Library of the best American literature / Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers

by Unknown

Fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall,

Maugre the farmer’s sighs, and at the gate

A tapering turret overtops the work.

And when his hours are number’d, and the world

Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,

Leaves, when the sun appears, astonish’d Art

To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,

Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,

The frolic architecture of the snow.

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