Joseph Campbell sets two kinds of landscape side by side: open grasslands and worked ploughlands. Grasslands are called fair but also lonely, good for cattle, and “not wrought”—left as they are. Ploughlands, by contrast, are rare and comely; they feed people and “swell with thought.” The speaker seems drawn to both, but the ploughland gets the warmer, more human praise. It represents care, labour, and community, while the grassland is beautiful but untamed and solitary.
The poem has a gentle, almost chant-like rhythm, with short balanced lines. Its mood is quiet and reflective, less like an argument than like someone weighing two simple truths. By the end, the cultivated field feels not just useful but deeply alive with human meaning.