252 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD. 



Those delectable juices 



Flowed through the sinuous sluices 



Of sweet springs under the orchard ; 



Climbed into fountains that chained them ; 



Dripped into cups that retained them, 



And swelled till they dropped, and we gained them. 



Then they were gathered and tortured 



By passage from hopper to vat. 



And fell — every apple crushed flat. 



Ah ! how the bees gathered round them. 



And how delicious they found them ! 



In went the pulp by the scoop-full, 



Till the juice flowed by the stoup-full, — 



Filling the half of a puncheon 



While the men swallowed their luncheon. 



Pure grew the stream with the stress 



Of the lever and screw, 



Till the last drops from the press 



Were as bright as the dew." 



There is but one long poem that I know of whose 

 subject is wholly the poetry of cider-making; namely, 

 "Cyder," by John Philips, far back there in the early 

 eighteenth century — entirely unread nowadays, and yet 

 standing, in the midst of those artificial, conventional, 

 unnatural days, as a protest, and, even in its didactic, 

 classical style, expressing an appreciation of country 

 life. Keats, in his ode "To Autumn," in his imagina- 

 tion sees, as the crowning image, the spirit of the fall 

 of the year seated beside a cider-press, as if this were 

 the most natural, the most satisfactory, and the most 

 representative picture he could give of the season: 



" Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, 



Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours." 



Fresh cider, as it comes straight from the press, 

 is indeed sweet and delicious. Yet to most people this 

 wine from the apples tastes best after it has stood for 



