Harvest

“ Matur'd the swelling grain;
A kindly harvest crowns Thy love,
And plenty fills the plain.
We own and bless Thy gracious sway;
Thy hand all nature hails;
Seedtime nor harvest, night nor day,
Summer nor winter fails. ”

“ The golden harvest-tide is here, the corn Bows its proud tops beneath the reaper's hand. Ripe orchards' plenteous yields enrich the land; Bring the first fruits and offer them this morn, With the stored sweetness of all summer hours, The amber honey sucked from myriad flowers, And sacrifice your best first fruits to-day, With fainting hearts and hands forespent with toil, Offer the mellow harvest's splendid spoil, To Him who gives and Him who takes away. ”

“ When Jesus saw them come he said to those who followed him, You need not say, It is four months before the harvest time;
7. Behold, the harvest time is now. Lift up your eyes and look; the fields are golden with the ripened grain.
8. Lo, many sowers have gone forth to sow the seeds of life; the seed has grown; the plants have strengthened in the summer sun; the grain has ripened, and the master calls for men to reap. ”

“ The farmer plows and plants. He cultivates in hope, watching his growing grain in graceful, wave-like motion wafted to and fro by the warm summer winds. The green begins to golden; the harvest is at hand. Joy lightens his labor as the fruit of past toil is about to be realized. ”

“ Fields upon fields of heavy-headed grain lay rotting ungathered upon the ground. No one was at hand to take in their rich harvest. As far as the eye could reach, they stretched away—they, sleeping too in the hazy air of autumn. ”

“ Consider what a vast crop is thus annually shed on the earth! This, more than any mere grain or seed, is the great harvest of the year. The trees are now repaying the earth with interest what they have taken from it. They are discounting. They are about to add a leaf's thickness to the depth of the soil. This is the beautiful way in which Nature gets her muck, while I chaffer with this man and that, who talks to me about sulphur and the cost of carting. We are all the richer for their decay. I am more interested in this crop than in the English grass alone or in the corn. ”

“ You've heard people compare old age to a harvest field, and talk about the autumn of life with its ripened corn waiting for the reaper Death, and all that, and speak about the 'harvest home,' as if it were the glorious end of everything. But it never did strike me that way, boys. The best comes after the harvesting, when the wheat is turned into flour and the flour into bread, and the full, wholesome loaves go to make up blood and muscle and brain. ”

“ THE REAPERS' SONG.
The harvest is nodding on valley and plain,
To the scythe and the sickle its treasures must yield;
Through sunshine and shower we have tended the grain;
'Tis ripe to our hand!—to the field—to the field!
If the sun on our labours too warmly should smile,
Why a horn of good ale shall the long hours beguile.
Then, a largess! a largess!—kind stranger, we pray,
We have toiled through the heat of the long summer day! ”

“ Our heavenly harvest lies in every earnest and faithful deed, as the oak with its centuries of growth and all its summer glory sleeps in the acorn-cup, as the golden harvest slumbers in the seeds under their covering of wintry snow. ”

“ But at this season Nature by the simplest stroke—the flush of a commonplace cheek, the warm touch of a commonplace hand—in a twinkling redresses the balance. Forthwith the ideal devourer of crops and herbs not only loses his appetite, but arising, smacks the earth with a hoe till the clods fly and the fields laugh with harvest. ”

“ What more natural than for the family to gather in the fine summer months beneath the shade of the farms, amid its herds so full of life, to enjoy the beauty of the harvest ripened with the warm kisses of the sun? ”

“ As one advances in life one gets to know the sowers of this harvest of tares, and to separate them from those of the wheat crops, without fouling one’s barn with the results of their labour; the effect of it being merely amusing at last. ”

“ We thank thee for the ground under our feet, for the green luxuriance that is spread on all the hills and fields, for the rich harvest now yielding to the mower's scythe, to be swept into his crowded barns ; and that other harvest, a wave- offering of bread for man, or which hangs abundant, growing or ripening, from many a tree all round the land. ”

