A woman was made body and heart for the beautiful love-life; But of the mother-miracle, How the cry of a troubled child whitens the red passions, She did not know. Fear of poverty corrupted her: she chose a fool that her heart hated, And now through him no release for her native passions, But only a spending of her loathsome fury on adornment and luxury. Ah, dead glory! and the heart sick with betrayal! There is no grace for the dead save to be born again: Engines shall not drag us from the grave, Nor wine nor meat revive us. For our thirst is a thirst no liquor can reach nor slake, And our hunger a hunger by no bread filled. The waters we crave bubble up from the springs of life, And the bread we would break comes down from invisible hands. We dead, awake! Kiss the beloved past good-by, Go leave the love-house of the betrayèd self, And through the dark of birth go and enter the soul the soul’s bleak weather. And I--I will not stay dead, though the dead cling to me; I will put away the kisses and the soft embraces and the walls that encompass me, And out of this womb I will surely move to the world of my spirit. I will lose my life to find it, as of old; Yea, I will turn from the life-lie I lived to the truth I was wrought for, And I will take the creator within, sower of the seed of the race, And make him a god, a shaper of civilization. Now on my soul’s imperious surge, Taking the risk, as of death, and in deepening twilight, I ride on the darkening flood and go out on the waters Till over the tide comes music, till over the tide the breath Of the song of my far-off soul is wafted and blown, Murmuring commandments. Storm and darkness! I am drowned in the torrent! I am moving forth irrevocably from the sheltering womb! I am naked and little! Oh, cold of the world, and light blinding, and space terrifying Now my cry goes up and the wailing of my helpless soul: Mother! my mother! Lo, then, the mother eternal! In my opening soul the footfall of her fleeting tread, And the song of her voice piercing and sweet with love of me, And the enwinding of her arms and adoring of her breath, And the milk of her plenty! Oh, Life, of which I am part--Life, from the depths of the heavens, That ascended like a water-spring into David of Asia on the eastern hills in the night, That came like a noose of golden shadow on Joan in the orchard, That gathers all life--the binding of brothers into sheaves, That of old, kneelers in the dust Named, glorying, Allah, Jehovah, God. _Century_ _James Oppenheim_ GOD AND THE FARMER