<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=341293" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>A Farmhouse Dirge</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Will you walk with me to the brow of the hill, to visit the farmer's wife,<br>Whose daughter lies in the churchyard now, eased of the ache of life?<br>Half a mile by the winding lane, another half to the top:<br>There you may lean o'er the gate and rest; she will want me awhile to stop,<br>Stop and talk of her girl that is gone and no more will wake or weep,<br>Or to listen rather, for sorrow loves to babble its pain to sleep.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">How thick with acorns the ground is strewn, rent from their cups and brown!<br>How the golden leaves of the windless elms come singly fluttering down!<br>The briony hangs in the thinning hedge, as russet as harvest corn,<br>The straggling blackberries glisten jet, the haws are red on the thorn;<br>The clematis smells no more but lifts its gossamer weight on high;-<br>If you only gazed on the year, you would think how beautiful 'tis to die.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The stream scarce flows underneath the bridge; they have dropped the sluice of the mill;<br>The roach bask deep in the pool above, and the water-wheel is still.<br>The meal lies quiet on bin and floor; and here where the deep banks wind,<br>The water-mosses nor sway nor bend, so nothing seems left behind.<br>If the wheels of life would but sometimes stop, and the grinding awhile would cease,<br>'Twere so sweet to have, without dying quite, just a spell of autumn peace.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Cottages four, two new, two old, each with its clambering rose:<br>Lath and plaster and weather tiles these, brick faced with stone are those.<br>Two crouch low from the wind and the rain, and tell of the humbler days,<br>Whilst the other pair stand up and stare with a self-asserting gaze;<br>But I warrant you'd find the old as snug as the new did you lift the latch,<br>For the human heart keeps no whit more warm under slate than beneath the thatch.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Tenants of two of them work for me, punctual, sober, true;<br>I often wish that I did as well the work I have got to do.<br>Think not to pity their lowly lot, nor wish that their thoughts soared higher;<br>The canker comes on the garden rose, and not on the wilding brier.<br>Doubt and gloom are not theirs and so they but work and love, they live<br>Rich in the only valid boons that life can withhold or give.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Here is the railway bridge, and see how straight do the bright lines keep,<br>With pheasant copses on either side, or pastures of quiet sheep.<br>The big loud city lies far away, far too is the cliffbound shore,<br>But the trains that travel betwixt them seem as if burdened with their roar.<br>Yet, quickly they pass, and leave no trace, not the echo e'en of their noise:<br>Don't you think that silence and stillness are the sweetest of all our joys?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Lo! yonder the Farm, and these the ruts that the broad-wheeled wains have worn,<br>As they bore up the hill the faggots sere, or the mellow shocks of corn.<br>The hops are gathered, the twisted bines now brown on the brown clods lie,<br>And nothing of all man sowed to reap is seen betwixt earth and sky.<br>Year after year doth the harvest come, though at summer's and beauty's cost:<br>One can only hope, when our lives grow bare, some reap what our hearts have lost.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And this is the orchard, small and rude, and uncaredfor, but oh! in spring,<br>How white is the slope with cherry bloom, and the nightingales sit and sing!<br>You would think that the world had grown young once more, had forgotten death and fear,<br>That the nearest thing unto woe on earth was the smile of an April tear;<br>That goodness and gladness were twin, were one:- The robin is chorister now:<br>The russet fruit on the ground is piled, and the lichen cleaves to the bough.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Will you lean o'er the gate, whilst I go on? You can watch the farmyard life,<br>The beeves, the farmer's hope, and the poults, that gladden his thrifty wife;<br>Or, turning, look on the hazy weald,-you will not be seen from here,-<br>Till your thoughts, like it, grow blurred and vague, and mingle the far and near.<br>Grief is a flood, and not a spring, whatever in grief we say;<br>And perhaps her woe, should she see me alone, will run more quickly away.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">`I thought you would come this morning, ma'am. Yes, Edith at last has gone;<br>To-morrow's a week, ay, just as the sun right into her window shone;<br>Went with the night, the vicar says, where endeth never the day;<br>But she's left a darkness behind her here I wish she had taken away.<br>She is no longer with us, but we seem to be always with her,<br>In the lonely bed where we laid her last, and can't get her to speak or stir.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``Yes, I'm at work; 'tis time I was. I should have begun before;<br>But this is the room where she lay so still, ere they carried her past the door.<br>I thought I never could let her go where it seems so lonely of nights;<br>But now I am scrubbing and dusting down, and seting the place to rights.<br>All I have kept are the flowers there, the last that stood by her bed.<br>I suppose I must throw them away. She looked much fairer when she was dead.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``Thank you, for thinking of her so much. Kind thought is the truest friend.<br>I wish you had seen how pleased she was with the peaches you used to send.<br>She tired of them too ere the end, so she did with all we tried;<br>But she liked to look at them all the same, so we set them down by her side.<br>Their bloom and the flush upon her cheek were alike, I used to say;<br>Both were so smooth, and soft, and round, and both have faded away.