“I don’t see why they don’t bottle the smell of new ploughed earth just as they have new mown hay,” laughed Billie. “I know two who would want to buy it.”
“Deed and Oi’d buy a gallon of sooch smells!”
“Do you know Masefield’s ‘Everlasting Mercy,’ Billie? You and Katy listen while I tell you the part about ploughing and then we’ll put up the tent houses.”
Very charming was the picture made by this group of girls. So Edwin Green thought as he walked silently across the lawn of the old farm. Katy, the sturdy Irish girl, was not without picturesque lines. Her look was somewhat that of Bastien Lepage’s peasant Jeanne d’Arc as she stood in rapt reverie while her beloved mistress gave voice to those wonderful lines of England’s greatest modern poet. Billie looked very down-to-date in her khaki overalls and stubby shoes, while Molly was very Mollyesque in the blue linen blouse that was the only true Molly Brown blue.
She did not hear her husband as he stepped lightly across the green spring grass and he motioned to Billie not to let her know he was there. He stood silently, with bared head while she recited. Molly’s voice had always appealed to Edwin, in fact it had been the first thing that had attracted him—and when Molly recited poetry!
“‘The past was faded like a dream;
There came the jingling of a team,
A ploughman’s voice, a clink of chain,
Slow hoofs, and harness under strain.
Up the slow slope a team came bowing,
Old Callow at his autumn ploughing,
Old Callow stooped above the hales,
Ploughing the stubble into wales.
His grave eyes looking straight ahead,
Shearing a long straight furrow red;
His plough-foot high to give it earth
To bring new food for men to birth.
“‘O wet red swathe of earth laid bare,
O truth, O strength, O gleaming share,
O patient eyes that watch the goal,
O ploughman of the sinner’s soul.
O Jesus, drive the coulter deep
To plough my living man from sleep.
“‘Slow up the hill the plough team plod,
Old Callow at the task of God,
Helped by man’s wit, helped by the brute,
Turning a stubborn clay to fruit,
His eye forever on some sign
To help him plough a perfect line.
*******
“‘I kneeled there in the muddy fallow,
I knew that Christ was there with Callow,
That Christ was standing there with me,
That Christ had taught me what to be,
That I should plough, and as I ploughed
My Savior Christ would sing aloud,
And as I drove the clods apart
Christ would be ploughing in my heart,
Through rest-harrow and bitter roots,
Through all my bad life’s rotten fruits.