-stretch’d curtain of retiring light,

With fiery treasures fraught; that on the sight

Flash from its bulging sides, where darkness lowers,

In Fancy’s eye, a chain of mould’ring tow’rs;

Or craggy coasts just rising into view,

Midst jav’lins dire and darts of streaming blue.

Strange to the world, he wore a bashful look,

The fields his study, nature was his book.

The kindly intercourse will ever prove

A bond of amity and social love.

The lessons of prudence have charms,

And slighted, may lead to distress;

But the man whom benevolence warms

Is an angel who lives but to bless.

Unsparing as the scourge of war,

Blasts follow blasts, and groves dismantled roar.

When now, unsparing as the scourge of war,

Blasts follow blasts and groves dismantled roar;

Around their home the storm-pinched cattle lows,

No nourishment in frozen pasture grows;

Yet frozen pastures every morn resound

With fair abundance thund’ring to the ground.

Proud-crested fiend, the world’s worst foe, ambition.

Strange to the world, he wore a bashful look; the field his study, Nature was his book.

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