Across my native fields and furrows,
Under a sky unfriendly, easeless,
Peace of the ages, fraught with treason,
Leads me; I creep, and something follows.
With me, behind me, foeman-sorrow
With dull grim whisper ever teases;
Though to play prophet it may please you:
Today is yesterday's unchanged morrow.
Everything lives by the same God still,
Even spring's herald, loudly ringing,
Cannot cleanse fields from mildew clinging...
Ploughman brings shoots to fallow sod still:
Though ploughshare into gravemounds prods still,
He recalls not ancestral singing.
1910