GATHERING CORN 



>LOW fair, blow free, O wind of 

 the west! Set the bare trees 

 all arocking in this world of 

 haze. Blue it lies, foldless, 

 swathing. Up into it, far to 

 south, swims a globe of red fire. This fine, 

 blue, clinging Omphale has shorn heaven's 

 Hercules of beams, drinks his light into her 

 spaces, drips it down, a warm, pale shining, 

 over the frosted fields. They lay glistering 

 white at day's dawn, thick-sown in all their 

 breadth with fine, sharp, pricking crystals, 

 crunching under -foot as though you trod 

 down a fairy host at guard. 



Black frost, say farmer-folk, foreshadow- 

 ing the mark of it. Timely, full of use. 

 Now apples shall part freely from the bur- 

 dened boughs, and come to the palate with 

 a new, fresh tang, infinitely delicious. Now 

 all the stubble's weedy, creeping riff-raff 

 shall be as smoking flax before the. plough, 

 no more to choke and hinder the turning of 



