Poem by Robert Seymour Bridges

Shorter Poems. Book V. 1. The Winnowers

Betwixt two billows of the downs
  The little hamlet lies,
And nothing sees but the bald crowns
  Of the hills, and the blue skies.

Clustering beneath the long descent
  And grey slopes of the wold,
The red roofs nestle, oversprent
  With lichen yellow as gold.

We found it in the mid-day sun
  Basking, what time of year
The thrush his singing has begun,
  Ere the first leaves appear.

High from his load a woodman pitched
  His faggots on the stack:
Knee-deep in straw the cattle twitched
  Sweet hay from crib and rack:

And from the barn hard by was borne
  A steady muffled din,
By which we knew that threshèd corn
  Was winnowing, and went in.

The sunbeams on the motey air
  Streamed through the open door,
And on the brown arms moving bare,
  And the grain upon the floor.

One turns the crank, one stoops to feed
  The hopper, lest it lack,
One in the bushel scoops the seed,
  One stands to hold the sack.

We watched the good grain rattle down,
  And the awns fly in the draught;
To see us both so pensive grown
  The honest labourers laughed:

Merry they were, because the wheat
  Was clean and plump and good,
Pleasant to hand and eye, and meet
  For market and for food.

It chanced we from the city were,
  And had not gat us free
In spirit from the store and stir
  Of its immensity:

But here we found ourselves again.
  Where humble harvests bring
After much toil but little grain,
  ’Tis merry winnowing.

1. Shorter Poems. Book IV. 13. The Windmill
2. Shorter Poems. Book IV. 4. “The Clouds Have Left the Sky”
3. Shorter Poems. Book IV. 7. “Gáy Róbin Is Seen No More”
4. Shorter Poems. Book IV. 23. “The storm is over, the land hushes to rest”
5. Shorter Poems. Book IV. 10. “O Love, my muse, how was’t for me”

Print

1725 Views

Last Poems

To Russian version