Fireside poetical readings Author:Thomas Cogswell Upham Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: American Cottage Life. Under this title we propose to present to the reader a series of poems, which have for their object to give some idea of American rural... more » life as it is ; and especially when elevated and purified by religious influences. To do ihis with poetical spirit, and at the same time with near conformity to the truth, it must be admitted, is no easy task. But we hope ihe attempt has been so far attended with success, that the reader will at least find reason for increased attachment to his favored country, and to her domestic and religious manners and institutions. (i.) The Farmer's Fireside. The moving accident is not my trade ; To freeze the blood I have no ready arts; 'T is my delight, alone in summer shade. To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts. Hart-leap Well, Wordsworth. Happy the man, not doomed afar to roam, In distant lands, beneath a foreign sky, Who hath a humble and secluded home, Bathed by the little brook that prattles by, With trees begirt, and birds that warble nigh. He, as he sitteth in his humble state, Hath little cause for earth's poor gauds to sigh; He needs not envy whom the world calls great, Who live in splendid house, with men that on them wait. The king upon a throne a sceptre wields, The cotter for a sceptre wields a hoe; But kings have griefs, which he, who tills the fields In humble honesty, doth never know. He, who through life in quietness would go, Far from the noisy world his way will keep, Beside the streams in solitude that flow, Contented with his little flock of sheep, Nor seek, in Glory's paths, her fading wreaths to reap. Far to the woodland haunts I turn mine eye, Nor longer in the troubled world remain, Where I have known no sweets of liberty, And seeming joy hath turned to real pain. Welcome to wo...« less