Boaz had cut his corn and sought his cot.

A hard day’s winnowing had fairly worn

Him out, and laid him in his usual spot.

His bins stood not far off, chock-full of corn.

 

Boaz was old, and rich in corn and grain,

Nor loth, for all his gold, to act aright:

His mill ran limpid, with no muddy stain;

His smithy cast no dark satanic light.

 

His hoary locks hung smooth as April rill;

His ricks rous’d no rapacity nor gall.

Should a poor woman pass, it was his will

That handy stalks of corn should thickly fall.

 

Boaz trod upright, far from shady ways,

In candid purity and snowy gown,

And always, as a public fountain plays,

Flung many a grainsack charitably down:

 

A loyal kinsman and a pious lord,

Unstinting, though not prodigal of hand;

As no young man, by womankind ador’d:

Youth has good looks, a patriarch is grand!

 

Old folk, backtracking to our primal spring,

Quit dubious days for dawning glory bright.

A young man’s iris is a blazing thing;

An old man’s, if you look, is full of light.

 

*

 

So Boaz lay that night among his own,

Dark knots of farmhands, with his stooks on show,

As big as dust-hills, if you hadn’t known.

This was particularly long ago.

 

No kings wrought Judah’s laws, but Dayanim;

Man was nomadic, and still gaping stood

At giants’ footprints that astonish’d him,

On soil still damp and soft from Noah’s flood.

 

*

 

Jacob lay still, and Judith; Boaz too

Blind and oblivious in his arbour lay.

Now from on high, a yawning portal through,

To him a holy vision found its way.

 

It was a vision of a vast oak, going

Up from his loins towards a cobalt sky,

And, link by link, a clan, a nation growing:

A king who sang; a dying god, hung high.

 

Said Boaz, in his spirit murmuring,

‘Forty on forty birthdays, Lord! I pil’d;

How shall all this from my old body spring?

I cannot boast a consort, nor a child.

 

‘Thou know’st that long ago my faithful fair,

Lord God Almighty, quit my couch for yours.

Twin souls conjoint, a still-commingling pair,

Gliding in convoy through oblivion’s doors.

 

‘That I should found a family? How so?

How should my loins now bring a brood to birth?

For in our youth triumphant mornings glow,

And, out of night, day springs victorious forth;

 

But I am shaky as a birch in snow,

A widow-man, on whom long shadows sink.

Towards my tomb my soul is winging low,

Just as a thirsty ox stoops down to drink.’

 

All this in mystic vision Boaz said,

Turning to God his drowsy orbs, all calm;

Nor thought a woman at his foot was laid.

So daisy blows, unmark’d by lofty palm.

 

*

 

Boaz was all unconscious in his cot;

At his foot, humbly, Ruth from Moab lay,

Half-clad, awaiting dawn, and who knows what

Illumination, born of waking day.

 

Boaz wist not that Ruth was lying by;

Ruth had no inkling what was in God’s mind...

Floral aromas, dill and dittany;

Fragrant with amaranth, Galgala’s wind.

 

O nuptial pomp! How grand a shadow cast!

No doubt a holy choir was gambolling,

all shyly; for an unknown form slid past,

Cobalt in colour: possibly, a wing.

 

From Boaz’ lungs and throat a rhythmic wind

Struck chords with murmurs born of mossy rills.

It was a month that’s naturally kind,

With lily-blossoms glorious on hills.

 

Ruth musing, Boaz snoozing; darkling sward;

Far off, a woolly flock was dully clinking,

As from on high abundant bounty pour’d;

A happy hour, that brings out lions, drinking.

 

In Ur and Ziph and Mizpah, not a sound.

A thin, bright moon was shining on its way

Among night’s blooms, down a dark sky, profound,

Inlaid with starry studs; and so Ruth lay,

 

Half-glancing through a shawl, and calm at last...

Bringing a bounty in that grows not old,

What god, what swain, thought Ruth, has idly cast

On starry corn his falchion wrought of gold?

 

                                                       Victor Hugo