Harvest home

As rests warm rapture rousd the rustics lay
The thread bare ballad from each quavering tongue
As ‘peggy bond’ or the ‘sweet month of may’
As how he joyd to hear each ‘good old song’
That on nights pausing ear did echo loud & strong
The muse might sing too for he well did know
The freaks & plays that harvest home doth end
How the last load is crownd wi boughs & how
Wi floating ribbons diznd at their end
The swains & maids wi fork & rake attend
& how the children on the load delight
Wi shouts of harvest home their throats to rend
& how the dames peep out to mark the sight
& all the feats that crown the harvest supper night

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Ducks & Ducklings

Among the tawny tasselled reed 
The ducks & ducklings float and feed
With head oft dabbing in the flood 
They fish all day the weedy mud
& tumbler-like are bobbing there
Heels topsy-turvy in the air
Then up and quack and down they go
Heels over head again below

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Photo by my friend John Abbott

Farwell

Farwell thou favorite spot farwell
Since every efforts vain
All I can do is still to tell
Of thy delightful plain
But that pro[v]es short—increasing years
That did my youth presage
Will now as each new day appears
Bring on declining age

Reflection pierces deadly keen
While I the moral scan
As are the changes of the green
So is the life of man
Youth brings age with faultering tongue
That does the exit crave
Theres one short scene presents the throng
Another shows the grave

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What is Life

& what is Life an hour-glass on the run
A mist retreating from the morning sun
A busy bustling still repeated dream
Its length a minutes pause a moments thought
& happiness a bubble on the stream
That in the act of seizing shrinks to nought

What are vain Hopes the puffing gale of morn
That of its charms divests the dewy lawn
& robs each floweret of its gem & dies
A cobweb hiding disappointments thorn
Which stings more keenly through the thin disguise

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Burning

Love though it is not chill & cold
But burning like eternal fire
Is yet not of approaches bold
Which gay dramatic tastes admire
Oh timid love more fond than free
In daring song is ill pourtrayed
Where as in war the devotee
By valour wins each captive maid

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Winding away

A green of all colours yellow brown & dark grey
While the footpaths all darkly goes winding away
Creeping onto a foot-brig that crosses a brook
Or a gate or a stile & how rustic they look
Some leaning so much that the maidens will go
Lower down with their buckets & try to creep through
There is nothing more sweet in the fields & the sun
Than those dear little footpaths that oer the fields run

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Music & glee

Among the green bushes the songs of the thrushes
Are answering each other in music & glee
While the magpies & rooks  in woods hedges near brooks
Mount their Spring dwellings on every high tree
There meet me at eve love we'll on grassy banks lean love
& crop a white branch from the scented may tree
Where the silver brook wimples & the rosy cheek dimples
Sweet will the time of that courting hour be

We'll notice wild flowers love that grow by thorn bowers love
Though sinful to crop them now beaded with dew
The violet is thine love the primrose is mine love
To Spring & each other so blooming & true
With dewdrops all beaded the feather grass seeded
The cloud mountains turn to dark woods in the sky
The daisy bud closes while sleep the hedge roses
Theres nothing seems wakeful but you love & I

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