Corn-Fields

When on the breath of Autumn's breeze,

From pastures dry and brown,

Goes floating, like an idle thought,

The fair, white thistle-down,—

Oh, then what joy to walk at will

Upon the golden harvest-hill!

What joy in dreaming ease to lie

Amid a field new shorn;

And see all round, on sunlit slopes,

The piled-up shocks of corn;

And send the fancy wandering o'er

All pleasant harvest-fields of yore!

I feel the day; I see the field;

The quivering of the leaves;

And good old Jacob, and his horse,—

Binding the yellow sheaves!

And at this very hour I seem

To be with Joseph in his dream!

I see the fields of Bethlehem,

And reapers many a one

Bending unto their sickles' stroke,

And Boaz looking on;

And Ruth, the Moabitess fair,

Among the gleaners stooping there!

Again, I see a little child,

His mother's sole delight,—

God's living gift of love unto

The kind, good Shunamite;

To mortal pangs I see him yield,

And the lad bear him from the field.

The sun-bathed quiet of the hills,

The fields of Galilee,

That eighteen hundred years ago

Were full of corn, I see;

And the dear Saviour take his way

'Mid ripe ears on the Sabbath-day.

Oh golden fields of bending corn,

How beautiful they seem!

The reaper-folk, the piled-up sheaves,

To me are like a dream;

The sunshine, and the very air

Seem of old time, and take me there!