Consciousness.

From the first dawn, when God looked down,
Dreamed, and began His weaving
Of earth and all the firmament,
So man began believing.
Out of first man's first conscious joy,
Of taking, or of giving;
Out of his first imagined woe,
Was born all conscious living.
Not worship of an unknown god,
Through fear, or love, or duty,
But worship of the earth he knew,
And earth's abiding beauty.
As primal man wrote down, long since,
In blood, the worth of living,
So would I fight to make it worth,
The having—and the giving.
And, looking back, down aeons lost
Of time, to earth's beginning,
I have no doubt that what earth gave—
And took; was worth the winning.

E. Mary Gurney.

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