Turning my John Clare lectures into a book, I don't have to wonder what happened in his day; for there it is, every exhausting moment of it, every custom, every ritual joy and pain. And I can just see a Helpston farmer apologising for the inconvenience. Those who brought the harvest home would have swayed across their own thresholds at a moonlit midnight, scratched to bits, a little drunk, as they deserved to be.
Upon the waggon now, with eager bound,
The lusty picker whirls the rustling sheaves;
Or, resting ponderous creaking fork aground,
Boastful at once whole shocks of barley heaves:
The loading boy revengeful inly grieves
To find his unmatched strength and power decay;
The barley horn his garments interweaves;
Smarting and sweating 'neath the sultry day,
With muttering curses stung, he mauls the heaps away.
Ronald Blythe - Word from Wormingford - 19th August 2005
(excerpt - lines 29 to 37 of 'The Harvest Morning')
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