Earth Mother, brown Mother, dear Mother, will the long night be run?...
Touch the root to its milk, do you say? Send the sap to the bud,
Feel the five-fingered leaf on my bosom, the grass on my lip?
Find my bed in the wild? Bear the rose and the lily for child?...
O, my Mother, Earth Mother, reach me round with your loving,
Fold me in to your heart, base me deep on your breast for this sleep!
Then, Mother, sweet Mother, with the clay and the spring I shall wake,
Turn my back to the East with its frost and its manacled trees,
Turn my face to the West and the blaze of my lover the Sun!
SEA GULLS
On Leaving Eggemoggin
Sea gulls I saw lifting the dawn with rosy feet,
Bearing the sunlight on their wings,
Dripping the dusk from burnished plumes;
And I thought
It would be joy to be a sea gull
At dusk, at dawn of day,
And through long sunlit hours.
Sea gulls I saw carrying the night upon their backs,
Wide tail spread crescent for the moon and stars—
The moon a glowing jelly fish,
The stars foam flecks of light;
And I thought
It would be joy to be a sea gull!
How I would dart with them,
Strike storm with coral spur,
Rip whirling spray of angry tides,
Snatch mangled, light-shot offal of the sea,—
Torn, tossed and moving terribly;
And stare for stare answer those myriad eyes
That float and sway, stab, sting and die away!
How I would peer from wide cold eyes of fire
At dusk, at dawn
And through the long daylight
Into those coiling depths of sea;
Then split the sun, the moon, the stars,
With laughter, laughter, laughter,
For the sea’s mad power!