The Promise of Bread
Out on the frozen uplands, underneath the snow
and sleet,
In the bosom of the plowland sleeps the Promise
of the Wheat.
With the ice for head-and-footstone, and a snowy
shroud outspread
In the frost-locked tomb of winter sleeps the Miracle
of Bread.
With its hundred thousand reapers and its hundred
thousand men,
And the click of guard and sickle and the flails that
turn again,
And drover's shout, and snap of whips and creak of
horses' tugs,
And a thin red line o' gingham girls that carry water
jugs;
And yellow stalks and dagger beards that stab thro'
cotton clothes,
And farmer boys a-shocking wheat in long and
crooked rows,
And dust-veiled men on mountain stacks, whose
pitchforks flash and gleam;
And threshing engines shrieking songs in syllables
of steam,
And elevators painted red that lift their giant arms
And beckon to the Harvest God above the brooding
farms,
And loaded trains that hasten forth, a hungry world
to fill__
All sleeping just beneath the snow, out yonder on the
hill.
___C. L. Edson
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