A sheaf gathers many individual stems of wheat, barley, or another cereal into a single manageable bundle for drying, transport, or threshing. Its form is closely associated with traditional harvest scenes and emblems of plenty. In poetry, the sheaf can symbolise unity, gathered achievement, maturity, and the fruits of labour. Biblical and funerary imagery may connect sheaves with souls collected at death or with a life completed in season. A fallen or forgotten sheaf may instead suggest waste, poverty, or loss.

A sheaf is a bundle of cut cereal stalks tied after reaping so that it can be dried, carried, stacked, or threshed. The plural is sheaves. In poetry, the gathering of many stems into one form makes it an image of unity, achievement, harvest, or lives collected at death. Students may encounter sheaves in biblical and traditional rural verse. Related terms include wheat, barley, reaper, binder, stook, threshing, harvest, and gleaning.