At Husking Time

At husking time the tassel fades
To brown above the yellow blades,
    Whose rustling sheath enswathes the corn
    That bursts its chrysalis in scorn
Longer to lie in prison shades.

Among the merry lads and maids
The creaking ox-cart slowly wades
Twixt stalks and stubble, sacked and torn
At husking time.

The prying pilot crow persuades
The flock to join in thieving raids;
The sly racoon with craft inborn
His portion steals; from plenty's horn
His pouch the saucy chipmunk lades
At husking time.

Emily Pauline Johnson

Emily Pauline Johnson was a Canadian poet of mixed Mohawk and English heritage. She was born on March 10, 1861, on the Six Nations Reserve near Brantford, Ontario. Johnson became known for her performances, where she often wore a traditional Mohawk dress. Her published works include poetry, short stories, and essays that explore themes of identity, cultural heritage, and nature. She passed away on March 7, 1913, in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Emily Pauline Johnson

Thistle-Down

Emily Pauline Johnson, Simple Poetry

Your Mirror Frame

Emily Pauline Johnson, Simple Poetry

The Vagabonds

Emily Pauline Johnson, Simple Poetry

Beyond The Blue

Emily Pauline Johnson, Simple Poetry

English

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The Corn Husker

Hard by the Indian lodges, where the bush
    Breaks in a clearing, through ill-fashioned fields,
She comes to labour, when the first still hush
    Of autumn follows large and recent yields.

Age in her fingers, hunger in her face,
    Her shoulders stooped with weight of work and years,
But rich in tawny colouring of her race,
    She comes a-field to strip the purple ears.

And all her thoughts are with the days gone by,
    Ere might's injustice banished from their lands
Her people, that to-day unheeded lie,
    Like the dead husks that rustle through her hands.

Emily Pauline Johnson

The Huskers

It was late in mild October, and the long autumnal rain
Had left the summer harvest-fields all green with grass again;
The first sharp frosts had fallen, leaving all the woodlands gay
With the hues of summer's rainbow, or the meadow flowers of May.
Through a thin, dry mist, that morning, the sun rose broad and red,
At first a rayless disk of fire, he brightened as he sped;
Yet, even his noontide glory fell chastened and subdued,
On the cornfields and the orchards, and softly pictured wood.
And all that quiet afternoon, slow sloping to the night,
He wove with golden shuttle the haze with yellow light;
Slanting through the painted beeches, he glorified the hill;
And, beneath it, pond and meadow lay brighter, greener still.
And shouting boys in woodland haunts caught glimpses of tha...

John Greenleaf Whittier

The Indian Corn Planter

He needs must leave the trapping and the chase,
    For mating game his arrows ne'er despoil,
And from the hunter's heaven turn his face,
    To wring some promise from the dormant soil.

He needs must leave the lodge that wintered him,
    The enervating fires, the blanket bed -
The women's dulcet voices, for the grim
    Realities of labouring for bread.

So goes he forth beneath the planter's moon
    With sack of seed that pledges large increase,
His simple pagan faith knows night and noon,
    Heat, cold, seedtime and harvest shall not cease.

And yielding to his needs, this honest sod,
    Brown as the hand that tills it, moist with rain,
Teeming with ripe fulfilment, true as God,
    With fostering richness, mothers every grain.

Emily Pauline Johnson

Before Harvest.

And now 'tis time for Harvest. Hark! and lo,
With ringing sound of full melodious horn,
Over yon eastern hill-top all aglow, -
Her sickle gleaming in the golden morn,
Her arm upraised with sheaf of yellow corn, -
She comes elate with light, elastic pace;
Her neck and zone full-clustered vines adorn;
Her saffron locks, fruit-crowned; her luscious grace;
Her round and ripened form; her fair, benignant face.

And now the fields, when suns serenely greet,
A rich and mellow, wanton joy afford:
The russet pease vines, and the burnished wheat
And whiter barley, - hating to be stored,
Guarding with jealous spears their precious hoard, -
The tapering oat-stalk, dangling beads of gold:
In brilliant sea of beauty all outpoured,
With dazzling depth of splendor all un...

W. M. MacKeracher

Harvest Time

Pillowed and hushed on the silent plain,
Wrapped in her mantle of golden grain,

Wearied of pleasuring weeks away,
Summer is lying asleep to-day, -

Where winds come sweet from the wild-rose briers
And the smoke of the far-off prairie fires;

Yellow her hair as the goldenrod,
And brown her cheeks as the prairie sod;

Purple her eyes as the mists that dream
At the edge of some laggard sun-drowned stream;

But over their depths the lashes sweep,
For Summer is lying to-day asleep.

The north wind kisses her rosy mouth,
His rival frowns in the far-off south,

And comes caressing her sunburnt cheek,
And Summer awakes for one short week, -

Awakes and gathers her wealth of grain,
Then sleeps and dreams for a year again.

Emily Pauline Johnson

When The Frost Is On The Punkin

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock,
And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin' turkey-cock,
And the clackin' of the guineys, and the cluckin' of the hens,
And the rooster's hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence;
O, it's then's the times a feller is a-feelin' at his best,
With the risin' sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest,
As he leaves the house, bare-headed, and goes out to feed the stock,
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.

They's something kindo' harty-like about the atmusfere
When the heat of summer's over and the coolin' fall is here -
Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossums on the trees,
And the mumble of the hummin'-birds and buzzin' of the bees;
But the air's so appetizin'; and the la...

James Whitcomb Riley