{
 "id": "henry-van-dyke-jr/mother-earth",
 "title": "Mother Earth",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Henry van Dyke Jr.",
 "poet_slug": "henry-van-dyke-jr",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "The Poems of Henry Van Dyke",
 "book_slug": "poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 131,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1920,
  "venue": "The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1920)",
  "note": "Taken from the 1920 collected edition. That is the printing this text comes from, not the poem's first appearance: the volume gathers work published from 1897 onward, and which earlier book or magazine printed this poem first has not been established here.",
  "uncertain": true,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsofhenryvand00vandrich"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/henry-van-dyke-jr_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16229",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16134",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10679",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3525",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9372",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29314",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43094",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsofhenryvand00vandrich",
   "https://archive.org/details/buildersotherpoe00vandrich",
   "https://archive.org/details/toilingoffelixan00vandiala",
   "https://archive.org/details/musicotherpoems0000henr_c7v6",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsnowfirstcol00vanduoft",
   "https://archive.org/details/songsoutofdoors0000vand",
   "https://archive.org/details/thyseaisgreatour00vandiala",
   "https://archive.org/details/chosenpoems0000vand"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 24,
  "n_stanzas": 3,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 77,
  "max_indent": 0
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 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Mother of all the high-strung poets and singers departed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mother of all the grass that weaves over their graves the glory of the field,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mother of all the manifold forms of life, deep-bosomed, patient, impassive,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Silent brooder and nurse of lyrical joys and sorrows!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Out of thee, yea, surely out of the fertile depth below thy breast,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Issued in some strange way, thou lying motionless, voiceless,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All these songs of nature, rhythmical, passionate, yearning.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Coming in music from earth, but not unto earth returning.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Dust are the blood-red hearts that beat in time to these measures,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou hast taken them back to thyself, secretly, irresistibly",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Drawing the crimson currents of life down, down, down",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Deep into thy bosom again, as a river is lost in the sand.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But the souls of the singers have entered into the songs that revealed them⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Passionate songs, immortal songs of joy and grief and love and longing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Floating from heart to heart of thy children, they echo above thee:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Do they not utter thy heart, the voices of those that love thee?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Long hadst thou lain like a queen transformed by some old enchantment",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into an alien shape, mysterious, beautiful, speechless,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Knowing not who thou wert, till the touch of thy Lord and Lover",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wakened the man-child within thee to tell thy secret.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All of thy flowers and birds and forests and flowing waters",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Are but the rhythmical forms to reveal the life of the spirit;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou thyself, earth-mother, in mountain and meadow and ocean,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Holdest the poem of God, eternal thought and emotion.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}