To My Sister, On Her Twenty-First Birthday.

    I.

    Old fables are not all a lie
    That tell of wondrous birth,
    Of Titan children, father Sky,
    And mighty mother Earth.

    Yea, now are walking on the ground
    Sons of the mingled brood;
    Yea, now upon the earth are found
    Such daughters of the Good.

    Earth-born, my sister, thou art still
    A daughter of the sky;
    Oh, climb for ever up the hill
    Of thy divinity!

    To thee thy mother Earth is sweet,
    Her face to thee is fair;
    But thou, a goddess incomplete,
    Must climb the starry stair.


    II.

    Wouldst thou the holy hill ascend,
    Wouldst see the Father's face?
    To all his other children bend,
    And take the lowest place.

    Be like a cottage on a moor,
    A covert from the wind,
    With burning fire and open door,
    And welcome free and kind.

    Thus humbly doing on the earth
    The things the earthly scorn,
    Thou shalt declare the lofty birth
    Of all the lowly born.


    III.

    Be then thy sacred womanhood
    A sign upon thee set,
    A second baptism--understood--
    For what thou must be yet.

    For, cause and end of all thy strife,
    And unrest as thou art,
    Still stings thee to a higher life
    The Father at thy heart.