The Song of the Harrow and Plow

From the acres of Aroostook, broad and mellow in the sun,
Down to rocky York, the chorus of the farmers has begun.
They are riding in Aroostook on a patent sulky plow,
--They are riding, taking comfort, for they've learned the secret how.
They are planting their potatoes with a whirring new machine,
--Driver sits beneath an awning; slickest thing you've ever seen.
There is not a rock to vex 'em in the acres spreading wide,
So they sit upon a cushion, cock their legs, and smoke and ride.
Gee and Bright go lurching onward in the furrow's mellow steam;
Over there, with clank of whiffle, tugs a sturdy
Morgan team.
And the man who rides the planter or who plods the broken earth
Joins and swells the mighty chorus of the season's budding mirth.
And they've pitched the tune to a jubilant strain.
They are lilting it merrily now.
We wait for that melody up here in Maine,
--'Tis the song of the harrow and plow.

They are picking rocks in Oxford, and in Waldo blasting ledge,
And they're farming down in Lincoln on their acres set on edge.
Down among the kitchen gardens of the slopes of Cumberland
They're sticking in the garden sass as thick as it will stand.
And every nose is sniffing at the scent of furrowed earth,
And every man is living all of life at what it's worth.
Though the farmer in Aroostook sails across a velvet field,
And his mellow, crumbly acres vomit forth a spendthrift yield,
All the rest are just as cheerful on their hillside farms as he,
For there's cosy wealth in gardens and a fortune in a tree.
So they're singing the song of the coming of Spring,
And the song of the empty mow;
Of the quiver of birth that is stirring the earth,
--'Tis the song of the harrow and plow.