POETRY.
THE COUNTRY LIFE.
MINS be the country life, content With the mild ways that shepherds went, Who, by a stream, cut reeds and blew The country's praises in the dew.
To drive my silly sheep to feed On the sweet herbage of the mead Through all the sunny hours, and then To fold them in to sleep again.
To know my flocks, to love my lambs, All the sweet babies and their dams, And see them leap to hear my call From the sweet morn to evenfall.
Or by some pleasant river-side To watch my kine stand dewy-eyed Grateful to Him who brings to pass The lilied water and sweet grass.
Or 'twixt the handles of a plough Upon some purple upland's brow To follow steaming steeds and see God's beauty written on hill and lea.
This is the rustic's lot of bliss, Which be of towns shall daily miss, To see God's rainbow mercy bridge The high heaven and the mountain ridge.
My shepherd dog upon my knee
His head shall rest for company In hours of leisure, and shall keep My wandering kine and straying sheep.
Shall taste my drink and share my bread, Milk from the kine myself had fed; Oat-cake and butter, golden-dyed As honey that my bees provide.
To market at the peep of day My way would wend with corn and hay.
But sell no harmless, joyous life To cry against the butcher's knife.
Be mine to foster life instead, Bid life to leap on hill and mead, His humble image, Who once said " Let there be Life ! " and Life was made.
Mine be the country way of peace, To tend maternal earth's increase ; The sun's child, and the wind's, grown mild With tender mercies for their child.
KATHARINE TYNAN.
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