To My Mother Earth

Earth, Earth, Earth,I am dying for love of thee,For thou hast given me birth,And thy hands have tended me.

I would fall asleep on thy breastWhen its swelling folds are bare,When the thrush dreams of its nestAnd the life of its joy in the air;

When thy life is a vanished ghost,And the glory hath left thy waves,When thine eye is blind with frost,And the fog sits on the graves;

When the blasts are shivering about,And the rain thy branches beats,When the damps of death are out,And the mourners are in the streets.

Oh my sleep should be deepIn the arms of thy swiftening motion,And my dirge the mystic sweepOf the winds that nurse the ocean.

And my eye would slowly opeWith the voice that awakens thee,And runs like a glance of hopeUp through the quickening tree;

When the roots of the lonely firAre dipt in thy veining heat,And thy countless atoms stirWith the gather of mossy feet;

When the sun's great censer swingsIn the hands that always be,And the mists from thy watery ringsGo up like dust from the sea;

When the midnight airs are assemblingWith a gush in thy whispering halls,And the leafy air is tremblingLike a stream before it falls.

Thy shadowy hand hath found meOn the drifts of the Godhead's will,And thy dust hath risen around meWith a life that guards me still.

O Earth! I have caught from thineThe pulse of a mystic chase;O Earth! I have drunk like wineThe life of thy swiftening race.

Wilt miss me, mother sweet,A life in thy milky veins?Wilt miss the sound of my feetIn the tramp that shakes thy plains

When the jaws of darkness rend,And the vapours fold away,And the sounds of life ascendLike dust in the blinding day?

I would know thy silver strainIn the shouts of the starry crowdWhen the souls of thy changing menRise up like an incense cloud.

I would know thy brightening lobesAnd the lap of thy watery barsThough space were choked with globesAnd the night were blind with stars!

From the folds of my unknown place,When my soul is glad and free,I will slide by my God's sweet graceAnd hang like a cloud on thee.

When the pale moon sits at nightBy the brink of her shining well,Laving the rings of her widening lightOn the slopes of the weltering swell,

I will fall like a wind from the westOn the locks of thy prancing streams,And sow the fields of thy restWith handfuls of sweet young dreams.

When the sound of thy children's cryHath stricken thy gladness dumb,I will kindle thine upward eyeWith a laugh from the years that come.

Far above where the loud wind raves,On a wing as still as snowI will watch the grind of the curly wavesAs they bite the coasts below;

When the shining ranks of the frostDraw down on the glistening woldIn the mail of a fairy host,And the earth is mossed with cold,

Till the plates that shine aboutClose up with a filmy din,Till the air is frozen out,And the stars are frozen in.

I will often stoop to rangeOn the fields where my youth was spent,And my feet shall smite the cliffs of changeWith the rush of a steep descent;

And my glowing soul shall burnWith a love that knows no pall,And my eye of worship turnUpon him that fashioned all--

When the sounding waves of strifeHave died on the Godhead's sea,And thy life is a purer lifeThat nurses a life in me.