Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, LAST OF THE VIRGIN SOD, by R. G. RUSTE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

LAST OF THE VIRGIN SOD, by                    
First Line: We broke today on the homestead
Last Line: To have marred that work of god?
Subject(s): God; Landscape; Nature - Religious Aspects


We broke today on the homestead
The last of the virgin sod,
And a haunting feeling oppressed me
That we marred a work of God.

A fragrance rose from the furrow,
A fragrance both young and old.
It was fresh with the dew of the morning,
Yet aged with time untold.

The creak of leather and clevis,
The rip of the coulter blade,
And we wreck what God with the labor
Of countless years has made.

I thought, while laying the last land,
Of the tropical sun and rains,
Of the jungles, oceans, and glaciers
Which had helped to make these plains;

Of monsters, horrid and fearful,
Which reigned in the land we plow,
And it seemed to me so presumptuous
Of man to claim it now.

So when, today, on the homestead,
We finished the virgin sod,
Is it strange I almost regretted
To have marred that work of God?





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