Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.
The Corn-fieldCharles R. Murphy
F
The last for my barn. I shall watch in the weak sunlight
A little while, though warmth is in the houses
Unneeded till now, and the drift of the chill of autumn
Is falling swiftly to cover my field with silence.
Soon its unkempt bareness shall be uncovered
Completely and its pebbly ground shall tighten
In the first frost; and no man be there to witness
Its lonely withered stubble, and at its sky-line
Smoke of gray sky and delicate twigs of bushes.
As others have waited through long years of labor
In other fields—to find not, though the corn’s returning
Be sure as the quiet and sting of coming winter.
I have gathered, and for my finer harvest
Now are waiting but these five stacks of fodder,
And my love out-given at last to my lonely corn-field,
And the planting of love for a distant other reaping,
Where perhaps my yield shall be garnered with the corn.