 |
| The Large Turf, Albrecht Durer, 1503 |
The Hawkweed
Between the red top and the rye,
Between the buckwheat and the corn,
The ploughman sees with sullen eye
The hawkweed licking at the sky:
Three level acres all forlorn,
Unfertile, sour, outrun, outworn,
Free as the day that they were born.
Southward and northward, west and east,
The sulphate and the lime are spread;
Harrowed and sweetened, urged, increased,
The furrow sprouts for man and beast:
While of the hawkweed's radiant head
No stanchion reeks, no stock is fed.
Triumphant up the taken field
The tractor and the plough advance;
Blest be the healthy germ concealed
In the rich earth, and blest the yield:
And blest be Beauty, that enchants
The frail, the solitary lance.
Between the red top and the rye,
Between the buckwheat and the corn,
The ploughman sees with sullen eye
The hawkweed licking at the sky:
Three level acres all forlorn,
Unfertile, sour, outrun, outworn,
Free as the day that they were born.
Southward and northward, west and east,
The sulphate and the lime are spread;
Harrowed and sweetened, urged, increased,
The furrow sprouts for man and beast:
While of the hawkweed's radiant head
No stanchion reeks, no stock is fed.
Triumphant up the taken field
The tractor and the plough advance;
Blest be the healthy germ concealed
In the rich earth, and blest the yield:
And blest be Beauty, that enchants
The frail, the solitary lance.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
The Buck in the Snow and Other Poems
1928
The hawkweed is certainly licking at the sky at Willow Manor, along with the Virginia creeper. Two new pairs of garden gloves are here, dormant on my desk, as we speak. Putting dishes away and washing linens proved to be therapeutic this week, but I simply can't get motivated to tackle weeds. For one thing, it's too damn hot. Obviously, Durer thought them lovely enough to paint, and Millay considered them a thing of beauty. I think I shall follow their lead, at least until it cools down a bit.
