Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/361

Here are some rich rye-fields waving over all the land, their heads nodding in the evening breeze, with an apparently alternating motion, i. e., they do not all bend at once, by ranks, but separately, and hence this agreeable alternation. How rich a sight this cereal fruit, now yellow for the cradle, flavus. It is an impenetrable phalanx. I walk for half a mile, looking in vain for an opening. . . . This is food for man. The earth labors not in vain. It is bearing its burden. The yellow, waving, rustling rye extends far up and over the hills on either side, a kind of pinafore to Nature, leaving only a narrow and dark passage at the bottom of a deep ravine. How rankly it has grown! How it hastes to maturity! I discover that there is such a goddess as Ceres. . . . The small trees and shrubs seen dimly in its midst are overwhelmed by the grain as by an inundation. They are seen only as indistinct forms of bushes and green leaves, mixed with the yellow stalks. There are certain crops which give me the idea of bounty, of the Alma Natura. They are the grains. Potatoes do not so fill the lap of earth. This rye excludes everything else, and takes possession of the soil. The farmer says, next year I will raise a crop of rye, and he proceeds to clear away the brush, and either ploughs it, or, if it is too uneven or stony, burns and harrows