She touched his eyes: no longer sealed,
They saw a troop of reapers wield
Their swift blades in a ripened field:
At each thrust of their snowy sleeves,
A thrill ran through the future sheaves,
Bustling like rain on forest-leaves.
They were not brawny men who bowed
With harvest-voices rough and loud,
But spirits moving as a cloud:
Oh, bid the morning-stars combine
To match the chorus clear and fine
That rippled lightly down the line,—
A cadence of celestial rhyme,
The language of that cloudless clime,
To which their shining hands kept time!
Behind them lay the gleaming rows,
Like those long clouds the sunset shows
On amber meadows of repose:
But like a wind the binders bright
Soon followed in their mirthful might,
And swept them into sheaves of light.
Doubling the splendor of the plain,
There rolled the great celestial wain
To gather in the fallen grain:
Its frame was built of golden bars,
Its glowing wheels were lit with stars,
The royal Harvest's car of cars.
The snowy yoke that drew the load
On gleaming hoofs of silver trode,
And music was its only goad:
To no command of word or beck
It moved, and felt no other check
Than one white arm laid on the neck,—
The neck whose light was overwound
With bells of lilies, ringing round
Their odors till the air was drowned:
The starry foreheads meekly borne,
With garlands looped from horn to horn,
Shone like the many-colored morn.
The field was cleared. Home went the bands,
Like children linking happy hands
While singing through their father's lands;
Or, arms about each other thrown,
With amber tresses backward blown,
They moved as they were Music's own.
The vision brightening more and more,
He saw the garner's glowing door,
And sheaves, like sunshine, strew the floor,—
The floor was jasper,—golden flails,
Swift sailing as a whirlwind sails,
Throbbed mellow music down the vales.