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| McHenry County spring. |
Out
here in the semi-wilds of McHenry County Illinois, a late spring has established itself
enough that many of the fields have
been readied for planting. Industrial farming of corn and soy beans planted fence-line
to fence-line and requiring farm equipment the size of aircraft carriers is the deal here. Acres allowed to go fallow are put in alfalfa for hay. Oh, here and there are tree farms, pumpkin patches, and small
orchards that often try to double as new and hip agri-tourism attractions. And
up by Harvard there are still the truck garden vegetable operations that
brought the first Hispanic farm workers to
the county decades ago. But mostly it is
big business.
Pretty
much gone are the family farmsteads. The once thriving dairy farms that made Harvard the Milk Capital of the World are mostly gone. A few hardy souls like my friends Sue Rekenthaler and her husband Gary Gauger grow fresh vegetables for
sale at local farmer’s markets and
by direct subscription to loyal customers and Michael Walkup has his mini-farm at the edge of Crystal Lake specializing in organic heirloom fruits and vegetables and free range poultry, but they are swimming against an overwhelming
tide.
Even
in this county, which still prides itself on its agriculture, most of the
residents live in towns and
sprawling subdivisions and are a
couple of generations or more removed from the farm. Essentially we are city slickers.
Still,
the rhythms of the agricultural seasons move us. Which inspired me to gather some verse by and about farmers.
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| Robert Burns, the Ploughman |
We’ll
start with the Ploughman Poet, Robert Burns. Born on his father’s Ayrshire farm in 1759, his
hard physical labor there and on his own farm were said to have damaged his
heart and contributed to his early death at age 37 in Dumfries in 1796. In
addition to his farming he was noted for his good looks and romantic escapades that were said to
have “strewn Scotland with his bastards” and for his preservation of many traditional Scottish folk songs that would have
otherwise been lost. He is revered as
the Scots National Poet. Burns often wrote about farming and its
struggles. Like much of his verse, this
was also set to music.
In The Character Of A Ruined Farmer
The Sun he is
sunk in the west,
All creatures
returned to rest,
While here I
sit, all sore beset,
With sorrow,
grief, and woe:
And it’s O,
fickle Fortune, O!
The prosperous
man is asleep,
Nor hears how
the whirlwinds sweep;
But Misery and I
must watch
The surly
tempest blow:
And it’s O, fickle
Fortune, O!
There lies the
dear partner of my breast;
Her cares for a
moment at rest:
Must I see thee,
my youthful pride,
Thus brought so
very low!
And it’s O,
fickle Fortune, O!
There lie my
sweet babies in her arms;
No anxious fear
their little hearts alarms;
But for their
sake my heart does ache,
With many a
bitter throe:
And it’s O,
fickle Fortune, O!
I once was by
Fortune carest:
I once could
relieve the distrest:
Now life's poor
support, hardly earn’d
My fate will
scarce bestow:
And it’s O, fickle
Fortune, O!
No comfort, no
comfort I have!
How welcome to
me were the grave!
But then my wife
and children dear—
O, wither would
they go!
And it’s O,
fickle Fortune, O!
O whither, O
whither shall I turn!
All friendless,
forsaken, forlorn!
For, in this
world, Rest or Peace
I never more
shall know!
And it's O,
fickle Fortune, O!
—Robert
Burns
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| Emily Dickinson of Amherst. |
Emily Dickinson herself was no
farmer, although she was a devoted gardener
on the large lot of her father’s Amherst
home. And the western Massachusetts town sat amid the state’s
most productive farms. She understood
the rhythm of the seasons well.
The products of my farm are these
The Products of
my Farm are these
Sufficient for
my Own
And here and
there a Benefit
Unto a Neighbor’s
Bin.
With Us, ‘tis
Harvest all the Year
For when the
Frosts begin
We just reverse
the Zodiac
And fetch the
Acres in.
—Emily
Dickinson
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| Millet's painting The Man With the Hoe inspired Edwin Markham's poem. |
Edwin Markam, born in 1852 and
the writer whose terse four line poem Outwitted contributed the name for
this blog, was already a white-bearded California teacher and principal when he finally caught the
public’s attention in 1898. The
Man With the Hoe was inspired by a painting by Jean-François Millet. In it
the hoer was not the noble independent yeoman
farmer and object of agrarian
democratic mythmaking. He was the
eternal peasant, serf, peon, hired man, sharecropper and a symbol of degradation
and exploitation. Markham instantly became one of the Poets of the People.
The Man With the Hoe
[Written after Millet’s world-famous
painting]
Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not, and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
To have dominion over sea and land;
To trace the stars and search the heavens for power;
To feel the passion of eternity?
Is this the dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
Down all the caverns of Hell to their last gulf
There is no shape more terrible than this—
More tounged with censure of the world’s blind greed—
More filled with signs and
portents for the soul—
More packed with danger to the universe.
What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
Are Plato and swing of the Pleiades?
What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?
Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;
Time’s tragedy is in that aching stoop;
Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
Plundered, profaned, and disinherited,
Cries protest to the Judges of the World,
A protest that is also prophecy.
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
Is this the handiwork you give to God,
This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?
How will you ever straighten up this shape;
Touch it again with immortality;
Give back the upward looking and the light;
Rebuild in it the music and the dream;
Make right the immemorial infamies,
Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
How will the Future reckon with this man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake all shores?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings—
With those who shaped him to the thing he is—
When this dumb terror shall rise to judge the world,
After the silence of the centuries?
—Edwin Markham
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| Young Willa Cather. |
Willa Cather, born in Virginia in 1873, moved to a high prairie wheat
farm in Nebraska when she was
nine years old. All though she only
stayed in the west until she graduated from college and moved back east, those experiences became the fodder for a life time of literary output, most famously her great and
influential novel O! Pioneers. But she
also wrote poetry, short stories,
and essays while working as a journalist, magazine editor, high school
English teacher, and lecturer. She died in 1947 revered as one of the most
significant American writers ever.
Prairie Spring
Evening and the
flat land,
Rich and sombre
and always silent;
The miles of
fresh-plowed soil,
Heavy and black,
full of strength and harshness;
The growing
wheat, the growing weeds,
The toiling
horses, the tired men;
The long empty
roads,
Sullen fires of
sunset, fading,
The eternal,
unresponsive sky.
Against all
this, Youth,
Flaming like the
wild roses,
Singing like the
larks over the plowed fields,
Flashing like a
star out of the twilight;
Youth with its
insupportable sweetness,
Its fierce
necessity,
Its sharp
desire,
Singing and
singing,
Out of the lips
of silence,
Out of the
earthy dusk.
—Willa
Cather
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| Ted Kooser. |
Born
in Iowa in 1939 and a long time Nebraskan, Ted Kooser knows a thing or three about farming and the land. It has earned him a Pulitzer Prize and two terms as U.S. Poet Laureate. In this
poem from his Flying
At Night : Poems 1965-1985 perhaps echoes a famous poem by our original
poet in this post, Bobby Burns—To a Mouse On Turning Her Up in Her Nest
with the Plough.
Spring Plowing
West of Omaha
the freshly plowed fields
steam in the
night like lakes.
The smell of the
earth floods over the roads.
The field mice
are moving their nests
to the higher
ground of fence rows,
the old among
them crying out to the owls
to take them
all. The paths in the grass
are loud with
the squeak of their carts.
They keep their
lanterns covered.
—Ted
Kooser
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