HARVEST. 



" Fling wide the grain ; we give the fields 



The ears that nod in summer's gale, 

 The shining stems that summer gilds. 

 The harvest that o'erflows the vale. 

 And swells, an amber sea, between 

 The full-leaved woods, its shores of green. 

 Hark! from the murmuring clods I hear 

 Glad voices of the coming year; 

 The song of him who binds the grain, 

 The shout of those that load the wain, 

 And from the distant grange there comes 



The clatter of the thresher's flail, 

 And steadily the millstone hums 

 ^ Down in the willowy vale." 

 ^^^^ Bryant. 



x**Tr^ijjj|fc^ ^^ term harvest, as it is generally under- 

 j i stood in the country, is limited to the 



time when the ripened grain is cut and gar- 

 nered into the barns. Yet the real harvest lasts 

 longer than that. The berry season and haying 

 SICKLES. immediately precede and often accompany the 

 reaping of the grain, and we are surely still getting in 

 our crops when we pick the last apple of October. 

 Are not these, then, also a part of the harvest? 

 Indeed, all summer and autumn, even till the last stalk 

 of corn is cut and the rustling shocks lie scattered in 

 corn husking in November, are but the gathering in 

 of the products from the seeds of the previous fall 

 and the blossoms of the spring. 



Let us turn to the hayfield while the men are there. 

 It is no wonder the cows love clover. See it turn over, 



265 



