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. The sun-bath'd quiet of the hills, The fields of Galilee, That eighteen hundred years ago Were full of corn, I see; And the dear Saviour takes his way 'Mid ripe ears on the Sabbath day. Oh, golden fields of bending corn, How beautiful they seem! The reaper-folk, the pil'd-up sheaves, To me are like a dream. The sunshine and the very air Seem of old time, and take me there. |