To My Mother Earth

0 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 breast
    When its swelling folds are bare,
When the thrush dreams of its nest
    And 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 deep
    In the arms of thy swiftening motion,
And my dirge the mystic sweep
    Of the winds that nurse the ocean.

And my eye would slowly ope
    With the voice that awakens thee,
And runs like a glance of hope
    Up through the quickening tree;

When the roots of the lonely fir
    Are dipt in thy veining heat,
And thy countless atoms stir
    With the gather of mossy feet;

When the sun's great censer swings
    In the hands that always be,
And the mists from thy watery rings
    Go up like dust from the sea;

When the midnight airs are assembling
    With a gush in thy whispering halls,
And the leafy air is trembling
    Like a stream before it falls.

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

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

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

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

I would know thy silver strain
    In the shouts of the starry crowd
When the souls of thy changing men
    Rise up like an incense cloud.

I would know thy brightening lobes
    And the lap of thy watery bars
Though space were choked with globes
    And 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 grace
    And hang like a cloud on thee.

When the pale moon sits at night
    By the brink of her shining well,
Laving the rings of her widening light
    On the slopes of the weltering swell,

I will fall like a wind from the west
    On the locks of thy prancing streams,
And sow the fields of thy rest
With handfuls of sweet young dreams.

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

Far above where the loud wind raves,
    On a wing as still as snow
I will watch the grind of the curly waves
    As they bite the coasts below;

When the shining ranks of the frost
    Draw down on the glistening wold
In the mail of a fairy host,
    And the earth is mossed with cold,

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

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

And my glowing soul shall burn
    With a love that knows no pall,
And my eye of worship turn
    Upon him that fashioned all--

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