When your doctors fail to render--
When your lotions fail to heal--
When the salted scar is burning--
When aturtle turns the keel:
When the lights are lost to leeward--
When the last least hope is gone--
Then I call ye--Oh my children--
As a Mother calls her spawn.
By no magic may I do it--
By no sudden quick surcease:
Slow, so slow, ye cannot know it
Do I bring ye your release.
As the blackened heavens soften
To the morning’s growing gray,
And the gray spreads gold and crimson
Till in splendor breaks the day:
So by little and by little,
That ye may not know or see,
Do I soothe the salted searing--
Do I bid the shadows flee--
Do I weld the torn heart-cord
No surgeon art may heal,
Till ye lift the fastened latchet
And go forth in laughing weal.
From Eastward and from Westward
I call my broken clan;
We may not meet in lane or street
Or greet us man and man:
But slowly spread my wide-leagued wings--
And falling tenderly,
I wrap my troubled Earth-spawn
Unto the heart of me.