And centaury-starred fields, and ploughmen bent
Above their ploughs and on their mules intent,
And earth, awakened from her winter-sleep,
And shapeless clods upturned from furrows deep,
And wagtails frisking o’er; and yet again,
“Hearken to what our master saith, good men!
“‘Cupbearer,’ was his word, ‘upon your track
Across the fields like lightning go you back,
And bid the ploughmen and the mowers all
Quit ploughs and scythes, the harvesters let fall
Their sickles, and the shepherds hastily
Forsake their flocks, and hither come to me!’”
Then the stout runner, fleeter than the goats,
Dashed through the pieces waving with wild-oats,
Fosses o’erleaped with meadow-flowers bright,
And in great yellow wheat-fields passed from sight,
Where reapers forty, sickle each in hand,
Like a devouring fire fall on the land,
And strip her mantle rich and odorous
From off her breast, and, ever gaining thus
As wolves upon their prey, rob, hour by hour,
Earth of her gold, and summer of her flower;
While in the wake of each, in ordered line,
Falls the loose grain, like tendrils of the vine.
And the sheaf-binders, ever on the watch,
The dropping wheat in handfuls deftly catch,
And underneath the arm the same bestow
Until, so gathering, they have enow;
When, pressing with the knee, they tightly bind,
And lastly fling the perfect sheaf behind.
Twinkle the sickles keen like swarming bees,
Or laughing ripple upon sunny seas
Where flounders are at play. Erect and tall,
With rough beards blent, in heaps pyramidal,
The sheaves by hundreds rise. The plain afar
Shows like a tented camp in days of war;
Even like that which once arose upon
Our own Beaucaire, in days how long withdrawn!
When came a host of terrible invaders,
The great Simon, and all the French crusaders,
Led by a legate, and in fierce advance
Count Raymond slaughtered and laid waste Provence.
And here, with gleanings falling from her fingers,
Full many a merry gleaner strays and lingers;
Or in the warm lea of the stacks of corn,
Or ’mid the canes, drops languidly, o’erborne
By some long look, that e’en bewilders her,
Because Love also is a harvester.
And yet again the master’s word,—“Go back
Like lightning, cupbearer, upon your track,
And bid the ploughmen and the mowers all
Quit ploughs and scythes, the harvesters let fall
Their sickles, and the shepherds instantly
Forsake their flocks, and hither come to me!”
Then fleeter than a goat sped on his way
The faithful soul, straight through the olives gray,
On, on, like a north-eastern gale descending
Upon the vineyards, and the branches rending,
Until, away in Crau, the waste, the lonely,
Behold him, where the partridge whirreth only;