Yet they have lived in a constant jar!
What remarkable sleepers they are!
Ruth.
Turn to the left—shun the wall—
One step more—that is all!
Now we are safe on the ground,
I will show you around.
Sixteen barrels of cider
Ripening all in a row!
Open the vent-channels wider!
See the froth, drifted like snow.
Blown by the tempest below!
Those delectable juices
Flowed through the sinuous sluices
Of sweet springs under the orchard;
Climbed into fountains that chained them;
Dripped into cups that retained them,
And swelled till they dropped, and we gained them.
Then they were gathered and tortured
By passage from hopper to vat,
And fell-every apple crushed flat.
Ah! how the bees gathered round them,
And how delicious they found them!
Oat-straw, as fragrant as clover,
Was platted, and smoothly turned over,
Weaving a neatly ribbed basket;
And, as they built up the casket,
In went the pulp by the scoop-full,
Till the juice flowed by the stoup-full,—
Filling the half of a puncheon
While the men swallowed their luncheon.
Pure grew the stream with the stress
Of the lever and screw,
Till the last drops from the press
Were as bright as the dew.
There were these juices spilled;
There were these barrels filled;
Sixteen barrels of cider—
Ripening all in a row!
Open the vent-channels wider!
See the froth, drifted like snow,
Blown by the tempest below!
David.
Hearts, like apples, are hard and sour,
Till crushed by Pain's resistless power;
And yield their juices rich and bland
To none but Sorrow's heavy hand.
The purest streams of human love
Flow naturally never,
But gush by pressure from above
With God's hand on the lever.
The first are turbidest and meanest;
The last are sweetest and serenest.
Ruth.
Sermon quite short for the text!
What shall we hit upon next?
Lift up the lid of that cask;
See if the brine be abundant;
Easy for me were the task
To make it redundant
With tears for my beautiful Zephyr—
Pet of the pasture and stall—
Whitest and comeliest heifer,
Gentlest of all!
Oh, it seemed cruel to slay her!
But they insulted my prayer
For her careless and innocent life,
And the creature was brought to the knife
With gratitude in her eye;
For they patted her back, and chafed her head,
And coaxed her with softest words, as they led
Her up to the ring to die.
Do you blame me for crying
When my Zephyr was dying?
I shut my room and my ears,
And opened my heart and my tears,
And wept for the half of a day;
And I could not go
To the rooms below
Till the butcher went away.
David.
Life evermore is fed by death,
In earth and sea and sky;
And, that a rose may breathe its breath,
Something must die.