Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, CORNFIELDS, by MARY HOWITT


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

CORNFIELDS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: When on the breath of autumn breeze
Last Line: Seem of old time, and take me there.
Alternate Author Name(s): Botham, Mary
Subject(s): Corn


WHEN on the breath of autumn 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 dreamy ease to lie
Amid a field new shorn,
And see all round on sun-lit slopes
The pil'd-up stacks 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 house
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 Moabite so 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 Shunammite;
To mortal pangs I see him yield,
And the lad bear him from the field.

The sun-bath'd quiet of the hills,
The fields of Galilee,
That eighteen hundred years ago
Were full of corn, I see;
And the dear Saviour takes his way
'Mid ripe ears on the Sabbath day.

Oh, golden fields of bending corn,
How beautiful they seem!
The reaper-folk, the pil'd-up sheaves,
To me are like a dream.
The sunshine and the very air
Seem of old time, and take me there.





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