FAREWELL TO A RURAL RESIDENCE.
How beautiful it stands,
Behind its elm-tree’s screen,
With simple attic cornice crown'd,
All graceful and serene;
Most sweet, yet sad, it is
Upon yon scene to gaze,
And list its inborn melody,
The voice of other days;
For there, as many a year
Its varied chart unroll'd,
I hid me in those quiet shades,
And call'd the joys of old;
I call'd them, and they came
When vernal buds appear'd,
Or where the vine-clad summer bower
Its temple-roof uprear'd,
Or where the o'erarching grove
Spread forth its copses green,
While eye-bright and asclepias rear'd
Their untrain'd stalks between,
And the squirrel from the boughs
His broken nuts let fall,
And the merry, merry little birds
Sang at his festival.
