As I sit here of a midsummer day, in front of the wide-open doors of a
big hay-barn, busy with my pen, and look out upon broad meadows where my
farmer neighbor is busy with his haymaking, I idly contrast his harvest
with mine. I have to admit that he succeeds with his better than I do
with mine, though he can make hay only while the sun shines, while I can
reap and cure my light fancies nearly as well in the shade as in the
sun. Yet his crop is the surer and of more certain value to mankind. But
I have this advantage over him--I might make literature out of his
haymaking, or might reap his fields after him, and gather a harvest he
never dreamed of. What does Emerson say?
One harvest from the field
Homeward bring the oxen strong;
A second crop thine acres yield,
Which I gather in a song.
But the poet, like the farmer, can reap only where he has sown, and if
Emerson had not scattered his own heart in the fields his Muse would not
reap much there. Song is not one of the instruments with which I gather
my harvest, but long ago, as a farm boy, in haymaking, and in driving
the cows to and from the pasture, I planted myself there, and whatever
comes back to me now from that source is honestly my own. The second
crop which I gather is not much more tangible than that which the poet
gathers, but the farmer as little suspects its existence as he does that
of the poet. I can use what he would gladly reject. His daisies, his
buttercups, his orange hawkweed, his yarrow, his meadow-rue, serve my
purpose better than they do his. They look better on the printed page
than they do in the haymow. Yes, and his timothy and clover have their
literary uses, and his new-mown hay may perfume a line in poetry. When
one of our poets writes, "wild carrot blooms nod round his quiet bed,"
he makes better use of this weed than the farmers can.
Certainly a midsummer day in the country, with all its sights and
sounds, its singing birds, its skimming swallows, its grazing or
ruminating cattle, its drifting cloud-shadows, its grassy perfumes from
the meadows and the hillsides, and the farmer with his men and teams
busy with the harvest, has material for the literary artist. A good hay
day is a good day for the writer and the poet, because it has a certain
crispness and pureness; it is positive; it is rich in sunshine; there is
a potency in the blue sky which you feel; the high barometer raises your
spirits; your thoughts ripen as the hay cures. You can sit in a circle
of shade beneath a tree in the fields, or in front of the open hay-barn
doors, as I do, and feel the fruition and satisfaction of nature all
about you. The brimming meadows seem fairly to purr as the breezes
stroke them; the trees rustle their myriad leaves as if in gladness; the
many-colored butterflies dance by; the steel blue of the swallows' backs
glistens in the sun as they skim the fields; and the mellow boom of the
passing bumble-bee but enhances the sense of repose and contentment that
pervades the air. The hay cures; the oats and corn deepen their hue; the
delicious fragrance of the last wild strawberries is on the breeze; your
mental skies are lucid, and life has the midsummer fullness and charm.
As I linger here I note the oft-repeated song of the scarlet tanager in
the maple woods that crown a hill above me, and in the loft overhead two
broods of swallows are chattering and lining up their light-colored
breasts on the rims of their nests, or trying their newly fledged wings
while clinging to its sides. The only ominous and unwelcome sound is the
call of the cuckoo, which I hear and have heard at nearly all hours for
many days, and which surely bodes rain. The countryman who first named
this bird the "rain crow" hit the mark. The cuckoo is a devourer of
worms and caterpillars, and why he should be interested in rain is hard
to see. The tree-toad calls before and during a shower, mainly, I think,
because he likes to have his back wet, but why a well-dressed bird like
the cuckoo should become a prophet of the rain is a mystery, unless the
rain and the shadows are congenial to the gloomy mood in which he
usually seems to be. He is the least sprightly and cheery of our birds,
and the part of doleful prophet in our bird drama suits him well.
