But read her thought to speed the race,
     And stars rush forth of blackest night: 
     You chill not at a cold embrace
     To come, nor dread a dubious might.

     Her double visage, double voice,
     In oneness rise to quench the doubt. 
     This breath, her gift, has only choice
     Of service, breathe we in or out.

     Since Pain and Pleasure on each hand
     Led our wild steps from slimy rock
     To yonder sweeps of gardenland,
     We breathe but to be sword or block.

     The sighting brain her good decree
     Accepts; obeys those guides, in faith,
     By reason hourly fed, that she,
     To some the clod, to some the wraith,

     Is more, no mask; a flame, a stream. 
     Flame, stream, are we, in mid career
     From torrent source, delirious dream,
     To heaven-reflecting currents clear.

     And why the sons of Strength have been
     Her cherished offspring ever; how
     The Spirit served by her is seen
     Through Law; perusing love will show.

     Love born of knowledge, love that gains
     Vitality as Earth it mates,
     The meaning of the Pleasures, Pains,
     The Life, the Death, illuminates.

     For love we Earth, then serve we all;
     Her mystic secret then is ours: 
     We fall, or view our treasures fall,
     Unclouded, as beholds her flowers

     Earth, from a night of frosty wreck,
     Enrobed in morning’s mounted fire,
     When lowly, with a broken neck,
     The crocus lays her cheek to mire.

     The appeasement of Demeter

     I

     Demeter devastated our good land,
     In blackness for her daughter snatched below. 
     Smoke-pillar or loose hillock was the sand,
     Where soil had been to clasp warm seed and throw
     The wheat, vine, olive, ripe to Summer’s ray. 
     Now whether night advancing, whether day,
     Scarce did the baldness show: 
     The hand of man was a defeated hand.

     II

     Necessity, the primal goad to growth,
     Stood shrunken; Youth and Age appeared as one;
     Like Winter Summer; good as labour sloth;
     Nor was there answer wherefore beamed the sun,
     Or why men drew the breath to carry pain. 
     High reared the ploughshare, broken lay the wain,
     Idly the flax-wheel spun
     Unridered:  starving lords were wasp and moth.

     III

     Lean grassblades losing green on their bent flags,
     Sang chilly to themselves; lone honey-bees
     Pursued the flowers that were not with dry bags;
     Sole sound aloud the snap of sapless trees,
     More sharp than slingstones on hard breastplates hurled. 
     Back to first chaos tumbled the stopped world,
     Careless to lure or please. 
     A nature of gaunt ribs, an earth of crags.