5467 lines
240 KiB
HTML
5467 lines
240 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
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<!DOCTYPE html>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:epub="http://www.idpf.org/2007/ops" lang="en-US" epub:prefix="z3998: http://www.daisy.org/z3998/2012/vocab/structure/, se: https://standardebooks.org/vocab/1.0" xml:lang="en-US">
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<head>
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<title>Poetry</title>
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<meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" name="viewport"/>
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<link rel="canonical" href="https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/voltairine-de-cleyre/poetry/text/single-page" />
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}
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nav + section,
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section + nav,
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section + section,
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section + article,
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article + section,
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article + article{
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body,
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and will just drop this entire query together if it's included. */
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*:target{
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}
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}
|
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]]></style>
|
||
</head>
|
||
<body><main>
|
||
<section id="titlepage" epub:type="titlepage frontmatter">
|
||
<h1 epub:type="title">Poetry</h1>
|
||
<p>By <b epub:type="z3998:author z3998:personal-name">Voltairine de Cleyre</b>.</p>
|
||
<img alt="" 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epub:type="se:image.color-depth.black-on-transparent"/>
|
||
</section>
|
||
<nav id="toc" epub:type="toc">
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">Table of Contents</h2>
|
||
<ol>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#titlepage">Titlepage</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#imprint">Imprint</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#the-burial-of-my-past-self">The Burial of My Past Self</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#night-on-the-graves">Night on the Graves</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#the-christians-faith">The Christian’s Faith</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#the-freethinkers-plea">The Freethinker’s Plea</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#to-my-mother">To My Mother</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#betrayed">Betrayed</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#optimism">Optimism</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#at-the-grave-in-waldheim">At the Grave in Waldheim</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#the-hurricane">The Hurricane</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#ut-sementem-feceris-ita-metes" lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ut Sementem Feceris, Ita Metes</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#the-dirge-of-the-sea">The Dirge of the Sea</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#bastard-born">Bastard Born</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#i-am">I Am</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#life-or-death">Life or Death</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#hymn">Hymn</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#you-and-i">You and I</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#the-toast-of-despair">The Toast of Despair</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#the-new-hope">The New Hope</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#in-memoriam-to-dyer-d-lum">In Memoriam</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#out-of-the-darkness">Out of the Darkness</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#mary-wollstonecraft">Mary Wollstonecraft</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#the-gods-and-the-people">The Gods and the People</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#john-p-altgeld">John <abbr epub:type="z3998:given-name">P.</abbr> Altgeld</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#the-cry-of-the-unfit">The Cry of the Unfit</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#in-memoriam-to-gen-m-m-trumbull">In Memoriam</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#the-wandering-jew">The Wandering Jew</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#the-feast-of-vultures">The Feast of Vultures</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#the-suicides-defense">The Suicide’s Defense</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#a-novel-of-color">A Novel of Color</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#germinal">Germinal</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#light-upon-waldheim">“Light Upon Waldheim”</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#loves-compensation">Love’s Compensation</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#santa-agueda">Santa Agueda</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#the-road-builders">The Road Builders</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#angiolillo">Angiolillo</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#ave-et-vale" lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ave et Vale</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#marsh-bloom">Marsh-Bloom</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#written-in-red">Written—in—Red</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#endnotes">Endnotes</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#colophon">Colophon</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li>
|
||
<a href="#uncopyright">Uncopyright</a>
|
||
</li>
|
||
</ol>
|
||
</nav>
|
||
<section id="imprint" epub:type="imprint frontmatter">
|
||
<header>
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">Imprint</h2>
|
||
<img alt="The Standard Ebooks logo." 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13.969%2C98.094L116.25%2C97L116.301%2C96.999C116.369%2C96.959%20116.406%2C96.937%20116.406%2C96.937L116.75%2C96.719L143.047%2C96.719L151%2C96.635Z%22%2F%3E%09%3Cpath%20d%3D%22m%2088.77419%2C52.4998%20c%20-4.66667%2C0%20-9.4386%2C3.43859%20-9.4386%2C8.8421%200%2C3.01755%202.03509%2C5.7193%205.50877%2C7.4386%203.4386%2C1.7193%206.52632%2C2.66667%206.52632%2C4.77193%200%2C2.70175%20-2.73684%2C2.8421%20-4.17544%2C2.8421%20-3.22807%2C0%20-7.08772%2C-3.26315%20-7.08772%2C-3.26315%20l%20-3.29824%2C5.54386%20c%200%2C0%204.10526%2C3.82456%2010.87719%2C3.82456%205.64912%2C0%2010.91228%2C-2.42105%2010.91228%2C-9.33334%200%2C-3.78947%20-3.54386%2C-6.52631%20-6.77193%2C-7.89473%20-3.29825%2C-1.40351%20-6.03509%2C-2.56141%20-6.03509%2C-4.17544%200%2C-1.57895%201.19298%2C-2.59649%203.4386%2C-2.59649%202.98245%2C0%205.85965%2C2%205.85965%2C2%20l%202.66666%2C-5.26316%20c%200%2C0%20-3.71929%2C-2.73684%20-8.98245%2C-2.73684%20Z%22%2F%3E%09%3Cpath%20d%3D%22m%20140.47341%2C52.4998%20-17.16363%2C0%200%2C30%2017.16363%2C0%200%2C-6%20-10.32727%2C0%200%2C-6.03637%209.89091%2C0%200%2C-6%20-9.89091%2C0%200%2C-5.96363%2010.32727%2C0%200%2C-6%20Z%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E" epub:type="z3998:publisher-logo se:image.color-depth.black-on-transparent"/>
