Sunday Morning, May 20th.
On Friday I began planting my corn. For many days previously I went out
every morning at sun-up, in the clear, sharp air, and thrust my hand
deep down in the soil of the field. I do not know that I followed any
learned agricultural rule, but somehow I liked to do it. It has seemed
reasonable to me, instead of watching for a phase of the moon (for I do
not cultivate the moon), to inquire of the earth itself. For many days I
had no response; the soil was of an icy, moist coldness, as of death.
"I am not ready yet," it said; "I have not rested my time."
Early in the week we had a day or two of soft sunshine, of fecund
warmth, to which the earth lay open, willing, passive. On Thursday
morning, though a white frost silvered the harrow ridges, when I thrust
my hand into the soil I felt, or seemed to feel, a curious response: a
strange answering of life to life. The stone had been rolled from the
sepulchre!
And I knew then that the destined time had arrived for my planting. That
afternoon I marked out my corn-field, driving the mare to my home-made
wooden marker, carefully observant of the straightness of the rows; for
a crooked corn-row is a sort of immorality. I brought down my seed corn
from the attic, where it had hung waiting all winter, each ear suspended
separately by the white, up-turned husks. They were the selected ears of
last year's crop, even of size throughout, smooth of kernel, with tips
well-covered--the perfect ones chosen among many to perpetuate the
highest excellencies of the crop. I carried them to the shed next my
barn, and shelled them out in my hand machine: as fine a basket of
yellow dent seed as a man ever saw. I have listened to endless
discussions as to the relative merits of flint and dent corn. I here
cast my vote emphatically for yellow dent: it is the best Nature can do!
I found my seed-bag hanging, dusty, over a rafter in the shed, and
Harriet sewed a buckle on the strip that goes around the waist. I
cleaned and sharpened my hoe.
"Now," I said to myself, "give me a good day and I am ready to plant."
The sun was just coming up on Friday, looking over the trees into a
world of misty and odorous freshness. When I climbed the fence I dropped
down in the grass at the far corner of the field. I had looked forward
this year with pleasure to the planting of a small field by hand--the
adventure of it--after a number of years of horse planting (with
Horace's machine) of far larger fields. There is an indescribable
satisfaction in answering, "Present!" to the roll-call of Nature; to
plant when the earth is ready, to cultivate when the soil begins to bake
and harden, to harvest when the grain is fully ripe. It is the chief
joy of him who lives close to the soil that he comes, in time, to beat
in consonance with the pulse of the earth; its seasons become his
seasons; its life his life.
Behold me, then, with a full seed-bag suspended before me, buckled both
over the shoulders and around the waist, a shiny hoe in my hand (the
scepter of my dominion), a comfortable, rested feeling in every muscle
of my body, standing at the end of the first long furrow there in my
field on Friday morning--a whole spring day open before me! At that
moment I would not have changed my place for the place of any king,
prince, or president.
At first I was awkward enough, for it has been a long time since I have
done much hand planting; but I soon fell into the rhythmic swing of the
sower, the sure, even, accurate step; the turn of the body and the
flexing of the wrists as the hoe strikes downward; the deftly hollowed
hole; the swing of the hand to the seed-bag; the sure fall of the
kernels; the return of the hoe; the final determining pressure of the
soil upon the seed. One falls into it and follows it as he would follow
the rhythm of a march.
Even the choice of seed becomes automatic, instinctive. At first there
is a conscious counting by the fingers--five seeds:
One for the blackbird,
One for the crow,
One for the cutworm,
Two to grow.
But after a time one ceases to count five, and _feels_ five,
instinctively rejecting a monstrous six, or returning to complete an
inferior four.
I wonder if you know the feel of the fresh, soft soil, as it answers to
your steps, giving a little, responding a little (as life always
does)--and is there not something endlessly good and pleasant about it?
And the movement of the arms and shoulders, falling easily into that
action and reaction which yields the most service to the least energy!
Scientists tell us that the awkward young eagle has a wider wing-stretch
than the old, skilled eagle. So the corn planter, at noon, will do his
work with half the expended energy of the early morning: he attains the
artistry of motion. And quite beyond and above this physical
accomplishment is the ever-present, scarcely conscious sense of reward,
repayment, which one experiences as he covers each planting of seeds.
As the sun rose higher the mists stole secretly away, first toward the
lower brook-hollows, finally disappearing entirely; the morning coolness
passed, the tops of the furrows dried out to a lighter brown, and still
I followed the long planting. At each return I refilled my seed-bag, and
sometimes I drank from the jug of water which I had hidden in the grass.
Often I stood a moment by the fence to look up and around me. Through
the clear morning air I could hear the roosters crowing vaingloriously
from the barnyard, and the robins were singing, and occasionally from
the distant road I heard the rumble of a wagon. I noted the slow kitchen
smoke from Horace's chimney, the tip of which I could just see over the
hill from the margin of my field--and my own pleasant home among its
trees--and my barn--all most satisfying to look upon. Then I returned to
the sweat and heat of the open field, and to the steady swing of the
sowing.
[Illustration: "OFTEN I STOOD A MOMENT BY THE FENCE"]
Joy of life seems to me to arise from a sense of being where one
belongs, as I feel right here; of being foursquare with the life we have
chosen. All the discontented people I know are trying sedulously to be
something they are not, to do something they cannot do. In the
advertisements of the country paper I find men angling for money by
promising to make women beautiful and men learned or rich--overnight--by
inspiring good farmers and carpenters to be poor doctors and lawyers. It
is curious, is it not, with what skill we will adapt our sandy land to
potatoes and grow our beans in clay, and with how little wisdom we farm
the soils of our own natures. We try to grow poetry where plumbing would
thrive grandly!--not knowing that plumbing is as important and
honourable and necessary to this earth as poetry.
