Alma Mater

O mother Earth, by the bright sky above thee,
I love thee, O, I love thee!
And yet they say that I must leave thee soon;
And if it must be so,
Then to what sun or moon
Or star I am to go,
Or planet, matters not for me to know.
O mother Earth, by the bright sky above thee,
I love thee, O I love thee!

O, whither will you send me?
O, wherefore will you rend me
From your warm bosom, mother mine? —
I can't fix my affections
On a state of conic sections,
And I don't care how old Daedalus
May try to coax and wheedle us
With wings he manufactures,
Sure to end in compound fractures,
Or in headers at right-angles to the brine—
O mother Earth, by the bright sky above thee,
I love thee, O, I love thee!

I cannot leave thee, mother:
I love thee, and not another;
And I can't say " man and brother "
To a shadowy abstraction,
To an uncomfortable fraction,
To the skeletons of quiddities,
And similar stupidities.
Have mercy, mother, mercy!
The unjustest of novercae
Sometimes leaves off her snarlings
At her predecessor's darlings;
And thou art all my mother,
I know not any other.
O mother Earth, by the bright sky above thee,
I love thee, O, I love thee!

So let me leave thee never,
But cling to thee for ever,
And hover round thy mountains,
And flutter round thy fountains,
And pry into thy roses fresh and red;
And blush in all thy blushes,
And flush in all thy flushes,
And watch when thou art sleeping,
And weep when thou art weeping,
And be carried with thy motion,
As the rivers and the ocean,
As the great rocks and the trees arc,
And all the things one sees are —
O mother, this were glorious life,
This were not to be dead.
O mother Earth, by the bright sky above thee,
I love thee, O, I love thee!