To My Sister.

O sister, God is very good--
    Thou art a woman now:
O sister, be thy womanhood
    A baptism on thy brow!

For what?--Do ancient stories lie
    Of Titans long ago,
The children of the lofty sky
    And mother earth below?

Nay, walk not now upon the ground
    Some sons of heavenly mould?
Some daughters of the Holy, found
    In earthly garments' fold?

He said, who did and spoke the truth:
    "Gods are the sons of God."
And so the world's Titanic youth
    Strives homeward by one road.

Then live thou, sister, day and night,
    An earth-child of the sky,
For ever climbing up the height
    Of thy divinity.

Still in thy mother's heart-embrace,
    Waiting thy hour of birth,
Thou growest by the genial grace
    Of the child-bearing earth.

Through griefs and joys, each sad and sweet,
    Thou shalt attain the end;
Till then a goddess incomplete--
    O evermore my friend!

Nor is it pride that striveth so:
    The height of the Divine
Is to be lowly 'mid the low;
    No towering cloud--a mine;

A mine of wealth and warmth and song,
    An ever-open door;
For when divinely born ere long,
    A woman thou the more.

For at the heart of womanhood
    The child's great heart doth lie;
At childhood's heart, the germ of good,
    Lies God's simplicity.

So, sister, be thy womanhood
    A baptism on thy brow
For something dimly understood,
    And which thou art not now;

But which within thee, all the time,
    Maketh thee what thou art;
Maketh thee long and strive and climb--
    The God-life at thy heart.