Keeping hope in the field of next year's harvest, he does not love what she is, but what he thinks she should become. His present is the driest drought, his love a green mirage whose precincts he plots out with a calendar of crops and flowers suitable for the season he imagines, being her benevolent despot. She, meanwhile, unaware of flax and barley rowed across her breast, lies unhoed, unsown. Counting sheaves, pretending they're her own harvest, she garners in catastrophe from the fields of his accomplishment. Waking to a dust bowl of unsprouted dreams, he finds her barren and love spent. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A SHROPSHIRE LAD: 47. THE CARPENTER'S SON by ALFRED EDWARD HOUSMAN FIDELIA: 4. THE AUTHOR'S RESOLUTION IN A SONNET by GEORGE WITHER IN BATTLE by ABUL HASAN OF BADAJOZ DROWNED IN HARBOUR by ANTIPATER OF THESSALONICA LAIS' MIRROR by DECIMUS MAGNUS AUSONIUS |