The Harvest
Sun on the mountain,
Shade in the valley,
Ripple and lightness
Leaping along the world,
Sun, like a gold sword
Plucked from the scabbard,
Striking the wheat-fields,
Splendid and lusty,
Close-standing, full-headed,
Toppling with plenty;
Shade, like a buckler
Kindly and ample,
Sweeping the wheat-fields
Darkening and tossing;
There on the world-rim
Winds break and gather
Heaping the mist
For the pyre of the sunset;
And still as a shadow,
In the dim westward,
A cloud sloop of amethyst
Moored to the world
With cables of rain.
Acres of gold wheat
Stir in the sunshine,
Rounding the hill-top,
Crested with plenty,
Filling the valley,
Brimmed with abundance,
Wind in the wheat-field
Eddying and settling,
Swaying it, sweeping it,
Lifting the rich heads,
Tossing them soothingly
Twinkle and shimmer
The lights and the shadowings,
Nimble as moonlight
Astir in the mere.
Laden with odors
Of peace and of plenty,
Soft comes the wind
From the ranks of the wheat-field,
Bearing a promise
Of harvest and sickle-time,
Opulent threshing-floors
Dusty and dim
With the whirl of the flail,
And wagons of bread,
Sown-laden and lumbering
Through the gateways of cities.
When will the reapers
Strike in their sickles,
Bending and grasping,
Shearing and spreading;
When will the gleaners
Searching the stubble
Take the last wheat-heads
Home in their arms ?
Ask not the question! -
Something tremendous
Moves to the answer.
Hunger and poverty
Heaped like the ocean
Welters and mutters,
Hold back the sickles!
Millions of children
Born to their mothers' womb,
Starved at the nipple, cry,--
Ours is the harvest!
Millions of women
Learned in the tragical
Secrets of poverty,
Sweated and beaten, cry,--
Hold back the sickles!
Millions of men
With a vestige of manhood,
Wild-eyed and gaunt-throated,
Shout with a leonine
Accent of anger,
Leaves us the wheat-fields!
When will the reapers
Strike in their sickles?
Ask not the question;
Something tremendous
Moves to the answer.
Long have they sharpened
Their fiery, impetuous
Sickles of carnage,
Welded them aeons
Ago in the mountains
Of suffering and anguish;
Hearts were their hammers
Blood was their fire,
Sorrow their anvil,
(Trusty the sickle
Tempered with tears;)
Time they had plenty-
Harvests and harvests
Passed them in agony,
Only a half-filled
Ear for their lot;
Man that has taken
God for a master
Made him a law,
Mocked him and cursed him,
Set up this hunger,
Called it necessity,
Put in the blameless mouth
Juda's language:
The poor ye have with you
Always, unending.
But up from the impotent
Anguish of children,
Up from the labor
Fruitless, unmeaning,
Of millions of mothers,
Hugely necessitous,
Grew by a just law
Stern and implacable,
Art born of poverty,
The making of sickles
Meet for the harvest.
And now to the wheat-fields
Come the weird reapers
Armed with their sickles,
Whipping them keenly
In the fresh-air fields,
Wild with the joy of them,
Finding them trusty,
Hilted with teen.
Swarming like ants,
The Idea for captain,
No banners, no bugles,
Only a terrible
Ground-bass of gathering
Tempest and fury,
Only a tossing
Of arms and of garments;
Sexless and featureless,
(Only the children
Different among them,
Crawling between their feet,
Borne on their shoulders;)
Rolling their shaggy heads
Wild with the unheard-of
Drug of the sunshine;
Tears that had eaten
The half of their eyelids
Dry on their cheeks;
Blood in their stiffened hair
Clouted and darkened;
Down in their cavern hearts
Hunger the tiger,
Leaping, exulting;
Sighs that had choked them
Burst into triumphing;
On they come, Victory!
Up to the wheat-fields,
Dreamed of in visions
Bred by the hunger,
Seen for the first time
Splendid and golden;
On they come fluctuant,
Seething and breaking,
Weltering like fire
In the pit of the earthquake,
Bursting in heaps
With the sudden intractable
Lust of the hunger:
Then when they see them-
The miles of the harvest
White in the sunshine,
Rushing and stumbling,
With the mighty and clamorous
Cry of a people
Starved from creation,
Hurl themselves onward,
Deep in the wheat-fields,
Weeping like children,
After ages and ages,
Back at the mother the earth.
