HE NEEDS must leave the trapping and the chase, For mating game his arrows ne'er despoil, And from the hunter's heaven turn his face, To wring some promise from the dormant soil. He needs must leave the lodge that wintered him, The enervating fires, the blanket bed— The women's dulcet voices, for the grim Realities of labouring for bread. So goes he forth beneath the planter's moon With sack of seed that pledges large increase, His simple pagan faith knows night and noon, Heat, cold, seedtime and harvest shall not cease. And yielding to his needs, this honest sod, Brown as the hand that tills it, moist with rain, Teeming with ripe fulfilment, true as God, With fostering richness, mothers every grain. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A PATCH OF OLD SNOW by ROBERT FROST SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: MRS. BENJAMIN PANTIER by EDGAR LEE MASTERS THE HOUSE OF LIFE: 86. LOST DAYS by DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI FRANCE; THE 18TH YEAR OF THESE STATES by WALT WHITMAN THE CRISIS by JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER HELEN AND THETIS by ALCAEUS OF MYTILENE THE CARPENTER by AMY BRUNER ALMY |