g of the woodman.
Oak and chestnut, hickory, walnut,
Poplar, sycamore, and locust,
Beech and elm and pine and cedar,
Laurel, holly, ash and maple--
All the trees have bent their growing
To the husbandman's caprices.
All the beasts have fled to westward;
All the reptiles skulk in hiding;
All the rivers and the brooklets
Have subdued their wild, free rolling.
Ancient mounds and Aztec relics,
Mural signs and hieroglyphics,
Toltec remnants and weird mummies,
All the arts and queer devices
Of a prehistoric people,
Have entombed their sylvan phantoms,
In an everlasting Lethe.
Now the woods and plains are surveys,
Of distinctive tracts and precincts,
Now the wide, primeval limits
Bound neat villages and districts.
There are Bryantsville and Fitchport,
Buckeye, Logan Town and Tyro,
Duncan Town and Buena Vista,
Hyattville, Paint Lick, and Lowell,
Clustered round the mother city,
The fair city on the hillside;
Clustered 'mid the charming bowers
Of the Garrard county woodlands.
Now the wild flower's timid blooming
Colors distant fields and by-ways,
And the city's rare exotics,
In the crystal greenhouse, flourish;
Rose and lily and camelia,
Tulip, fuschia, and verbena,
Rear their gorgeous tints to gladden
Many a sweet domestic picture.
All the knotted thorns and briers,
Serve in close-cut garden hedges;
All the grapevine swings are curling
Over tasteful, latticed arbors.
Apples, pears, and plums, and peaches,
Herbs and blossoms, fruits and berries,
Swell the trade of horticulture,
Birds and fowls and flesh and fishes,
Now supply the city's market.
Houses, homes of care and culture,
Public buildings grand and costly,
Deckings rural and artistic,
All the mart and traffic symbols,
Mark the once entangled wildwood,
Deck the erst embowered valley.
Nature views her splendid ruins,
In a garb of man's creation;
Smooths her rugged frowns and wrinkles,
'Neath the mask of modern pruning;
Draws her cloven foot in hiding,
Under skirts of art so simple;
Buries all her savage spirit,
In the graces of refinement;
Merges wilderness and mountain,
In the sea of cultivation.
And her name, no longer rustic,
Bears the soubriquet, Lancaster.
'Tis our birthplace, dear and sacred,
In the heart of old Kentucky,
'Tis the pride of Garrard county,
Fairest city of the hillside.
May she never kn