A CORN-FIELD IN GLENCROE. 2 oi 



Lifts its huge altar to heaven's outer door ; 

 Beside me chants its ceaseless hymn of praise 

 The pure-lipped river ; while the laden ears 

 Store up the manna, like the pot of old 

 Within the Hebrew ark. The sordid world, 

 With all its money-changers, care-worn toils, 

 Is shut out from this shrine not made with hands. 

 From sowing time, when man had done his part, 

 To reaping time, when man must work again, 

 The field has been in the sole charge of God ; 

 The farmer slept and woke, and all the time 

 The earth brought forth its fruit unaided how, 

 Man knoweth not. Beneath the patient heavens, 

 In presence of all enemies subdued, 

 The storm and drought, the blight of worm and rust, 

 God spread a table in this wilderness 

 His annual corn beside the unfailing stream, 

 The bread and water that are sure to all. 

 With thankful hearts shall we not worship here, 

 Look to those higher hills whence comes our help, 

 And feel that man lives not by bread alone, 

 But by each word that cometh from God's mouth, 

 Expressed in Nature's mute symbolic speech, 

 In lofty mountain and in lowly glebe ! 



