The opening of Chapter I
Low stirrings in the leaves, before the wind
Wakes all the green strings of the forest lyre.
LOWELL.The light of an early Spring morning, shining fair on upland and lowland, promised a good day for the farmer's work. And where a film of thin smoke stole up over the tree-tops, into the sunshine which had not yet got so low, there stood the farmer's house.
It was a little brown house, built surely when its owner's means were not greater than his wishes, and probably some time before his family had reached the goodly growth it boasted now. All of them were gathered at the breakfast-table.
"Boys, you may take the oxen, and finish ploughing that upland field -- I shall be busy all day sowing wheat in the bend meadow."