THE EPIC OF THE CORNFIELD. 



THE rotation of crops on the farm has this year 

 filled the field opposite my window with a 

 thriving growth of corn. Last year it grew 

 rye, and the year before it lay fallow. But never was 

 it so beautiful as these tall stalks have made it, their 

 pale green below crowned with golden tassels nod- 

 ding in the breezes like the plumes of a great army. 

 It is a large field for a New England farm, and its 

 eight or nine acres are filled to the very fences with 

 a crop which I have seen grow from one foot to nine 

 and ten in height. When 1 awake in the morning it 

 is the first sight that greets my eyes, its whole ex- 

 panse glittering in the sunlight like the waters of a 

 lake. At noon its soft whispers come across into my 

 chamber, voicing mysterious messages. In the even- 

 ing dampness sweet odours exhale from it and drift 

 into the open doors, the choicest fragrance of the 

 farm. And all night long, when the wind is up, I 

 hear the soft clash of stalks and blades which tells 

 of the steady struggle it keeps up against the gale. 



These voices of the cornfield have gradually 

 blended themselves into a poem, a sort of epic of the 

 field, a series of cantos whose linked numbers tell 



"5 



