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 Washington.