Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint,
Possessed the land which rendered to their toil
Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool and wood.
Each of these landlords walked amidst his farm,
Saying, ''Tis mine, my children's and my name's.
How sweet the west wind sounds in my own trees!
How graceful climb those shadows on my hill!
I fancy these pure waters and the flags
Know me, as does my dog: we sympathize;
And, I affirm, my actions smack of the soil.'

Where are these men? Asleep beneath their grounds:
And strangers, fond as they, their furrows plough.
Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys
Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs;
Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet
Clear of the grave.
They added ridge to valley, brook to pond,
And sighed for all that bounded their domain;
'This suits me for a pasture; that's my park;
We must have clay, lime, gravel, granite-ledge,
And misty lowland, where to go for peat.
The land is well,—lies fairly to the south.
'Tis good, when you have crossed the sea and back,
To find the sitfast acres where you left them.'
Ah! the hot owner sees not Death, who adds
Him to his land, a lump of mould the more.
Hear what the Earth says:—

EARTH-SONG

'Mine and yours;
Mine, not yours.
Earth endures;
Stars abide—
Shine down in the old sea;
Old are the shores;
But where are old men?
I who have seen much,
Such have I never seen.

'The lawyer's deed
Ran sure,
In tail,
To them, and to their heirs
Who shall succeed,
Without fail,
Forevermore.

'Here is the land,
Shaggy with wood,
With its old valley,
Mound and flood.
But the heritors?—
Fled like the flood's foam.
The lawyer, and the laws,
And the kingdom,
Clean swept herefrom.

'They called me theirs,
Who so controlled me;
Yet every one
Wished to stay, and is gone,
How am I theirs,
If they cannot hold me,
But I hold them?'

When I heard the Earth-song
I was no longer brave;
My avarice cooled
Like lust in the chill of the grave.

The staunch and strenuous Serpent spends his time
In the safe field of serpentine pursuits,
Rightly considering it a social crime
To parody the ways of other brutes.

Scorning the fraud of alien aspirations,
The snobbishness that apes another class,
Proud, and yet conscious of his limitations,
He bites the dust and grovels in the grass.

The moral food that keeps him down is Force,
Force to confine his fancies to their beds.
Makes him the laughing-stock of quadrupeds.

No weak attempt to carol like the Lark,
Fore-doomed to failure and to ridicule,
Troubles his life; he does not wish to bark,
Has no desire to amble like a Mule.

Having no legs he does not try to walk,
But keeps contentedly his native crawl;
Having no voice he does not strive to talk,
Much less to bellow or to caterwaul.

Mark the inevitably reached result:
To balance the advantages he missed,
In three departments he may yet exult
To be the only perfect specialist.

Three arts are his: to writhe, to hiss, to creep.
The Toad's tenacity, the Wombat's wiles,
Or the keen cunning of the crafty Sheep
(And all are artists in their various styles),

Would vainly challenge them. He reigns supreme
In these the fields of his activity,
And reigning so defies the envious Bream,
Who sneers and shrugs and sniggers in the sea.

Type of the wise, who roar but never foam
(If they can help it) at the mouth, except
When night and morn they brush their teeth at home
With pallid powder for that purpose kept.