L. H. Bailey Poetry

Needing an occasional break from market garden planning, I have been unpacking and reintroducing myself to my book collection, one at a time. “Wind and Weather” By Liberty Hyde Bailey was yesterdays book, a lovely little 1916 copyright published by MacMillan, part of “The Background Books, The Philosophy of the Holy Earth” series. Poems with titles like “Winter,” “Hermit Thrush,” “Mother Mud,” Apple Blow,” and “‘Cello” fill the pages.

This one stands out in my mind.

“I Plow”

Quick smell of the earth, I am come once more
To the feel of the soil and the sky before
To tang of the ditch and whift of the bough
With stamp of my team and grip of my plow.

I am blowing again with wind and rain
I am falling with the frost and snow
Yearning once more with the fields that have lain
Through the months of the drought and flow,-
You shall hear the clank of my plow and chain
Where my hard-harnessed horses throw
And follow the welts that I rip in twain
As I turn up the lands below.

Jangle and crunch in the far-windy morn
Cut and grind through the singing sod
Stone and high-hummock and thistle and thorn
Root and stubble and rolling clod
Puddles that break into furrows foreshorn
Helm of the handles, plow-point’s prod,-
With hale of great harvests my bouts are borne
Ov’r the vasts of the glebes of God.

Mete to the mark are my furrows full-set
Hard with the muscle and marrow and sweat
Straightforth is the way and the fields are rife
High over the heights of the hills of life.