"The Great Mother"

The Great Mother

A little square of emerald green,

        Fenced in by walls of lusty trees;

Out of the forest dense and wild,

        Baring its breast to sun and breeze.

“O happy, peaceful mead!” I said;

        “How sweet, how sweet to lie and dream

Without a sorrow or regret—

        Indifferent to wind and beam.”

Who will believe that mead took voice

        And spake with longing unrepressed:

“What dost thou know of passionate grief?

        I have borne great trees on my breast!

“Have felt their slender fingers twine

        What time I yielded nourishment,

And while my strength ebbed to their veins

        My brown breast swelled in proud content.

“And I have watched them grow to age,—

        I, mother of that forest wild,

And sweet and strong and beautiful,—

        And counted every one my child.

“But men—the puny, pigmy things!—

        Beat axes thro’ those noble veins

And drained their life-sap. . . . At each blow

        My poor heart bled in anguished pains.

“And all those tiny rootlets were

        Love-fibres reaching my heart’s core,

And every one was wrenched apart—

        Dost thou not think my wounds are sore?

“ ‘How sweet,’ thou sayest, ‘to lie and dream

        Without a longing or regret!’. . . . 

Has thou borne children on thy breast?

        Tell me: what mother can forget?”

"The Great Mother" published in an unidentified publication, clipping courtesy of the Ella Higginson Papers, Center for Pacific Northwest Studies, Heritage Resources, Western Washington University, Bellingham WA.