Some brittle sticks of thorn or brier
Make me a fire
Close by whose living coal I sit,
And glow like it.
Lord, I confess too, when I dine,
The pulse is thine,
And all those other bits that be
There placed by thee.
'Tis thou that crown'st my glittering hearth
With guiltless mirth,
And giv'st me wassail bowls to drink,
Spiced to the brink.
Lord, 'tis thy plenty-dropping hand
That soils my land,
And giv'st me for my bushel sown
Twice ten for one.
All these and better thou dost send
Me to this end,—
That I should render for my part,
A thankful heart;
Which, fired with incense, I resign
As wholly thine—
But the acceptance, that must be,
My God, by thee.
FOOTNOTE:
[21] By Robert Herrick, an English poet (1591-1674).
FIRST DAYS AT WAKEFIELD [22]
A proof that even the humblest fortune may grant happiness, which depends not on circumstances but constitution.
The place of our retreat was in a little neighborhood consisting of farmers, who tilled their own grounds, and were equal strangers to opulence and poverty. As they had almost all the conveniences of life within themselves, they seldom visited towns or cities in search of superfluity. Remote from the polite, they still retained the primeval simplicity of manners; and frugal by habit, they scarcely knew that temperance was a virtue.
They wrought with cheerfulness on days of labor; but observed festivals as intervals of idleness and pleasure. They kept up the Christmas carol, sent true love knots on Valentine morning, ate pancakes on Shrovetide, showed their wit on the first of April, and religiously cracked nuts on Michaelmas Eve.