Earth’s animate full flower she looked, intense
     For worship, wholly given him, fair
     Adoring or desiring; in her bright jet,
     Earth’s crystal spring to sky:  Earth’s warrior Best
     To win Heaven’s Pure up that midway
     We vision for new ground, where sense
     And spirit are one for the further flight; breast-bare,
     Bare-limbed; nor graceless gleamed her disarray
     In scorn of the seductive insincere,
     But martially nude for hot Bellona’s play,
     And amorous of the loftiest in her view.

     V

     She sprang from dust to drink of earth’s cool dew,
     The breath of swaying grasses share,
     Mankind embrace, their weaklings rear,
     At wrestle with the tyrannic strong;
     Her forehead clear to her mate, virgin anew,
     As immortals may be in the mortal sphere. 
     Read through her launching heart, who had lain long
     With Earth and heard till it became her own
     Our good Great Mother’s eve and matin song: 
     The humming burden of Earth’s toil to feed
     Her creatures all, her task to speed their growth,
     Her aim to lead them up her pathways, shown
     Between the Pains and Pleasures; warned of both,
     Of either aided on their hard ascent. 
     Now when she looked, with love’s benign delight
     After great ecstasy, along the plains,
     What foulest impregnation of her sight
     Transformed the scene to multitudinous troops
     Of human sketches, quaver-figures, bent,
     As were they winter sedges, broken hoops,
     Dry udder, vineless poles, worm-eaten posts,
     With features like the flowers defaced by deluge rains? 
     Recked she that some perverting devil had limned
     Earth’s proudest to spout scorn of the Maker’s hand,
     Who could a day behold these deathly hosts,
     And see, decked, graced, and delicately trimmed,
     A ribanded and gemmed elected few,
     Sanctioned, of milk and honey starve the land:-
     Like melody in flesh, its pleasant game
     Olympianwise perform, cloak but the shame: 
     Beautiful statures; hideous,
     By Christian contrast; pranked with golden chains,
     And flexile where is manhood straight;
     Mortuaries where warm should beat
     The brotherhood that keeps blood sweet: 
     Who dared in cantique impious
     Proclaim the Just, to whom was due
     Cathedral gratitude in the pomp of state,
     For that on those lean outcasts hung the sucker Pains,
     On these elect the swelling Pleasures grew. 
     Surely a devil’s land when that meant death for each! 
     Fresh from the breast of Earth, not thus,
     With all the body’s life to plump the leech,
     Is Nature’s way, she knew.  The abominable scene
     Spat at the skies; and through her veins,
     To cloud celestially