Rachel Lyman Field

The Mushroom Gatherers

Into the woods behind the farm

Where the yellow mushrooms grow,

Each with a basket on an arm,

Into the woods we'll go.

Lightly our feet will carry us there

Past thicket and fallen tree,

Till we come to the sun-patched clearing where

Grows that golden company.

We shall find them wherever our eyes may look—

Scattered or in a ring;

In mossy hollow; in rooty nook

And the fir boughs' sheltering.

Spicy and plump and strangely cold,

We'll gather them where they grow,

And when each basket brims with gold,

Home through the woods we'll go.