Night in the valley,
Gloom on the mountain,
Wind in the wheat,
Far to the southward
The flutter of lightning,
The shudder of thunder;
But high at the zenith,
A cluster of stars
Glimmers and throbs
In the gasp of the midnight,
Steady and absolute,
Ancient and sure
poem by Duncan Campbell Scott
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Thoughts In A Wheat-Field
IN his wide fields walks the Master,
In his fair fields, ripe for harvest,
Where the evening sun shines slant-wise
On the rich ears heavy bending;
Saith the Master: 'It is time.'
Though no leaf shows brown decadence,
And September's nightly frost-bite
Only reddens the horizon,
'It is full time,' saith the Master,
The wise Master, 'It is time.'
Lo, he looks. That look compelling
Brings his laborers to the harvest;
Quick they gather, as in autumn
Passage-birds in cloudy eddies
Drop upon the seaside fields;
White wings have they, and white raiment,
White feet shod with swift obedience,
Each lays down his golden palm branch,
And uprears his sickle shining,
'Speak, O Master,--is it time?'
O'er the field the servants hasten,
Where the full-stored ears droop downwards,
Humble with their weight of harvest:
Where the empty ears wave upward,
And the gay tares flaunt in rows:
But the sickles, the sharp sickles,
Flash new dawn at their appearing,
Songs are heard in earth and heaven,
For the reapers are the angels,
And it is the harvest time.
O Great Master, are thy footsteps
Even now upon the mountains?
Are thou walking in thy wheat-field?
Are the snowy-wingèd reapers
Gathering in the silent air?
Are thy signs abroad, the glowing
Of the distant sky, blood-reddened,--
And the near fields trodden, blighted,
Choked by gaudy tares triumphant,--
Sure, it must be harvest time?
Who shall know the Master's coming?
Whether it be at dawn or sunset,
When night dews weigh down the wheat-ears,
Or while noon rides high in heaven,
Sleeping lies the yellow field?
Only, may thy voice, Good Master,
Peal above the reapers' chorus,
And dull sound of sheaves slow falling,--
'Gather all into My garner,
For it is My harvest time.'
poem by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
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Waiting On The Wheat Harvest
as you sow brothers sisters so you wheat harvest reap
as a grain of wheat dies germinates bears fruit to heap
Jesus will completely clean up threshing floor gather his wheat
chaff he will burn up with unquenchable fire hell suffering heat
an enemy came in over sowed weeds in among seed wheat
reapers harvest collect weeds burn them saving only wheat
Satan demands sifts men as wheat to blow away in sifting wind
Son of man will send angels to gather chosen ones from ill wind
a grain of wheat falls into the ground dies then bears fruit new life
so hate soul temptation in this world safeguard soul for eternal life
poem by Terence George Craddock
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Parables of Jesus: The Kingdom of Heaven: The Wheat and the Darnel Gospel, Matthew 13: 24-30
Then Jesus told another parable:
‘Kingdom of Heaven- Wheat and the darnel'
Heaven can be compared to that of a man,
Who sowed only good seed in his whole field.
But just when everybody fell asleep,
His enemy had come and sown darnel,
Amongst the wheat and sped away quite fast.
And when the new wheat sprouted very well,
The darnel too appeared amidst the same;
His labourers all went to him and said,
‘Wasn't it good seed that you sowed in your field?
He told them, ‘Some enemy had done this! '
When they asked if they should pull the weeds out,
He told, ‘No, as the wheat would come with it! '
‘Let them both grow until the harvest-time;
And then I will instruct my reapers all,
‘Collect the darnel first; burn the bundles!
Gather the good wheat all into my barn! '
poem by John Celes
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Messidor
Put in the sickles and reap;
For the morning of harvest is red,
And the long large ranks of the corn
Coloured and clothed as the morn
Stand thick in the fields and deep
For them that faint to be fed.
Let all that hunger and weep
Come hither, and who would have bread
Put in the sickles and reap.
Coloured and clothed as the morn,
The grain grows ruddier than gold,
And the good strong sun is alight
In the mists of the day-dawn white,
And the crescent, a faint sharp horn,
In the fear of his face turns cold
As the snakes of the night-time that creep
From the flag of our faith unrolled.
