Then the mercy of Heaven is loosened, and I see one or two flakes
of snow very slowly begin to fall.
The Furrows
As I see the corn grow green all about my neighbourhood, there rushes
on me for no reason in particular a memory of the winter.
I say "rushes," for that is the very word for the old sweeping lines
of the ploughed fields. From some accidental turn of a train-journey
or a walking tour, I saw suddenly the fierce rush of the furrows.
The furrows are like arrows; they fly along an arc of sky.
They are like leaping animals; they vault an inviolable hill
and roll down the other side. They are like battering battalions;
they rush over a hill with flying squadrons and carry it with a
cavalry charge. They have all the air of Arabs sweeping a desert,
of rockets sweeping the sky, of torrents sweeping a watercourse.
Nothing ever seemed so living as those brown lines as they shot sheer
from the height of a ridge down to their still whirl of the valley.
They were swifter than arrows, fiercer than Arabs, more riotous and
rejoicing than rockets. And yet they were only thin straight lines
drawn with difficulty, like a diagram, by painful and patient men.
The men that ploughed tried to plough straight; they had no notion
of giving great sweeps and swirls to the eye. Those cataracts
of cloven earth; they were done by the grace of God. I had always
rejoiced in them; but I had never found any reason for my joy.
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