Summer Acres / Anne Wilkinson

Summer Acres

I

These acres breathe my family,
Holiday with seventy summers’ history.
My blood lives here,
Sunned and veined three generations red
Before my bones were formed.

My eyes are wired to the willow
That wept for my father,
My heart is boughed by the cedar
That covers with green limbs the bones of my children,
My hands are white with a daisy, sired
By the self same flower my grandfather loved;

My ears are tied to the tattle of water
That echoes the vows of ancestral lovers,
My skin is washed by a lather of waves
That bathed the blond bodies of uncles and aunts
And curled on the long flaxen hair of my mother;

My feet step soft on descendants of grass
That was barely brushed
By the wary boots of a hummingbird woman,
The Great Great Grandmother
Of my mid-century children.


II

September born, reared in the sunset hour,
I was the child of old men heavy with honour;
I mourned the half mast time of their death and sorrowed
A season for leaves, shaking their scarlet flags
From green virility of trees.

And the whine of autumn in the family tree.
How tired, how tall grow the trees
Where the trees and the family are temples
Whose columns will tumble, leaf over root to their ruin.

Here, in my body’s home my heart dyes red
The last hard maple in their acres.
Where birch and elm and willow turn,
Gently bred, to gold against the conifers,
I hail my fathers, sing their blood to the leaf.

~~
Anne Wilkinson (1910-1961)
from Counterpoint to Sleep, 1951

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Anne Wilkinson biography

Barley Feed / AE Reiff

Barley Feed

There is a harvest in a cutting down,
In the shed blood of the speared hero,
There is a redding of the land
Before green graves under sod.
Gold the heroes of valor, gold,
Directed to heaven, not strangers,
Wise men, they leave a country,
Dropping like fruit from a tree.

I am rich in cultivation,
A soft plough, I rend the ground,
The grasses, the aired bodies,
Stir about the break of day.
No sparing of the vine nor branches,
So outstretched the whitened lances.
An ardent star across the lightening field
No trembling saw that lofty hill concealed.

First flowers on these mountains
My wealth, the treasured sun,
The purpled blades shed blood.
No piercéd then would not be pierced again.
Now earth, be made sweet by this barley feed.

~~

AE Reiff

from The True Light that Lights, 2020

[All rights reserved by the author - Used with permission]

AE Reiff biography

Harvest / John Addington Symonds

The west is purple, and a golden globe,
Sphered with new-risen moonlight, hangs between
The skirts of evening's amethystine robe
And the round world bathed in the steady sheen.
There bending o'er a sickle bright and keen,
Rests from his long day's labour one whose eyes
Are fixed upon the large and luminous skies :

An earnest man he seems with yellow hair,
And yellow neath his scythe-sweep are the sheaves;
Much need hath he to waste the nights with care,
Lest waking he should hear from dripping eaves
The plash of rain, or hail among thin leaves,
Or melancholy wailings of a wind,
That lays broad field and furrow waste behind.

Much need hath he the live-long day to toil,
Sweeping the golden granaries of the plain,
Until he garner all the summer's spoil,
And store his gaping barns with heavy grain;
Then will he sleep, nor heed the plash of rain,
But with gay wassail and glad winter cheer
Steel a stout heart against the coming year.

~~
John Addington Symonds (1840-1893)
from New and Old: A volume of verse, 1880 

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

John Addington Symonds biography

August / Mary Slade

August

I come! I come! and the waving field
Its wealth of golden grain shall yield.
In the hush and heat of glowing noon,
The insects' hum is the only tune;
For the merriest birds forget to sing,
And sit in the shade with drooping wing.

But see! how the purpling grapes hang high,
And ripen beneath my sunny sky!
And see! how the fruits of the bending tree
Turn blushing and rosy cheeks to me!
And soon shall your garners be over-full
With gifts from the August bountiful.

