I'm sorry for the Dead to-day,

I'm sorry for the Dead to-day,
It's such congenial times
Old neighbors have at fences
At time o' year for hay—

When broad sun-burned acquaintances
Discourse between the toil
And laugh, a homely species,
That makes the meadows smile.

It seems so straight to lie away
From all the noise of fields,
The busy carts, the fragrant cocks,
The mower's meter steals

A trouble, lest they 're homesick,—
Those farmers and their wives,
Set separate from the farming
And all the neighbors' lives.

I wonder if the sepulchre
Is not a lonesome way,
When men and boys, and larks and June
Go down the fields to hay!