Mother Earth
Mother of all the high-strung poets and singers departed,Mother of all the grass that weaves over their graves the glory of thefield,Mother of all the manifold forms of life, deep-bosomed, patient,impassive,Silent brooder and nurse of lyrical joys and sorrows!Out of thee, yea, surely out of the fertile depth below thy breast,Issued in some strange way, thou lying motionless, voiceless,All these songs of nature, rhythmical, passionate, yearning.Coming in music from earth, but not unto earth returning.
Dust are the blood-red hearts that beat in time to these measures,Thou hast taken them back to thyself, secretly, irresistiblyDrawing the crimson currents of life down, down, downDeep into thy bosom again, as a river is lost in the sand.But the souls of the singers have entered into the songs that revealedthem,--Passionate songs, immortal songs of joy and grief and love and longing,Floating from heart to heart of thy children, they echo above thee:Do they not utter thy heart, the voices of those that love thee?
Long hadst thou lain like a queen transformed by some old enchantmentInto an alien shape, mysterious, beautiful, speechless,Knowing not who thou wert, till the touch of thy Lord and LoverWakened the man-child within thee to tell thy secret.All of thy flowers and birds and forests and flowing watersAre but the rhythmical forms to reveal the life of the spirit;Thou thyself, earth-mother, in mountain and meadow and ocean,Holdest the poem of God, eternal thought and emotion.
Words in this poem
- impassive a.
- Not susceptible of pain or suffering; apathetic; impassible; unmoved.
- lyrical a.
- Of or pertaining to a lyre or harp. [L. lyricus, Gr. lyrique. See Lyre.]
- voiceless a.
- Having no voice, utterance, or vote; silent; mute; dumb.
- hast
- , 2d pers. sing. pres. of. Fave, contr. of havest.
- irresistibly adv.
- In an irrestible manner.
- speechless a.
- Destitute or deprived of the faculty of speech.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Mother Earth is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poems of Henry Van Dyke, Project Gutenberg ebook #16229; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Henry Van Dyke, Mother Earth, in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16229, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/van-dyke-poems/mother-earth.html, id L22954.
Form and metre
Mother Earth is 27 lines in 3 stanzas. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter.
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 --------AA departed · the · field · patient · impassive · sorrows · breast · voiceless · yearningA · returningA
- 2 -------AA measures · irresistibly · down · sand · revealed · them · longing · theeA · theeA
- 3 ------AA enchantment · speechless · lover · secret · waters · spirit · oceanA · emotionA
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Mother of all the high-strung poets and singers departed, | 15 | /˘·····/˘·/˘˘/˘ |
| Mother of all the grass that weaves over their graves the glory of the | 16 | /˘··········/˘·· |
| field, | 1 | · |
| Mother of all the manifold forms of life, deep-bosomed, patient, | 16 | /˘···/˘·····/˘/˘ |
| impassive, | 3 | ˘/˘ |
| Silent brooder and nurse of lyrical joys and sorrows! | 13 | /˘·····/˘··/˘ |
| Out of thee, yea, surely out of the fertile depth below thy breast, | 16 | ····/˘···˘/····· |
| Issued in some strange way, thou lying motionless, voiceless, | 13 | /˘·····/˘/˘/˘ |
| All these songs of nature, rhythmical, passionate, yearning. | 13 | ····/˘···/˘/˘ |
| Coming in music from earth, but not unto earth returning. | 15 | /˘·/˘·······˘/˘ |
| Dust are the blood-red hearts that beat in time to these measures, | 14 | ············/˘ |
| Thou hast taken them back to thyself, secretly, irresistibly | 15 | ··/˘···˘//˘·˘/˘ |
| Drawing the crimson currents of life down, down, down | 12 | /˘·/˘/˘····· |
| Deep into thy bosom again, as a river is lost in the sand. | 17 | ····/˘˘/··/˘····· |
| But the souls of the singers have entered into the songs that revealed | 17 | ·····/˘·/˘·····˘/ |
| them,-- | 1 | · |
| Passionate songs, immortal songs of joy and grief and love and longing, | 16 | /˘·˘/˘········/˘ |
| Floating from heart to heart of thy children, they echo above thee: | 16 | /˘······/˘·/˘··· |
| Do they not utter thy heart, the voices of those that love thee? | 15 | ···/˘···/˘····· |
| Long hadst thou lain like a queen transformed by some old enchantment | 15 | ·······˘/···˘/˘ |
| Into an alien shape, mysterious, beautiful, speechless, | 13 | ···/˘·˘/˘/˘/˘ |
| Knowing not who thou wert, till the touch of thy Lord and Lover | 14 | /···········/˘ |
| Wakened the man-child within thee to tell thy secret. | 13 | /˘·········/˘ |
| All of thy flowers and birds and forests and flowing waters | 13 | ···/···/˘·//˘ |
| Are but the rhythmical forms to reveal the life of the spirit; | 15 | ········˘/····/ |
| Thou thyself, earth-mother, in mountain and meadow and ocean, | 14 | ·˘/·/˘·/˘·/··/ |
| Holdest the poem of God, eternal thought and emotion. | 14 | /˘·/··˘/˘··/˘˘ |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.