HARVEST.

Gray orchards starred with fruitage gold and red, Field beyond field of yellow-tasseled corn, Rippling responsive to each breath of morn. Along the Southern wall the dark vines shed Their splendid clusters, blue-black and pale green, With liquid sunshine through their thin films seen. In yonder mead the haymakers at work With lusty sounds the clear tense air fulfill, Rearing the shapely hayrick's mimic hill, The dried grass tossing with light-wielded fork. Daylong the reapers glean the bladed gold; High to the topmost orchard branches climb The apple-gatherers, and from each limb Shake the ripe globes of sweetness, downward rolled Upon the leaf-strewn ground; and all day long From the near vineyard comes the merry song Of those who prune the stocks and tread the press. The spirit melts beneath the mastering sense Of supreme beauty and beneficence, Power divine and awful gentleness. No space for sadness in the heart to-day, Seeing the generous, faithful earth fulfill The springtide promise of vine, field and hill When bush and hedge were rosy-flushed with May. Yet at the threshold of fruition fain We pause to catch the savor once again Of sweet expectancy. The perfect year In fourfold beauty rounds itself at length, With golden fullness of developed strength, Into the sure, complete, unswerving sphere. This the result of frozen winter-rains, Of hard, white snows, of dull, loud-dripping thaw, Of showers and shine of spring, of March blasts raw, Of glaring August heats,—these dainty grains, This fruitage delicate. O sluggard soul! What harvest reapest thou as seasons roll? Mayhap to thee the slow results of time Bring also profit, though thy fruit, hung high, Escape the glance of careless passers-by, A seeming fragile husk of empty rhyme. Yet there are those who know what fed the root, What long, dull tedium as of wintry hours, What rapture as of spring-light after showers, Went to the ripening of this strange, frail fruit. Defeat and hope, disaster, joy and pain, Grief, pleasure and despair—the same old train That follows every soul. No grafted seed, No alien harvest this, but a true part Of the whole being—soul and pulse and heart— That from the living bough is lightly freed.