Seed-Time and Harvest

AS o’er his furrowed fields which lie

Beneath a coldly dropping sky,

Yet chill with winter’s melted snow,

The husbandman goes forth to sow,

Thus, Freedom, on the bitter blast

The ventures of thy seed we cast,

And trust to warmer sun and rain

To swell the germs and fill the grain.

Who calls thy glorious service hard?

Who deems it not its own reward?

Who, for its trials, counts it less

A cause of praise and thankfulness?

It may not be our lot to wield

The sickle in the ripened field;

Nor ours to hear, on summer eves,

The reaper’s song among the sheaves.

Yet where our duty’s task is wrought

In unison with God’s great thought,

The near and future blend in one,

And whatsoe’er is willed, is done!

And ours the grateful service whence

Comes day by day the recompense;

The hope, the trust, the purpose stayed,

The fountain and the noonday shade.

And were this life the utmost span,

The only end and aim of man,

Better the toil of fields like these

Than waking dream and slothful ease.

But life, though falling like our grain,

Like that revives and springs again;

And, early called, how blest are they

Who wait in heaven their harvest-day!

1843.