ove, like this, of _my_ possessing?
This vale offends my upland's law;
This sheltered garden needs suppressing.
My rocks this grass would never yield,
And how absurd the level field!
What here will grow is past my guessing."

"Behold the slope!" another cries:
"No sign of bog or meadow near it!
A varied surface I despise:
There's not a stagnant pool to cheer it!"
"Why plough at all?" remarked a third,
"Heaven help the man!" a fourth I heard,--
"His farm's a jungle: let him clear it!"

No friendly counsel I disdain:
My fields are free to every comer;
Yet that, which one to praise is fain,
But makes another's visage glummer.
I bow them out, and welcome in,
But while I seek some truth to win
Goes by, unused, the golden summer!

Ah! vain the hope to find in each
The wisdom each denies the other;
These mazes of conflicting speech
All theories of culture smother.
I'll raise and reap, with honest hand,
The native harvest of my land;
Do thou the same, my wiser brother!

PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S NOTE-BOOKS.

VIII.

Concord, _Saturday, August 13, 1842._--My life, at this time, is more
like that of a boy, externally, than it has been since I was really a
boy. It is usually supposed that the cares of life come with matrimony;
but I seem to have cast off all care, and live on with as much easy
trust in Providence as Adam could possibly have felt before he had
learned that there was a world beyond Paradise. My chief anxiety
consists in watching the prosperity of my vegetables, in observing how
they are affected by the rain or sunshine, in lamenting the blight of
one squash and rejoicing at the luxurious growth of another. It is as if
the original relation between man and Nature were restored in my case,
and that I were to look exclusively to her for the support of my Eve and
myself,--to trust to her for food and clothing, and all things needful,
with the full assurance that she would not fail me. The fight with the
world,--the struggle of a man among men,--the agony of the universal
effort to wrench the means of living from a host of greedy
competitors,--all this seems like a dream to me. My business is merely
to live and to enjoy; and whatever is essential to life and enjoyment
will come as naturally as the dew from heaven. This is, pract