~~
Mary Slade (1826-1882)

from The Children's Hour, 1880

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Mary Slade biography

Harvest Dust / Winifred Welles

Harvest Dust

The road is burned to dust, like more dust meadow rue
     Smokes in the meadow. Berries are balanced to fall
At a cobweb's echo. Apples will soon be over, nothing is left to do
     For the trees but to crook their elbows on the wall.

In the farmhouse doorway a woman husking corn
     Droops to where, softer than children's hair, a yellow heap
Of the silk fondles her hand. Under her eyes her face is as worn
     As the stone steps where she sits and has fallen asleep.

What is it all for? Why must the earth crack
     Over and over, beneath this searing breath?
Only that apples be amber and berries black,
     And women content and wearied unto death.

~~
Winifred Welles
from This Delicate Love, 1929

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

Winifred Welles biography 

Before Harvest / W.M. MacKeracher

Before Harvest 

And now 'tis time for Harvest. Hark! and lo,
     With ringing sound of full melodious horn,
Over yon eastern hill-top all aglow,—
     Her sickle gleaming in the golden morn,
     Her arm upraised with sheaf of yellow corn,—
She comes elate with light, elastic pace;
     Her neck and zone full-clustered vines adorn;
Her saffron locks, fruit-crowned; her luscious grace;
Her round and ripened form; her fair, benignant face.

And now the fields, when suns serenely greet,
     A rich and mellow, wanton joy afford:
The russet pease vines, and the burnished wheat
     And whiter barley,— hating to be stored,
     Guarding with jealous spears their precious hoard,—
The tapering oat-stalk, dangling beads of gold:
     In brilliant sea of beauty all outpoured,
With dazzling depth of splendor all untold,
Where fleets of zephyrs skip in fold that follows fold

Like to a dream I had but yesternight,
     Of pure, transporting, childlike playfulness.
The presence of a fair-haired, blue-eyed, bright,
     Thoughtless and laughing.— Words can not express
     In poet phrase the fulness that did bless
Entrancingly my vision. I advanced
     Behind to worship. Straight each golden tress
Was ruffled and about my face they danced,
Smoth'ring with beauty, while the maiden gleeful glanced.

~~

W.M. MacKeracher (1871-1913)

from Vacation Verse, 1891 

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

W.M. MacKeracher biography

Hurrahing in Harvest / Gerard Manley Hopkins

Hurrahing in Harvest

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks rise
   Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
   Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?
I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
   Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
   And, éyes, heárt, what looks, what lips yet gave you a
Rapturous love's greeting of realer, of rounder replies?
And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder
   Majestic — as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet!—
These things, these things were here and but the beholder
   Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
   And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.

~~
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
from Poems, 1918

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

Gerard Manley Hopkins biography

"Hurrahing in Harvest" read by Jonathan Roumie. Courtesy World on Fire Institute.

September / John Clare

September 

Harvest awakes the morning still,
And toil’s rude groups the valleys fill;
Deserted is each cottage hearth
To all life, save the cricket’s mirth;
Each burring wheel its sabbath meets,
Nor walks a gossip in the streets;
The bench beneath the eldern bough,
Lined o’er with grass, is empty now,
Where blackbirds, caged from out the sun,
Would whistle while their mistress spun:                
All haunt the thronged fields, to share
The harvest’s lingering bounty there.

    As yet, no meddling boys resort
About the streets in idle sport;
The butterfly enjoys its hour,
And flirts, unchased, from flower to flower;
The humming bees, which morning calls
From out the low hut’s mortar walls,
And passing boy no more controls —
Fly undisturb’d about their holes;                      
The sparrows in glad chirpings meet,
Unpelted in the quiet street.
None but imprison’d children now
Are seen, where dames with angry brow
Threaten each younker to his seat,
Who, through the window, eyes the street;
Or from his hornbook turns away,
To mourn for liberty and play.

