But their eyes, some foreign way,
Looked at him; and he was still.
Last, he reached his arms to sleep,
Where the Vision waited, dim,
Still beyond some deep-on-deep.
And the darkness folded him,
Eager heart and weary limb.--
All day long, he kept the sheep.
JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY
HARVEST-MOON: 1914
OVER the twilight field,
The overflowing field,--
Over the glimmering field,
And bleeding furrows with their sodden yield
Of sheaves that still did writhe,
After the scythe;
The teeming field and darkly overstrewn
With all the garnered fulness of that noon--
Two looked upon each other.
One was a Woman men called their mother;
And one, the Harvest-Moon.
And one, the Harvest-Moon,
Who stood, who gazed
On those unquiet gleanings where they bled;
Till the lone Woman said:
"But we were crazed . . .
We should laugh now together, I and you,
We two.
You, for your dreaming it was worth
A star's while to look on and light the Earth;
And I, forever telling to my mind,
Glory it was, and gladness, to give birth
To humankind!
Yes, I, that ever thought it not amiss
To give the breath to men,
For men to slay again:
Lording it over anguish but to give
My life that men might live
For this.
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