In the forest, amid old trees and wet dead leaves,
a shrine.
Men on the wet leaves kneeling.
The spirit of God in the air above a shrine.
Now, America, you press your lips to mine,
Feel on your lips the throbbing of my blood.
Christ, come to life and life calling,
Sweet and strong.
Spring. God in the air above old fields.
Farmers marking fields for the planting of the corn.
Fields marked for corn to stand in long
straight aisles.
In the spring I press your body down on wet cold
new-plowed ground.
Men, give your souls to me.
I would have my sacred way with you.
In the forest, amid old trees and wet dead leaves,
a shrine.
Men rising from the kneeling place to sing.
Everywhere in the fields now the orderly planting
of corn.
Sherwood Anderson was born in Camden, Ohio, on September 13, 1876. Though best known for his fiction, such as Winesburg, Ohio (1919), he wrote two collections of poetry. Anderson died in 1941.
