THE FAERY YEAR 



Scenes of Harvest 



With the air above the near stubble fields 

 a-shimmer, and blue hills smoking in the peculiar 

 glare of August, the harvest draws near its close. 

 The bleached-looking barley, a poor thing in colour, 

 nondescript, after the glory of wheat, is being 

 stacked. Even a sound of threshing is in field 

 corners, where some thin crop of rough, poppy- 

 mingled oats lately delighted and offended the eye. 

 Rising and falling in rhythm as the burr of nightjars 

 on haunted midsummer eves this hum of threshing 

 machines is the most lulling music. No sound of 

 harvest is unmelodious, scarcely the rattle of the 

 elevator at the stack side, never the slow clank of 

 the team coming home or going to their patient toil, 

 nor the terms of encouragement and reproach which 

 the driver or carter addresses to his horses, in broad 

 Anglo-Saxon. But the hum of the thresher is best 

 of all ; there has been nothing of the kind quite 

 its equal since the swish of the scythe in dewy 

 meadow grasses ceased in England. 



All the work and movement of harvest in sultry 

 August days are restful and assuaging to watch. 

 Though it is often a matter of livelihood that the 

 grain gold with none of the dross of gold should 

 be got to the stack whilst the weather holds up, 

 there is no rush or scare. In each quarter of the 

 field the task is done with the slow dignity of 

 endurance. In the hottest hours, when the un- 

 seasoned man who does no work at the earth feels 

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