By the crystal brook and mountain lake, The peasant is up at break of day, And see yonder band, so blithe and free; And behold the gleaner, young and fair, With her rosy cheeks and yellow hair; Content with her poor but happy lot, She bears her sheaf to her mother's cot. Away from the noise of city strife, Oh let me live where no cares annoy, When life's Autumn comes, as come it will, The Peasant's Song of Winter. UTUMN has fled, and Winter is come; The groves are mute, and the birds are dumb; The winds are cold, and the skies are gray, And the weary sun makes short the day. And the gushing streams and tiny rills, Like fragments of robes that seraphs wear, But snows may drift and the clouds may scowl; All the joy he feels no tongue may tell, Though trees are stripped of their leafy plumes, And the gardens glow no more with blooms, Oh, the little snow-drop, sweetly chaste, Will blossom soon on the hoary waste! Warm suns will shine, and the soft winds blow, And rivers swell with the melting snow, And the daisies soon again be seen, And the teeming fields be clothed in green. Torpid Nature into life will spring, The bees will steal from their cloistered cells, So the changing seasons come and go, He knows, when his earthly race is run, Truth. TERNAL Truth! rear high thy crest, ETERNAL Truth I rear high In all thy splendor shine, Where countless millions, long oppressed, Subvert all false and hollow creeds, And blood-stained shrines o'erthrow; Uproot all rank and deadly weeds Lead Knowledge to benighted climes; The human will direct; Change sounds of chains to church-bell chimes; Thy sceptre, Faith, protect. Thy temples build on every height; Dash idols to the ground; That mankind, basking in thy light, May worshippers be found. |