_In the afternoon they came unto a land
In which it seemed always afternoon_--

the country of King Alcinous. At intervals, as we walked on through the
cider-dreamy afternoon, thinking apples, smelling apples, munching
apples, there came a mellow sound like soft thunder through the trees. It
was the thunder of apples being poured into barrels, and, as in a sleep,
the fragrant wagons passed and repassed along the road--"the slow-moving
wagons of our lady of Eleusis."

That line of Virgil came to me, as lines will sometimes come in fortunate
moments, with the satisfaction of perfect fitness to the hour and the
mood, gathering into one sacred, tear-filled phrase the deep sense that
had been possessing me, as we passed the husbandmen busy with the various
harvest, of the long antiquity of these haunted industries of the earth.

So long, so long, has man pursued these ancient tasks; so long ago was
he urging the plowshare through the furrow, so long ago the sower went
forth to sow; so long ago have there been barns and byres, granaries and
threshing-floors, mills and vineyards; so long has there been milking of
cows, and herding of sheep and swine. Can one see a field of wheat
gathered into sheaves without thinking of the dream of Joseph, or be
around a farm at lambing time without smiling to recall the cunning of
Jacob? Already were all these things weary and old and romantic when
Virgil wrote and admonished the husbandman of times and seasons, of
plows and harrows, of mattocks and hurdles, and the mystical winnowing
fan of Iacchus.

To the meditative, romantic mind, the farmer and plowman, standing thus