Welsh Journals

The Exiles GOD lent the life, He breathed upon the seed That leaves might lace the mother's hot-house heart And roots transmute her clay He banked the father's furnace that it feed With mid-day heat the arteries at night To keep the frost away. Nursed on its mother's breast, sealed from the grief Of winter, knowing only deep on deep Of wet and leafy mould, The little plant put out a pointed leaf Arching its spine to catch the beams that leap From glass dewed with the cold. Greener than corn that dulls the summer grass, Shining like petals of the hellebore That tease the new turned year As leaves came out they shaped a tier of stars, A crown without a jewel, waiting for The bud that still bent near. And then before the sepals broke, before Even a fringe could tell the hidden hue, The clutching roots, moist and Still warm with love, were pulled from the earthy floor Of the greenhouse, carried abroad and set into A hole dug in the sand. Sands of Egypt, dust of Shiloh, dust Of Babylon; these arid soils God chose For hardening His plants. Potipher's wife and sons of Eli must Beslime like snails, Daniel in Shinar know The bustle of palace ants. Prison walls must grind down Joseph's pride And little Samuel, dreaming he was home In Ramah, hearing through The olive trees and down the mountain side, His Mother calling, Come now, Samuel, come Before the dew wets you