And so, my friend, you will garner tomorrow,
Your ripened fields of waving grain;
And you stand tonight, with a touch of sorrow,
And a sense of loss, and a subtle pain,
As your gaze for the last time wanders over
Your season's work: for with the wheat,
You know that the reaping will discover
One poor little corn-flower at your feet.
And just for that sweet, faint blossom lying
Mute and appealing in its death,
The color from your strong lip is dying,
And I read your pain in your bated breath.
Yet, oh, it must be--we know, we know it,
Friend, my friend of the fateful days;
But the heart is wise, and will not show it,
Though a hundred blossoms the sickle graze.
For the sower must sow, and the dews must nourish,
And sweet flowers spring in a gay disdain
Of danger till under the sickle's flourish,
They fall for the sake of the yellow grain.
So the sun goes down on a nameless sorrow,
And I look in your eyes as they scan your wheat;
And I read therein that no other tomorrow
Will dawn from an evening so bitterly sweet.
While all the great wonder we stand confessing,
Why flowers need perish when grain must fall;
And life is a riddle we die in guessing,
And toss to our neighbor--and that is all.
