Selected Poetry.

Otago Witness, Issue 1418, 25 January 1879, Page 21

Selected Poetry.

THE PLOUGHMAN. Clear tbe brown, path, t to meet his coultor'd gleam ! Lo ! on ho comes, behind his smoiang team, With Toil's bright drops on his sunburnt brow j The lord of earth— the hero of the plough. First in the field, before the reddening sun ; Last in the shadows when the day is done, Line after line, along the bursting sod, Marks the broad acres where his feet have trod. Still, where he treads, the stubborn olodß divide, The Bmoobh, fresh farrow opens deep and wide j Matted and dense the tangled turf upheaves, Mellow and dark the ridgy cornfield cleaves j < Up the steep hillside, where the labouring tram Starts the long track that scores the leTel plain. Through the moist valley, clogged with oozing clay, The patient convoy breaks its destined way ; At every turn the loosening chains resound, The swinging plough-share circles glistening round, Till the wild field one billowy waste appears, And weary hands unbind the panting steers. These are the hands whose sturdy labour brings The peasant's food, and golden pomp of kings : This is the page, whose letters shall be seen Changed by the sun to words of living green j This is the scholar, whose immortal pen Spells the first lesson hunger taught to men ; The3e are the lines, 0 heaven- commnnded toil ! That fill thy dead— the charter of the soil ! Oliver Wendel Holmes <