Amos Alcott - Tablets

The earth is mine and mine the sheaves,
I'll harvest all her bounty leaves,
Nor stinted store she deals to me,
Gives all she has, and gives it free,
Since from myself I cannot stir
But I become her pensioner:
Sun, cloud, flame, atom, ether, sea,
Beauteous she buildeth into me,
Seasons my frame with flowing sense,
Insinuates intelligence;
Feeds me and fills with sweet contents,
Deals duteously her elements:
Dawn, day, the noon, the sunset clear,
Delight my eye; winds, woods, my ear,
While apple, melon, strawberry, peach,
She plants and puts within my reach;
Regales with all the garden grows,
Whate'er the orchard buds and blows;
Lifts o'er my head her sylvan screens,
And sows my slopes with evergreens,
While odorous roses, mint, and thyme,
Steep soul and sense in softer clime;
Preserves me when lapsed memory slips
Fading in sleep's apocalypse;
Surprising tasks and leisures sends,
And crowns herself to give me friends;
The morn's elixir pours for me,
And brims my brain with ecstasy.

Earth all is mine and mine the sheaves,
I harvest all her Planter leaves.

"Behold the bending boughs, with store of fruit they tear,
And what they have brought forth, for weight, they scarce can bear."

"Where on all sides the apples scattered lie,
Each under its own tree."

"Now turn thine eye to view Alcinous' groves,
The pride of the Phœacian isle, from whence,
Sailing the spaces of the boundless deep,
To Ariconian precious fruits arrived: —
The pippin burnished o'er with gold, the moyle
Of sweetest honied taste, the fair pearmain,
Tempered, like comeliest nymph, with red and white;
Nor does the Eliot least deserve thy care,
Nor John's apple, whose withered rind, intrenched
With many a furrow, aptly represents
Decrepit age; nor that from Harvey named,
Quick relishing. Why should we sing the thrift,
Codling, or Pomroy, or of pimpled coat
The russet; the red-streak, that once
Was of the sylvan kind, uncivilized,
Of no regard, till Scudamore's skilful hand
Improved her, and by courtly discipline
Taught her the savage nature to forget:
Let every tree in every garden own
The red-streak as supreme, whose pulpous fruit
With gold irradiate, and vermilion spires,
Tempting, not fatal, as the birth of that
Primeval interdicted plant, that won
Fond Eve, in hapless hour, to taste and die."

"Nor does this happy place only dispense
Its various pleasures to the sense,
Here health itself doth live,
That salt of life which doth to all a relish give;
Its standing pleasure and intrinsic wealth,
The body's virtue, and the soul's good fortune, health.
The tree of life when it in Eden stood,
Did its immortal head to heaven rear;
It lasted a tall cedar till the flood,
Now a small thorny shrub it doth appear,
Nor will it thrive too everywhere;
It always here is freshest seen,
'Tis only here an evergreen:
If, through the strong and beauteous fence
Of temperance and innocence,
And wholesome labors and a quiet mind,
Diseases passage find,
They must fight for it, and dispute it hard
Before they can prevail;
Scarce any plant is growing here,
Which against death some weapon does not bear:
Let cities boast that they provide
For life the ornaments of pride;
But 'tis the country and the field
That furnish it with staff and shield."

"We nowhere art do so triumphant see,
As when it grafts or buds a tree;
In other things we count it to excel
If it a docile scholar can appear
To nature, and but imitates her well:
It overrules and is her master here:
It imitates her Maker's power divine,
And changes her sometimes, and sometimes does refine;
It does like grace, the fallen tree restore
To its blest state of Paradise before;
Who would not joy to see his conquering hand
O'er all the vegetable world command,
And the wild giants of the wood, receive
What laws he's pleased to give?
He bids the ill-natured crab produce
The gentle apple's winy juice,
The golden fruit that worthy is
Of Galatea's purple kiss;
He does the savage hawthorn teach
To bear the medlar and the pear;
He bids the rustic plum to rear
A noble trunk and be a peach;
Even Daphne's coyness he does mock,
And weds the cherry to her stock,
Though she refused Apollo's suit,
Even she, that chaste and virgin tree,
Now wonders at herself to see
That she's a mother made, and blushes in her fruit."

"Thick growing thyme, and roses wet with dew,
Are sacred to the sisterhood divine."