Spencer Heath Archive

Item 646

Pencil by Heath on the back of a grocery advertisement.

No date

PRAYER FOR INTEGRITY

Lord, I am drawn from East to West and North to South

My being rises towards the

Born of the earth and nourished at her breast

My being rises towards the Sun, the Source whence came my mother’s life and mine

Yet needs must rest again on that sweet bosom

Ere

Doth light infuse itself into my soul direct

Or must the mortal eye, itself light-builded, through the brain transmit

Some finite part into my being’s ecstasy and pain

And constitute my vision, yea and my deathless dreams?

Doth life itself from the vast empyrean descend

And shape itself into the will and being that is I

But through the body of the Mother Earth

Who sweetens through her long travail

As we, her children, suckling at her breast

When life was only an escape from death