O fruitful and sacred ground, O sunlight and summer sky, Absorb me and fold me round, For broken and tired am I.
How deep the April night is in its noon, The hopeful, solemn, many-murmured night! The earth lies hushed with expectation; bright Above the world's dark border burns the moon, Yellow and large; from forest floorways, strewn With flowers, and fields that tingle with new birth, The moist smell of the unimprisoned earth Comes up, a sigh, a haunting promise. Soon, Ah, soon, the teeming triumph! At my feet The river with its stately sweep and wheel Moves on slow-motioned, luminous, grey like steel. From fields far off whose watery hollows gleam, Aye with blown throats that make the long hours sweet, The sleepless toads are murmuring in their dream.
O differing human heart, Why is it that I tremble when thine eyes, Thy human eyes and beautiful human speech, Draw me, and stir within my soul That subtle ineradicable longing For tender comradeship? It is because I cannot all at once, Through the half-lights and phantom-haunted mists That separate and enshroud us life from life, Discern the nearness or the strangeness of thy paths Nor plumb thy depths. I am like one that comes alone at night To a strange stream, and by an unknown ford Stands, and for a moment yearns and shrinks, Being ignorant of the water, though so quiet it is, So softly murmurous, So silvered by the familiar moon.
O little one, daughter, my dearest, With your smiles and your beautiful curls, And your laughter, the brightest and clearest, O gravest and gayest of girls;
With your hands that are softer than roses, And your lips that are lighter than flowers, And that innocent brow that discloses A wisdom more lovely than ours;
With your locks that encumber, or scatter In a thousand mercurial gleams, And those feet whose impetuous patter I hear and remember in dreams;
With your manner of motherly duty, When you play with your dolls and are wise; With your wonders of speech, and the beauty In your little imperious eyes;
When I hear you so silverly ringing Your welcome from chamber or stair. When you run to me, kissing and clinging, So radiant, so rosily fair;
I bend like an ogre above you; I bury my face in your curls; I fold you, I clasp you, I love you. O baby, queen-blossom of girls!