NATURE AND THE POETS 95 



And to the sleeping flowers, below, 

 The early bluebirds sing. 



Brethren, the sower's task is done. 



The seed is in its winter bed. 



Now let the dark-brown mould be spread, 



To hide it from the sun, 

 And leave it to the kindly care 

 Of the still earth and brooding air, 

 As when the mother, from her breast, 

 Lays the hushed babe apart to rest, 

 And shades its eyes and waits to see 

 How sweet its waking smile will be. 

 The tempest now may smite, the sleet 

 All night on the drowned furrow beat, 

 And winds that, from the cloudy hold 

 Of winter, breathe the bitter cold, 

 Stiffen to stone the mellow mould, 



Yet safe shall lie the wheat; 

 Till, out of heaven's unmeasured blue, 



Shall walk again the genial year, 

 To wake with warmth and nurse with dew 



The germs we lay to slumber here." 



Of course the poet was not' writing an agricultu- 

 ral essay, yet one does not like to feel that he was 

 obliged to ignore or sacrifice any part of the truth 

 to build up his verse. One likes to see him keep 

 within the fact without being conscious of it or 

 hampered by it, as he does in "The Planting of the 

 Apple-tree," or in the "Lines to a Water- fowl." 



But there are glimpses of American scenery and 

 climate in Bryant that are unmistakable, as in these 

 lines from "Midsummer: " 



" Look forth upon the earth her thousand plants 

 Are smitten; even the dark, sun-loving maize * 

 Faints in the field beneath the torrid blaze; 

 The herd beside the shaded fountain pants; 

 For life is driven from all the landscape brown; 

 The bird has sought his tree, the snake his den, 



