| Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912–22. | | | | The Corn-field | | By Charles R. Murphy |
| | | FIVE stacks of fodder are waiting in my corn-field, | |
| The last for my barn. I shall watch in the weak sunlight | |
| A little while, though warmth is in the houses | |
| Unneeded till now, and the drift of the chill of autumn | |
| Is falling swiftly to cover my field with silence. | 5 |
| Soon its unkempt bareness shall be uncovered | |
| Completely and its pebbly ground shall tighten | |
| In the first frost; and no man be there to witness | |
| Its lonely withered stubble, and at its sky-line | |
| Smoke of gray sky and delicate twigs of bushes. | 10 |
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| I have gathered, yet await a subtler harvest | |
| As others have waited through long years of labor | |
| In other fields—to find not, though the corn’s returning | |
| Be sure as the quiet and sting of coming winter. | |
| I have gathered, and for my finer harvest | 15 |
| Now are waiting but these five stacks of fodder, | |
| And my love out-given at last to my lonely corn-field, | |
| And the planting of love for a distant other reaping, | |
| Where perhaps my yield shall be garnered with the corn. | | | | |
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