The harvest-hymns
Rise from the fields, where, in the setting sun,
The reapers stretch by sheaves of golden dun
Their weary limbs;
While many a sunburnt lad or maiden weaves
With every corn-flower that the sickle leaves
Demeter’s harvest-crowns, or binds and trims
For the Great Mother her allotted sheaves.
The whole west glows
Like a vast sea of rosy molten ore
Where, here and there, great tracks of pearly shore
Or gleaming rows
Of crimson reefs and isles of amber blaze;
And through the whole a mighty fan of rays
Spreads as the sun approaches earth and throws
A farewell glance before he goes his ways.
A rich warm scent
Of summer ripeness fills the fertile plain;
The ox, unyoked, kneels chewing near the wain;
In one sound blent
The voices of the insect-swarms that fill
Each furrow, indefatigably trill
And chirp and hum; until the bright day spent,
Invokes the dusk to make the lone fields still.