<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN>
<h3 id="id00570" style="margin-top: 3em">THE INDIAN CORN PLANTER</h3>
<p id="id00571" style="margin-top: 2em">He needs must leave the trapping and the chase,<br/>
For mating game his arrows ne'er despoil,<br/>
And from the hunter's heaven turn his face,<br/>
To wring some promise from the dormant soil.<br/></p>
<p id="id00572">He needs must leave the lodge that wintered him,<br/>
The enervating fires, the blanket bed—<br/>
The women's dulcet voices, for the grim<br/>
Realities of labouring for bread.<br/></p>
<p id="id00573">So goes he forth beneath the planter's moon<br/>
With sack of seed that pledges large increase,<br/>
His simple pagan faith knows night and noon,<br/>
Heat, cold, seedtime and harvest shall not cease.<br/></p>
<p id="id00574">And yielding to his needs, this honest sod,<br/>
Brown as the hand that tills it, moist with rain,<br/>
Teeming with ripe fulfilment, true as God,<br/>
With fostering richness, mothers every grain.<br/></p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />