i 4 2 MIDSUMMER NIGHT 

 race of slow horses moving in jangling 

 harness to the deep shouts of the heavy 

 men. Generation after generation of men, 

 bent with age and unceasing labour, plodding 

 the earth, sowing the yellow grains that 

 would produce a million million berries for 

 mankind. Spring after spring, each with its 

 glory of blue-winged swallows speeding, 

 wheeling, falling through the azure, the 

 cuckoo calling in the meadows, and the lark- 

 song shaking its silver earthchain as it strove 

 to be free. Through all the sowings and the 

 reapings for thousands of years the wheat 

 had known that it was grown for man, and 

 the soul of the wheat grew in the knowledge 

 of its service. Lying there on the cool 

 couch of the silver-flotten corn, with the 

 soft earth under me, sweet with its scent 

 of stored sunbeams, the beauty of the 

 phantom wheat carried me away in a passion 

 of sweet ecstasy. Faint as the sea-murmur 

 within the shell, the voice of the corn 

 came to the inward ear. Ever the same 



