Jean-François Millet's The Gleaners and Poetry

The Wheat Fields

Lo, the drowsy heat of summer

Hanging humid, low and near,
As peasants gleaning frail and humble

Thank the Lord whom they revere.

Lo, the wheat-line yon receding

Into gray obscurity—

How thankless greed absconds with nature

And her virgin purity …

-jwm

Poetic Parameters:

Stanza Type: Quatrain

Meter: Line 1 in each stanza is eight syllables; lines 2 and 4 in each stanza is seven syllables; and line 3 in each stanza is nine syllables

Rhyme Scheme: xaxa xbxb (where ‘x’ represents unrhymed lines)

Composition: May 19, 2019

This poem was inspired by an 1857 painting titled, The Gleaners; a work of art produced by Jean-FrançoisMillet (1814 – 1875). One of the founders of the Barbizon School, Millet’s realist style significantly helped usher in the modern period of art.

Millet had an empathetic eye for conditions surrounding the rural life of peasant farmers, as he himself grew up in these conditions. After having trained in Cherbourg and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and after the French Revolution, Millet moved to the village of Barbizon to paint the harsh life of rural peasantry.

The Gleaners was first exhibited in Salon in 1857. It was initially received with criticism as it seemed to glorify the arduous existence of the impoverished- an implicit condemnation of the middle- and upper-class tiers of society. It did not help that the poor significantly outnumbered the rich, and that there was a palpable tension between the lower-class and those who were well off.

Lo, the drowsy heat of summer

Hanging humid, low and near,

As peasants gleaning frail and humble

Thank the Lord whom they revere.

The first stanza of the poem focuses on the peasants who are gathering up scraps of leftover wheat grain. Despite the wafting heat of the heavy summer day, and despite the scarcity of wheat left, I wanted the stanza to depict the poor as thankful that Providence has brought them the opportunity to gather food together. I wanted to depict them as grateful harvesters of nature’s bounty.

Lo, the wheat-line yon receding

Into gray obscurity—

How thankless greed absconds with nature

And her virgin purity …

The second stanza is an entirely different story. The abundance of wheat, if you look off into the distance of the painting by clicking the image, seems to be disappearing at an alarming rate, as if being devoured by some ravenous entity.

Wholescale farming is, of course, necessary, but the poem wants to do two things. It wants to magnify the rapacious indifference of the process- a sort of  thankless, and even violent apathy with regard to what is being done, as if nature herself were being plundered. 

The poem also wants to show the disparity between the poor and the rich: between the peasants who are both humble and thankful; and the overabundance achieved by insatiable greed (represented by the overseer on the horse).

In short, the second stanza is a diatribe aimed at greed- whose destructive proclivity wreaks havoc on both nature and humanity.

The last element of the poem is the ellipsis at the end, an indicator that this marauding of nature is ceaseless.