Page:Poems Jackson.djvu/211

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FALLOW.
155
FALLOW.
ABOVE, below me, on the hill,
Great fields of grain their fulness fill;
The golden fruit bends down the trees;
The grass stands high round mowers' knees;
The bee pants through the clover-beds,
And cannot taste of half the heads;
The farmer stands, with greedy eyes,
And counts his harvest's growing size.

Among his fields, so fair to see,
He takes no count, no note, of me.
I lie and bask, along the hill,
Content and idle, idle still,
My lazy silence never stirred
By breathless bee or hungry bird:
All creatures know the cribs which yield;
No creature seeks the fallow field.

But to no field on all the hill
Come sun and rain with more good-will;
All secrets which they bear and bring
To wheat before its ripening,
To clover turning purple red,
To grass in bloom for mowers' tread,—
They tell the same to my bare waste,
But never once bid me to haste.

Winter is near, and snow is sweet;
Who knows if they be seeds of wheat