Charles R. Murphy

FIVE stacks of fodder are waiting in my corn-field,

The last for my barn. I shall watch in the weak sunlight

A little while, though warmth is in the houses

Unneeded till now, and the drift of the chill of autumn

Is falling swiftly to cover my field with silence.

Soon its unkempt bareness shall be uncovered

Completely and its pebbly ground shall tighten

In the first frost; and no man be there to witness

Its lonely withered stubble, and at its sky-line

Smoke of gray sky and delicate twigs of bushes.

I have gathered, yet await a subtler harvest

As others have waited through long years of labor

In other fields—to find not, though the corn’s returning

Be sure as the quiet and sting of coming winter.

I have gathered, and for my finer harvest

Now are waiting but these five stacks of fodder,

And my love out-given at last to my lonely corn-field,

And the planting of love for a distant other reaping,

Where perhaps my yield shall be garnered with the corn.