CHORUS

If with voice of words or prayers thy sons may reach thee,
 We thy latter sons, the men thine after-birth,
 We the children of thy grey-grown age, O Earth,
O our mother everlasting, we beseech thee,
By the sealed and secret ages of thy life;
 By the darkness wherein grew thy sacred forces;
 By the songs of stars thy sisters in their courses;
By thine own song hoarse and hollow and shrill with strife;
By thy voice distuned and marred of modulation;
 By the discord of thy measure's march with theirs;
 By the beauties of thy bosom, and the cares;
By thy glory of growth, and splendour of thy station;
By the shame of men thy children, and the pride;
 By the pale-cheeked hope that sleeps and weeps and passes,
 As the grey dew from the morning mountain-grasses;
By the white-lipped sightless memories that abide;
By the silence and the sound of many sorrows;
 By the joys that leapt up living and fell dead;
 By the veil that hides thy hands and breasts and head,
Wrought of divers-coloured days and nights and morrows;
Isis, thou that knowest of God what worlds are worth,
 Thou the ghost of God, the mother uncreated,
 Soul for whom the floating forceless ages waited
As our forceless fancies wait on thee, O Earth;
Thou the body and soul, the father-God and mother,
 If at all it move thee, knowing of all things done
 Here where evil things and good things are not one,
But their faces are as fire against each other;
By thy morning and thine evening, night and day;
 By the first white light that stirs and strives and hovers
 As a bird above the brood her bosom covers,
By the sweet last star that takes the westward way;
By the night whose feet are shod with snow or thunder,
 Fledged with plumes of storm, or soundless as the dew;
 By the vesture bound of many-folded blue
Round her breathless breasts, and all the woven wonder;
By the golden-growing eastern stream of sea;
 By the sounds of sunrise moving in the mountains;
 By the forces of the floods and unsealed fountains;
Thou that badest man be born, bid man be free.

GREECE

I am she that made thee lovely with my beauty
 From north to south:
Mine, the fairest lips, took first the fire of duty
 From thine own mouth.
Mine, the fairest eyes, sought first thy laws and knew them
 Truths undefiled;
Mine, the fairest hands, took freedom first into them,
 A weanling child.
By my light, now he lies sleeping, seen above him
 Where none sees other;
By my dead that loved and living men that love him;
 (Cho.) Hear us, O mother.

ITALY

I am she that was the light of thee enkindled
 When Greece grew dim;
She whose life grew up with man's free life, and dwindled
 With wane of him.
She that once by sword and once by word imperial
 Struck bright thy gloom;
And a third time, casting off these years funereal,
 Shall burst thy tomb.
By that bond 'twixt thee and me whereat affrighted
 Thy tyrants fear us;
By that hope and this remembrance reunited;
 (Cho.) O mother, hear us.

SPAIN

I am she that set my seal upon the nameless
 West worlds of seas;
And my sons as brides took unto them the tameless
 Hesperides.
Till my sins and sons through sinless lands dispersed,
 With red flame shod,
Made accurst the name of man, and thrice accursed
 The name of God.
Lest for those past fires the fires of my repentance
 Hell's fume yet smother,
Now my blood would buy remission of my sentence;
 (Cho.) Hear us, O mother.

FRANCE

I am she that was thy sign and standard-bearer,
 Thy voice and cry;
She that washed thee with her blood and left thee fairer,
 The same was I.
Were not these the hands that raised thee fallen and fed thee,
 These hands defiled?
Was not I thy tongue that spake, thine eye that led thee,
 Not I thy child?
By the darkness on our dreams, and the dead errors
 Of dead times near us;
By the hopes that hang around thee, and the terrors;
 (Cho.) O mother, hear us.

RUSSIA

I am she whose hands are strong and her eyes blinded
 And lips athirst
Till upon the night of nations many-minded
 One bright day burst:
Till the myriad stars be molten into one light,
 And that light thine;
Till the soul of man be parcel of the sunlight,
 And thine of mine.
By the snows that blanch not him nor cleanse from slaughter
 Who slays his brother;
By the stains and by the chains on me thy daughter;
 (Cho.) Hear us, O mother.

SWITZERLAND

I am she that shews on mighty limbs and maiden
 Nor chain nor stain;
For what blood can touch these hands with gold unladen,
 These feet what chain?
By the surf of spears one shieldless bosom breasted
 And was my shield,
Till the plume-plucked Austrian vulture-heads twin-crested
 Twice drenched the f