| |
| COME, let us mount the breezy down | |
| And hearken to the tumult blown | |
| Up from the champaign and the town. | |
| |
| The harvest days are come again, | |
| The vales are surging with the grain; | 5 |
| The merry work goes on amain. | |
| |
| Pale streaks of cloud scarce veil the blue; | |
| Against the golden harvest hue | |
| The Autumn trees look fresh and new. | |
| |
| Wrinkled brows relax with glee, | 10 |
| And aged eyes they laugh to see | |
| The sickles follow o’er the lea. | |
| |
| I see the little kerchief’d maid | |
| With dimpling cheek and bodice staid, | |
| ’Mid the stout striplings half afraid; | 15 |
| |
| I see the sire with bronzèd chest: | |
| Mad babes amid the blithe unrest | |
| Seem leaping from the mother’s breast. | |
| |
| The mighty youth and supple child | |
| Go forth, the yellow sheaves are piled; | 20 |
| The toil is mirth, the mirth is wild … | |
| |
| Lusty Pleasures, hobnail’d Fun | |
| Throng into the noonday sun | |
| And ’mid the merry reapers run. | |
| |
| Draw the clear October out! | 25 |
| Another, and another bout! | |
| Then back to labour with a shout! | |
| |
| The banded sheaves stand orderly | |
| Against the purple Autumn sky | |
| Like armies of Prosperity. | 30 |
| |
| Hark! thro’ the middle of the town | |
| From the sunny slopes run down | |
| Bawling boys and reapers brown; | |
| |
| Laughter flies from door to door, | |
| To see fat Plenty with his store | 35 |
| Led a captive by the poor … | |
| |
| Right thro’ the middle of the town, | |
| With a great sheaf for a crown, | |
| Onward he reels, a happy clown. | |
| |
| Faintly cheers the tailor thin, | 40 |
| And the smith with sooty chin | |
| Lends his hammer to the din; | |
| |
| And the master, blithe and boon, | |
| Pours forth his boys that afternoon, | |
| And locks his desk an hour too soon. | 45 |
| |
| Yet when the shadows eastward lean | |
| O’er the smooth-shorn fallows clean, | |
| And Silence sits where they have been, | |
| |
| Amid the gleaners I will stay, | |
| While the shout and roundelay | 50 |
| Faint off, and daylight dies away. | |
| |
| —Dies away, and leaves me lone | |
| With dim ghosts, of years agone, | |
| Summers parted, glories flown; | |
| |
| Till Day beneath the West is roll’d, | 55 |
| Till grey spire and tufted wold | |
| Purple in the evening gold. | |
| |
| Memories, when old age is come, | |
| Are stray ears that deck the gloom, | |
| And echoes of the Harvest-home. | 60 |
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