text:                                   1
  
  When the world turns completely upside down
  You say well emigrate to the Eastern Shore
  Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore;
  Well live among wild peach trees, miles from town,
  Youll wear a coonskin cap, and I a gown
  Homespun, dyed butternuts dark gold color.
  Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor,
  Well swim in milk and honey till we drown.
  
  The winter will be short, the summer long,
  The autumn amber-hued, sunny and hot,
  Tasting of cider and of scuppernong;
  All seasons sweet, but autumn best of all.
  The squirrels in their silver fur will fall
  Like falling leaves, like fruit, before your shot.
  
  
                                    2
  
  The autumn frosts will lie upon the grass
  Like bloom on grapes of purple-brown and gold.
  The misted early mornings will be cold;
  The little puddles will be roofed with glass.
  The sun, which burns from copper into brass,
  Melts these at noon, and makes the boys unfold
  Their knitted mufflers; full as they can hold
  Fat pockets dribble chestnuts as they pass.
  
  Peaches grow wild, and pigs can live in clover;
  A barrel of salted herrings lasts a year;
  The spring begins before the winters over.
  By February you may find the skins
  Of garter snakes and water moccasins
  Dwindled and harsh, dead-white and cloudy-clear.
  
  
                                    3
  
  When April pours the colors of a shell
  Upon the hills, when every little creek
  Is shot with silver from the Chesapeake
  In shoals new-minted by the ocean swell,
  When strawberries go begging, and the sleek
  Blue plums lie open to the blackbirds beak,
  We shall live well  we shall live very well.
  
  The months between the cherries and the peaches
  Are brimming cornucopias which spill
  Fruits red and purple, sombre-bloomed and black;
  Then, down rich fields and frosty river beaches
  Well trample bright persimmons, while you kill
  Bronze partridge, speckled quail, and canvasback.
  
  
                                    4
  
  Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones
  Theres something in this richness that I hate.
  I love the look, austere, immaculate,
  Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones.
  Theres something in my very blood that owns
  Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate,
  A thread of water, churned to milky spate
  Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones.
  
  I love those skies, thin blue or snowy gray,
  Those fields sparse-planted, rendering meagre sheaves;
  That spring, briefer than apple-blossoms breath,
  Summer, so much too beautiful to stay,
  Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves,
  And sleepy winter, like the sleep of death.