Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A COTTAGE MONARCHY, by NORMAN ROWLAND GALE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A COTTAGE MONARCHY, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Why should he ask to share the fate
Last Line: Of love's successful government.
Subject(s): Country Life


WHY should he ask to share the fate
Of those to noisier issues lent?
'Tis work enough to legislate
Where Love's the only Government.

A cottage is the Council Room,
Round which the finch and throstle sing;
No threats of war gigantic loom,
Only one Subject calls him King.

This Citizen so sweet and brown
Can yet his very Empress be;
She speaks not seldom from the Throne,
That simple throne his happy knee.

And here no Opposition grows
From dewy dawn to dewy dusk;
They pass a Bill to train the rose,
And move Amendments for the musk.

Where studious cowslips learn the field,
And redstarts flutter in their nook;
Where reverence lives, and faith is pealed
From village spires, they read the book

Whose leaves Dame Nature loves to turn,
From snowdrop preface to the notes;
Contented in a mass of fern,
Or happy on a sheaf of oats.

Here music's native to the hedge,
And heavenly bounteousness of rills
Croons undersong among the sedge,
And cools the giant feet of hills.

'Tis good to see the lambs leap up
With jerky legs, as if to try
Their foreheads on the buttercup
That blooms so fiercely in the sky!

And good it is on lawny slope
To sit and watch the brooklet run
Past orchards where the pippins hope
To turn as golden as the sun.

It curves in silver from the glade
With primrose port and cressy cape,
Delighting by its reach of shade
And vagrant loveliness of shape.

Ah, happy countryman! How sweet
To follow quiet, dwell with rest,
And ever in your green retreat
Be sure of wonder in the breast!—

And sure of her whose grace and tact,
In Sessions well and wisely spent,
Have helped to pass the finest Act
Of Love's successful Government.





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