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I THY greatest knew thee, Mother Earth; unsour’d | |
| He knew thy sons. He prob’d from hell to hell | |
| Of human passions, but of love deflower’d | |
| His wisdom was not, for he knew thee well. | |
| Thence came the honey’d corner at his lips, | 5 |
| The conquering smile wherein his spirit sails | |
| Calm as the God who the white sea-wave whips, | |
| Yet full of speech and intershifting tales, | |
| Close mirrors of us: thence had he the laugh | |
| We feel is thine; broad as ten thousand beeves | 10 |
| At pasture! thence thy songs, that winnow chaff | |
| From grain, bid sick Philosophy’s last leaves | |
| Whirl, if they have no response—they enforced | |
| To fatten Earth when from her soul divorced. | |
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II How smiles he at a generation rank’d | 15 |
| In gloomy noddings over life! They pass. | |
| Not he to feed upon a breast unthank’d, | |
| Or eye a beauteous face in a crack’d glass. | |
| But he can spy that little twist of brain | |
| Which mov’d some weighty leader of the blind, | 20 |
| Unwitting ’t was the goad of personal pain, | |
| To view in curs’d eclipse our Mother’s mind, | |
| And show us of some rigid harridan | |
| The wretched bondmen till the end of time. | |
| O liv’d the Master now to paint us Man, | 25 |
| That little twist of brain would ring a chime | |
| Of whence it came and what it caus’d, to start | |
| Thunders of laughter, clearing air and heart. | |
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