In some great day
The Country Church
Will find its voice
And it will say:
“I stand in the fields
Where the wide earth yields
Her bounties of fruit and grain;
Where the furrows turn
Till the plowshares burn
As they come round and round again;
Where the workers pray
With their tools all day
In sunshine and shadow and rain.
“And I bid them tell
Of the crops they sell
And speak of the work they have done;
I speed every man
In his hope and plan
And follow his day with the sun;
And grasses and trees,
The birds and the bees
I know and feel ev’ry one.
“And out of it all
As the seasons fall
I build my great temple alway;
I point to the skies,
But my footstone lies
In commonplace work of the day;
For I preach the worth
Of the native earth—
To love and to work is to pray.”
LIBERTY H. BAILEY in _Rural Manhood_.