Cornfields

When on the breath of autumn breeze
From pastures dry and brown,
Goes floating like an idle thought
The fair white thistle-down,
Oh then what joy to walk at will
Upon the golden harvest hill!

What joy in dreamy ease to lie
Amid a field new shorn,
And see all round on sun-lit slopes
The pil'd-up stacks of corn;
And send the fancy wandering o'er
All pleasant harvest-fields of yore.

I feel the day — I see the field,
The quivering of the leaves,
And good old Jacob and his house
Binding the yellow sheaves;
And at this very hour I seem
To be with Joseph in his dream.

I see the fields of Bethlehem
And reapers many a one,
Bending unto their sickles' stroke,
And Boaz looking on;
And Ruth, the Moabite so fair,
Among the gleaners stooping there.

Again I see a little child,
His mother's sole delight,
God's living gift of love unto
The kind good Shunammite;
To mortal pangs I see him yield,
And the lad bear him from the field.