read,
To hide it from the sun,
And leave it to the kindly care
Of the still earth and brooding air,
As when the mother, from her breast,
Lays the hushed babe apart to rest,
And shades its eyes, and waits to see
How sweet its waking smile will be.
The tempest now may smite, the sleet
All night on the drowned furrow beat,
And winds that, from the cloudy hold,
Of winter breathe the bitter cold,
Stiffen to stone the yellow mould,
Yet safe shall lie the wheat;
Till, out of heaven's unmeasured blue
Shall walk again the genial year,
To wake with warmth and nurse with dew
The germs we lay to slumber here."

[Footnote 1: For farmer's lore as to the diverse soils and diverse
planting seasons, see Virgil's _Eclogues_, books i. and ii.]

[Footnote 2: In spite of this imperfection the first Sower is a highly
prized painting and is in the Quincy-Shaw Collection, Boston.]

[Footnote 3: Compare also Victor Hugo's poem, often referred to in
descriptions of this picture, _Saison des Semailles: Le Soir_.]

XII

THE GLEANERS

It is harvest time on a large farm. The broad fields have been shorn
of their golden grain, and men and women are still busy gathering
it in. The binders have tied the wheat in sheaves with withes, the
sheaves are piled upon a wagon and carried to a place near the farm
buildings, where they are stacked in great mounds resembling enormous
soup tureens. The overseer rides to and fro on his horse giving orders
to the laborers.

Now come the gleaners into the field to claim the time-honored
privilege of gathering up the scattered ears still lying on the
ground. The custom dates back to very early times.[1] The ancient
Hebrews had a strict religious law in regard to it: "When ye reap
the harvest of your land, thou shalt not make clean riddance of the
corners of thy field when thou reapest, neither shalt thou gather any
gleaning of thy harvest: thou shalt leave them unto the poor, and to
the stranger."[2] Another law says that the gleanings are "for the
fatherless and for the widow; that the Lord thy God may bless thee in
all the work of thine hands."[3]

This generous practice is still observed in France. The owner of a
grain field would be afraid of bad luck to the harvest if he should
refuse to let the gleaners in after the reapers. Gleaning is, however,
allowed only in broad daylight, that no dishonest persons may carry
away entire sheaves.

It is near no