Poem by Ernest Charles Jones

Hymn for Lammas Day

SHARPEN the sickle! The fields are white,
    'Tis the time of the harvest at last;
Reapers! be up with the morning light,
    Ere the blush of its youth be past.
Why stand on the highway, and lounge at the gate,
    With a summer day's work to perform?
If we wait for the hiring, 'tis long we may wait—
    Till the hour of the night and the storm.

Sharpen the sickle! How proud they stand,
    In the pomp of their golden grain!
But I'm thinking, ere noon, 'neath the sweep of my hand,
    How many shall lie on the plain!
Tho' the ditch be wide, the fence be high,—
    There's a spirit to carry us o'er;
For God never meant his people to die
    In sight of so rich a store.

Sharpen the sickle! How full are the ears!
    And at home they are crying for bread;
And the field has been watered with orphans' tears,
    And enriched with their father's dead.
And hopes that are buried, and hearts that broke,
    Lie deep in the treasuring sod:
Then dash down the grain with a thunderstroke,
    In the name of humanity's God!

1. The Silent Cell
2. A Fine Young Foreign Gentleman
3. Earth's Burdens
4. Too Soon
5. The Life of a Flower

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