Touch the Earth

By: Henry Beston

“Nature is part of our humanity, and without some awareness and experience of that divine mystery, man ceases to be man.

—Henry Beston

The world today is sick to its thin blood
for lack of elemental things, for fire
before the hands, for water welling
from the earth, for air, for the
dear earth itself underfoot. In
my world of beach and dunes these
elemental presences lived and had
their being, and under their
arch there moved an incomparable
pageant of nature and the year…

Hold your hands out over
the earth as over a flame.
To all who love her, who
open to her the doors
of their veins, she gives
of her strength,
sustaining them with
her own measureless
tremor of dark life.

Touch the earth, love
the earth, honour the
earth,
her plains,
her valleys,
her hills,
and her seas;
rest your spirit
in her solitary places.

For the gifts of life
are the earth’s and they
are given to all, and they
are the songs of birds at
daybreak, Orion and the Bear,
and dawn seen over ocean
from the beach.

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You can find this passage in Henry Beston’s necessary book — The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod.

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