RIPE FOR HER REAPING by C. M. Snow

Pacific Press Publishing Company · OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA · Nov 22, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 47.

RIPE FOR HER REAPING.

By C. M. Snow

O, GATHER in the clusters from the vineyard of the earth; Her grapes are hanging heavy on the vine! The time has come to gather them, whatever be their worth; They are bursting, they are dropping, with their store of ruddy wine.

I see upon the harvest-field, I see upon the hill, The wing-beats of the autumn wind, the shadow from the sky Where the white cloud of the harvest-time is swiftly driving by, And I hear the reapers chanting with a will.

The whole earth is the harvest-field; the sowing has been long, The waiting for the harvest many years; The tares have grown to fulness, and the weeds a mighty throng, All the ills and sins from Adam down, the sorrows and the tears.

The sickle has been lying with the rust upon the blade, The melody of "Harvest Home," a nigh forgotten song; But the Master of the harvest leads the reaping host along, And that reaping can no longer be delayed.

The tares and wheat together grown are waiting for the stroke; The threshing-floor is ready for the flail. The signal to the reaper band God never will revoke, And the hand that wields the sickle then will never, never fail.

I seem to see the harvest now in panoramic view, The hoary wrongs of years agone—the sins that were my own— Like a never-ending seething sea, whose boundary none have known, Stretching far and wide in deep, autumnal hue.

The reapers swing the glittering blade adown the waving field; The tares and wheat are falling side by side. The sheaves the reapers gather there are but a scanty yield; But the tares they bind for burning blot the landscape far and wide.

The breath of God upon the field is winnowing the grain; There's nothing from that searching fan the sower can conceal; All the rights and wrongs of centuries that judgment doth reveal, While the tares of sin are burning on the plain.

C. M. SNOW.