It knows no appeasing
It know no greed.
Its seed is hunger,
Its soil is need.
You will sow and tend
And at last there will rise
A harvest that almost
Satisfies.
–From Because It’s Here (written in 1944?)
Creativity
Working Knowledge
A human being needs some pride in knowing
Some thing that he himself can verify,
If it’s no more than the proper time for hoeing
And planting beans, or how to still the cry
Of newborn things; he needs decisive acts
That keep his knowledge clear-cut and unblurred,
To hold him steady in the midst of facts
For which he has to take another’s word.
Although it’s fine to know the sun consists
Of hot atomic gases, anyone
Who crumbles sun-warm earth in his own fists
To make it right for seedlings, works with sun,
And, doing what he knows and understands,
Is proud of having working knowledge in his hands.
–Think About These Things (written in 1947?)
John Muir’s Water Ouzel
The psalmist of the waterfalls,
It nests beside the mountain streams
And in my musings often calls
And often flashes through my dreams . . .
I have not seen, I have not heard,
The bird, not shall I hear or see,
But Muir with many a reverent word
Has loved it into life for me.
It sings, inviolate, apart,
Though he who loved it best is gone.
In many an awed and thankful heart
His love for it lives on and on.
–From Petals of Light (written in 1947?)