Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/427

JEDEDIAH HUNT. Jedediah Hunt was born at Candor, Tioga county, New York, on the twenty- eighth day of December, 1815. His father, also named Jedediah, was captain of a company of New York Volunteers in the celebrated battle of Lundy's Lane, in 1815. Jedediah, jr. emigrated to Ohio about the year 1840. He is now a merchant at Cliilo, in Clermont county, Ohio. Mr. Hunt has been a contributor to Graham's Magazine., New York Home Journal, The Genius of the West, the Cincinnati Gazette, and other Western journals. He published " The Cottage Maid, a Tale in Rhyme," in a thin oc- tavo, at Cincinnati, in 1847, and is the author of several popular prose articles, but, as he says in a note accompanying the poems contributed for this volume, is "not a liter- ary man in the generally received acceptation of that term." The pursuit of litera- ture is a recreation in such leisure as the cares of an active business life permit. THE WILLOW BY THE SPRING. Near to my old grandfather's cot, A small stream murmurs by, And from its bank a spring pours out Whose bed is never dry ; Beside that spring a willow stands, A tall and stately tree. Oh. wouldst thou learn the charms it hath ? I'll tell its charms to thee, — The willow by the spring, The willow by the spring. Oh, may it life and strength receive. While time the moments wing. My mother on her bridal morn, Two twigs inserted there. And twining them together close, United thus the pair ; She left them to the charge of fate, To flourish or to fade, — But taking root they rapid grew, And gave the spring its shade, — The willow by the spring. The willow by the spring. Oh, may it live and strength receive. While time the moments wing. How oft have I, when but a child. And e'en in later years. Sat 'neath that willow's drooping boughs, And bathed its roots in tears ; Not for a sadness which I felt. From pains that pressed my heart, — But memory with her troop of thoughts, Bade feeling's fountain start, — The willow by the spring. The willow by the spring. Oh, may it live and strength receive, While time the moments wing. When on the cultured plains of life, A wedded pair I see. Who, true to each, together cling, I think upon that tree ; There, green in age, it broadly spreads Its branches to the sun, — (411)