Dear Mother-Earth <br /> Of Titan birth, <br />Yon hills are your large breasts, and often I <br />Have climbed to their top-nipples, fain and dry <br />To drink my mother's-milk so near the sky. <br /> <br /> O ye hill-stains, <br /> Red, for all rains! <br />The blood that made you has all bled for us, <br />The hearts that paid you are all dead for us, <br />The trees that shade you groan with lead, for us! <br /> <br /> And O, hill-sides, <br /> Like giants' brides <br />Ye sleep in ravine-rumpled draperies, <br />And weep your springs in tearful memories <br />Of days that stained your robes with stains like these! <br /> <br /> Sleep on, ye hills! <br /> Weep on, ye rills! <br />The stainers have decreed the stains shall stay. <br />They chain the hands might wash the stains away. <br />They wait with cold hearts till we "rue the day". <br /> <br /> O Mother-Earth <br /> Of Titan birth, <br />Thy mother's-milk is curdled with aloe. <br />-- Like hills, Men, lift calm heads through any woe, <br />And weep, but bow not an inch, for any foe! <br /> <br /> Thou Sorrow-height <br /> We climb by night, <br />Thou hast no hell-deep chasm save Disgrace. <br />To stoop, will fling us down its fouled space: <br />Stand proud! The Dawn will meet us, face to face, <br />For down steep hills the Dawn loves best to race!<br /><br />Sidney Lanier<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/our-hills/
