Page:Poems Curwen.djvu/185

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Harvest Home.

Round the festive board in the Parish Room,—
 So tastefully decked with the corn, and wheat,
And flowers, and fruit, for our Harvest Home,
 Parents and children and pastor now meet.

For harvest is passed, and summer ended,
 We have gathered the fruit, and garnered the grain,
And now that toil is awhile suspended
 There's time for social enjoyment again.

Spring saw the tilling, ploughing, and sowing,
 Heard Cuckoo calling, saw budding of leaves;
And summer's warm breath ripened the growing
 Grain, which fair autumn bound into sheaves.

Nov/ the roses are faded, the green leaves are sere,
 The cuckoo is silent, the swallows ta'en wing;
But the fruit of man's toil is visible here,
 In the harvest reaped from labour in spring.

O children of men! it needs not the preacher
 To point out the lesson harvest conveys,
For Nature herself is an eloquent teacher
 Propounding great truths in simplest ways.

Men reap as they sow. Who planteth good seed
 Reaps a rich harvest; he who sows ill,
Or lets his fair pasture run into weed,
 Cannot expect to bring grist to the mill.

When the Lord of the Harvest cometh to reap
 The seeds lying dormant in the dark tomb,
May all who are here awake from that sleep
 To join in singing Heaven's Harvest Home!