    Yet loud are morning’s early sounds;
The farm or cottage yard abounds                        
With creaking noise of opening gate,
And clanking pumps, where boys await
With idle motion, to supply
The thirst of cattle crowding nigh.
Upon the dovecote’s mossy slates,
The pigeons coo around their mates;
And close beside the stable wall,
Where morning sunbeams earliest fall,
The basking hen, in playful rout,
Flaps the powdery dust about.                            
Within the barn-hole sits the cat
Watching to seize the thirsty rat,
Who oft at morn its dwelling leaves
To drink the moisture from the eaves;
The red-breast, with his nimble eye,
Dares scarcely stop to catch the fly,
That, tangled in the spider’s snare,
Mourns in vain for freedom there.
The dog beside the threshold lies,
Mocking sleep, with half-shut eyes —                      
With head crouch’d down upon his feet,
Till strangers pass his sunny seat —
Then quick he pricks his ears to hark,
And bustles up to growl and bark;
While boys in fear stop short their song,
And sneak in startled speed along;
And beggar, creeping like a snail,
To make his hungry hopes prevail
O’er the warm heart of charity,
Leaves his lame halt and hastens by.                    

    The maid afield now leaves the farm,
With dinner basket on her arm,
Loitering unseen in narrow lane,
To be o’ertook by following swain,
Who, happy thus her truth to prove,
Carries the load and talks of love.
Soon as the dew is off the ground,
Rumbling like distant thunder round,
The waggons haste the corn to load,
And hurry down the dusty road;                          
While driving boy with eager eye
Watches the church clock passing by —
Whose gilt hands glitter in the sun —
To see how far the hours have run;
Right happy, in the breathless day,
To see time wearing fast away.
But now and then a sudden shower
Will bring to toil a resting hour;
Then, under sheltering shocks, a crowd
Of merry voices mingle loud,                            
Draining, with leisure’s laughing eye,
Each welcome, bubbling bottle dry;
Till peeping suns dry up the rain,
Then off they start to toil again.

   Anon the fields are getting clear,
And glad sounds hum in labour’s ear;
When children halloo “Here they come!”
And run to meet the Harvest Home,
Cover’d with boughs, and throng’d with boys,
Who mingle loud a merry noise,                          
And, when they meet the stack-throng’d yard
Cross-buns and pence their shouts reward.
Then comes the harvest-supper night,
Which rustics welcome with delight;
When merry game and tiresome tale,
And songs, increasing with the ale,
Their mingled uproar interpose,
To crown the harvest’s happy close;
While Mirth, that at the scene abides,
Laughs, till she almost cracks her sides.                

   Now harvest’s busy hum declines,
And labour half its help resigns.
Boys, glad at heart, to play return;
The shepherds to their peace sojourn,
Rush-bosom’d solitudes among,
Which busy toil disturb’d so long.
The gossip, happy all is o’er,
Visits again her neighbour’s door,
On scandal’s idle tales to dwell,
Which harvest had no time to tell;                      
And free from all its sultry strife,
Enjoys once more her idle life.
A few, whom waning toil reprieves,
Thread the forest’s sea of leaves,
Where the pheasant loves to hide,
And the darkest glooms abide,
Beneath the old oaks moss’d and grey,
Whose shadows seem as old as they;
Where time hath many seasons won,
Since aught beneath them saw the sun;                    
Within these brambly solitudes,
The ragged, noisy boy intrudes,
To gather nuts, that, ripe and brown,
As soon as shook will patter down.

   Thus harvest ends its busy reign,
And leaves the fields their peace again;
Where Autumn’s shadows idly muse
And tinge the trees in many hues:
Amid whose scenes I’m fain to dwell,
And sing of what I love so well.                        
But hollow winds, and tumbling floods,
And humming showers, and moaning woods,
All startle into sudden strife,
And wake a mighty lay to life;
Making, amid their strains divine,
Unheard a song so mean as mine.

