The poem
WHO is that goddess to whom men should pray, But her from whom their hearts have turned away, Out of whose virgin being they were born, Whose mother nature they have named with scorn Calling its holy substance common clay.
Yet from this so despised earth was made The milky whiteness of those queens who swayed Their generations with a light caress, And from some image of whose loveliness The heart built up high heaven when it prayed.
Lover, your heart, the heart on which it lies, Your eyes that gaze and those alluring eyes, Your lips, the lips they kiss, alike had birth Within that dark divinity of earth, Within that mother being you despise.
Ah, when I think this earth on which I tread Hath borne these blossoms of the lovely dead, And makes the living heart I love to beat, I look with sudden awe beneath my feet As you with erring reverence overhead.