The Ripening Corn

How sweet to walk llnough the wheatlands brown, When tlie teeming fatness of Heaven drops dov, n ! The waving erop Wlth its bursling ears A sea of gold on the earth appears ; No longer robed In a dress of green, With tawny faces the fields are teen ; A sight more welcome and joyous far Tlian a hundred bluod-won victories are. 15eautiful custom was that of old, When the Hebrew brought, wilh a joy untold, The earliest ears of the ripening corn And laid them down by the altar's hom ; When the priesthood waved them before the Lord, White the giver of harvesis all hearta adored; What gifts more suited could man inipart To express the flow of his grateful heart 7 A crowd awaits 'neath the cottage eaves, To cut the corn and to bind the sheaves ; At leugth is lieard the expected sound - Put in Lile sickle, the coru is browned ; And the reapers go forti with as blithe a soulAs those who joined the Olympian goal; And sorrowless hearts and voices come To swell the shouts of the harvest home. And there ia a reaper on earth well known, Whose deeds are traced on the burial stone; He carnes a sickle more deadly and keen Than e'er on the harvest field was seen ; He cut8 down the earliest ears in spring, As well as the ripest that time can briug ; The tares he gathers to flames are driven, The wheat is laid on the aarner of Heaven.