My mother earth I shall forget
When I am sick and like to die;
There, in a breathless chamber set,
My mother earth I shall forget,
These hedges starred with flowers wet,
These muddy roads beneath the sky.
My mother earth I shall forget,
When I am sick and like to die.
Let them bury your big eyes
In the secret earth securely,
Your thin fingers, and your fair,
Soft, indefinite-colored hair,--
All of these in some way, surely,
From the secret earth shall rise;
Not for these I sit and stare,
Broken and bereft completely;
Your young flesh that sat so neatly
On your little bones will sweetly
Blossom in the air.
But your voice,--never the rushing
Of a river underground,
Not the rising of the wind
In the trees before the rain,
Not the woodcock's watery call,
I was Willie Metcalf.
They used to call me “Doctor Meyers,”
Because, they said, I looked like him.
And he was my father, according to Jack McGuire.
I lived in the livery stable,
Sleeping on the floor
Side by side with Roger Baughman’s bulldog,
Or sometimes in a stall.
I could crawl between the legs of the wildest horses
Without getting kicked—we knew each other.
On spring days I tramped through the country
To get the feeling, which I sometimes lost,
That I was not a separate thing from the earth.
I used to lose myself, as if in sleep,
By lying with eyes half-open in the woods.
Sometimes I talked with animals—even toads and snakes—
I would be wandering in distant fields
Where man, and bird, and beast, lives leisurely,
And the old earth is kind, and ever yields
Her goodly gifts to all her children free;
Where life is fairer, lighter, less demanding,
And boys and girls have time and space for play
Before they come to years of understanding--
Somewhere I would be singing, far away.
For life is greater than the thousand wars
Men wage for it in their insatiate lust,
And will remain like the eternal stars,
When all that shines to-day is drift and dust
But I am bound with you in your mean graves,
O black men, simple slaves of ruthless slaves.
Legs hold a torso away from the earth.
And a regular high poem of legs is here.
Powers of bone and cord raise a belly and lungs
Out of ooze and over the loam where eyes look and ears hear
And arms have a chance to hammer and shoot and run motors.
You make us
Proud of our legs, old man.
And you left off the head here,
The skull found always crumbling neighbor of the ankles.
There is strength in the soil;
In the earth there is laughter and youth.
There is solace and hope in the upturned loam.
And lo, I shall plant my soul in it here like a seed!
And forth it shall come to me as a flower of song;
For I know it is good to get back to the earth
That is orderly, placid, all-patient!
It is good to know how quiet
And noncommittal it breathes,
This ample and opulent bosom
That must some day nurse us all!
"The sting of it all," you said, as you stooped low over your roses,
"The worst of it is, when I think of Death,
That Spring by Spring the Earth shall still be beautiful,
And Summer by Summer be lovely again,
--And I shall be gone!"
"I would not care, perhaps," you said, watching your roses,
"If only 'twere dust and ruin and emptiness left behind!
But the thought that Earth and April
Year by casual year
Shall waken around the old ways, soft and beautiful,
Year by year when I am away,
--This, this breaks my heart!"
Rest, little Guest,
Beneath my breast.
Feed, sweet Seed,
At your need.
I took Love for my lord
And this is my reward,
My body is good earth.
That you, dear Plant, have birth.
In such a cell with compass and with scale
Some quaint geographer might subtly trap
The oceans and the earth into a map,
Painting the sea and sky with colors pale,
Embellished well with many a quaint design,
The elephant, the bullock and the ape,
The apple, the corn, the winepress and the grape,
The battle axe, the frigate and the mine.
Lo, now, we see the tabulated scheme
Of all the earth; its diagram of story;
But not its mysteries of pain and dream,
Its love, its pride, its passion and its glory.
So Fortunes lie on paper and make no sound,
But with its seasons still the earth turns round.
Now I go, do not weep, woman —
Woman, do not weep;
Though I go from you to die,
We shall both lie down
At the foot of the hill, and sleep.
Now I go, do not weep, woman —
Woman, do not weep;
Earth is our mother and our tent the sky.
Though I go from you to die.
We shall both lie down
At the foot of the hill, and sleep.
Earth raised up her head
From the darkness dread and drear,
Her light fled,
Stony, dread,
And her locks covered with grey despair.
"Prisoned on watery shore,
Starry jealousy does keep my den
Cold and hoar;
Weeping o'er,
I hear the father of the ancient men.
"Selfish father of men!
Cruel, jealous, selfish fear!
Can delight,
Chained in night,
The virgins of youth and morning bear?
"Does spring hide its joy,
They may rail at this life -- from the hour I began it
I found it a life full of kindness and bliss;
And, until they can show me some happier planet,
More social and bright, I'll content me with this.
As long as the world has such lips and such eyes
As before me this moment enraptured I see,
They may say what they will of their orbs in the skies,
But this earth is the planet for you, love, and me.
In Mercury's star, where each moment can bring them
New sunshine and wit from the fountain on high,
Though the nymphs may have livelier poets to sing them,
They've none, even there, more enamour'd than I.
And, as long as this harp can be waken'd to love,
And that eye its divine inspiration shall be,