We called her Mother Earth. Because she gave birth to us, and then we sucked her dry.
Each of us inevitable;
Each of us limitless—each of us with his or her right upon the earth.
Earth, the mother of all,
Moves on her stedfast way,
Gathering, flinging, sowing.
Mortals, we live in her day,
She in her children is growing.
Now days are dragon-ridden, the nightmare
Rides upon sleep: a drunken soldiery
Can leave the mother, murdered at her door,
To crawl in her own blood, and go scot-free.
For all that Nature by her mother-wit
Could frame in earth.
Be humble, as you crawl beneath our rods!—
Our touch can alter all created things,
We are everything on earth—except The Gods!
The time was fast approaching when Earth, like all mothers, must say farewell to her children.
The common growth of Mother Earth
Suffices me,—her tears, her mirth,
Her humblest mirth and tears.
Today, in Afghanistan, a girl will be born. Her mother will hold her and feed her, comfort her and care for her — just as any mother would anywhere in the world. In these most basic acts of human nature, humanity knows no divisions.
Of all that breathes and crawls across the earth,
our mother earth breeds nothing feebler than a man.