~~

John Clare (1793-1864)
from The Shepherd's Calendar, 1827

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[October]

John Clare biography

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

August / John Clare

August

Harvest approaches with its busy day;        
The wheat tans brown, and barley bleaches grey;
In yellow garb the oatland intervenes,
And tawny glooms the valley throng’d with beans.
Silent the village grows,—wood-wandering dreams
Seem not so lonely as its quiet seems;
Doors are shut up as on a winter’s day,
And not a child about them lies at play;
The dust that winnows ’neath the breeze’s feet
Is all that stirs about the silent street:              
Fancy might think that desert-spreading Fear
Had whisper’d terrors into Quiet’s ear,
Or plundering armies past the place had come
And drove the lost inhabitants from home.
The fields now claim them, where a motley crew
Of old and young their daily tasks pursue.
The reapers leave their rest before the sun,
And gleaners follow in the toils begun
To pick the litter’d ear the reaper leaves,
And glean in open fields among the sheaves.              
The ruddy child, nursed in the lap of Care,
In Toil’s rude strife to do its little share,
Beside its mother poddles o’er the land,
Sunburnt, and stooping with a weary hand,
Picking its tiny glean of corn or wheat,
While crackling stubbles wound its little feet;
Full glad it often is to sit awhile
Upon a smooth green bank to ease its toil,
And fain would spend an idle hour in play
With insects, strangers to the moiling day,              
Creeping about each rush and grassy stem,
And often wishes it were one of them:
Meanwhile the expecting mother stops to tie
Her handful up, and, waiting his supply,
Misses the idle younker from her side;
Then shouts of rods, and morts of threats beside
Picture harsh truths in his unpractised breast,—
How they, who idle in the harvest rest,
Shall well-deserving in the winter pine,
Or hunt the hedges with the birds and swine.            
In vain he wishes that the rushes’ height
Were tall as trees to hide him from her sight.
Leaving his pleasant seat, he sighs and rubs
His legs, and shows scratch’d wounds from piercing stubs,
To make excuse for play; but she disdains
His little wounds, and smiles while he complains;
And as he stoops adown in troubles sore,
She sees his grief, and bids him mourn no more,
For by and by, on the next Sabbath-day,
He shall have well-earn’d pence as well as play,        
When he may buy, almost without a stint,
Sweet candied horehound, cakes, and peppermint,
At the gay shop, within whose window lie
Things of all sorts to tempt his eager eye:
Rich sugar-plums in phials shining bright,
In every hue, young fancies to delight;
Coaches and ladies of gilt gingerbread;
And downy plums, and apples streak’d with red.
Such promises all sorrow soon displace,
And smiles are instant kindled in his face;              
Scorning the troubles which he felt before,
He picks the trailing ears, and mourns no more.

    The fields are all alive with sultry noise
Of labour’s sounds, and insects’ busy joys.
The reapers o’er their glittering sickles stoop,
Startling full oft the partridge coveys up;
Some o’er the rustling scythe go bending on;
And shockers follow where their toils have gone,
Heaping the swaths that rustle in the sun,
Where mice from Terror’s dangers nimbly run,            
Leaving their tender young in fear’s alarm
Lapt up in nests of chimbled grasses warm,
Hoping for safety from their flight in vain;
While the rude boy, or churlish-hearted swain,
Pursues with lifted weapons o’er the ground,
And spreads an instant murder all around.
In vain the anxious maiden’s tender prayer
Urges the clown their little lives to spare;
She sighs, while trailing the long rake along,
At scenes so cruel, and forgets her song.

