THE MAIZE HARVEST 
Far through the quiet twilight of the cool October dawn 
Spreads a rumbling, as of chariots in an army moving on. 
Toward the fertile river-bottoms, toward the poorer clay-capped hills, 
Toward each quarter of the country that the ample corn crop fills, 
Out of every barn-yard gateway, out of every farmhouse road, 
You can hear the hollow wagons rolling to their morning load. 
There are orchards in the Westland; wheat-fields wave and ripen there; 
Classic harvests draw, in season, songs of plenty from the air. 
Red Pomona shakes the branches, yellow Ceres binds the grain 
To delight the poet’s fancy, and the farmer’s hope of gain. 
But in this native maize-land the year no poem yields 
Like the sound of all the wagons rolling to the husking-fields. 
—John Brown Jewett 
