Fling wide the golden shower; we trust The strength of armies to the dust. This peaceful lea may haply yield Its harvest for the tented field. Ha! feel ye not your fingers thrill, As o'er them, in the yellow grains, Glide the warm drops of blood that fill, For mortal strife, the warrior's veins; Such as, on Solferino's day, Slaked the brown sand and flowed away-- Flowed till the herds, on Mincio's brink, Snuffed the red stream and feared to drink;-- Blood that in deeper pools shall lie, On the sad earth, as time grows gray, When men by deadlier arts shall die, And deeper darkness blot the sky Above the thundering fray; And realms, that hear the battle-cry, Shall sicken with dismay; And chieftains to the war shall lead Whole nations, with the tempest's speed, To perish in a day;-- Till man, by love and mercy taught, Shall rue the wreck his fury wrought, And lay the sword away! Oh strew, with pausing, shuddering hand, The seed upon the helpless land, As if, at every step, ye cast The pelting hail and riving blast. IV. Nay, strew, with free and joyous sweep, The seed upon the expecting soil; For hence the plenteous year shall heap The garners of the men who toil. Strew the bright seed for those who tear The matted sward with spade and share, And those whose sounding axes gleam Beside the lonely forest-stream, Till its broad banks lie bare; And him who breaks the quarry-ledge, With hammer-blows, plied quick and strong, And him who, with the steady sledge, Smites the shrill anvil all day long. Sprinkle the furrow's even trace For those whose toiling hands uprear The roof-trees of our swarming race, By grove and plain, by stream and mere; Who forth, from crowded city, lead The lengthening street, and overlay Green orchard-plot and grassy mead With pavement of the murmuring way. Cast, with full hands the harvest cast, For the brave men that climb the mast, When to the billow and the blast It swings and stoops, with fearful strain, And bind the fluttering mainsail fast, Till the tossed bark shall sit, again, Safe as a sea-bird on the main. V. Fling wide the grain for those who throw The clanking shuttle to and fro, In the long row of humming rooms, And into ponderous masses wind The web that, from a thousand looms, Comes forth to clothe mankind. Strew, with free sweep, the grain for them, By whom the busy thread Along the garment's even hem And winding seam is led; A pallid sisterhood, that keep The lonely lamp alight, In strife with weariness and sleep, Beyond the middle night. Large part be theirs in what the year Shall ripen for the reaper here. VI.