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. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...IN THE GARDEN AT THE DAWN HOUR by EDGAR LEE MASTERS WINTER NIGHT by CH'IEN WEN OF LIANG HOLY CHRISTMAS by GEORGE HERBERT AN ESSAY ON MAN by ALEXANDER POPE OBSERVATIONS IN THE ART OF ENGLISH POESY: 7. TROCHAIC VERSE: THE THIRD EPIGRAM by THOMAS CAMPION |