{
 "id": "edward-thomas/haymaking",
 "title": "Haymaking",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Edward Thomas",
 "poet_slug": "edward-thomas",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poems",
 "book_slug": "poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 44,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1917,
  "venue": "Poems (1917)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22423"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/edward-thomas_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22423",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22732",
   "https://www.google.com/books/edition/Collected_Poems/LMsEAQAAIAAJ",
   "https://www.google.com/books/edition/Two_Poems/3ycPAAAAQAAJ"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 42,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 51,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "After night’s thunder far away had rolled",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The fiery day had a kernel sweet of cold,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And in the perfect blue the clouds uncurled,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like the first gods before they made the world",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And misery, swimming the stormless sea",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In beauty and in divine gaiety.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The smooth white empty road was lightly strewn",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With leaves⁠—the holly’s Autumn falls in June⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And fir cones standing stiff up in the heat.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The mill-foot water tumbled white and lit",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With tossing crystals, happier than any crowd",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of children pouring out of school aloud.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And in the little thickets where a sleeper",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For ever might lie lost, the nettle-creeper",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And garden warbler sang unceasingly;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While over them shrill shrieked in his fierce glee",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The swift with wings and tail as sharp and narrow",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As if the bow had flown off with the arrow.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Only the scent of woodbine and hay new-mown",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Travelled the road. In the field sloping down,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Park-like, to where its willows showed the brook,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Haymakers rested. The tosser lay forsook",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Out in the sun; and the long wagon stood",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Without its team, it seemed it never would",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Move from the shadow of that single yew.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The team, as still, until their task was due,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Beside the labourers enjoyed the shade",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That three squat oaks mid-field together made",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Upon a circle of grass and weed uncut,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And on the hollow, once a chalk-pit, but",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Now brimmed with nut and elder-flower so clean.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The men leaned on their rakes, about to begin,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But still. And all were silent. All was old,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "This morning time, with a great age untold,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Older than Clare and Cobbett, Morland and Crome,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Than, at the field’s far edge, the farmer’s home,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A white house crouched at the foot of a great tree.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Under the heavens that know not what years be",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The men, the beasts, the trees, the implements",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Uttered even what they will in times far hence⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All of us gone out of the reach of change⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Immortal in a picture of an old grange.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}