HARVEST. 273 



And if there is a time when a man can relish a bath, 

 or, better still, a plunge in a pond or a brook, it is in 

 the twilight after a day's work with timothy or clover, 

 when the seeds have simply tattooed him from head 

 to foot in innumerable, speckled, itching spots of red. 

 We see wisps of hay hanging from the gateposts 

 where the wagons have passed through, and strands 

 cast along the roadside and in the barnyard. Out on 

 the hillside, in the orchard, they are still cutting. 

 There will be a good load or two more of it. The 

 sweet scent of new-mown hay is wafted to us as we lie 

 in the shade. We can see the mowers bending and 

 swaying at their work. At times one will rest, and 

 then the musical whetting of his scythe soon reaches 

 our ears. Let us go down among them. The erect 

 grasses, with their slender stems and nodding tops, fall 

 one by one before the steady slash of the blade, and 

 at each stroke are bunched by the mower with the heel 

 of his scythe and laid in a windrow along the swath. 

 Perhaps, later on, these same long lines of damp green 

 grass will be tossed and scattered to dry in the wind 

 and the sun, and then afterwards raked together again 

 or forked into haycocks to shed the rain. There are 

 few more interesting things to watch or to do on a 

 farm than the cutting of grass with a scythe. 



"O sound to rout the brood of cares, 

 The sweep of scythe in morning dew," 



sings Tennyson. 



Mr. Andrew Lang's "Scythe Song" gives such a 

 lovely picture of the mowers, and so perfectly repro- 



