The Reapers by Lauchlan Maclean Watt.

This poem was published in July 1916 just after the first day of the Somme offensive.

It gives a romantic view of death but I especially like the last four lines of the poem. It is easy to forget the deeds and the sacrifices made whilst “Walking life’s noisy ways.”


The Reapers

Red are the hands of the Reapers,
And the harvest is so white!
Red are the feet that are treading
The threshing floors by night:
And, on the young brows, dripping
AS with the dew of morn,
Deep rose-red are the woundings,
Like scars of a crown of thorns.

Tired, so many, with reaping, -
Tired with treading the grain,
Still they lie, in their sleeping,
Low in the Valley of Pain, -
Never again to be quaffing,
The joy of life, like wine;
Never again to laughing
In Youth’s glad hour divine.

Birds shall sing in the branches,
Children dance by the shore;
But they who share the red reaping
Shall come back never more.
Let whoso can forget them,
Walking life’s noisy ways;
We who have looked on the Reapers
Go quietly, all our days.

Lauchlan Maclean Watt C.F.
France 1916.

(He was born on 24th October 1867, and was educated at Edinburgh University, where he graduated M.A. in 1894 and B.D. in 1897. Licensed by the Presbytery of Dalkeith on 12th May 1896, he was ordained, on 7th April 1897, to Turriff, translated, on 12th February 1901, to Alloa and Tullibody, translated, on 16th February 1911, to St. Stephen's, Edinburgh, and translated, on 26th June 1923, to Glasgow Cathedral.

He retired, on 15th May 1934, to Kinloch, Lochcarron, Ross-shire.

He received the D.D. of Edinburgh University in 1920, and the LL.D. of Glasgow University in 1933. Dr. MacLean Watt was Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1933.

During the First World War, he served as chaplain with the 7th Division. H.M. Government sent him as Commissioner to the United States and Canada in 1918. In his own Church, Dr. MacLean Watt held many important posts, all of which he filled with distinction. He wrote many books in prose and verse,)