Little Dues of Corn 1791 



a flock of pigeons is greedily feeding on the dropped 

 grain, one amorous cock bird alone neglecting it to 

 flirt his tail and blow out his crop and bow and coo 

 to an assiduous hen ; in another there is a band of 

 gleaners equally industrious, traversing the land with 

 bent backs and downcast eyes, foot by foot and ridge 

 by ridge, wretched and poverty-struck old women for 

 the most part, gathering like the bird a precarious- 

 sustenance from the land, like the semi-dormant 

 animals laying up a little store for the winter. To- 

 me that natural and simple process is typical and 

 emblematic of all human industry. In the case of the 

 poor gJeaner the problem is as simple as may be, for 

 it is only how to keep body and soul together in the 

 hard times that are coming ; the only miracle is that 

 the preservation of life should concern her at all, since 

 continued existence means for herself so many more 

 days of care, and want, and pain ; yet as long as the 

 dying spark shows a gleam of red she will nurse and 

 fan it more carefully than the imaginative young girl 

 to whom the years that are to come melt into a bright 

 landscape of flowery meadow where she is to wander 

 happily culling bud and blossom. Her aged friend 

 has tested and destroyed that hallucination. The sky 

 lowers and storms blow on the last black stage of the 

 journey, yet she would not shorten it by an inch, and 

 nevertheless when the end does come, will lie down> 

 as happily as a child going to bed, in the quiet hostelry 

 of death. Without knowing why, she is as obedient 



