Winslow Homer titled this post-Civil War painting "Song of the Lark" to make it clear the young man, like the lark, is an early riser. The virtue of agrarian labor appealed to Homer, who showed farmers as solid individualists, confident in their strength to provide for others. The man's sycthe was about to become obsolete, largely replaced by the mechanical eaper in the 1870s. Like the thresher, mechanization changed age-old rural patterns and practices of life.
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