A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields/Sonnet—A Dream (Sully Prudhomme)
For works with similar titles, see A Dream.
Sonnet—A DREAM.
The farmers told me, 'Give us no command;
To make thy bread thine own fields cultivate;'
Weavers cried out, 'Thy own cloth fabricate;'
And builders, 'Take this trowel in thine hand;'
And lone, abandoned by the human band,
Bearing about me their relentless hate,
I prayed to Heaven their wrath to mitigate,
But it sent lions on my path to stand.
Here broke my dream. Another day had birth.
Hummed looms afar, fields sown appeared in ken,
And masons, mounting ladders, sang in mirth:
I knew my happiness, and first felt then
None may dispense with others' help on earth,
And from that time I learned to love all men.