Soon as the morning trembles o’er the sky,
And unperceived unfolds the spreading day,
Before the ripened field the reapers stand
In fair array, each by the lass he loves,
To bear the rougher part and mitigate
By nameless gentle offices her toil.
At once they stoop, and swell the lusty sheaves;
While through their cheerful band the rural talk,
The rural scandal, and the rural jest
Fly harmless, to deceive the tedious time
And steal unfelt the sultry hours away.
Behind the master walks, builds up the shocks,
And, conscious, glancing oft on every side
His sated eye, feels his heart heave with joy.
The gleaners spread around, and here and there,
Spike after spike, their sparing harvest pick.
Be not too narrow, husbandmen! but fling
From the full sheaf with charitable stealth
The liberal handful. Think, oh! grateful think
How good the God of harvest is to you,
Who pours abundance o’er your flowing fields,
While these unhappy partners of your kind
Wide-hover round you, like the fowls of heaven,
And ask their humble dole. The various turns
Of fortune ponder; that your sons may want
What now with hard reluctance faint ye give.
From Thomson‘s Seasons (1730), ‘Autumn’
This is a heart rending, beautiful poem. Thank you for sharing. I have learned so much and found so much to love and explore of 18th century literature.
Where I live in the English midlands there is an old farm with wheat fields and I walk through a lane cutting across it on my walks sometimes. There is a single oak tree bang in the middle of the wheat field sitting alone. I learned that oak trees were planted in fields hundreds of years ago so the people tilling the fields and reaping the wheat would have shelter from the blazing sun and the pouring rain. Where boys and men sat as they worked for their humble dole. Now its scenic and beautifully aesthetic, the sole oak tree in yellow gold field. But it was born of human toil and shelter.