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Mary Webb. “The Spirit of Earth.” Manuscript poem, one leaf, 5″ x 7½″, on off-white laid ruled paper, twelve lines in three stanzas, black ink. Roughly trimmed from a larger sheet. One faint crease and one small margin tear. The title line (in smaller script, and crowded against the top edge of the paper) may have been added after the body of the poem was written. In her poems and novels, Webb depicted the physical features, details and moods of her Shropshire countryside with lucidly and accuracy. At the same time, she imbued this external world with allegorical meaning, the physical qualities becoming symbols of human experience.