Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Earth and her Praisers lyrics

I.    The Earth is old; Six thousand winters make her heart a-cold; The sceptre slanteth from her palsied hold. She saith, "'Las me! God's word that I was 'good'   Is taken back to heaven, From whence when any sound comes, I am riven By some sharp bolt; and now no angel would Descend with sweet dew-silence on my mountains, To glorify the lovely river fountains   That gush along their side: I see—O weary change!—I see instead   This human wrath and pride, These thrones and tombs, judicial wrong and blood, And bitter words are poured upon mine head— 'O Earth! thou art a stage for tricks unholy, A church for most remorseful melancholy; Thou art so spoilt, we should forget we had An Eden in thee, wert thou not so sad!' Sweet children, I am old! ye, every one, Do keep me from a portion of my sun.   Give praise in change for brightness! That I may shake my hills in infiniteness Of breezy laughter, as in youthful mirth, To hear Earth's sons and daughters praising Earth." II. Whereupon a child began With spirit running up to man As by angels' shining ladder, (May he find no cloud above!) Seeming he had ne'er been sadder  All his days than now, Sitting in the chestnut grove, With that joyous overflow Of smiling from his mouth o'er brow And cheek and chin, as if the breeze Leaning tricksy from the trees To part his golden hairs, had blown Into an hundred smiles that one. III. "O rare, rare Earth!" he saith,  "I will praise thee presently; Not to-day; I have no breath:  I have hunted squirrels three— Two ran down in the furzy hollow Where I could not see nor follow, One sits at the top of the filbert-tree, With a yellow nut and a mock at me:  Presently it shall be done! When I see which way these two have run, When the mocking one at the filbert-top Shall leap a-down and beside me stop,  Then, rare Earth, rare Earth, Will I pause, having known thy worth,  To say all good of thee!" IV. Next a lover,—with a dream 'Neath his waking eyelids hidden, And a frequent sigh unbidden, And an idlesse all the day Beside a wandering stream, And a silence that is made Of a word he dares not say,— Shakes slow his pensive head:  "Earth, Earth!" saith he, "If spirits, like thy roses, grew On one stalk, and winds austere Could but only blow them near,  To share each other's dew;— If, when summer rains agree To beautify thy hills, I knew Looking off them I might see  Some one very beauteous too,—   Then Earth," saith he, "I would praise ... nay, nay—not thee!" V. Will the pedant name her next? Crabbèd with a crabbèd text Sits he in his study nook, With his elbow on a book, And with stately crossèd knees, And a wrinkle deeply thrid Through his lowering brow, Caused by making proofs enow That Plato in "Parmenides" Meant the same Spinoza did,— Or, that an hundred of the groping Like himself, had made one Homer, Homeros being a misnomer What hath he to do with praise Of Earth or aught? Whene'er the sloping Sunbeams through his window daze His eyes off from the learned phrase, Straightway he draws close the curtain. May abstraction keep him dumb! Were his lips to ope, 't is certain "Derivatum est" would come. VI. Then a mourner moveth pale In a silence full of wail, Raising not his sunken head Because he wandered last that way With that one beneath the clay: Weeping not, because that one, The only one who would have said "Cease to weep, beloved!" has gone Whence returneth comfort none. The silence breaketh suddenly,— "Earth, I praise thee!" crieth he, "Thou hast a grave for also me." VII. Ha, a poet! know him by The ecstasy-dilated eye, Not uncharged with tears that ran Upward from his heart of man; By the cheek, from hour to hour, Kindled bright or sunken wan With a sense of lonely power; By the brow uplifted higher Than others, for more low declining By the lip which words of fire Overboiling have burned white While they gave the nations light: Ay, in every time and place Ye may know the poet's face  By the shade or shining. VIII. 'Neath a golden cloud he stands, Spreading his impa**ioned hands. "O God's Earth!" he saith, "the sign From the Father-soul to mine Of all beauteous mysteries, Of all perfect images Which, divine in His divine, In my human only are Very excellent and fair! Think not, Earth, that I would raise Weary forehead in thy praise, (Weary, that I cannot go Farther from thy region low,) If were struck no richer meanings From thee than thyself. The leaning Of the close trees o'er the brim Of a sunshine-haunted stream Have a sound beneath their leaves,  Not of wind, not of wind, Which the poet's voice achieves: The faint mountains, heaped behind, Have a falling on their tops,  Not of dew, not of dew, Which the poet's fancy drops: Viewless things his eyes can view Driftings of his dream do light All the skies by day and night, And the seas that deepest roll Carry murmurs of his soul. 'Earth, I praise thee! praise thou me! God perfecteth his creation With this recipient poet-pa**ion, And makes the beautiful to be. I praise thee, O belovèd sign, From the God-soul unto mine! Praise me, that I cast on thee The cunning sweet interpretation, The help and glory and dilation  Of mine immortality!" IX. There was silence. None did dare To use again the spoken air Of that far-charming voice, until A Christian resting on the hill, With a thoughtful smile subdued (Seeming learnt in solitude) Which a weeper might have viewed Without new tears, did softly say, And looked up unto heaven alway While he praised the Earth—     "O Earth, I count the praises thou art worth, By thy waves that move aloud, By thy hills against the cloud, By thy valleys warm and green, By the copses' elms between, By their birds which, like a sprite Scattered by a strong delight Into fragments musical, Stir and sing in every bush; By thy silver founts that fall, As if to entice the stars at night To thine heart; by gra** and rush, And little weeds the children pull, Mistook for flowers!     —Oh, beautiful Art thou, Earth, albeit worse Than in heaven is callèd good! Good to us, that we may know Meekly from thy good to go; While the holy, crying Blood Puts its music kind and low 'Twixt such ears as are not dull,  And thine ancient curse! X. "Praisèd be the mosses soft In thy forest pathways oft, And the thorns, which make us think Of the thornless river-brink  Where the ransomed tread: Praisèd be thy sunny gleams, And the storm, that worketh dreams  Of calm unfinishèd: Praisèd be thine active days, And thy night-time's solemn need, When in God's dear book we read   No night shall be therein: Praisèd be thy dwellings warm By household f*ggot's cheerful blaze, Where, to hear of pardoned sin, Pauseth oft the merry din, Save the babe's upon the arm Who croweth to the crackling wood: Yea, and, better understood, Praisèd be thy dwellings cold, Hid beneath the churchyard mould, Where the bodies of the saints Separate from earthly taints Lie asleep, in blessing bound, Waiting for the trumpet's sound To free them into blessing;—none Weeping more beneath the sun, Though dangerous words of human love Be graven very near, above. XI. "Earth, we Christians praise thee thus, Even for the change that comes With a grief from thee to us: For thy cradles and thy tombs, For the pleasant corn and wine And summer-heat; and also for The frost upon the sycamore  And hail upon the vine!"