With the first light on the skyline came the rapping of the sickles And the brown arms of the reapers bent to toil another morn; Close beside me in the glimmer, in the golden sweep and shimmer, Knelt a reaper strange among us, crooning thro' the ragged corn: "Born of sorrow, Gone to-morrow — Gone to lie in yonder valley where their fathers long have lain; Men who know not ship nor sabre, Each but drudges by his neighbor, And the fields wherein they labor are a heritage of pain!" Sleep was heavy on our eyelids when a lone star followed sunset, But we missed the pale young stranger, none knew whither he had gone — Then, from where the dead are lying, with the nightwind's tender sighing Rose and fell a last low cadence of the voice we heard at dawn: "Weary reapers, Early sleepers — Brief the glow that drifts across them from the waning August moon: These that rest beyond its gleaming Lie unvexed of drift or dreaming, And the fields with harvest teeming have forgot them all too soon!" | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...BLACK SHEEP by RICHARD EUGENE BURTON IF by EDWARD JAMES MORTIMER COLLINS THE EXAMPLE by WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES AT CASTERBRIDGE FAIR: 7. AFTER THE FAIR by THOMAS HARDY THE SPIRIT OF SHAKESPEARE: 1 by GEORGE MEREDITH THE OLD MAN AND JIM by JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY |