The Plow / Raymond Holden

The Plow

I thought the white patch on the Eastern hill
Was surely snow. I watched it and it stirred,
And even the drifted uplands lost the chill
They had been blowing downward and a bird
Flashed blue and there were others which I heard.

The patch of snow moved with a man behind,
And furrows on the hillside rippled brown.
The Winter went like water from my mind
And the misty April sun came faintly down
And I forgot the road which leads to town.

I was not anything but one desire
To follow in the wake of the billowy blade
With wind and water and my kind of fire –
To cleave the fallow hillside and invade
Young earth and rise up glad and unafraid.

~~

Raymond Holden (1894-1972)

from Granite and Alabaster, 1922

[Poem is in the public domain in the United States]

Raymond Holden 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

The Sower / Charles G.D. Roberts

 
The Sower

A brown sad-coloured hillside, where the soil,
Fresh from the frequent harrow, deep and fine,
Lies bare; no break in the remote sky-line,
Save where a flock of pigeons streams aloft,
Startled from feed in some low-lying croft,
Or far-off spires with yellow of sunset shine;
And here the Sower, unwittingly divine,
Exerts the silent forethought of his toil.

Alone he treads the glebe, his measured stride
Dumb in the yielding soil; and tho' small joy
Dwell in his heavy face, as spreads the blind
Pale grain from his dispensing palm aside,
This plodding churl grows great in his employ;--
Godlike, he makes provision for mankind.

---
Charles G.D. Roberts (1860-1943)
from In Divers Tones, 1886

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

Charles G.D. Roberts biography