No further might the scene unfold;
The gazer’s voice could not withhold;
The very rapture made him bold:
He cried aloud, with claspéd hands,
“O happy fields! O happy bands!
Who reap the never-failing lands.
“Oh master of these broad estates,
Behold, before your very gates
A worn and wanting laborer waits!
Let me but toil amid your grain,
Or be a gleaner on the plain,
So I may leave these fields of pain!
“A gleaner, I will follow far,
With never look or word to mar,
Behind the Harvest’s yellow car;
All day my hand shall constant be,
And every happy eve shall see
The precious burden borne to thee!”
At morn some reapers neared the place,
Strong men, whose feet recoiled apace;
Then gathering round the upturned face,
They saw the lines of pain and care,
Yet read in the expression there
The look as of an answered prayer.
A poem like the preceding abounds in beautiful word pictures, which add to the charm of the imaginary incident which is related.
Here is the first: It is a country road in the harvest season. On one side, stretching away into the dim distance, lie fields already reaped; upon the other, a bank, covered with briery vines, rises steeply into the darkness. The evening star lies close to the horizon, and in the sky the cold crescent moon hangs like an empty sickle. In the grass under the bank, with night dews thickly gathered upon him, lies a poor and weary reaper. His torn clothes, old and ill-kept, his tanned face, slender figure, and more than all else the rusty sickle in his hand, show that he has been long without work, and has suffered in poverty.
The next four scenes are from the reaper’s dream:
1. It is a busy afternoon, and in a field of ripening grain reapers are busy wielding their sickles, but they are not the strong men who talk with loud, rough voices and bind the sheaves with joke and laughter; they are gentle spirits moving like clouds, and their sickles seem like little strokes of lightning as they slide musically through the golden grain. Their shining hands keep time to a beautiful song, and often the reapers glance across the gleaming rows of grain into the rich red of the sunset. The binders follow the reapers and place the sheaves in gleaming rows, while behind them follows the great wagon gathering in the fallen grain,—a wagon not of earth, but built of gold. Beautiful cattle draw the wain, cattle that tread on silver hoofs and move without other command than sweet music, or the soft touch of a white-armed angel. Around the necks of the cattle are white lilies, and from the horns droop garlands of many-colored flowers, freshly picked from the dewy grass.
2. A jasper floor on which the grain lies like sunshine, and where golden flails, falling swiftly, beat out the grain to mellow music, gleams with increasing brightness.
3. The great mansion shines with its long corridors, its gleaming porticos and polished pavement, all beautiful and hard and cool. Inside is spread a fragrant feast to which seven angels sing invitation with their silver clarions. Softly the invited guests float in, a multitude in number, but silently as the stars move in heaven. Sweet music floats around the beautiful room, and smiling faces nod around the board. Doors are opened and closed without sound, and the feet of the servants on the polished floor give no more sound than falling shadows.