Lassitude

I LAID me down beside the sea,

Endless in blue monotony;

The clouds were anchored in the sky,

Sometimes a sail went idling by.

Upon the shingles on the beach

Gray linen was spread out to bleach,

And gently with a gentle swell

The languid ripples rose and fell.

Mathilde Blind

The Sower

THE winds had hushed at last as by command;

The quiet sky above,

With its grey clouds spread oer the fallow land,

Sat brooding like a dove.

There was no motion in the air, no sound

Within the tree-tops stirred,

Save when some last leaf, fluttering to the ground,

Dropped like a wounded bird.

Or when the swart rooks in a gathering crowd

With clamorous noises wheeled,

Hovering awhile, then swooped with wrangling loud

Down to the stubbly field.

For now the big-thewed horses, toiling slow

In straining couples yoked,

Patiently dragged the plowshare to and fro

Till their wet haunches smoked.

Till the stiff acre, broken into clods,

Bruised by the harrow's tooth,

Lay lightly shaken, with its humid sods

Ranged into furrows smooth.

There looming lone, from rise to set of sun,

Without or pause or speed,

Solemnly striding by the furrows dun,

The sower sows the seed.

The sower sows the seed, which mouldering,

Deep coffined in the earth,

Is buried now, but with the future spring

Will quicken into birth.

Oh, poles of birth and death! Controlling Powers

Of human toil and need!

On this fair earth all men are surely sowers,

Surely all life is seed!

All life is seed, dropped in Time's yawning furrow,

Which with slow sprout and shoot,

In the revolving world's unfathomed morrow,

Will blossom and bear fruit.

Mathilde Blind

Reapers

SUN-TANNED men and women, toiling there together;

Seven I count in all, in yon field of wheat,

Where the rich ripe ears in the harvest weather

Glow an orange gold through the sweltering heat.

Busy life is still, sunk in brooding leisure:

Birds have hushed their singing in the hushed tree tops;

Not a single cloud mars the flawless azure;

Not a shadow moves o'er the moveless crops;

In the grassy shallows, that no breath is creasing,

Chestnut-coloured cows in the rushes dank

Stand like cows of bronze, save when they flick the teasing

Flies with switch of tail from each quivering flank.

Nature takes a rest-even her bees are sleeping,

And the silent wood seems a church that's shut;

But these human creatures cease not from their reaping

While the corn stands high, waiting to be cut.

Mathilde Blind