Page:Frank Owen - Rare Earth, 1931.djvu/275

 their entire lives lived merely to utter one bit of sound in the vast concert?

Perhaps after all his father was right. The soil is the single worth-while thing to which man may clutch. The soil gives life and strength. It is the source of energy. It alone justifies its being. Man springs from the soil and to the soil he returns eventually. We are all earth-children. No use to try to shake off the shackles, to break free from the soil. It reaches out even unto the cities and claims its due. But the soil is serene. It is the mother of trees and flowers, it is the mother of all human life.

And he thought of a verse which Hung Long Tom had once recited to him: The Snow fell Like a bridal veil, Covering the warm body Of the Earth. It was the night That Earth And Sky were wed. And round the hazy Moon