EARTH, ocean, air, belovèd brotherhood! | |
| If our great mother has imbued my soul | |
| With aught of natural piety to feel | |
| Your love, and recompense the boon with mine; | |
| If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even, | 5 |
| With sunset and its gorgeous ministers, | |
| And solemn midnight’s tingling silentness; | |
| If autumn’s hollow sighs in the sere wood, | |
| And winter robing with pure snow and crowns | |
| Of starry ice the gray grass and bare boughs; | 10 |
| If spring’s voluptuous pantings when she breathes | |
| Her first sweet kisses, have been dear to me; | |
| If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast | |
| I consciously have injured, but still loved | |
| And cherished these my kindred; then forgive | 15 |
| This boast, belovèd brethren, and withdraw | |
| No portion of your wonted favor now! | |
| |
| Mother of this unfathomable world! | |
| Favor my solemn song, for I have loved | |
| Thee ever, and thee only; I have watched | 20 |
| Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps, | |
| And my heart ever gazes on the depth | |
| Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed | |
| In charnels and on coffins, where black death | |
| Keeps record of the trophies won from thee, | 25 |
| Hoping to still these obstinate questionings | |
| Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost, | |
| Thy messenger, to render up the tale | |
| Of what we are. In lone and silent hours, | |
| When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness, | 30 |
| Like an inspired and desperate alchemist | |
| Staking his very life on some dark hope, | |
| Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks | |
| With my most innocent love, until strange tears | |
| Uniting with those breathless kisses, made | 35 |
| Such magic as compels the charmèd night | |
| To render up thy charge: and, tho’ ne’er yet | |
| Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary, | |
| Enough from incommunicable dream, | |
| And twilight phantasms, and deep noonday thought, | 40 |
| Has shone within me, that serenely now | |
| And moveless, as a long-forgotten lyre | |
| Suspended in a solitary dome | |
| Of some mysterious and deserted fane, | |
| I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain | 45 |
| May modulate with murmurs of the air, | |
| And motions of the forests and the sea | |
| And voice of living beings, and woven hymns | |
| Of night and day, and the deep heart of man. | |
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