Thought for the day, Sunday 5th October

“I walk the unfrequented road
With open eye and ear;
I watch afield the farmer load
The bounty of the year.

I filch the fruit of no one’s toil,
no trespasser am I —
and yet I reap from every soil
and from the boundless sky.

I gather where I did not sow,
And bind the mystic sheaf,
The amber air, the river’s flow,
The rustle of the leaf.

A beauty springtime never knew
Haunts all the quiet ways,
And sweeter shines the landscape through
Its veil of autumn haze.

I face the hills, the streams, the wood,
And feel with all akin;
My heart expands: their fortitude
And peace and joy flow in.”

Frederick Lucian Hosmer (1840 – 1929)