A high barometer is best for the haymakers and it is best for the human
spirits. When the smoke goes straight up, one's thoughts are more likely
to soar also, and revel in the higher air. The persons who do not like
to get up in the morning till the day has been well sunned and aired
evidently thrive best on a high barometer. Such days do seem better
ventilated, and our lungs take in fuller draughts of air. How curious it
is that the air should seem heavy to us when it is light, and light when
it is heavy! On those sultry, muggy days when it is an effort to move,
and the grasshopper is a burden, the air is light, and we are in the
trough of the vast atmospheric wave; while we are on its crest, and are
buoyed up both in mind and in body, on the crisp, bright days when the
air seems to offer us no resistance. We know that the heavier salt
sea-water buoys us up more than the fresh river or pond water, but we do
not feel in the same way the lift of the high barometric wave. Even the
rough, tough-coated maple-trees in spring are quickly susceptible to
these atmospheric changes. The farmer knows that he needs sunshine and
crisp air to make maple-sugar as well as to make hay. Let the high
blue-domed day with its dry northwest breezes change to a warmer,
overcast, humid day from the south, and the flow of sap lessens at once.
It would seem as if the trees had nerves on the outside of their dry
bark, they respond to the change so quickly. There is no sap without
warmth, and yet warmth, without any memory of the frost, stops the flow.
The more the air presses upon us the lighter we feel, and the less it
presses upon us the more "logy" we feel. Climb to the top of a mountain
ten thousand feet high, and you breathe and move with an effort. The air
is light, water boils at a low temperature, and our lungs and muscles
seem inadequate to perform their usual functions. There is a kind of
pressure that exhilarates us, and an absence of pressure that depresses
us.
The pressure of congenial tasks, of worthy work, sets one up, while the
idle, the unemployed, has a deficiency of hæmoglobin in his blood. The
Lord pity the unemployed man, and pity the man so over-employed that the
pressure upon him is like that upon one who works in a tunnel filled
with compressed air.
Haying in this pastoral region is the first act in the drama of the
harvest, and one likes to see it well staged, as it is to-day--the high
blue dome, the rank, dark foliage of the trees, the daisies still white
in the sun, the buttercups gilding the pastures and hill-slopes, the
clover shedding its perfume, the timothy shaking out its little clouds
of pollen as the sickle-bar strikes it, most of the song-birds still
vocal, and the tide of summer standing poised at its full. Very soon it
will begin to ebb, the stalks of the meadow grasses will become dry and
harsh, the clover will fade, the girlish daisies will become coarse and
matronly, the birds will sing fitfully or cease altogether, the pastures
will turn brown, and the haymakers will find the hay half cured as it
stands waiting for them in the meadows.
What a wonderful thing is the grass, so common, so abundant, so various,
a green summer snow that softens the outlines of the landscape, that
makes a carpet for the foot, that brings a hush to the fields, and that
furnishes food to so many and such various creatures! More than the
grazing animals live upon the grass. All our cereals--wheat, barley,
rye, rice, oats, corn--belong to the great family of the grasses.
Grass is the nap of the fields; it is the undergarment of the hills. It
gives us the meadow, a feature in the northern landscape so common that
we cease to remark it, but which we miss at once when we enter a
tropical or semi-tropical country. In Cuba and Jamaica and Hawaii I saw
no meadows and no pastures, no grazing cattle, none of the genial,
mellow look which our landscape presents. Harshness, rawness, aridity,
are the prevailing notes.
From my barn-door outlook I behold meadows with their boundary line of
stone fences that are like lakes and reservoirs of timothy and clover.
They are full to the brim, they ripple and rock in the breeze, the green
inundation seems about to overwhelm its boundaries, all the surface
inequalities of the land are wiped out, the small rocks and stones are
hidden, the woodchucks make their roads through it, immersed like
dolphins in the sea. What a picture of the plenty and the flowing
beneficence of our temperate zone it all presents! Nature in her kinder,
gentler moods, dreaming of the tranquil herds and the bursting barns.
Surely the vast army of the grass hath its victories, for the most part
noiseless, peace-yielding victories that gladden the eye and
tranquillize the heart.
