Domestic Happiness

The winds of February blow
     Their chilling blasts around us still, 
And yet the earth is clad in snow, 
     Though thinly spread o'er vale and hill;
For slowly fades its pall away, 
Before the kindled beam of day.
The farmer, heedless of the blast, 
With laboring team is driving past:
Amid the forest is his care, 
For busier seasons to prepare:
Not mindless he of coming Spring,
That shall new scenes of pleasure bring;
When, freed from Winter-sternest king—
The earth shall spread its meadows green, 
Where birds shall sing, and flowers be seen;
When forth the willing swain must go, 
His fallow plains to plow and sow.
He toils amid the forest dun, 
Until the slowly sinking sun
Tells to him that the hour hath come 
When he must turn again for home, 
To feed the rude, impatient swine, 
And shelter the more useful kine.
The kine, obedient to his call, 
Enter submissive to the stall, 
And patient wait their wonted hay, 
Laborious piled in Summer's day.
When finished all his daily cares, 
He to the well-stored house repairs:
His wife, no less in toil than he, 
Brings on the smoking hommony, 
With the broad pan of richest milk—
A feast that kings in gold and silk, 
Surrounded by their menial train, 
Would seek to rival long in vain.
Then draw they round the household fire—
The wife, the little ones, and sire—
While in the cushioned arm-chair sitting, 
The old grandam pursues her knitting, 
And in her lap close curls the kitten, 
Purring aloud, with its little fist
Half hid beneath snowy breast;
And eke the rosy cherubs gather 
Around to listen to their father—
Who tells some burning tale of old, 
When battle o'er our borders rolled—
When human hearts were crushed to earth, 
And blood was on the very hearth;
With merrier stories following after, 
To wake awhile uproarious laughter—
And useful morals ending each, 
Of virtuous loveliness to teach.
Oh! who of earth's unnumbered crowd 
Would not, in very truth, be proud 
To be the lord of such a home,
Where wrangling discord ne'er may come.
Not such his joy who leaves his wife, 
And joins the din of vulgar strife—
And mingles in the wordy war 
That thickens round the tavern bar:
Where sold, from many a ???? ???
To spend their hard-earned shillings go,
And mid the throng their places take,
To swell the jeers and oaths they break
Blasphemous from the crew obscene
That ever in such courts convene. 
But soulless is his boasted pleasure,
     An aching heart his bosom fills—
To him is never known that pleasure,
     A peaceful home, remote from ills
The guilty landlord!-see him stand,—
     The foul excrescence of mortality,—
With his decanter in his hand,
     Dealing out crime and immortality,
And selling every human ill
That flesh is heir to by the gill:
Aye, see him ever and anon
     Raise to his own polluted lip
The cup of ruin he had drawn, 
     And death and sorrow from it sip;
Entrapt within his own vile stare, 
     A victim to the draught he pours 
To those who nightly gather there, 
     Within his own guilt-hiding doors;
And see them, every farthing gone, 
In lothed debauchery revel on,—
Their very garments sold in pawn,—
Till wakes the sick and blushing morn, 
When purseless, stript, and reeling, they 
From the black den are driven away, 
To meet their poor and heart-sick wives 
All trembling for their very lives 
While round them cling, in wailing groups, 
     The children of each wretched sire:
Within whose hearts are quenched the hopes 
     Of boyhood, and its young desire.
Is this the pleasure of your days, 
     Ye scorners of the crystal spring?,
Is this the joy your poets praise, 
     And in unhallowed numbers sing, 
When in the cup of sparkling wine 
     They tell of attributes divine?
Away! away! with joys like these,
Drawn from the wine-cup's baleful lees!
Give me the pleasures of that cot, 
Where wine, and want, and wo, come not, 
Though poor, whose cheerful inmates deem 
Enough for man, the crystal stream.