John Keats: To Autumn (1819) / Russell Lee: Harvest Time, High Plains (1940)

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Apples on a tree, orchard in Delta County, Colorado: photo by Russell Lee, September 1940

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Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
...Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
...With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
...And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
......To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
...And still more, later flowers for the bees,
...Until they think warm days will never cease,
......For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

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Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
...Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
...Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
...Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
......Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
...Steady thy laden head across a brook;
...Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
......Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

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...Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
...Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
...And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
...Among the river sallows, borne aloft
...Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
...Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
...The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
......And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

John Keats (1795-1821): To Autumn, 19 September 1819, from Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems, 1820

Exhibit of crops and vegetables at the Pie Town, New Mexico Fair: photo by Russell Lee, October 1940

Jim Norris, homesteader, cutting a head of cabbage, Pie Town, New Mexico: photo by Russell Lee, October 1940

Mrs. Jim Norris with homegrown cabbage, one of the many vegetables which the homesteaders grow in abundance, Pie Town, New Mexico: photo by Russell Lee, October 1940

Mr. Leatherman, homesteader, tying up cauliflower, Pie Town, New Mexico: photo by Russell Lee, October 1940

Bill Stagg turning up his beans, Pie Town, New Mexico. He will next pile them for curing: photo by Russell Lee, October 1940

Harvesting corn, Pie Town, New Mexico: photo by Russell Lee, October 1940

Peach tree in an orchard, Delta County, Colorado: photo by Russell Lee, September 1940

Pickers in a peach orchard, Delta County, Colorado: photo by Russell Lee, September 1940 x

Crates of peaches being gathered from pickers to be hauled to the shipping shed, Delta County, Colorado: photo by Russell Lee, September 1940 x

Hauling crates of peaches from the peach orchard to the shipping shed, Delta County, Colorado: photo by Russell Lee, September 1940

Crates of peaches in the orchard, Delta County, Colorado: photo by Russell Lee, September 1940

Hay stack and automobiles of peach pickers, Delta County, Colorado: photo by Russell Lee, September 1940

Wheat near Muskogee, Oklahoma: photo by Russell Lee, September 1939 or 1940

Corn near Muskogee, Oklahoma: photo by Russell Lee, September 1939 or 1940

Photos by Russell Lee (1903-1986) from Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress