Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Earth and her Praisers lyrics

     The Earth is old
Six thousand winters make her heart a-cold
The sceptre slanteth from her palsied hold
She saith
"'Las me! God's word that I was 'good'
   Is taken back to heaven
From whence when any sound comes, I am riven
By some sharp bolt and now no angel would
Descend with sweet dew-silence
On my mountains
To glorify the lovely river fountains
   That gush along their side:
I see O weary change! I see instead
   This human wrath and pride
These thrones and tombs, judicial
Wrong and blood
And bitter words are poured upon mine head
'O Earth! thou art a stage for tricks unholy
A church for most remorseful melancholy
Thou art so spoilt, we should forget we had
An Eden in thee, wert thou not so sad!'


Sweet children, I am old! ye, every one
Do keep me from a portion of my sun
   Give praise in
Change for brightness!
That I may shake my hills in infiniteness
Of breezy laughter, as in youthful mirth
To hear Earth's sons and
Daughters praising Earth"

Whereupon a child began
With spirit running up to man
As by angels' shining ladder
(May he find no cloud above)
Seeming he had ne'er been sadder
 All his days than now
Sitting in the chestnut grove
With that joyous overflow
Of smiling from his mouth o'er brow
And cheek and chin, as if the breeze
Leaning tricksy from the trees
To part his golden hairs, had blown
Into an hundred smiles that one

"O rare, rare Earth!" he saith
 "I will praise thee presently
Not to day I have no breath:
 I have hunted squirrels three
Two ran down in the furzy hollow
Where I could not see nor follow
One sit's at the top of the filbert-tree
With a yellow nut and a mock at me:
 Presently it shall be done!
When I see which way these two have run
When the mocking one at the filbert-top
Shall leap a down and beside me stop
 Then, rare Earth, rare Earth
Will I pause, having known thy worth
 To say all good of thee!"

Next a lover, with a dream
'Neath his waking eyelids hidden
And a frequent sigh unbidden
And an idlesse all the day
Beside a wandering stream
And a silence that is made
Of a word he dares not say
Shakes slow his pensive head:
 "Earth, Earth!" saith he
"If spirit's, like thy roses, grew
On one stalk, and winds austere
Could but only blow them near
 To share each other's dew
If, when summer rains agree
To beautify thy hills, I knew
Looking off them I might see
 Some one very beauteous too
   Then Earth, " saith he
"I would praise nay, nay not thee!"

Will the pedant name her next?
Crabbèd with a crabbèd text
Sit's he in his study nook
With his elbow on a book
And with stately crossèd knees
And a wrinkle deeply thrid
Through his lowering brow
Caused by making proofs enow
That Plato in "Parmenides"
Meant the same Spinoza did
Or, that an hundred of the groping
Like himself, had made one Homer
Homeros being a misnomer
What hath he to do with praise
Of Earth or aught? Whene'er the sloping
Sunbeams through his window daze
His eyes off from the learned phrase
Straightway he draws close the curtain
May abstraction keep him dumb!
Were his lips to ope, 't is certain
"Derivatum est" would come

Then a mourner moveth pale
In a silence full of wail
Raising not his sunken head
Because he wandered last that way
With that one beneath the clay:
Weeping not, because that one
The only one who would have said
"Cease to weep, beloved!" has gone
Whence returneth comfort none
The silence breaketh suddenly
"Earth, I praise thee!" crieth he
"Thou hast a grave for also me"

Ha, a poet! know him by
The ecstasy-dilated eye
Not uncharged with tears that ran
Upward from his heart of man
By the cheek, from hour to hour
Kindled bright or sunken wan
With a sense of lonely power
By the brow uplifted higher
Than others, for more low declining
By the lip which words of fire
Overboiling have burned white
While they gave the nations light:
Ay, in every time and place
Ye may know the poet's face
 By the shade or shining

'Neath a golden cloud he stands
Spreading his impassioned hands
"O God's Earth!" he saith, "the sign
From the Father-soul to mine
Of all beauteous mysteries
Of all perfect images
Which, divine in His divine
In my human only are
Very excellent and fair!
Think not, Earth, that I would raise
Weary forehead in thy praise
(Weary, that I cannot go
Farther from thy region low)
If were struck no richer meanings
From thee than thyself the leaning
Of the close trees o'er the brim
Of a sunshine haunted stream
Have a sound beneath their leaves
 Not of wind, not of wind
Which the poet's voice achieves:
The faint mountains, heaped behind
Have a falling on their tops
 Not of dew, not of dew
Which the poet's fancy drops:
Viewless things his eyes can view
Driftings of his dream do light
All the skies by day and night
And the seas that deepest roll
Carry murmurs of his soul
'Earth, I praise thee! praise thou me!
God perfecteth his creation
With this recipient poet passion
And makes the beautiful to be
I praise thee, O belovèd sign
From the God-soul unto mine!
Praise me, that I cast on thee
The cunning sweet interpretation
The help and glory and dilation
 Of mine immortality!"

There was silence none did dare
To use again the spoken air
Of that far-charming voice, until
A Christian resting on the hill
With a thoughtful smile subdued
(Seeming learnt in solitude)
Which a weeper might have viewed
Without new tears, did softly say
And looked up unto heaven alway
While he praised the Earth
       "O Earth
I count the praises thou art worth
By thy waves that move aloud
By thy hills against the cloud
By thy valleys warm and green
By the copses' elms between
By their birds which, like a sprite
Scattered by a strong delight
Into fragments musical
Stir and sing in every bush
By thy silver founts that fall
As if to entice the stars at night
To thine heart by grass and rush
And little weeds the children pull
Mistook for flowers!
        Oh, beautiful
Art thou, Earth, albeit worse
Than in heaven is callèd good!
Good to us, that we may know
Meekly from thy good to go
While the holy, crying Blood
Puts it's music kind and low
'Twixt such ears as are not dull
 And thine ancient curse!

"Praisèd be the mosses soft
In thy forest pathways oft
And the thorns, which make us think
Of the thornless river-brink
 Where the ransomed tread:
Praisèd be thy sunny gleams
And the storm, that worketh dreams
 Of calm unfinishèd:
Praisèd be thine active days
And thy night-time's solemn need
When in God's dear book we read
 No night shall be therein:
Praisèd be thy dwellings warm
By household faggot's cheerful blaze
Where, to hear of pardoned sin
Pauseth oft the merry din
Save the babe's upon the arm
Who croweth to the crackling wood:
Yea, and, better understood
Praisèd be thy dwellings cold
Hid beneath the churchyard mould
Where the bodies of the saints
Separate from earthly taints
Lie asleep, in blessing bound
Waiting for the trumpet's sound
To free them into blessing none
Weeping more beneath the sun
Though dangerous words of human love
Be graven very near, above

"Earth, we Christians praise thee thus
Even for the change that comes
With a grief from thee to us:
For thy cradles and thy tombs
For the pleasant corn and wine
And summer heat and also for
The frost upon the sycamore
 And hail upon the vine!"