I've Had a Superfluity of Yankee Ingenuity

Something there is that doesn’t like at all
The city folk who turn to country labors;
Something there is that I’d be apt to call
The Neighbors.

I’d met Old Sam. Life gave him scanty measure,
Yet he was generous, as well as proud.
He called one dusk — to my surprise and pleasure —
And asked me if I’d like my garden plowed.
At first, Old Sam was shy and ill at ease,
But, when he left at twelve, his tongue more limber . . .
I found I’d promised him the maple trees,
A barn of hay, and all the idle timber.

As for Matilda, granite-eyed and stern,
Her attitude was wary at the start;
But — driving her to town — I came to learn
Like all her kind, she had a lonely heart.
Later, when I had made her problems mine
And watched her manner grow relaxed and lenient,
I overheard her on the party line
Describing me as queerish — but convenient.

And there was Hi, whose fences joined my clover;
A cheerful neighbor, though his lot was hard.
It vexed him how his cows kept taking over
My pasture, then my meadow, then my yard.
Checking the boundaries where I’d seen him putter,
I saw that Hi — to cut his grain expenses —
Had neatly snipped the fence wires with a cutter;
Which taught me this: Good neighbors make bad fences.

Something in rural districts doesn’t care
For foreigners, however kind or steady,
Something I’d call the People Living There
Already.