Son of the Earth, brave flinger of the seed,
Strider of furrows, copesmate of the morn,
Which, stirr’d with quickenings now of day unborn,
Approves the mystery of thy fruitful deed;
Thou, young in hope and old as man’s first need,
Through all the hours that laugh, the hours that mourn,
Hold’st to one strenuous faith, by time unworn,
Sure of the miracle—that the clod will breed.
Dark is this upland, pallid still the sky,
And man, rude bondslave of the glebe, goes forth
To labour; serf, yet genius of the soil,
Great his abettors—a confederacy
Of mightiest Powers, old laws of heaven and earth,
Foresight and Faith, and ever-during Toil.