An Asteroid Homesteader's Song

Three generations have gone by
And my granddaughters shall give birth
Before I ever come to fly
To holy Earth.

Crowned by old time, grey, blue and white
Veined marble worked by the devout;
The citadel from which the might
That's ours flowed out--

Where outpoured, once, as wounds pour blood,
A gush of folk with rocket wings,
And Earth's long-cultured hardihood
In arduous things:

Strong, wrapped in spaceship metal, kin
To folk in all the sky's four quarters:
Age after Age, all orbits spin
Through us, Earth's daughters

Who, exiled from the tightly curled
And thick-aired gravitational heart,
Lack limbs with strength to stand the world
Or break apart.

But still we steer by earthly beacon
And still hold faith with what Earth taught;
For though our limbs and lungs may weaken
Our hearts do not.