Earth daughter
Her golden cheeks,
Ripening wheat,
Her
Gentle gait,
Tender grass prancing,
Young full body,
Like the palm trees,
Gracefully moving,
In the scented breeze,
The coarsely-clad
Shy maiden,
Standing alone in the
Rolling green fields,
In the secluded valley,
On this splendid morning,
Tending the field for her family,
That resides merrily,
In a rough dewlling,
In the village outlined,
In the background
In the shivering fog,
Sweeping down the
Serpentine black road,
The big family that lives
By the sweat of their brows;
A happy daughter,
Bursting out of the earth,
Like the modern-day Artemis,
Dazzling everyone with
Her purity and innocence,
This shy earth-daughter,
A solitary reaper-figure
Seen earlier by wandering Romantic poet,
Then forgotten again,
And rediscovered, outside
An Indian suburb,
By a distant descendant
Of W. Wordsworth.
The narrator’s voice in ” Earth Daughter ” exhibits a jeweller’s eye for detail and a true craftsman’s lightness of touch in its composition.