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``I never could tell you how kind too were the ladies up at the hall;<br>Every noon, or fair or wet, one of them used to call.<br>Worry and work seems ours, but yours pleasant and easy days,<br>And when all goes smooth, the rich and poor have different lives and ways.<br>Sorrow and death bring men more close, 'tis joy that puts us apart;<br>'Tis a comfort to think, though we're severed so, we're all of us one at heart.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``She never wished to be smart and rich, as so many in these days do,<br>Nor cared to go in on market days to stare at the gay and new.<br>She liked to remain at home and pluck the white violets down in the wood;<br>She said to her sisters before she died, `'Tis so easy to be good.'<br>She must have found it so, I think, and that was the reason why<br>God deemed it needless to leave her here, so took her up to the sky.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``The vicar says that he knows she is there, and surely she ought to be;<br>But though I repeat the words, 'tis hard to believe what one does not see.<br>They did not want me to go to the grave, but I could not have kept away,<br>And whatever I do I can only see a coffin and church-yard clay.<br>Yes, I know it's wrong to keep lingering there, and wicked and weak to fret;<br>And that's why I'm hard at work again, for it helps one to forget.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``The young ones don't seem to take to work as their mothers and fathers did.<br>We never were asked if we liked or no, but had to obey when bid.<br>There's Bessie won't swill the dairy now, nor Richard call home the cows,<br>And all of them cry, `How can you, mother?' when I carry the wash to the sows.<br>Edith would drudge, for Death one's hearth of the helpful one always robs.<br>But she was so pretty I could not bear to set her on dirty jobs.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``I don't know how it'll be with them when sorrow and loss are theirs,<br>For it isn't likely that they'll escape their pack of worrits and cares.<br>They say it's an age of progress this, and a sight of things improves,<br>But sickness, and age, and bereavement seem to work in the same old grooves.<br>Fine they may grow, and that, but Death as lief takes the moth as the grub.<br>When their dear ones die, I suspect they'll wish they'd a floor of their own to scrub.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``Some day they'll have a home of their own, much grander than this, no doubt,<br>But polish the porch as you will you can't keep doctors and coffins out.<br>I've done very well with my fowls this year, but what are pullets and eggs,<br>When the heart in vain at the door of the grave the return of the lost one begs?<br>The rich have leisure to wail and weep, the poor haven't time to be sad:<br>If the cream hadn't been so contrairy this week, I think grief would have driven me mad.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``How does my husband bear up, you ask? Well, thank you, ma'am, fairly well;<br>For he too is busy just now, you see, with the wheat and the hops to sell:<br>It's when the work of the day is done, and he comes indoors at night,<br>While the twilight hangs round the window-panes before I bring in the light,<br>And takes down his pipe, and says not a word, but watches the faggots roar-<br>And then I know he is thinking of her who will sit on his knee no more.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``Must you be going? It seems so short. But thank you for thinking to come;<br>It does me good to talk of it all, and grief feels doubled when dumb.<br>An the butter's not quite so good this week, if you please, ma'am, you must not mind,<br>And I'll not forget to send the ducks and all the eggs we can find;<br>I've scarcely had time to look round me yet, work gets into such arrears,<br>With only one pair of hands, and those fast wiping away one's tears.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``You've got some flowers, yet, haven't you, ma'am? though they now must be going fast;<br>We never have any to speak of here, and I placed on her coffin the last.<br>Could you spare me a few for Sunday next? I should like to go all alone,<br>And lay them down on the little mound where there isn't as yet a stone.<br>Thank you kindly, I'm sure they'll do, and I promise to heed what you say;<br>I'll only just go and lay them there, and then I will come away.''</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Come, let us go. Yes, down the hill, and home by the winding lane.<br>The low-lying fields are suffused with haze, as life is suffused with pain.<br>The noon mists gain on the morning sun, so despondency gains on youth;<br>We grope, and wrangle, and boast, but Death is the only certain truth.<br>O love of life! what a foolish love! we should weary of life did it last.<br>While it lingers, it is but a little thing; 'tis nothing at all when past.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The acorns thicker and thicker lie, the briony limper grows,<br>There are mildewing beads on the leafless brier where once smiled the sweet dog-rose.<br>You may see the leaves of the primrose push through the litter of sodden ground;<br>Their pale stars dream in the wintry womb, and the pimpernel sleepeth sound.<br>They will awake; shall we awake? Are we more than imprisoned breath?<br>When the heart grows weak, then hope grows strong, but stronger than hope is Death.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Alfred+Austin">Alfred Austin</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=341293" data-title="A Farmhouse Dirge de Alfred Austin" data-description="Will you walk with me to the brow of the hill, to visit the farmer's wife, Whose daughter lies in the churchyard now, eased of the ache of life? Half a mile by the winding lane, another half to the top: There you may lean o'er the gate and rest; s..."></div> </div> </div>

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