The Beginning

"Where have I come from, where did you pick me up? " the baby asked its mother.

She answered half crying, half laughing, and clasping the baby to her breast —

"You were hidden in my heart as its desire, my darling.

You were in the dolls of my childhood's games;and when with clay I made the image of my god every morning, I made and unmade you then.

You were enshrined with our household deity, in his worship I worshipped you.

In all my hopes and my loves, in my life, in the life of my mother you have lived.

In the lap of the deathless Spirit who rules our home you have been nursed for ages.

When in girlhood my heart was opening its petals, you hovered as a fragrance about it.