Ah, well! the little clock has proved
The best of all bonanzas;
And thus my happy heart is moved
To these effusive stanzas.
Improvement.
Along the avenue I pass
Huge piles of wood and stone,
And glance at each amorphous mass,
Whose cumbrous weight has crushed the grass,
With half resentful groan.
Say I: "O labor, to despoil
Some lovely forest scene,
Or at the granite stratum toil,
And desecrate whole roods of soil,
Is vandal-like and mean!
"Than ever to disfigure thus
Our prairie garden-land,
Let me consort with Cerberus,
Be chained to crags precipitous,
Or seek an alien strand."
But while this pining, pouting Muse
The interval ignores,
Deft industry, no time to lose,
Contrives and carries, hoists and hews,
And symmetry restores.
Behold! of rock and pile and board
A modern miracle,
My neighbor's dwelling, roofed and floored,
That rapid grew as Jonah's gourd,
And far more beautiful.
The artisan's receding gait
Has brushed the chips away,
Where innocence shall recreate,
Or like the flowers grow, and wait
The balminess of May.