I understand it perfectly; I too, followed long after false gods. I
thought I must rush forth to see the world, I must forthwith become
great, rich, famous; and I hurried hither and thither, seeking I knew
not what. Consuming my days with the infinite distractions of travel, I
missed, as one who attempts two occupations at once, the sure
satisfaction of either. Beholding the exteriors of cities and of men, I
was deceived with shadows; my life took no hold upon that which is deep
and true. Colour I got, and form, and a superficial aptitude in judging
by symbols. It was like the study of a science: a hasty review gives one
the general rules, but it requires a far profounder insight to know the
fertile exceptions.
But as I grow older I remain here on my farm, and wait quietly for the
world to pass this way. My oak and I, we wait, and we are satisfied.
Here we stand among our clods; our feet are rooted deep within the soil.
The wind blows upon us and delights us, the rain falls and refreshes us,
the sun dries and sweetens us. We are become calm, slow, strong; so we
measure rectitudes and regard essentials, my oak and I.
I would be a hard person to dislodge or uproot from this spot of earth.
I belong here; I grow here. I like to think of the old fable of the
wrestler of Irassa. For I am veritably that Anteus who was the wrestler
of Irassa and drew his strength from the ground. So long as I tread the
long furrows of my planting, with my feet upon the earth, I am
invincible and unconquerable. Hercules himself, though he comes upon me
in the guise of Riches, or Fame, or Power, cannot overthrow me--save as
he takes me away from this soil. For at each step my strength is
renewed. I forget weariness, old age has no dread for me.
Some there may be who think I talk dreams; they do not know reality. My
friend, did it ever occur to you that you are unhappy because you have
lost connection with life? Because your feet are not somewhere firm
planted upon the soil of reality? Contentment, and indeed usefulness,
comes as the infallible result of great acceptances, great
humilities--of not trying to make ourselves this or that (to conform to
some dramatized version of ourselves), but of surrendering ourselves to
the fullness of life--of letting life flow through us. To be used!--that
is the sublimest thing we know.
It is a distinguishing mark of greatness that it has a tremendous hold
upon real things. I have seen men who seemed to have behind them, or
rather within them, whole societies, states, institutions: how they
come at us, like Atlas bearing the world! For they act not with their
own feebleness, but with a strength as of the Whole of Life. They speak,
and the words are theirs, but the voice is the Voice of Mankind.
I don't know what to call it: being right with God or right with life.
It is strangely the same thing; and God is not particular as to the name
we know him by, so long as we know Him. Musing upon these secret things,
I seem to understand what the theologians in their darkness have made so
obscure. Is it not just this at-one-moment with life which sweetens and
saves us all?
In all these writings I have glorified the life of the soil until I am
ashamed. I have loved it because it saved me. The farm for me, I decided
long ago, is the only place where I can flow strongly and surely. But to
you, my friend, life may present a wholly different aspect, variant
necessities. Knowing what I have experienced in the city, I have
sometimes wondered at the happy (even serene) faces I have seen in
crowded streets. There must be, I admit, those who can flow and be at
one with that life, too. And let them handle their money, and make
shoes, and sew garments, and write in ledgers--if that completes and
contents them. I have no quarrel with any one of them. It is, after all,
a big and various world, where men can be happy in many ways.
For every man is a magnet, highly and singularly sensitized. Some draw
to them fields and woods and hills, and are drawn in return; and some
draw swift streets and the riches which are known to cities. It is not
of importance what we draw, but that we really draw. And the greatest
tragedy in life, as I see it, is that thousands of men and women never
have the opportunity to draw with freedom; but they exist in weariness
and labour, and are drawn upon like inanimate objects by those who live
in unhappy idleness. They do not farm: they are farmed. But that is a
question foreign to present considerations. We may be assured, if we
draw freely, like the magnet of steel which gathers its iron filings
about it in beautiful and symmetrical forms, that the things which we
attract will also become symmetrical and harmonious with our lives.
Thus flowing with life, self-surrendering to life a man becomes
indispensable to life, he is absolutely necessary to the conduct of
this universe. And it is the feeling of being necessary, of being
desired, flowing into a man that produces the satisfaction of
contentment. Often and often I think to myself:
These fields have need of me; my horse whinnies when he hears my step;
my dog barks a welcome. These, my neighbours, are glad of me. The corn
comes up fresh and green to my planting; my buckwheat bears richly. I am
indispensable in this place. What is more satisfactory to the human
heart than to be needed and to know we are needed? One line in the Book
of Chronicles, when I read it, flies up at me out of the printed page as
though it were alive, conveying newly the age-old agony of a misplaced
man. After relating the short and evil history of Jehoram, King of
Judah, the account ends--with the appalling terseness which often crowns
the dramatic climaxes of that matchless writing:
"And (he) departed without being desired."
Without being desired! I have wondered if any man was ever cursed with a
more terrible epitaph!
And so I planted my corn; and in the evening I felt the dumb weariness
of physical toil. Many times in older days I have known the wakeful
nerve-weariness of cities. This was not it. It was the weariness which,
after supper, seizes upon one's limbs with half-aching numbness. I sat
down on my porch with a nameless content. I looked off across the
countryside. I saw the evening shadows fall, and the moon come up. And I
wanted nothing I had not. And finally sleep swept in resistless waves
upon me and I stumbled up to bed--and sank into dreamless slumber.
V