This is such a sweet poem. Helen Jackson was born in 1830 and was a writer and poet. She was an advocate on behalf of native American people, worrking constantly for better (and even some) recognition of their rights. It is a lovely sunny summer’s day today and I can just imagine a poppy in a wheat field.
Poppies on the Wheat
by Helen Hunt Jackson
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.
Lois Elsden 
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