“In our swift country, houses trim and white Are pitched like tents, the lodging of a night; Each on its bank of baked turf mounted high Perches impatient o’er the roadside dry, While the wronged landscape coldly stands aloof, Refusing friendship with the upstart roof. Not so the Eagle; on a grass-green swell That toward the south with sweet concessions fell It dwelt retired, and half had grown to be As aboriginal as rock or tree. It nestled close to earth, and seemed to brood O’er homely thoughts in a half-conscious mood, As by the peat that rather fades than burns The smouldering grandam nods and knits by turns, Happy, although her newest news were old Ere the first hostile drum at Concord rolled. If paint it e’er had known, it knew no more Than yellow lichens spattered thickly o’er That soft lead-gray, less dark beneath the eaves Which the slow brush of wind and weather leaves. The ample roof sloped backward to the ground, And vassal lean-tos gathered thickly round, Patched on, as sire or son had felt the need, Like chance growths sprouting from the old roof’s seed, Just as about a yellow-pine-tree spring Its rough-barked darlings in a filial ring. But the great chimney was the central thought Whose gravitation through the cluster wrought; For ’tis not styles far-fetched from Greece or Rome, But just the Fireside, that can make a home; None of your spindling things of modern style, Like pins stuck through to stay the card-built pile, It rose broad-shouldered, kindly, debonair, Its warm breath whitening in the October air, While on its front a heart in outline showed The place it filled in that serene abode.