Explore "The Hawkweed" by Edna St. Vincent Millay on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Between the red-top and the rye, / Between the buckwheat and the corn,
The ploughman sees with sullen eye / The hawkweed licking at the sky: / Three level acres all forlorn, / Unfertile, sour, outrun, outworn, / Free as the day that they were born.
Southward and northward, west and east, / The sulphate and the lime are spread;
Harrowed and sweetened, urged, increased, / The furrow sprouts for man and beast: / While of the hawkweed's radiant head / No stanchion reeks, no stock is fed.
Triumphant up the taken field / The tractor and the plough advance;
Blest be the healthy germ concealed / In the rich earth, and blest the yield: / And blest be Beauty, that enchants / The frail, the solitary lance.