Songs of the Fields 



birds, and the vWcv A\liispcrs their hinabj% — the oat 



field is the most beautiful on God's footstool, and 



it is alive with niusieians. 



A few days later, wlien blue tints give place 



to the gold of a])pvoaching ripeness, it is lovely 



in a Avarni, mellow way. Because there is inilini- The 



ited sameness in a field of growing grain a pho- ^°"^ °' 



p^ o o I j.j^g Sheaves 



tograjihic study of it is not pleasing. The time 

 to reproduce it is when the cutting is over and 

 the harvest stands in shocks, from the canoj^y of 

 which crickets sing, a million in unison. Locusts 

 hiun in the big trees, ^\'ild doves coo from the 

 thicket across the river, the clacking reaper rattles 

 a rhythmic accompaniment, and my partners, 

 bending over the sheaves, touch the scene with 

 life and color. I never see harvesters cutting 

 grain that I do not think of a command uttered 

 by jNIoses three thousand years ago: "And when 

 ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not 

 wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt 

 thou gather the gleanings of the harvest." JNIoses 

 intended these gleanings to remain for the "])oor 

 and the stranger." In my country gleanings fall 

 to the birds, since these fields know neither the 

 poor nor the stranger. Harvesting scenes are so 

 touched \vith life, music, and color that they al- 

 ways have been great fa^'orites with artists and 

 poets. The most ^'ivid shirt of a workman or 

 the red 'kerchief knotted around his throat is not 



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