Poems such as Digging and some of our videos on the agrarian
Poems such as “Digging” and some of our videos on the agrarian and craft life show that work can be more than a job; it can be connected to family and community. Choose two of the readings and comment on the ways in which work or the work ethic can unite more than one generation of a family.
“The Village Blacksmith” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1840)
Under a spreading chestnut-tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands,
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.
His hair is crisp, and black, and long;
His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whate’er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.
Week in, week out, from morn till night,
You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
When the evening sun is low.
And children coming home from school
Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,
And hear the bellows roar,
And catch the burning sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing-floor.
He goes on Sunday to the church,
And sits among his boys;
He hears the parson pray and preach,
He hears his daughter’s voice
Singing in the village choir,
And it makes his heart rejoice.
It sounds to him like her mother’s voice
Singing in Paradise!
He needs must think of her once more,
How in the grave she lies;
And with his hard, rough hand he wipes
A tear out of his eyes.
Toiling,—rejoicing,—sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close;
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night’s repose.
Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought.
“Needlework” by Hazel Hall (1920)
LENGTHS of lawn, and dimities,
Dainty, smooth and cool—
In their possibilities
Beautiful—
Stretch beneath my hand in sheets, 5
Fragrant from the loom,
Like a field of marguerites
All in bloom.
Where my scissors’ footsteps pass
Fluttering furrows break, 10
As the scythe trails through the grass
Its deep wake.
All my stitches, running fleet,
Cannot match the tread
Of my thoughts whose wingèd feet 15
Race ahead.
They are gathering imagery
Out of time and space,
That a needle’s artistry
May embrace. 20
Hints of dawn and thin blue sky,
Breaths the breezes bear,
Wispy-waspy things that fly
In warm air.
Bolts of dimity I take, 25
Muslin smooth and cool;
These my fingers love to make
Beautiful.
Crowds are passing on the street—
Tuck on tuck and pleat on pleat 30
Of people hurrying along,
Homeward bound—throng on throng.
Their work is finished, mine undone;
Still my stitches run.
I cannot watch the people go— 35
Fold on fold and row on row;
But I know each pulsing tread
Is spinning out a life’s fine thread;
I know the stars, like needle-gleams,
Are pricking through the sky’s wide seams; 40
And soon the moon must show its face,
Like a pearl button stitched in place.
All the long hours of the day
Are finished now and folded away;
Yet the hem is still undone 45
Where my stitches run.
“Hay for the Horses” by Gary Snyder (1958)
He had driven half the night
From far down San Joaquin
Through Mariposa, up the
Dangerous Mountain roads,
And pulled in at eight a.m.
With his big truckload of hay
behind the barn.
With winch and ropes and hooks
We stacked the bales up clean
To splintery redwood rafters
High in the dark, flecks of alfalfa
Whirling through shingle-cracks of light,
Itch of haydust in the
sweaty shirt and shoes.
At lunchtime under Black oak
Out in the hot corral,
—The old mare nosing lunchpails,
Grasshoppers crackling in the weeds—
“I’m sixty-eight” he said,
“I first bucked hay when I was seventeen.
I thought, that day I started,
I sure would hate to do this all my life.
And dammit, that’s just what
I’ve gone and done.”
“Hoeing” by John Updike (1963)
I sometimes fear the younger generation
will be deprived
of the pleasures of hoeing;
there is no knowing
how many souls have been formed by this
simple exercise.
The dry earth like a great scab breaks,
revealing
moist-dark loam —
the pea-root’s home,
a fertile wound perpetually healing.
How neatly the great weeds go under!
The blade chops the earth new.
Ignorant the wise boy who
has never rendered thus the world
fecunder.
Answer preview to Poems such as Digging and some of our videos on the agrarian
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