The Sower

On “Sower at Sunset” by Vincent Van Gogh (Matthew 13:1-19)

The Sower

His father set him on the obvious path,
Dealing in pictures as commodities,
But days spent in purveying of engravings
Ate his heart like a flock of crows.
Teaching in a British boarding school
Was fruitless as a rocky ground for him.
Giving the lessons is not so difficult,
But to make the boys learn them— is.

Evangelizing on probation in
A derelict Belgian mining district,
He copied out the whole “Imitation
Of Christ” by hand. I know no better way
Of getting it into my head. When he began
To give away his salary and clothes
And food in emulation, his superiors
Dismissed him. Like a thicket of thorns,

Proprieties and stipulations choked him.
I am often homesick for the land
Of paintings. On return, efflorescing
As in nourishing soil, he gave us the sowers,
As he saw them in the Belgian fields:
I’m haunted by the figure of the sower.
As he drew them, copied from the masters:
I have drawn The Sower five times

And will take it up again, I’m so entirely
Absorbed by that figure: how they strode
Over the plowed earth, flinging seed
from a bag slung over the shoulder. He felt
Yearnings for that Infinite, of which
The sower and the sheaf are symbols.
The molten sun poured its tactile gold
Over the violet expanse of waiting field,

Touched with crimson, the expanding furrow,
The disappearing flock of dark birds
And the determined steps of the Sower,
His face serene, his smooth gesture sure
To lay the seed where it would root and ripen.
And in the near distance rose the harvest
Of ready wheat, yielding thirty, sixty,
Or one hundred times what was sown.

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Italicized lines in the poem are copied or paraphrased from Vincent Van Gogh’s letters.

I was also inspired by the parable in Matthew 13:1-19.

The Sower is in the collection of the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands.

The Sower by Vincent van Gogh, 1888