O Vine of Life, that in these reaching fingers,
Urges a sunward way!
Hold here and climb, and halt not, that there lingers
So far outstripped, my halting, wistful clay.
Make here thy foothold of my rapturous heart,--
Yea, though the tendrils start
To hold and twine!
I am the heart that nursed
Thy sunward thirst.--
A little while, a little while, O Vine,
My own and never mine,
Feed thy sweet roots with me
Abundantly.
O wonder-wildness of the pushing Bud
With hunger at the flood,
Climb on, and seek, and spurn.
Let my dull spirit learn
To follow with its longing, as it may,
While thou seek higher day.--
But thou, the reach of my own heart's desire,
Be free as fire!
Still climb and cling; and so
Outstrip,--outgrow.
O Vine of Life, my own and not my own,
So far am I outgrown!
High as I may, I lift thee, Soul's Desire.
--Lift thou me higher.
_And thou, Wayfaring Woman, whom I meet
On all the highways,--every brimming street,
Lady Demeter, is it thou, grown gaunt
With work and want?
At last, and with what shamed and stricken eyes,
I see through thy disguise
Of drudge and Exile,--even the holy boon
That silvers yonder in the Harvest-moon;--
That dimly under glows
The furrows of thy worn immortal face,
With mother-grace._
_O Queen and Burden-bearer, what of those
To whom thou gavest the lily and the rose
Of thy far youth?... For whom,
Out of the wondrous loom
Of thine enduring body, thou didst make
Garments of beauty, cunningly adorned,
But only for Death's sake!
Largess of life, but to lie waste and scorned.--
Could not such cost of pain,
Nor daily utmost of thy toil prevail?--
But they must fade, and pale,
And wither from thy desolated throne?--
And still no Summer give thee back again
Thine own?_
_Lady of Sorrows,--Mother,--Drudge august.
Behold me in the dust._