Put in the sickles and reap.
In the mists of the day-dawn white
That roll round the morning star,
The large flame lightens and grows
Till the red-gold harvest-rows,
Full-grown, are full of the light
As the spirits of strong men are,
Crying, Who shall slumber or sleep?
Who put back morning or mar?
Put in the sickles and reap.
Till the red-gold harvest-rows
For miles through shudder and shine
In the wind's breath, fed with the sun,
A thousand spear-heads as one
Bowed as for battle to close
Line in rank against line
With place and station to keep
Till all men's hands at a sign
Put in the sickles and reap.
A thousand spear-heads as one
Wave as with swing of the sea
When the mid tide sways at its height;
For the hour is for harvest or fight
In face of the just calm sun,
As the signal in season may be
And the lot in the helm may leap
When chance shall shake it; but ye,
Put in the sickles and reap.
For the hour is for harvest or fight
To clothe with raiment of red;
O men sore stricken of hours,
Lo, this one, is not it ours
To glean, to gather, to smite?
Let none make risk of his head
Within reach of the clean scythe-sweep,
When the people that lay as the dead
Put in the sickles and reap.
Lo, this one, is not it ours,
Now the ruins of dead things rattle
As dead men's bones in the pit,
Now the kings wax lean as they sit
Girt round with memories of powers,
With musters counted as cattle
And armies folded as sheep
Till the red blind husbandman battle
Put in the sickles and reap?
Now the kings wax lean as they sit,
The people grow strong to stand;
The men they trod on and spat,
The dumb dread people that sat
As corpses cast in a pit,
Rise up with God at their hand,
And thrones are hurled on a heap,
And strong men, sons of the land,
Put in the sickles and reap.
The dumb dread people that sat
All night without screen for the night,
All day without food for the day,
They shall give not their harvest away,
They shall eat of its fruit and wax fat:
They shall see the desire of their sight,
Though the ways of the seasons be steep,
They shall climb with face to the light,
Put in the sickles and reap.
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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Harvest Song
I am a reaper whose muscles set at sundown. All my oats are cradled.
But I am too chilled, and too fatigued to bind them.
And I hunger.
I crack a grain between my teeth. I do not taste it.
I have been in the fields all day. My throat is dry.
I hunger.
My eyes are caked with dust of oatfields at harvest-time.
I am a blind man who stares across the hills, seeking stack'd fields of other harvesters.
It would be good to see them . . crook'd, split, and iron-ring'd handles of the scythes. It would be good to see them, dust-caked and blind. I hunger.
(Dusk is a strange fear'd sheath their blades are dull'd in.)
My throat is dry. And should I call, a cracked grain like the oats...eoho--
I fear to call. What should they hear me, and offer me their grain, oats, or wheat, or corn? I have been in the fields all day. I fear I could not taste it. I fear knowledge of my hunger.
My ears are caked with dust of oatfields at harvest-time.
I am a deaf man who strains to hear the calls of other harvesters whose throats are also dry.
It would be good to hear their songs . . reapers of the sweet-stalk'd cane, cutters of the corn...even though their throats cracked and the strangeness of their voices deafened me.
I hunger. My throat is dry. Now that the sun has set and I am chilled, I fear to call. (Eoho, my brothers!)
I am a reaper. (Eoho!) All my oats are cradled.
But I am too fatigued to bind them. And I hunger.
I crack a grain. It has no taste to it.
My throat is dry...
O my brothers, I beat my palms, still soft, against the stubble of my harvesting. (You beat your soft palms, too.) My pain is sweet. Sweeter than the oats or wheat or corn. It will not bring me knowledge of my hunger.
poem by Jean Toomer
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The Harvest Of The Sea
The earth grows white with harvest; all day long
The sickles gleam, until the darkness weaves
Her web of silence o'er the thankful song
Of reapers bringing home the golden sheaves.
The wave tops whiten on the sea fields drear,
And men go forth at haggard dawn to reap;
But ever 'mid the gleaners' song we hear
The half-hushed sobbing of the hearts that weep.
poem by John McCrae
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Songs In A Cornfield
A song in a cornfield
Where corn begins to fall,
Where reapers are reaping,
Reaping one, reaping all.
