Category Archives: Farming

“Mowing” by Robert Frost [w/ Audio]

Posted on by
Reply 
There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
 And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
 What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;
 Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
 Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound --
 And that was why it whispered and did not speak.
 It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,
 Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf: 
 Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
 To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,
 Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers
 (Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.
 The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.
 My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.

“The Hayloft” by Robert Louis Stevenson [w/ Audio]

Posted on by
Reply 
Through all the pleasant meadow-side
   The grass grew shoulder-high,
 Till the shining scythes went far and wide
   And cut it down to dry.

These green and sweetly smelling crops
   They led in wagons home;
 And they piled them here in mountain tops
   For mountaineers to roam.

Here is Mount Clear, Mount Rusty-Nail,
   Mount Eagle and Mount High --
 The mice that in these mountains dwell,
   No happier are than I!

O what a joy to clamber there,
   O what a place for play,
 With the sweet, the dim, the dusty air,
   The happy hills of hay!

“The Donkey” by G.K. Chesterton [w/ Audio]

Posted on by
Reply 
When fishes flew and forests walked
   And figs grew upon thorn,
 Some moment when the moon was blood
   Then surely I was born.

With monstrous head and sickening cry
   And ears like errant wings,
 The devil's walking parody
   On all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,
   Of ancient crooked will;
 Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
   I keep my secret still.
 
Fools! For I also had my hour;
   One far fierce hour and sweet:
 There was a shout about my ears,
    And palms before my feet.