The Mother
We scar the earth with dreadful engin’ry; She takes us to her bosom at the last; Hiding our hate with love, who cannot see Of any child the faults; and holds us fast. We’ll wait in quiet till our passion’s past.
Ivor Gurney
We scar the earth with dreadful engin’ry; She takes us to her bosom at the last; Hiding our hate with love, who cannot see Of any child the faults; and holds us fast. We’ll wait in quiet till our passion’s past.
Gurney imagines the earth as a mother who absorbs everything human beings do to her. The opening line admits that we scar her with “dreadful engin’ry,” a phrase suggesting both industrial damage and the machinery of war. Yet the earth does not scold.
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