Sing pretty Lettice,
Sing Rachel, sing May;
Only Marian cannot sing
While her sweetheart's away.
Where is he gone to
And why does he stay?
He came across the green sea
But for a day,
Across the deep green sea
To help with the hay.
His hair was curly yellow
And his eyes were grey,
He laughed a merry laugh
And said a sweet say.
Where is he gone to
That he comes not home?
To-day or to-morrow
He surely will come.
Let him haste to joy
Lest he lag for sorrow,
For one weeps to-day
Who'll not weep to-morrow:
To-day she must weep
For gnawing sorrow,
To-night she may sleep
And not wake to-morrow.
May sang with Rachel
In the waxing warm weather,
Lettice sang with them,
They sang all together:—
'Take the wheat in your arm
Whilst day is broad above,
Take the wheat to your bosom,
But not a false love.
Out in the fields
Summer heat gloweth,
Out in the fields
Summer wind bloweth,
Out in the fields
Summer friend showeth,
Out in the fields
Summer wheat groweth;
But in the winter
When summer heat is dead
And summer wind has veered
And summer friend has fled,
Only summer wheat remaineth,
White cakes and bread.
Take the wheat, clasp the wheat
That's food for maid and dove;
Take the wheat to your bosom,
But not a false false love.'
A silence of full noontide heat
Grew on them at their toil:
The farmer's dog woke up from sleep,
The green snake hid her coil.
Where grass stood thickest, bird and beast
Sought shadows as they could,
The reaping men and women paused
And sat down where they stood;
They ate and drank and were refreshed,
For rest from toil is good.
While the reapers took their ease,
Their sickles lying by,
Rachel sang a second strain,
And singing seemed to sigh:—
'There goes the swallow—
Could we but follow!
Hasty swallow stay,
Point us out the way;
Look back swallow, turn back swallow, stop swallow.
'There went the swallow—
Too late to follow:
Lost our note of way,
Lost our chance to-day;
Good bye swallow, sunny swallow, wise swallow.
'After the swallow
All sweet things follow:
All things go their way,
Only we must stay,
Must not follow; good bye swallow, good swallow.'
Then listless Marian raised her head
Among the nodding sheaves;
Her voice was sweeter than that voice;
She sang like one who grieves:
Her voice was sweeter than its wont
Among the nodding sheaves;
All wondered while they heard her sing
Like one who hopes and grieves:—
'Deeper than the hail can smite,
Deeper than the frost can bite,
Deep asleep through day and night,
Our delight.
'Now thy sleep no pang can break,
No to-morrow bid thee wake,
Not our sobs who sit and ache
For thy sake.
'Is it dark or light below?
Oh, but is it cold like snow?
Dost thou feel the green things grow
Fast or slow?
'Is it warm or cold beneath,
Oh, but is it cold like death?
Cold like death, without a breath,
Cold like death?'
If he comes to-day
He will find her weeping;
If he comes to-morrow
He will find her sleeping;
If he comes the next day
He'll not find her at all,
He may tear his curling hair,
Beat his breast and call.
poem by Christina Georgina Rossetti
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Golden Wheat
Remember me when the South wind blow
Golden wheat, where the waves dance in row
Forget the emptiness and cold
Embrace love and the memories you hold
Remember me solemnly gazing for doe
Golden wheat, where waves dance in row
Entwined together on the greens we rolled
Embrace love and the memories you hold
Will you stay with me, as old we grow
Golden wheat, where the wave dance in row
Together we'll erase the world's toll
Embrace love and the memories you hold
South wind lover always know
Golden wheat, where waves dance in row
Bodies come together as if made in a mold
Embrace love and the memories you hold
My pledge to you from Heaven and below
Golden wheat, where waves dance in row
With my last breath our love will still unfold
Embrace love and the memories you hold
When we're gone I hope our descendants know
Golden Wheat, where waves dance in row
Feel the south wind, be it warm or cold
Embrace love and the memories you hold
poem by Rhonda Baker
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Pleasure In Our Bounty
Bountiful harvests compliment you-beloved;
So rich with the gathering bounty...
Your wheat and corn fields are most plentiful... indeed--
Garning the corn 'tis nigh;
We two are within these fields--
Aglow with love...
Our hearts never more sure;
Explicit in our very dreams---
We dance to the rhythm of our hearts...
