Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922.

Harvest Home

Frederick Tennyson (1807–1898)

COME, let us mount the breezy down

And hearken to the tumult blown

Up from the champaign and the town.

The harvest days are come again,

The vales are surging with the grain;

The merry work goes on amain.

Pale streaks of cloud scarce veil the blue;

Against the golden harvest hue

The Autumn trees look fresh and new.

Wrinkled brows relax with glee,

And aged eyes they laugh to see

The sickles follow o’er the lea.

I see the little kerchief’d maid

With dimpling cheek and bodice staid,

’Mid the stout striplings half afraid;

I see the sire with bronzèd chest:

Mad babes amid the blithe unrest

Seem leaping from the mother’s breast.

The mighty youth and supple child

Go forth, the yellow sheaves are piled;

The toil is mirth, the mirth is wild …

Lusty Pleasures, hobnail’d Fun

Throng into the noonday sun

And ’mid the merry reapers run.

Draw the clear October out!

Another, and another bout!

Then back to labour with a shout!

The banded sheaves stand orderly

Against the purple Autumn sky

Like armies of Prosperity.

Hark! thro’ the middle of the town

From the sunny slopes run down

Bawling boys and reapers brown;

Laughter flies from door to door,

To see fat Plenty with his store

Led a captive by the poor …

Right thro’ the middle of the town,

With a great sheaf for a crown,

Onward he reels, a happy clown.

Faintly cheers the tailor thin,

And the smith with sooty chin

Lends his hammer to the din;

And the master, blithe and boon,

Pours forth his boys that afternoon,

And locks his desk an hour too soon.

Yet when the shadows eastward lean

O’er the smooth-shorn fallows clean,

And Silence sits where they have been,

Amid the gleaners I will stay,

While the shout and roundelay

Faint off, and daylight dies away.

—Dies away, and leaves me lone

With dim ghosts, of years agone,

Summers parted, glories flown;

Till Day beneath the West is roll’d,

Till grey spire and tufted wold

Purple in the evening gold.

Memories, when old age is come,

Are stray ears that deck the gloom,

And echoes of the Harvest-home.