Page:A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields.djvu/161

Thou gladd'nest mine eyes! Village roofs emerge
Bathed in a sea of foliage to the verge
Of skies for ever blue—a slender coil
Of smoke arising, speaks of daily toil;
A woman in a field, that calls her boy
Far off—a youthful herdsman in his joy,
That sits beside a cow, and while it feeds,
Tied to its tether, tries of river reeds
To make a rustic flute, and plaintively
Intones a simple Breton melody,—
An air so melancholy, soft, and sweet,
That you would weep to hear it. Then the heat—
The rural hum, the fragrance on the wind,
The grey old walls of cottages entwined
With ivy, and the pathways small and white
Bordered with heath. All, all in memory's light
Revive, as when with naked feet I ran
To Moustoir, where our dawn of love began,
When the port scaling, ere darkness had bound
The earth, I hastened through familiar ground
To meet my loved one. Recollections fond
In which my poor heart revels—far beyond
Hopes for the future—dreams, in which I live,
Which give me more than present joys can give;
Thus day by day, unwearied, I behold
The roofs of thatch, the woods that them enfold,—
The old wells where the women pitchers fill,
The court in flower, with bee-hives near the sill,
The threshing floor, the pump, the barn, the nook,
With heaps of apples that most tempting look,
Red-cheeked and golden, and the hay-ricks high,
The doors by which sleek cattle slothful lie,
The mangers clean, the piles of garnered straw,
Denoting rural comfort, household law—