The Equinox (Volume I, Number VI)

THE EARTH THE child of miracle to the world, greeting. I reach my hands to the leaves and dabble in the dew: I sprinkle dew on you for kisses. I kneel down and hold the grass of the black earth to my bosom; I crush the earth to my lips as if it were a grape. And the wine of Demeter flushes my cheeks; they burn with joy of youth Why should I greet the world? Because my heart is bursting with love for the world. Love, say 1? Why not lust? Is not lust strength, and merriment, and the famine that only the infinite can stay? And why do I call myself the child of miracle? Because I have entered a second time into my mother’s womb and am born. Because to the knowledge of manhood has come the passion, even the folly, of adolescence ; with all its pride and purity. It is for this that you see me lying upon the thick wet grass, unquenchable; or rejoicing in the fat black loam. Now the manner of the miracle was this. In the beginning is given to a youth the vision of his mate. This one must he henceforth seek blindly; and many are the enchantments and disenchantments. Through this his vision fades; even his hunger dies away unless he be indeed Elect. But in the end it may be that God shall send him the other half of that Token 108