ISSUE: Autumn 1927
Earth, mother of all, kind earth,
Hear my prayer,
You called her out of your being,
Sweet, sweet, and so fair;
Why have you set behind her the shadow Of my despair?
She goes about the world as the sun
Goes round the sky,
Giving the hills their clear-cut lines,
But always nigh Her trials a shadow in pools of light,
And it is I.
She is more lovely than a daffodil
By, a stone wall,
I gaze on her for hours and hours,
Until I fall Into a trance and worship her;
Earth, mother of all,
Heart of our heart and ground of our wisdom,
You could foresee That I would arise, too, out of your bosom;
Let it not be That all my longing should end in nothing,
Give her to me!
Then i, the shadow, shall be a day
All sun and shine;
You shall enjoy a flowering forth
In this love of mine;
Our love will be a whole field of flowers
And a fruitful vine.
Mother of all, your ancient love,
In us reborn,
Will be birds nesting, leaves budding,
Midsummer corn,
Your autumn apple, the red berry
On a winter thorn.
Old ballads tell, when lovers died,
How their desire Sprang from the grave and twined together
A rose and a briar: O wait not till we are cold, but now,
In the heat of the fire,
Let us be molten down and run together, ,
She and I! Our love will sparkle as a sun uprising
And dapple the sky With the brightest dawn that has ever dawned,
Before we die.
