March — Polish of Labor. 91 



true poet would be set dreaming just as surely by the 

 polish of the ploughshare — a polish not due to any in- 

 tentional scheming about effect, but simply a proof of 

 labor, like that noble polish which comes of itself upon 

 the laborious human mind when it has toiled in the in- 

 tellectual fields. The mere fact that Virgil noticed the 

 shining of a ploughshare nineteen hundred years ago is 

 of itself, a poetical association, as Thomson felt when he 

 wrote : — 



1 Such themes as these the rural Maro sang 

 To wide imperial Rome, in the full height 

 Of elegance and taste, by Greece refined. 

 In ancient times, the sacred plough employ'd 

 The kings and awful fathers of mankind. 

 And some, with whom compared, your insect tribes 

 Are but the beings of a summer's day, 

 Have held the scale of empire, ruled the storm 

 Of mighty war ; then, with victorious hand 

 Disdaining little delicacies, seized 

 The plough, and greatly independent lived.' 



1 1 was bred to the plough,' wrote Burns, * and am in- 

 dependent ; ' the two ideas of ploughing and indepen- 

 dence connecting themselves together very easily, in 

 part perhaps because the ploughman whilst he works 

 is not commanded by another, but is lord of his own 

 team, and guides his own implement as it makes the 

 long furrow in the earth. There is certainly a great 

 dignity in the grand old agricultural operations ; so 

 much dignity, indeed, that they are compatible with the 

 grandest traditions of religious or political history. One 

 is tempted to avoid the allusion to Cincinnatus because 