And welcome the twiglight with open arms...
Soon-yes- very soon--
A waltz under the Harvest Moon---
You 'twil surely catch me should i swoon...
For in your arms...beloved...'tis where i belong;
Ah... but for the gathering...
The season for sowing 'tis done--
And together a prolific abundance we have reaped--
Could our love ever be more grand or fulfilling--
As it 'tis right now...this very moment?
Here 'neath the moon-in the breeze of our Eternal Youth?
Embraced by the harvests and its 'Golden Hue'...
Alive in the Summer of renew...
Most blessed are we two...
Dancing as one when day 'tis done--
With open arms we acknowledge...
A new season for us has begun;
The Essence
August 1,2010
poem by Theodora Onken
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Oh!
OH! let the lighting clouds come instantly
from the snowy summit of the Mount Stake
and let the scythe
come into the blonde hair of the wheat scything
and i have put the sedge
on the rainless back of the field
from the cloud
we sowed the field together with my mother
my sister pruned the grass in needy
and suckled there her newly born baby
OH! the endlees winter of 72
OH! come and warm everwhere and us a little bit
let my melancholic love spring up from my bed
I have three ears of wheat
at the large thrashing field of my village
let the rain and the days sunny
spread everywhere their beauty
I do not want too much
let unbind the infertility of the sky
guard and save our winter provisions
for this
I have descended from the mountain
to the blonde hair of the wheat for cropping
poem by Metin Sahin
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Poem Song
I like to call you my wild horse
(and feed you silver sage ? )
Id like to paint my poems with
Desert tongued clay across her back
And ride you savagely as the sweet and southern wind
Through green and wild kentucky
Id like to make you my secret song
Blaze and dark and red in the orchards
And I would steal away to watch the way
Your silver belly bends and bows beneath me
Id make you my wings in the foothills of montana
My lover in the oceans of the world
Id make you... of children
And I would scatter you across my green memories of home
Id make you my hungry valley
And sow your golden fields and wheats my own
If I were a painter
I would paint you with this note
Silver traces on your skin
And if I were a writer
I would write these words on your back
In desert tongue clay, deep in (your wind? )
Id make you my secret song
Blazing in the orchard
And I would steal away
To watch the way your silver belly
Bends and bows beneath me
Id make you my wings in the foothills of montana
Make you my lover in the oceans of the world
Id make you my calico children
And I would scatter you across my green memories of home
Id be your hungry valley
And Id sow your golden fields of wheat my own
If I were a writer
I would make you my wild horse
Id paint you silver sage and
Ride you savagely through green wild country
(? ? ? ) swedish verses
And you are the rose on my alter
I worship you eternally in flight
Like the wave ?
Ill dip you in these praises like cobwebs
And watch them....?
For your hair is the rain
And it soaks across the continents of my skin
These hands that worship you so completely
You see this woman standing before you
Naked and seared, true of intent,
I dont need you
I want you near
For you are my love
You are my flower of the sun
You are my lover for all time
You wake in the morning
For your sun(flowers? )
You wake in the morning
With your kiss
Ill be your hungry valley
And sow your golden fields of wheat...?
And you are the rose on my alter
I worship you eternally in flight
Like the wave ?
You be my calico children
Ill scatter you across my green memories of home
song performed by by Jewel
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A Sower
With sanguine looks
And rolling walk
Among the rooks
He loved to stalk,
While on the land
With gusty laugh
From a full hand
He scattered chaff.
Now that within
His spirit sleeps
A harvest thin
The sickle reaps;
But the dumb fields
Desire his tread,
And no earth yields
A wheat more red.
poem by Sir Henry Newbolt
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The Unconquered Dead
". . . defeated, with great loss."
Not we the conquered! Not to us the blame
Of them that flee, of them that basely yield;
Nor ours the shout of victory, the fame
Of them that vanquish in a stricken field.
That day of battle in the dusty heat
We lay and heard the bullets swish and sing
Like scythes amid the over-ripened wheat,
And we the harvest of their garnering.
Some yielded, No, not we! Not we, we swear
By these our wounds; this trench upon the hill
Where all the shell-strewn earth is seamed and bare,
Was ours to keep; and lo! we have it still.
We might have yielded, even we, but death
Came for our helper; like a sudden flood
The crashing darkness fell; our painful breath
We drew with gasps amid the choking blood.
