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The Country Life Poem By Richard Henry Stoddard Not what we would, but what we must, Makes up the sum of living: Heaven is both more and less than just, In taking and in giving. Swords cleave to hands that sought the plow, And laurels miss the soldier's brow. Me, whom the city holds, whose feet Have worn its stony highways, Familiar with its loneliest street,— Its ways were never my ways. My cradle was beside the sea, And there, I hope, my grave will be. Old homestead! in that old gray town Thy vane is seaward blowing; Thy slip of garden stretches down To where the tide is flowing; Below they lie, their sails all furled, The ships that go about the world. Dearer that little country house, Inland with pines beside it; Some peach trees, with unfruitful boughs, A well, with weeds to hide it: No flowers, or only such as rise Self-sown—poor things!—which all despise. Dear country home! can I forget The least of thy sweet trifles? The window vines that clamber yet, Whose blooms the bee still rifles? The roadside blackberries, growing ripe, And in the woods the Indian pipe? Happy the man who tills his field, Content with rustic labor; Earth does to him her fullness yield, Hap what may to his neighbor. Well days, sound nights—oh, can there be A life more rational and free?