Earth loves her young: a preference manifest: <br />She prompts them to her fruits and flower-beds; <br />Their beauty with her choicest interthreads, <br />And makes her revel of their merry zest; <br />As in our East much were it in our West, <br />If men had risen to do the work of heads. <br />Her gabbling grey she eyes askant, nor treads <br />The ways they walk; by what they speak oppressed. <br />How wrought they in their zenith? 'Tis not writ; <br />Not all; yet she by one sure sign can read: <br />Have they but held her laws and nature dear, <br />They mouth no sentence of inverted wit. <br />More prizes she her beasts than this high breed <br />Wry in the shape she wastes her milk to rear.<br /><br />George Meredith<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/earth-s-preference/
