Classic Poem

The wide, warm acres stretching lazily,
Roll out their russet silence to the sea,
Bared to the winds that whisper ceaselessly
Of homing time and landward-lying things.

Along the uplands, vagrant locusts whirr
Themselves through sunshine, and within the blur
Of purple distances, the faint, far stir
Of some lone haymaker that scythes and sings.

Across the marsh, reclaimed from the seas that creep
Against the sheltering dykes, the droning sweep
Of sickles, where the long salt grasses sleep,
Hushed in the peace that near fulfillment brings.