“ When the harvest has been gathered from our strong, true land, a growth
comes on which late in the year causes the earth to regain somewhat of
its old greenness. New blades spring up in the stubble of the wheat ”

“ Have you fought the good fight? What is the state of your crops? Will your harvest answer well to the seed-time, and are you cheered by the prospect of stretching cornfields? Is there any blight on your fields, any murrain in your herds? ”

“ The Goddess of the Plentiful Harvest sits in the slope of an overflowing cornucopia; a sheaf of ripe wheat rests in her supporting arm; she is attended by a lad who can scarcely lift the weight of fruit he bears. ”

“ Harvest is a time of ripeness. Then the fruit and grain are fully developed, both in size and weight. Time has tempered the acid of the green fruit. It has been mellowed and softened by the rains and the heat of summer. ”

“ For the beginning of Harvest there is this
Harvest Song.
Now Lammas comes in,
Our harvest begin,
We have done our endeavours to get the corn in;
We reap and we mow
And we stoutly blow
And cut down the corn
That did sweetly grow.
The poor old man
That can hardly stand,
Gets up in the morning, and do all he can,
Gets up, &c.
I hope God will reward
Such old harvest man.
But the man who is lazy
And will not come on,
He slights his good master
And likewise his men ”

“ You say at once—"From the miller"; but how does the miller get the corn to grind into flour? He buys it of the farmer. But how does the farmer get it? With infinite pains he prepares the ground with plough and harrow. Then he sows the seed and—leaves it. He can do no more. The soil in which it grows, the sunshine to warm it, the rain to moisten it, and the wind to blow upon it—all these are God's doing, not man's. So a wonder is seen in thousands of harvest fields every year. One grain has produced a hundred grains by the almighty power of God. ”

“ Harvest days we toiled to sow for;
Now the sheaves are gathered newly,
Now the wheat is garnered duly.
It is finished. What is finished?
Much is finished known or unknown:
Lives are finished; time diminished ”

“ When it begins to get a little warm in the spring you begin to plow, and when you cast in the seed you do not expect to reap on to-morrow; but you wait, and by and by the grain begins to shoot, and everythings [everything] looks beautiful and green, and when it commences to head out, you begin to talk about the harvest. ”

“ In the morning early folk arose; and the lads and women who were not of the night-shift got them ready to go to the mead and the acres; for the sunshine had been plenty these last days and the wheat was done blossoming, and all must be got ready for harvest. ”

“ Nature elsewhere rich in hints to the gardener and the farmer is not silent here. A lesson plainly taught in all this apparatus for the dispersal of seeds is that the more various the planting the fuller the harvest. Now that from the wheat fields comes a cry of disappearing gains, it is time to heed the story told in the unbroken prairie that diversity in sowing means wealth in reaping. ”

“ Of the seed scattered by the early sowers, a grain found here and there a sheltering crevice, and struggled into life, bearing fruit that in the succession of years increased and multiplied until thousands were fed and strengthened by its harvest. ”

“ But with every deed you are sowing a seed,
Though the harvest you may not see. ”

“ In both cases man became skilled in harvesting long before he understood anything of the art of cultivation. Primitive man roamed from place to place in the wake of the annual wave of harvest, gathering wild crops of grain, berries and fruits. ”

“ It sprouts and grows, and by and by he reaps the harvest [139] of the sowing, and he says, “I have harvested, I have raised so many bushels of corn to the acre.” Oh, no, he has not. He has sown so many seeds, he has cultivated so many acres, he has put in his sickle or his harvesting machine, and he has gathered so many stalks. But he could not have done it if some forces of nature had not been at work perfecting that which he began. He and nature, as we say—he and God, as I say—have worked together to raise the harvest. ”

“ They may bring their fattest cattle and richest fruits to the fair, but they are all eclipsed by the show of men. These are stirring autumn days, when men sweep by in crowds, amid the rustle of leaves, like migrating finches; this is the true harvest of the year, when the air is but the breath of men, and the rustling of leaves is as the trampling of the crowd. ”

