The Virgin Mother

Who is that goddess to whom men should pray     But her from whom their hearts have turned away,     Out of whose virgin being they were born,     Whose mother nature they have named in scorn     Calling its holy substance common clay.     Yet from this so despised earth was made     The milky whiteness of those queens who swayed     Their generations with a light caress,     And from some image of whose loveliness     The heart built up high heaven when it prayed.     Lover, your heart, the heart on which it lies,     Your eyes that gaze, and those alluring eyes,     Your lips, the lips they kiss, alike had birth     Within this dark divinity of earth,     Within this mother being you despise.     Ah, when I think this earth on which we tread     Hath borne these blossoms of the lovely dead,     And made the living heart I love to beat,     I look with sudden awe beneath my feet     As you with erring reverence overhead.