Haunted Reaping

Out we go in the dusk of morn

Over the hills to the reaping.

Our sickles crash on the golden corn

When the rest of earth is sleeping.

Bending and bowing, bending and bowing,

Gathering in and striking free,

Gripping the sheaf with the sickle and knee

And laying it down for the tying.

The dim, dark hills are all around,

The silence breeds a sullen dread,

Our sickle strokes like shrieks resound

In chambers of the murdered dead.

But one dull star stays overhead,

The waning moon seems all awry.

The dying night is loth to die

Though in the east the mists are red.

Over the stubble chill winds creep

Like breaths from a dead world blowing,

God! it is awesome so to reap

With such strange fancies growing.

Bending and bowing, bending and bowing,

Gathering in and striking free,

Gripping the sheaf with sickle and knee,

And laying it down for the tying.

My father reaps six feet before

With hairy arms as hard as steel.

I hear the corn as oft of yore

Before his whirlng sickle reel;

And, God, what wild, mad horrors steal !-

Bidding me take too long a stride,

And drive my sickle in his side,

And grind his face beneath my heel.

I dread this brooding, awful morn

With its haunted hush dismaying-

It seems as though pale souls newborn

Our curved wet blades were slaying.

Bending and bowing, bending and bowing,

Gathering in and striking free,

Gripping the sheaf with the sickle and knee

And laying it down for the tying.

My father's beard is grizzled gray-

It trails like mist in heavy wind.

He was three-score yesterday,

And yet I reap six feet behind.

Lean he is, and bent, and lined,

And he has held me many years;

And still I toil in hate and tears,

And still he swears that he is kind.

Ah, God, will morning never break?

I know he is old and loving,

Yet I hear with every stroke I make

A demon with me moving;

Bending and bowing, bending and bowing,

Gathering in and striking free,

Gripping the sheaf with sickle and knee

And laying it down for the tying.

At last! The morning comes at last:

The hills are rich with filtered gold,

And through the vales a glory vast

In glowing might is swiftly rolled.

And hard my father's hand I hold,

And, standing 'midst the gleaming corn,

With him thank Heaven for the morn-

"With lips that still are gray and cold! .