The Earth-Bond

Surely both earth and heaven are God’s; and so He will not count it sin if I should love More than the unknown heaven above His dear earth that I know.

Meadow and sea and sky, and storm and shine, Glad voices that from croft and coppice call, The city loud with life, and all Of mortal and divine

That make this earth akin to you and me, Partner in hopes we live by or regret-- Dear are they all, and dearer yet Some human two or three.

So that, as one in sleep may leave his bed And, blindly drawn to haunts he loved by day, Walk through an old familiar way With sure, unconscious tread,

In the last sleep, if I should dream and do Even as thus some living sleeper might, I shall stray, ghost-like, in the night Home to the earth I knew.