The Potato Harvest / Charles G.D. Roberts

The Potato Harvest

A high bare field, brown from the plough, and borne
     Aslant from sunset; amber wastes of sky
     Washing the ridge; a clamour of crows that fly
In from the wide flats where the spent tides mourn
To yon their rocking roosts in pines wind-torn;
     A line of grey snake-fence, that zigzags by
     A pond, and cattle; from the homestead nigh
The long deep summonings of the supper horn.

Black on the ridge, against that lonely flush,
     A cart, and stoop-necked oxen; ranged beside
     Some barrels, and the day-worn harvest-folk,
Here emptying their baskets, jar the hush
     With hollow thunders. Down the dusk hillside
     Lumbers the wain; and day fades out like smoke.

~~
Charles G.D. Roberts (1860-1943)
from Songs of the Common Day, 1893

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Charles G.D. Roberts biography