The roar fell faint and farther off, and soon
Sank to a foolish humming in our ears,
Like crickets in the long, hot afternoon
Among the wheat fields of the olden years.
Before our eyes a boundless wall of red
Shot through by sudden streaks of jagged pain!
Then a slow-gathering darkness overhead
And rest came on us like a quiet rain.
Not we the conquered! Not to us the shame,
Who hold our earthen ramparts, nor shall cease
To hold them ever; victors we, who came
In that fierce moment to our honoured peace.
poem by John McCrae
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The Earth-Mother
COMETH a voice:—‘My children, hear;
From the crowded street and the close-packed mart
I call you back with my message clear,
Back to my lap and my loving heart.
Long have ye left me, journeying on
By range and river and grassy plain,
To the teeming towns where the rest have gone—
Come back, come back to my arms again.
‘So shall ye lose the foolish needs
That gnaw your souls; and my touch shall serve
To heal the ills that the city breeds,
The pallid cheek and the fretted nerve.
Treading the turf that ye once loved well,
Instead of the stones of the city’s street,
Ye shall hear nor din nor drunken yell,
But the wind that croons in the ripening wheat.
‘Yonder, beneath the smoke-smeared sky,
A city of half a million souls
That struggle and chaffer and strive and cry
By a sullied river that seaward rolls.
But here, blue range and full-filled creek,
And the soil made glad by the welcome rain
Waiting the plough. If peace ye seek,
Come back, come back to my arms again.
‘I that am old have seen long since
Ruin of palaces made with hands
For the soldier-king and the priest and prince
Whose cities crumble in desert sands.
But still the furrow in many a clime
Yields softly under the ploughman’s feet;
Still there is seeding and harvest time,
And the wind still croons in the ripening wheat.
‘Where is Persepolis? Ask the Wind
That once the tresses of Thais kissed.
A stone or two you may haply find
Where Night and the Desert keep their tryst.
But the broken goblet is cast away,
And to seek for the lights that are lost is vain.
The city passes; the green fields stay—
Come back, come back to my arms again.
‘The works of man are but little worth;
For a time they stand, for a space endure;
But turn once more to your mother—Earth,
My gifts are gracious, my works are sure.
Green shoot of herbage for growing herd,
And blossoming promise of fruitage sweet,
These shall not fail, if ye heed my word,
Nor the wind that croons in the ripening wheat.
‘Would ye fashion a nation, whole and true,
Goodly-proportioned, sound at core?
Then this, my sons, ye must surely do—
Give city less, and country more.
Would ye rear a race to hold this land
From foemen steering across the main?
Then, children, listen and understand—
Come back, come back to my arms again.
‘Your coastwise cities are passing fair—
Jetty and warehouse and banking-hall,
Tower and dome and statued square—
But who is to guard when the blow shall fall?
The men who can shoot and ride are found
Not where the clerks and the shopmen meet,
But out, where the reaper hears the sound
Of the wind that croons in the ripening wheat.
‘Ye know, who have long since left the loam
For a city job in some crowded works,
That sorrow abides in the straitened home,
And Death in the stifling factory lurks.
And some, who are out of a job, must sleep
On a city bench in the driving rain.
Of happier days are ye dreaming deep?
Come back, come back to my arms again.
‘There in the city, by jungle law,
Each fights for his meat till set of sun.
By the deadliest fang and the sharpest claw
The right to the largest share is won.
But here there is neither strife nor guile,
The brazen robber nor smooth-tongued cheat.
Your gold is safe—where the harvests smile,
And the wind still croons in the ripening wheat.
‘I mind me once, in a sunlit land,
Lancer, Hussar, and fierce Uhlan
Came galloping in on every hand,
And poppied cornfields over-ran.
And many a sabre was stoutly plied,
And many a hero kissed the plain,
And many a hero’s mother cried,
“Come back, come back to my arms again!”
‘But when no longer the trumpets pealed,
And the stricken land was at rest once more,
They found a peasant who sowed his field
Nor knew that France had been at war.
E’en so, instead of the strife and pain
I give you peace, with its blessing sweet.
Come back, come back to my arms again,
For the wind still croons in the ripening wheat.’
poem by Frank Dalby Davison
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Prepare the sickles in May, use the sickles in June, and in July carry the sickles to the tool shed.
