five o’clock morning
The mechanism of the ancient reaper had given way under the strain of the home meadows , and if this crop was to be saved it must be by hand . I have kept the record of those days of joyous labour under a June sky . Men were hard to get in our village ; old Dodden , who was over seventy , volunteered his services -- he had done yeoman work with the scythe in his youth -- and two of the farm hands with their master completed our strength . We took our places under a five o'clock morning sky , and the larks cried down to us as we stood knee-deep in the fragrant dew-steeped grass , each man with his gleaming scythe poised ready for its sweeping swing . Old Dodden led by right of age and ripe experience ; bent like a sickle , brown and dry as a nut , his face a tracery of innumerable wrinkles , he has never ailed a day , and the cunning of his craft was still with him . At first we worked stiffly , unreadily , but soon the monotonous motion possessed us with its insistent rhythm , and the grass bowed to each sibilant swish and fell in sweet-smelling swathes at our feet . Now and then a startled rabbit scurried through the miniature forest to vanish with white flick of tail in the tangled hedge ; here and there a mother lark was discovered sitting motionless , immovable upon her little brood ; but save for these infrequent incidents we paced steadily on with no speech save the cry of the hone on the steel and the swish of the falling swathes .