“ Harvest is the elegant and literary word; crop is the common and commercial expression; we say a man sells his crop, but we should not speak of his selling his harvest; we speak of an ample or abundant harvest, a good crop. Harvest is applied almost wholly to grain; crop applies to almost anything that is gathered in; we speak of the potato-crop, not the potato-harvest; we may say either the wheat-crop or the wheat-harvest. Produce is a collective word for all that is produced in farming or gardening, and is, in modern usage, almost wholly restricted to this sense ”

“ For those who cultivate land which is alike arid, heavy, and barren, and in which they sow seeds, do not make so great a harvest as those who cultivate a fertile and mellow soil and sow their grain in that. ”

“ How does he know what kind of grain he will reap at harvest time? Does wheat ever produce oats? Or clover seed produce wheat? What happened while the farmer slept? Who sowed the tares in his field? Who sows the tares in our minds? What do we call these tares? Should they be removed or permitted to grow? Should we be thankful to our parents for preventing tares from being sown? In what kind of soil did the grain grow to a fruitage of thirty, sixty and an hundred fold?
[192]
REAPING. THE HARVEST TIME OF LIFE.
Suggestion:—The object used is a small sheaf of grain. ”

“ A farmer ploughs his land, then sows his seed, and then waits months for the harvest. The Church too frequently scratches the hard ground with an impatient hand, drops in a few seeds, and immediately breaks into lamentations, because no instantaneous harvest springs forth. ”

“ But we know, darling, that if a farmer went over a huge field, simply scattering grain, perhaps on ground even unploughed, and then went home, quite sure that all would go right, that he had only to go on for ever sowing and a harvest would certainly rise, he would hardly be likely to garner a crop.... ”

“ In order that there may be a good harvest, the land must be manured and carefully prepared, the seed must be sown in due season, the weeds which spring up must be rooted out, and the soil must be diligently cultivated throughout. ”

“ Every fruit-bearing branch, therefore, he purges, that it may bring forth more fruit. The successful farmer carefully removes all the foreign growth out of his field, and then cultivates his plants, that he may reap the greatest possible harvest. ”

“ Ar. rabi, 'the Spring.' In India applied to the crops, or harvest of the crops, which are sown after the rains and reaped in the following spring or early summer. Such crops are wheat, barley, gram, linseed, tobacco, onions, carrots and turnips, &c. ”

“ Where are the harvests garnered which grew in the soil of the human heart? What thoughts and generous purposes have been ripened and stored up like fruit, and what ones have fallen and perished like leaves? ”

“ When the season comes and the soil is ready, the farmer knows he must sow the seed, or he cannot hope to reap a harvest. So it is with the moulds: to the conditions for growth there must be added the germs of life, or no mould will be produced. ”

“ Hence the farmer who most frequently stirs his soil in the growing season, and especially in seasons of drought, reaps, other things being equal, a more abundant harvest than if tillage were neglected. ”

“ For their place is already filled, and the new husbandmen, their children, have in their turn come into the field, to eat of the fruit they sowed, to sow in turn a seed of which they themselves shall not see the harvest, whose sheaves others shall bind, whose ears others shall thresh, and of whose corn others shall make bread after them. ”

“ For the Eye to make a Companion betwixt a sown Crop and such a ho’d Crop, it ought, when ’tis half grown, to look on the ho’d Crop across the Rows; because in the other it does so, in Effect, which way soever it looks; but whatever Appearance the ho’d Crop of Vegetables (of as large a Species as Wheat) makes when young, it surely, if well managed, appears more beautiful at Harvest than a sown Crop. ”

“ At the beginning of the harvest they pluck an ear of corn and say, ‘Whatever god is the guardian of this place, this is your share, take it, and do not interfere.’ The last plants in the field are cut and sent home by a little girl and put at the bottom of the grain-bin of the house. ”

“ If, after having toiled and sown, we had nothing to do but to gather in the harvest, every person would become an agriculturist. But a soil which is not manured will soon grow exhausted; and if it be neither ploughed nor harrowed, instead of barley or vegetables, it will soon be covered with tares; rank weeds will flourish in every field. ”