Haymaking
The living quality of
the man's mind
stands out
and its covert assertions
for art, art, art!
painting
that the Renaissance
tried to absorb
but
it remained a wheat field
over which the
wind played
men with scythes tumbling
the wheat in
rows
the gleaners already busy
it was his own---
magpies
the patient horses no one
could take that
from him
poem by William Carlos Williams
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Sonnet: Parables of Jesus: Grain of Wheat
Unless a grain of wheat is sown in soil,
And dies, decays, transforms, gets life anew,
And sprouts into a sapling through one's toil,
It cannot grow to bear fruits that are due!
The grain of wheat remains as such, if not:
Like selfish men who will not do God's will;
Serve God usefully, they simply cannot,
Nor granary at harvest-time, they fill.
Like grain of wheat, men have God's will to do;
Like Jesus, they must carry cross till death;
Like Saviour Christ, they will resurrect too,
And fulfill purpose for which God gave birth!
But Christ died on the cross for mankind's sins,
And love of man, and Father's obeisance!
poem by John Celes
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That Summer
I went to work for her that summer
A teenage kid so far from home
She was a lonely widow woman
Hell-bent to make it on her own
We were a thousand miles from nowhere
Wheat fields as far as I could see
Both needing something from each other
Not knowing yet what that might be.
til she came to me one evening
Hot cup of coffee and a smile
In a dress that I was certain
She hadnt worn in quite a while
There was a difference in her laughter
There was a softness in her eyes
And on the air there was a hunger
Even a boy could recognize.
She had a need to feel the thunder
To chase the lightning from the sky
To watch a storm with all its wonder
Written in her lovers eyes
She had to ride the heat of passion
Like a comet burning bright
Rushing headlong in the wind
Now where only dreams have been
Burning both ends of the night.
That summer wind was all around me
Nothing between us but the night
When I told her that Id never
She softly whispered thats alright
And then I watched her hands of leather
Turn to velvet in a touch
Theres never been a summer
When I have ever learned so much.
We had a need to feel the thunder
To chase the lightning from the sky
To watch a storm with all its wonder
Written in her lovers eyes
She had to ride the heat of passion
Like a comet burning bright
Rushing headlong in the wind
Now where only dreams have been
Burning both ends of the night.
I often think about that summer
The sweat, the moonlight and the lace
And I have rarely held another
When I havent seen her face
And every time I pass a wheat field
And watch it dancing with the wind
Although I know it isnt real
I swear inside I feel
Her hungry arms again.
She had a need to feel the thunder
To chase the lightning from the sky
To watch a storm with all its wonder
Written in her lovers eyes
She had to ride the heat of passion
Like a comet burning bright
Rushing headlong in the wind
Now where only dreams have been
Burning both ends of the night.
Rushing in long in the wind
Now where only dreams have been
Burnin both ends of the night
song performed by by Garth Brooks
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Valley Deep
Your eyes are a powerful ocean,
Your hair a golden field of wheat,
Your lips are crimson rose petals,
Your mind a valley deep,
I want to drown in the ocean,
I want to run my hand through the golden field of wheat,
I want to press my lips against the crimson rose petals,
I want to run through the valley deep
poem by Mary Great
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Floral Poems of Delight
A famous poet and artist
~~Cicely Mary Barker~~
born in London eighteen ninety-five
died in London age seventy-eight
produced a very beautiful book
~~The Flower Fairies~~
Unable to attend school because
of ill-health, Cicely worked from
home, taught by a Governess...
A copy of this book was given to
me on my fifth birthday, and was
a first introduction to floral poems.
My young life was absorbed with
Flower Fairies...the Song of the
Poppy was my favourite. I recall
the words until this day. I am sure
that Cicely Mary Barker would be
delighted to see her Poppy Flower
poem brought to light after so
many years...and I quote:
The green wheat's a-growing
The lark sings on high
In scarlet silk a-glowing
Here stand I.
The wheat's turning yellow
Ripening for sheaves
I hear the little fellow
who scares the bird thieves.
Now the harvest's ended
The wheat fields are bare
But still red and splendid
I am there.
by C.M.Barker
Many thanks to the one and
only...the Late Poet and Artist
Cicely Mary Barker.
poem by Joyce Hemsley
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