Brown bed of earth, still fresh and warm with love,
Now hold me tight:
Broad field of sky, where the clouds laughing move,
Fill up my pores with light:
You trees, now talk to me, chatter and scold or weep,
Or drowsing stand:
You winds, now play with me, you wild things creep,
You boulders, bruise my hand!
I now am yours and you are mine: it matters not
What Gods herein I see:
You grow in me, I am rooted to this spot,
We drink and pass the cup, immortally.
Some one dug this up and brought it
To our house.
In the dark upper hall, I see it dimly,
Looking at me through the glass.
Where dancers have danced, and weary people
Have crept to their bedrooms in the morning,
Where sick people have tossed all night,
Where children have been born,
Where feet have gone up and down,
Where anger has blazed forth, and strange looks have passed,
It has rested, watching meanwhile
The opening and shutting of doors,
The coming and going of people,
The carrying out of coffins.
Earth still clings to its eye-sockets,
It will wait, till its vengeance is accomplished.
I KNOW the man without a soul :
He is happy as the day,
He is happy, people say.
He is happy — so they say :
But they do not see him roll
On the ground in very dole.
All along the ground in dole,
When no one is watching, he
Bites the ground in agony.
He bites the ground in agony :
But with people he is whole :
I know the man without a soul !
The proud and sturdy horses
Gather their willing forces,
Unswerving make their courses
Over the brown
Earth that was mowing meadow
A month agone, where shadow
And light in the tall grasses
Quivered and was gone.
They spoil the nest of plover
And lark, turn up, uncover
The bones of many a lover
Unfamed in tales;
Arrows, old flints of hammers,
The rooks with hungry clamours
Hover around and settle
Seeking full meals.
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.
To climb a hill that hungers for the sky,
To dig my hands wrist deep in pregnant earth,
To watch a young bird, veering, learn to fly,
To give a still, stark poem shining birth.
To hear the rain drool, dimpling, down the drain
And splash with a wet giggle in the street,
To ramble in the twilight after supper,
And to count the pretty faces that you meet.
To ride to town on trolleys, crowded, teeming
With joy and hurry and laughter and push and sweat--
Squeezed next a patent-leathered Negro dreaming
Of a wrinkled river and a minnow net.
To buy a paper from a breathless boy,
And read of kings and queens in foreign lands,
Hyperbole of romance and adventure,
All for a penny the color of my hand.
Though we are bound to earth by many ties,
And all along the roads whereby we came
A thousand tongues to listening hearts proclaim
Our kinship with the world that round us lies;
Though sunlit fields and woods and arching skies,
And flowers that break in shafts of living name,
Constrain with beauty all our quickened frame,
Breathing love's messages in sweetest guise;
Yet deeper than all rapture earth may bring
Is that fine sense whereby we are aware
Of something in ourselves that does not spring
From life without or in its fullness share,
But like a captive bird with quivering wing
Strains ever to its native, purer air.
We grow more reconciled to Nature's ways,
And more responsive, with the passing years,
Finding in them a solace for the fears
Engendered by the thought of lessening days;
There comes a sense of comradeship that stays
The lonely questioning heart, and more endears
The deep and changeful beauty that appears
More deep and beautiful with every phase.
The brooding tenderness of earth and sky
Becomes more palpable and to our need,
As if some friendly consciousness were nigh —
Some mother element but dimly guessed,
That, gathering nearer, gently sought to lead
Weary and wandering children back to rest.
The earth takes up our bodies, every one,
And brings them slowly backward to the dark ;
Then on her shadowed side we droop and slumber,
Turned from the sun.
(Meanwhile He covers continents in light
One after other, so they stretch and wake,
Live their day through and droop again to slumber :
Day, night : day, night.)
The stars shine forth and disappear again,
Roaring about in space above our heads,
While we are folded to the earth in slumber
With dreaming brain.
We travel through the darkness : we are spun
Upward through rays of light into the morning ;
We waken with the earth : we glide from slumber
Toward the sun.
When I rise above the earth,
And look down on the things that fetter me,
I beat my wings upon the air.
Or tranquil lie,
Surge after surge of potent strength
Like incense comes to me
When I rise up above the earth
And look down upon the things that fetter me.
There comes to my heart from regions remote
A wild desire for the hedge and the brush,
Whenever I hear the first wild note
Of the meadow lark and the hermit thrush.
The broken and upturned earth to the air,
By a million thrusting blades of Spring,
Sends out from the sod and everywhere
Its pungent aromas over everything.
Then it's Oh, for the hills, the dawn, and the dew,
The breath of the fields and the silent lake.
And watching the wings of light burst through
The scarlet blush of the new daybreak.
It is then, when the earth still nestles in sleep,
And the robes of light are scarce unfurled.
You can almost feel, in its mighty sweep.
The onward rush and roll of the world.
Sap stirs near me, roots stretch and seize,
Sundering stones.
And rivers waken, start in monotones
Their later tunes.
Oaks bend their knotted knees
In labor, and the full earth groans
Like women big with their increase;
While underground my body lies,
With open eyes,
In this stiff pose of peace.