    When the Sun stoops to meet the western sky,
And Noon’s hot hours have wander’d weary by,
Seeking a hawthorn bush or willow-tree
For resting-places that the coolest be,
Where baskets heaped and unbroached bottles lie,
Which dogs in absence watch’d with wary eye,
They catch their breath awhile, and share the boon
Which bevering-time allows their toil at noon.
Next to her favour’d swain the maiden steals,
Blushing at kindness which his love reveals;            
Making a seat for her of sheaves around,
He drops beside her on the naked ground.
Then from its cool retreat the beer they bring,
And hand the stout-hoop’d bottle round the ring.
Each swain soaks hard; the maiden, ere she sips,
Shrieks at the bold wasp settling on her lips,
That seems determined only her’s to greet,
As if it fancied they were cherries sweet!
The dog foregoes his sleep awhile, or play,
Springing at frogs that rustling jump away,              
To watch each morsel carelessness bestows,
Or wait the bone or crust the shepherd throws;
For shepherds are no more of ease possest,
But share in harvest-labours with the rest.

    When day declines and others meet repose,
The bawling boy his evening journey goes;
At toil’s unwearied call the first and last,
He drives his horses to their night’s repast,
In dewy close or meadow to sojourn;
And often ventures, on his still return,                
O’er garden pales, or orchard walls, to hie,
When sleep’s safe key hath lock’d up danger’s eye,
All but the mastiff watching in the dark,
Who snuffs and knows him, and forbears to bark.
With fearful haste he climbs each loaded tree,
And picks for prizes, that the ripest be;
While the pale moon, creeping with jealous light,
Fills empty shadows with the power to fright;
And, from the barn-hole, pops and hurries by,
The grey owl, screaming with a fearful cry;—            
He hears the noise, and, hastening to escape,
Thinks each thing grows around a dismal shape.
Quick tumbling o’er the mossy mould’ring wall,
He loses half his booty in the fall;
Where, soon as ever Morning opes its eyes,
The restless hogs will happen on the prize,
And crump adown the mellow and the green,
Making all seem as nothing e’er had been.

    Amid the broils of harvest’s weary reign,
How sweet the Sabbath wakes its rest again!              
And on each weary mind what rapture dwells,
To hear once more the pleasant chiming bells,
That from each steeple, peeping here and there,
Murmur a soothing lullaby to care.
The shepherd, journeying on his morning rounds,
Pauses awhile to hear the pleasing sounds,
While the glad children, free from toil’s employ,
Mimic the "ding dong" hums, and laugh for joy.
The fields themselves seem happy to be free,
Where insects chatter with unusual glee;                
While Solitude, the grass and stubs among,
Appears to muse and listen to the song.
In quiet peace awakes the welcome morn;
Men tired, and children with their gleaning worn,
Weary and stiff, lie round doors all day,
To rest themselves, with little heart for play.
In calm delight the Sabbath wears along;
Yet round the Cross, at noon, a tempted throng
Of little younkers, with their pence, repair
To buy the downy plum and luscious pear                  
That melts i’ th’ mouth, which gardeners never fail,
For gain’s strong impulse, to expose for sale;
Placed on the circling Cross-steps in the sun,
What time the parson has his sermon done.
There, soon the boy his sore-earn’d penny spends;
And he the while, that pennyless attends,
In sullen, silent mood, approaching nigh,
Full often drops a keen, desiring eye
Upon each loaded basket, to perceive
What makes his little fingers itch to thieve;—          
But, close at hand, the stocks in terror shine,
And temptings strong, to stronger fears resign.
Thus Sunday’s leisure passes swiftly by
In rest, soft peace, and home-tranquility,
Till Monday morning doth its cares pursue,
Rousing the harvest’s busy toils anew.

~~

John Clare (1793-1864)
from The Shepherd's Calendar, 1827

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[September]

John Clare biography

Winter Field / A.E. Coppard

Winter Field

Sorrow on the acres,
    Wind in the thorn,
And an old man plowing
    Through the frosty morn.

 A flock of the dark birds,
    Rooks and their wives,
Follow the plow team
    The old man drives;

And troops of starlings,
    A-tittle-tat and prim,
Follow the rooks
    That follow him.

---
A.E. Coppard (1878-1957)
from Pelagea, and other poems,  1926

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

A.E. Coppard biography