The Monitor. [volume] (Woodstown, N.J.) 1884-1892, 1885-10-23
JOHN REED.s THOUGHTS.

Taylor several years ago 1t is very little
known, but is characterized by such attri-
butes of general worth and genuine poetlcai
power as to be one of the highest chapters in
the history of real American poetry:
There's a mist on the meadow below: the
frogs chirp and cry;
It's chill when the sun is down, and the sod is
not yet dry:
The world is a lonely place, it seems, and !
dont know why.
1 see, rs | lean on the fence, how YEARLY
trudges Dan,
With the feel of The spring in his bones, like
weak and elderly man;
I've had il a many n time: but we must work
when W. can.
But day after day to toll. and ever from sun 10
sun,
Though up to the seasons front and nothing
be left undonc,
Is ending mt twelve like q clock, and begin
ming again at one.
The frogs make ii %sorowful noise, and yet its
the time they mate,
There's something comes with the spring, II
lightness or else Il weight;
There's something comes with the spring, and
it seems to me it's fate;
It's the hankering after a life that you never
have learned to know;
It's the diseonten. with a life that is always
thus and so;
It's the wondering what We are, and where we
are going 10 go.
My life is lucky enough, l fancy 10 most mems
eyes,
For the more a family grows, the oitener some
one dies,
Ana it's now run on SO long, il couldn't beoth
erwiSe.
And sister Jane and myself, we have learned
to claim and yield:
She rules in the house nj will, and | in the
barn and field;
So, nigh upon thirty y~ears,-as if written and
signed and sealed.
how and when;
One day my time will be up, and Jane be the
mistress then,
Forsingle women are tough, and live down The
single men.
She kept me so to herself, she was always the
stronger hand,
And my lot showed well enough when | look
ed around in the land;
But I'm tired and sore at heart, and l don't
quite understand.
| wonder how it had been if I'd taken what
others need,
The plague, they say, of a wife, the care of a
younger breeds
If Edith Pleasanton now were near me
as Edith Reed!
suppose that IL son wen grown We're there in
the place of Dan.
And l felt myself in him as | was when my
l should feel no older. sure, and certainly
more Il man!
A daughter, besides, in the house; nay, let
there be two or three.
We never can overdo the luck that can never
And what has come to the most might also have
come to me.
I've thought, when II neighbor's wife or his
child was carried away,
That to have no loss was a gain; but now-l
can hardly say;
He seems to possess them still, under the
ridges of clay,
And share and share in a life is somehow, a
different thing,
From properly helu by ueeu, anu the rlchcS
that oft take wing.
l feel so close in the breast-I think il must he
the spring.
I'm drying up like Il brook when the woods
have been cleared around:
You're sure it mus5 always run, you are used
TO the sight and sound.
But it shrinks till there's only left II stony rut
in the ground.
There's nothing to do but 10 take the days as
they come and go,
And not to worry with thoughts that nobody
likes to show;
For people 50 seldomt talk of the things they
want TO know.
There's times when the way is plain and every
thing nearly right,
And then of "A sudden You stand like n man
with "A clouded sight;
A bush seems often II beast in the dusk of II
falling night.
l must move; my joints are stiif, the weather
is breeding rain,
And Dan is hurrying on with his pillow team
up the lane.
III go TO the village store, I'd rather not talk
with Jane.
Mr.. John w. Hartman, of Experiment
Mills. Monroe County. Pa. has five pump