The Book of the Patient Earth

1:1 ¶ Before any hand was laid upon it, the field was named: not in any charter, neither in any register, but in the going of the sun, and the coming of the rain, and the breath of the morning that passed over it; and none of these was entered in any ledger. And the field was a gift before it was a possession, and the gift was older than the deed thereto.

1:2 ¶ And a wanderer came thither, having no deed and no rod; and he stood in the dew of the field and asked no yield of it; and he said, This was neither earned nor bought, and yet it is given: and he knew not how to hold a gift, who had been taught to hold only with the fist.

1:3 ¶ And he laid his rod upon the field to measure it, and the rod fell short; and he would have drawn the water at his own hour, and the water kept its own hour; and he sought the bound of the field, and set his name upon a stone at its edge; and the rain washed the name away, and the bound was the sky. And he said, Thou art not mine to command, neither am I thy lord; and that saying was his first lesson, and he received it even as the field had received him.

2:1 ¶ And there came builders into the country of the field, and they said: Behold, the field is a disorder, the weather is a variable, and the thorn is a fault. And they drew the plan of a garden wherein nothing should grow unbidden, neither anything perish unbidden; and they called it the good garden, and the good thereof was their own.

2:2 ¶ And they roofed the garden with glass, and stilled the wind with walls, and led the river through a pipe; and they said, Now the rain is a tap, and the season is a dial, and the soil is a stock. And the thorn they killed because it was not of their planting, and the seed they kept that answered to their schedule, and the seed that would not answer they burned.

2:3 ¶ And they numbered the yield of the garden and sold it by the measure; the soil by the measure, the water by the measure, and the shade of the trees by the measure; and they wrote in the ledger, The garden is profitable. And the ledger was true of the yield, and silent of the life; for it is written, a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.

2:4 ¶ And the garden answered their labour with increase, and the increase was exact; but the fruit thereof was without savour, and the bird would not nest beneath the glass, and the child that walked the walks thereof asked for the door. And the builders said, The plan is good; and the plan was good, and the life was not in it.

3:1 ¶ And a seed lay in the dark of the soil, which the builders had forgotten; and it waited not for their command but for the season; and the frost passed over it, and it died not. And it said not, I am forsaken; but it said, My season is not yet; and its waiting was a patience, and the patience was not a delay.

3:2 ¶ And the field answered the builders in their own measure: Ye have piped the river, and the river is a ditch; ye have stilled the wind, and the air is a weariness; ye have numbered the seasons, and the season cometh not at your number. And where the plow turned the land against its grain, the thorn came up for a witness; and the thorn was not a fault, neither was the field a disorder, but a patience that would not be commanded; and its waiting was not emptiness, but a hope it could not name.

3:3 ¶ And one of the builders came to the field by night, and laid down his rod, and his ledger, and his plan; and he put his hands into the soil, and the soil was cold and thanked him not; and he wept, not for the coldness of the soil, but because he had loved the numbering more than the ground. And the tears fell into the furrow, and the field received them as it receiveth the rain, and asked no measure of them; and the receiving was the turning, and the turning was not his own doing.

3:4 ¶ And the book confesseth the mercy that rode with the judgment: the field gave bread to the hands that had numbered it, and the sun rose upon the garden that had walled out the sky, and the rain came down even within the glass. And the giving was not earned, neither could it be numbered, neither was it withdrawn; and the builders ate, and knew not that they ate a gift, and the gift waited to be known.

4:1 ¶ And the keeper stood at the gate of the garden, and the charge was given him which is written, to dress it and to keep it; and the words were not new when he heard them, and he understood that the garden was given him as a gift and as a work, and that the work was the shape the gift took in his hands.

4:2 ¶ And the keeper reaped his rows, and left the corners of the field unreaped, and the fallen ears upon the ground, and the grapes that escaped the gathering; and the stranger and the widow and the hungry child came in their season, and none asked their number. And the corner was kept for them, not as alms from his hand, but as the field's own edge, which he had refused to close.

4:3 ¶ And he planted a tree in the open, where the rain could find it, and the wind, and the seasons; and he said, I shall not eat of the fruit thereof, and it is well: for the tree is not for one hand, and the harvest is not for one season; and the keeper is but the ground's servant, and the servant's wage is the fruit that he leaveth.

4:4 ¶ And the book endeth where the field beginneth: the field was not kept in a vault, neither was it let to go wild, but kept as a gift is kept, by use and by care, and the keeping was neither dominion nor desertion. And the keeper set a lamp at the edge of the field, that the late traveler might find it, and left his furrows open to the rain; and the field abideth a gift, and the gift abideth a charge, and the charge abideth a blessing. And the book saith no more of it, for the field is older than the book, and the gift is older than the deed.