Margaret Junkin Preston

The Reapers of Lindisfarne

IN his abbey cell Saint Cuthbert
  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;

Still scouted all peaceful tillage,
  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?”

“Through year and through year I have taught them
  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.

“In their sight I will set the lesson;
  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.”

Therewith from his Melrose cloister
  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.

And it came to pass when the autumn
  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.

Then certain among the people,
  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

“Shall make of his sword a sickle,
  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.”

Right sadly Saint Cuthbert listened;
  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.

Then he dreamed that he saw descending
  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.

In the cool of the crispy morning,
  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.”

He turned to look at his corn-land;
  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!