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Showing as little actual comprehension Of Christian charity and love and duty, As if the Sermon on the Mount had been Outdated like a last year's almanac Rich in broad woodlands and in half-tilled fields, And yet so pinched and bare and comfortless, The veriest straggler limping on his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! Not such should be the homesteads of a land Where whoso wisely wills and acts may dwell As king and lawgiver, in broad-acred state, With beauty, art, taste, culture, books, to make His hour of leisure richer than a life Of fourscore to the barons of old time, Our yeoman should be equal to his home Set in the fair, green valleys, purple walled, A man to match his mountains, not to creep Dwarfed and abased below them.

I would fain In this light way (of which I needs must own With the knife-grinder of whom Canning sings, "Story, God bless you! I have none to tell you!") Invite the eye to see and heart to feel The beauty and the joy within their reach,-- Home, and home loves, and the beatitudes Of nature free to all.

Haply in years That wait to take the places of our own, Heard where some breezy balcony looks down On happy homes, or where the lake in the moon Sleeps dreaming of the mountains, fair as Ruth, In the old Hebrew pastoral, at the feet Of Boaz, even this simple lay of mine May seem the burden of a prophecy, Finding its late fulfilment in a change Slow as the oak's growth, lifting manhood up Through broader culture, finer manners, love, And reverence, to the level of the hills.
O Golden Age, whose light is of the dawn, And not of sunset, forward, not behind, Flood the new heavens and earth, and with thee bring All the old virtues, whatsoever things Are pure and honest and of good repute, But add thereto whatever bard has sung Or seer has told of when in trance and dream They saw the Happy Isles of prophecy Let Justice hold her scale, and Truth divide Between the right and wrong; but give the heart The freedom of its fair inheritance; Let the poor prisoner, cramped and starved so long, At Nature's table feast his ear and eye With joy and wonder; let all harmonies Of sound, form, color, motion, wait upon The princely guest, whether in soft attire Of leisure clad, or the coarse frock of toil, And, lending life to the dead form of faith, Give human nature reverence for the sake Of One who bore it, making it divine With the ineffable tenderness of God; Let common need, the brotherhood of prayer, The heirship of an unknown destiny, The unsolved mystery round about us, make A man more precious than the gold of Ophir.
Sacred, inviolate, unto whom all things Should minister, as outward types and signs Of the eternal beauty which fulfils The one great purpose of creation, Love, The sole necessity of Earth and Heaven!.

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