The pleasant sounds of the rural day,—
The crunch of the cattle eating,
In the barn near by, their noon-time hay;
The waiting horse's impatient neigh;
The catbird's call from the maple spray;
The sparrow warbling his roundelay;
The swallow's chirp from its nest of clay
Under the rafters; and far away,
The throb of the saw-mill, old and gray,
And the river's song, as it sought the bay,—
We heard them all, in our happy play
Under the high-top sweeting:

The mournful lowing of mother-cows,
And the weanling calf's entreating
From the paddock near, where he learned to browse;
The cackle of fowls among the mows;
The small soft talk from the martin-house;
The pigeon, cooing his tender vows
Beside his gentle and constant spouse;
And the singing wind in the swaying boughs
Of the dear old high-top sweeting.

Many a playmate came to share
The sports of our merry meeting;
Zigzag butterflies, many a pair,
Doubled and danced in the sunny air;
The yellow wasp was a visitor there;
The cricket chirped from his grassy lair;
Even the squirrel would sometimes dare
Look down upon us, with curious stare;
The bees plied fearless their honeyed care
Almost beside us, nor seemed aware
Of human presence; and when the glare
Of day was done, and the eve was fair,
The fireflies glimmered everywhere,
Like diamond-sparkles in beauty's hair,
In the boughs of the high-top sweeting.

The humming-bird, with his gem-bright eye,
Paused there, to sip the clover,
Or whizzed like a rifle-bullet by;
The katydid, with its rasping dry,
Made forever the same reply,
Which laughing voices would still deny;
And the beautiful four-winged dragon-fly
Darted among us, now low, now high,
And we sprang aside with a startled cry,
Fearing the fancied savagery
Of the harmless and playful rover.

The flying grasshopper clacked his wings,
Like castanets gayly beating;
The toad hopped by us, with jolting springs;
The yellow spider that spins and swings
Swayed on its ladder of silken strings;
The shy cicada, whose noon-voice rings
So piercing-shrill that it almost stings
The sense of hearing, and all the things
Which the fervid northern summer brings,—
The world that buzzes and crawls and sings,—
Were friends of the high-top sweeting.

The balsam lifted its coronal
Of jewels, so fair and fleeting,
Worn as ear-drops, by damsels small,
At many a mimic festival;
And in late summer and early fall,
The gay rudbeckia nodded, to call
The bumblebee to her banquet-hall,
And golden-rod grew yellow and tall,
'Mid purple asters, more fair than all,
With the raspberry-briers, by the old stone wall
Close by the high-top sweeting.