| George William (“A. E.”) Russell (1867–1935). Collected Poems by A.E. 1913. |
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| 28. The Virgin Mother |
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| WHO is that goddess to whom men should pray, | |
| But her from whom their hearts have turned away, | |
| Out of whose virgin being they were born, | |
| Whose mother nature they have named with scorn | |
| Calling its holy substance common clay. | 5 |
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| Yet from this so despised earth was made | |
| The milky whiteness of those queens who swayed | |
| Their generations with a light caress, | |
| And from some image of whose loveliness | |
| The heart built up high heaven when it prayed. | 10 |
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| Lover, your heart, the heart on which it lies, | |
| Your eyes that gaze and those alluring eyes, | |
| Your lips, the lips they kiss, alike had birth | |
| Within that dark divinity of earth, | |
| Within that mother being you despise. | 15 |
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| Ah, when I think this earth on which I tread | |
| Hath borne these blossoms of the lovely dead, | |
| And makes the living heart I love to beat, | |
| I look with sudden awe beneath my feet | |
| As you with erring reverence overhead. | 20 |
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