Poppies on the Wheat
by Helen Hunt Jackson (American poet, 1830-1885)
Along Ancona's hills the shimmering heat,
A tropic tide of air with ebb and flow
Bathes all the fields of wheat until they glow
Like flashing seas of green, which toss and beat
Around the vines. The poppies lithe and fleet
Seem running, fiery torchmen, to and fro
To mark the shore.
The farmer does not know
That they are there. He walks with heavy feet,
Counting the bread and wine by autumn's gain,
But I,--I smile to think that days remain
Perhaps to me in which, though bread be sweet
No more, and red wine warm my blood in vain,
I shall be glad remembering how the fleet,
Lithe poppies ran like torchmen with the wheat.
Helen Hunt Jackson was born Helen Fiske in Amherst, Massachusetts, on October 15, 1830. She was not only a noted writer, but also a tireless advocate on behalf of the improved treatment of Native Americans in the United States. Jackson died in 1885.
In her travel writing, Jackson gives a further glimpse of the Italian vistas that seem to have inspired this poem: "Then began a royal progress through a garden; all the way to Ancona, four hours, nothing but wheat-fields and vineyards; in the wheat-fields, scarlet poppies and purple foxglove, and bright blue something, I don't know what, but as we dashed by it looked like bachelor's-buttons flying off in the air."
