A COUNTRY LIFE.

Southland Times, Issue 1525, 16 January 1872, Page 3

A COUNTRY LIFE.

By John G. Smith. Let other poets — pale-faced cits — In rhyming rack their feckless wits, And sing in praise of city life — Its apish modes and civic strife — Its mayors high, its councillors great — Its upper tens, its empty state — Its coteries and tawdry joys — Irs tinsel show and base alloys ; My pen let higher themes employ, Contentment, peace, and harmless joy ; For these I long — from those I flee — A rural life's tiie life for me. I lore to roam at gloaming tide, By tmirin'ring rill or greenwood's side, And see the sun's departing glow Enrobe with gold the world below, Whore purling brook in devious way Iks anthmn sings at close of day, Where fi-uvers in rainbow colors drest, Fold up their dewy leaves to rest, Where softly sighs the evening breeze 'Mid leci'y shrubs and stately trees, Till o'er the scene the shadows creep, An 1 Nature shuts her eyes to sleep, 'Mid joys like these I'd wander free — A rural life's tho life for me. I love — when Nature wakes again, And smiles o'er hill and holt and plain, To walk abroad and hear the sound Of glee and gladness all around ; Wbere sportive lambkins frisk aud play, Rejoicing in the new born day, Where peace and sweet contentment reign, And Eden's beauties bloom again ; Where ilow'rets wet with blobs of dew Uplift their eyes and crests of blue ; Where go wans star the em'rald lea — A rural life's the life for inc. I love to roam, when virgin Spring, With gladness make 3 the welkin ring, And frees from Winter's icy chain The beauteous forms of earth again ; When Summer comes with robes of green And charms the evervarving scene ; When stately Autumn treads the plain, And turns to gold the waving grain — When fruit hangs mellow on the tree — A rural life's the life for me. When Winter sends his fleecy snows, And Boreas loud hia trumpet blows— When Nature's desolate and lone, And all her changeful beauties gone, How sweet in some sequestered cot From City's vain turmoils remote, To range in merry circle wide Around the blazing ingle's side, The hoary sire — the matron mild — The smiling youth — the pluyful child — And wake with innocence and gtee, The deathless tones of minstrelsy, And stir the bosom's inmost core With lays we loved in days of yore ; O grant that I that sire may be — A rural life's tho life for me.