And yet not idly all. A farmer's son, Proud of field-lore and harvest craft, and feeling All their fine possibilities, how rich And restful even poverty and toil Become when beauty, harmony, and love Sit at their humble hearth as angels sat At evening in the patriarch's tent, when man Makes labor noble, and his farmer's frock The symbol of a Christian chivalry Tender and just and generous to her Who clothes with grace all duty; still, I know Too well the picture has another side,-- How wearily the grind of toil goes on Where love is wanting, how the eye and ear And heart are starved amidst the plenitude Of nature, and how hard and colorless Is life without an atmosphere. I look Across the lapse of half a century, And call to mind old homesteads, where no flower Told that the spring had come, but evil weeds, Nightshade and rough-leaved burdock in the place Of the sweet doorway greeting of the rose And honeysuckle, where the house walls seemed Blistering in sun, without a tree or vine To cast the tremulous shadow of its leaves Across the curtainless windows, from whose panes Fluttered the signal rags of shiftlessness. Within, the cluttered kitchen-floor, unwashed (Broom-clean I think they called it); the best room Stifling with cellar damp, shut from the air In hot midsummer, bookless, pictureless, Save the inevitable sampler hung Over the fireplace, or a mourning piece, A green-haired woman, peony-cheeked, beneath Impossible willows; the wide-throated hearth Bristling with faded pine-boughs half concealing The piled-up rubbish at the chimney's back; And, in sad keeping with all things about them, Shrill, querulous-women, sour and sullen men, Untidy, loveless, old before their time, With scarce a human interest save their own Monotonous round of small economies, Or the poor scandal of the neighborhood; Blind to the beauty everywhere revealed, Treading the May-flowers with regardless feet; For them the song-sparrow and the bobolink Sang not, nor winds made music in the leaves; For them in vain October's holocaust Burned, gold and crimson, over all the hills, The sacramental mystery of the woods. Church-goers, fearful of the unseen Powers, But grumbling over pulpit-tax and pew-rent, Saving, as shrewd economists, their souls And winter pork with the least possible outlay Of salt and sanctity; in daily life Showing as little actual comprehension Of Christian charity and love and duty, As if the Sermon on the Mount had been Outdated like a last year's almanac Rich in broad woodlands and in half-tilled fields, And yet so pinched and bare and comfortless, The veriest straggler limping on his rounds, The sun and air his sole inheritance, Laughed at a poverty that paid its taxes, And hugged his rags in self-complacency!