The meadow presents a pleasing picture before it is invaded by the
haymakers, and a varied and animated one after it is thus invaded; the
mowing-machine sending a shudder ahead of it through the grass, the
hay-tedder kicking up the green locks like a giant, many-legged
grasshopper, the horserake gathering the cured hay into windrows, the
white-sleeved men with their forks pitching it into cocks, and, lastly,
the huge, soft-cheeked loads of hay, towering above the teams that draw
them, brushing against the bar-ways and the lower branches of the trees
along their course, slowly winding their way toward the barn. Then the
great mows of hay, or the shapely stacks in the fields, and the battle
is won. Milk and cream are stored up in well-cured hay, and when the
snow of winter fills the meadows as grass fills them in summer, the
tranquil cow can still rest and ruminate in contentment.
As the swallows sweep out and in near my head they give out an angry
"Sleet, sleet," as if my presence had suddenly become offensive to them.
I know what makes the change in their temper. The young are leaving
their nests, and at such eventful times the parent birds are always
nervous and anxious. When any of our birds launch a family into the
world they would rather not have spectators, and you are pretty sure to
be abused if you intrude upon the scene. The swallow can put a good deal
of sharp emphasis into that "Sleet, sleet," though she is not armed to
make any of her threats good. Who knows that all will go well with them
when they first make the plunge into space with their untried wings? A
careful parent should keep the coast clear.
They have been testing their wings for several days, clinging to the
sides of the nest and beating the wings rapidly. And now comes the
crucial moment of letting go and attempting actual flight. Several of
them have already done it, and I see them resting on the dead limbs of a
plum-tree across the road. But more are to follow, and parental anxiety
is still rife. I shall be sorry when the spacious hayloft becomes
silent. That affectionate "Wit, wit" and that contented and caressing
squeaking and chattering give me a sense of winged companionship. The
old barn is the abode of friendly and delicate spirits, and the sight of
them and the sound of them surely bring a suggestion of poetry and
romance to these familiar scenes.
Is not the swallow one of the oldest and dearest of birds? Known to the
poets and sages and prophets of all peoples! So infantile, so helpless
and awkward upon the earth, so graceful and masterful on the wing, the
child and darling of the summer air, reaping its invisible harvest in
the fields of space as if it dined on the sunbeams, touching no earthly
food, drinking and bathing and mating on the wing, swiftly, tirelessly
coursing the long day through, a thought on wings, a lyric in the shape
of a bird! Only in the free fields of the summer air could it have got
that steel-blue of the wings and that warm tan of the breast. Of course
I refer to the barn swallow. The cliff swallow seems less a child of the
sky and sun, probably because its sheen and glow are less, and its shape
and motions less arrowy. More varied in color, its hues yet lack the
intensity, and its flight the swiftness, of those of its brother of the
haylofts. The tree swallows and the bank swallows are pleasing, but they
are much more local and restricted in their ranges than the
barn-frequenters. As a farm boy I did not know them at all, but the barn
swallows the summer always brought.
After all, there is but one swallow; the others are particular kinds
that we specify. How curious that men should ever have got the notion
that this airy, fairy creature, this playmate of the sunbeams, spends
the winter hibernating in the mud of ponds and marshes, the bedfellow of
newts and frogs and turtles! It is an Old-World legend, born of the
blindness and superstition of earlier times. One knows that the rain of
the rainbow may be gathered at one's feet in a mud-puddle, but the
fleeting spectrum of the bow is not a thing of life. Yet one would as
soon think of digging up a rainbow in the mud as a swallow. The swallow
follows the sun, and in August is off for the equatorial regions, where
it hibernates on the wing, buried in tropical sunshine.
Well, this brilliant day is a good day for the swallows, a good day for
the haymakers, and a good day for him who sits before his open barn door
and weaves his facts and midsummer fancies into this slight literary
fabric.