Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79.
The Reapers of Lindisfarne
By Margaret J. Preston (18201897)I
Sate burdened and care-dismayed:
For the wild Northumbrian people,
For whom he had wrought and prayed,
Still clung to their warlike pastime,
Their plunder and border raid;
And queried with scowling brow,
“Shall we who have won our victual
By the stout, strong hand till now,
Forswearing the free, bold foray,
Crawl after the servile plough?”
By the word of my mouth,” he said,
“And still, in their untamed rudeness,
They trust to the wilds for bread;
But now will I teach henceforward
By the toil of my hands instead.
And, gazing across the tarn,
They shall see on its nether border
Garth, byre, and hurdled barn,
And the brave, fair field of barley
That shall whiten at Lindisfarne.”
Saint Cuthbert went his way:
He felled the hurst, and the meadow
Bare him rich swaths of hay,
And forth and aback in the furrow
He wearied the longsome day.
The ground with its sere leaves strawed,
And the purple was over the moorlands,
And the rust on the sunburnt sod,
That, ripe for the reaper, the barley
Silvered the acres broad.
Fierce folk who had laughed to scorn
The cark of the patient toiler,
While riot and hunt and horn
Were wiling them in the greenwood,
Cried: “Never Northumbrian born
Or help to winnow the heap:
The hand that hath sowed may garner
The grain as he list,—or sleep,
And pray the hard Lord he serveth,
That his angels may come and reap.”
And, bowing his silvered head,
He sought for a Christ-like patience
As he lay on his rush-strewn bed,
And strength for the morrow’s scything,
Till his fears and his sadness fled.
On the marge of the moorland tarn
A circle of shining reapers,
Who heaped in the low-eaved barn
The sheaves that their gleaming sickles
Had levelled at Lindisfarne.
Ere the lark had quitted her nest
In the beaded grass, the sleeper
Arose from his place of rest;
“For,” he sighed, “I must toil till the gloaming
Is graying the golden west.”
Did he dream? Did he see aright?
Close cut was the field of barley,
And the stubble stood thick in sight:
For the reapers with shining sickles
Had harvested all the night!