BOVE, below me, on the hill, Great fields of grain their fulness fill; The golden fruit bends down the trees; The grass stands high round mowers' knees; The bee pants through the clover-beds, And cannot taste of half the heads; The farmer stands, with greedy eyes, And counts his harvest's growing size.
Among his fields, so fair to see, He takes no count, no note, of me. I lie and bask, along the hill, Content and idle, idle still, My lazy silence never stirred By breathless bee or hungry bird: All creatures know the cribs which yield; No creature seeks the fallow field.
But to no field on all the hill Come sun and rain with more good-will; All secrets which they bear and bring To wheat before its ripening, To clover turning purple red, To grass in bloom for mowers' tread,— They tell the same to my bare waste, But never once bid me to haste.
Winter is near, and snow is sweet; Who knows if they be seeds of wheat Or clover, which my bosom fill? Who knows how many summers will Be needed, spent, before one thing Is ready for my harvesting? And after all, if all were laid Into sure balances and weighed, Who knows if all the gain and get On which hot human hearts are set Do more than mark the drought and dearth Through which this little dust of earth Must lie and wait in God's great hard, A patient bit of fallow land?
FALLOW
"Above, below me, on the hill, Great fields of grain their fulness fill; The golden fruit bends down the trees; The grass stands high round mowers' knees"
BOVE, below me, on the hill,