| |
| OUT we go in the dusk of morn | |
| Over the hills to the reaping. | |
| Our sickles crash on the golden corn | |
| When the rest of earth is sleeping. | |
| Bending and bowing, bending and bowing, | 5 |
| Gathering in and striking free, | |
| Gripping the sheaf with the sickle and knee | |
| And laying it down for the tying. | |
| |
| The dim, dark hills are all around, | |
| The silence breeds a sullen dread, | 10 |
| Our sickle strokes like shrieks resound | |
| In chambers of the murdered dead. | |
| But one dull star stays overhead, | |
| The waning moon seems all awry. | |
| The dying night is loth to die | 15 |
| Though in the east the mists are red. | |
| |
| Over the stubble chill winds creep | |
| Like breaths from a dead world blowing, | |
| God! it is awesome so to reap | |
| With such strange fancies growing. | 20 |
| Bending and bowing, bending and bowing, | |
| Gathering in and striking free, | |
| Gripping the sheaf with sickle and knee, | |
| And laying it down for the tying. | |
| |
| My father reaps six feet before | 25 |
| With hairy arms as hard as steel. | |
| I hear the corn as oft of yore | |
| Before his whirling sickle reel; | |
| And, God, what wild, mad horrors steal!— | |
| Bidding me take too long a stride, | 30 |
| And drive my sickle in his side, | |
| And grind his face beneath my heel. | |
| |
| I dread this brooding, awful morn | |
| With its haunted hush dismaying— | |
| It seems as though pale souls newborn | 35 |
| Our curved wet blades were slaying. | |
| Bending and bowing, bending and bowing, | |
| Gathering in and striking free, | |
| Gripping the sheaf with the sickle and knee | |
| And laying it down for the tying. | 40 |
| |
| My father’s beard is grizzled gray— | |
| It trails like mist in heavy wind. | |
| He was three-score yesterday, | |
| And yet I reap six feet behind. | |
| Lean he is, and bent, and lined, | 45 |
| And he has held me many years; | |
| And still I toil in hate and tears, | |
| And still he swears that he is kind. | |
| |
| Ah, God, will morning never break? | |
| I know he is old and loving, | 50 |
| Yet I hear with every stroke I make | |
| A demon with me moving; | |
| Bending and bowing, bending and bowing, | |
| Gathering in and striking free, | |
| Gripping the sheaf with sickle and knee | 55 |
| And laying it down for the tying. | |
| |
| At last! The morning comes at last: | |
| The hills are rich with filtered gold, | |
| And through the vales a glory vast | |
| In glowing might is swiftly rolled. | 60 |
| And hard my father’s hand I hold, | |
| And, standing ’midst the gleaming corn, | |
| With him thank Heaven for the morn— | |
| With lips that still are gray and cold! | |
| |