|
||
</header>
|
||
<p>This ebook is the product of many hours of hard work by volunteers for <a href="https://standardebooks.org/">Standard Ebooks</a>, and builds on the hard work of other literature lovers made possible by the public domain.</p>
|
||
<p>This particular ebook is based on transcriptions from <a href="https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/voltairine-de-cleyre/poetry#transcriptions">various sources</a> and on digital scans from <a href="https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/voltairine-de-cleyre/poetry#page-scans">various sources</a>.</p>
|
||
<p>The source text and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the United States public domain; that is, they are believed to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. They may still be copyrighted in other countries, so users located outside of the United States must check their local laws before using this ebook. The creators of, and contributors to, this ebook dedicate their contributions to the worldwide public domain via the terms in the <a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/">CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication</a>. For full license information, see the <a href="uncopyright">Uncopyright</a> at the end of this ebook.</p>
|
||
<p>Standard Ebooks is a volunteer-driven project that produces ebook editions of public domain literature using modern typography, technology, and editorial standards, and distributes them free of cost. You can download this and other ebooks carefully produced for true book lovers at <a href="https://standardebooks.org/">standardebooks.org</a>.</p>
|
||
</section>
|
||
<article id="the-burial-of-my-past-self" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">The Burial of My Past Self</h2>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Poor Heart, so weary with thy bitter grief!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">So thou art dead at last, silent and chill!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The longed-for death-dart came to thy relief,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And there thou liest, Heart, forever still.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Dead eyes, pain-pressed beneath their black-fringed pall!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Dead cheeks, dark-furrowed with so many tears!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>So thou art passed far, far beyond recall,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And all thy hopes are past, and all thy fears.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Thy lips are closed at length in the long peace!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Pale lips! so long they have thy woe repressed,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>They seem even now when life has run its lease</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">All dumbly pitiful in their mournful rest.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>And now I lay thee in thy silent tomb,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Printing thy brow with one last solemn kiss;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Laying upon thee one fair lily bloom,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">A symbol of thy rest;—oh, rest is bliss.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>No, Heart, I would not call thee back again;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">No, no; too much of suffering hast thou known;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>But yet, but yet, it was not all in vain—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Thy unseen tears, thy solitary moan!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>For out of sorrow joy comes uppermost;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Where breaks the thunder soon the sky smiles blue;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>A better love replaces what is lost,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And phantom sunlight pales before the true!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>The seed must burst before the germ unfolds,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The stars must fade before the morning wakes;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Down in her depths the mine the diamond holds;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">A new heart pulses when the old heart breaks.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>And now, Humanity, I turn to you;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">I consecrate my service to the world!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Perish the old love, welcome to the new—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Broad as the space-aisles where the stars are whirled!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<footer>
|
||
<p>Greenville, <abbr epub:type="z3998:place">Mich.</abbr>, <time datetime="1885">1885</time>.</p>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="night-on-the-graves" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">Night on the Graves</h2>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>O’er the sweet, quiet homes in the silent grave-city,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Softly the dewdrops, the night-tears, fall;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Broadly about, like the wide arms of pity,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The silver-shot darkness lies over all.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Heroes, asleep ’neath the red-hearted rose-wreaths,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Leaf-crowned with honor, flower-crowned with rest,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Gently above you each moon-dripping bough breathes</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>A far-echoed whisper, “Sleep well; ye are blest.”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Oh! never, as long as the heart pulses quicker</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>At the dear name of Country may yours be forgot;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Nor may we, till the last puny life spark shall flicker,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Your deeds from the tablets of Memory blot!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Spirits afloat in the night-shrouds that bound us,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Souls of the “Has-Been” and of the “To-Be,”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Keep the fair light of Liberty shining around us,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Till our souls may go back to the mighty <strong>soul-sea</strong>.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<footer>
|
||
<p><abbr>St.</abbr> Johns, <abbr epub:type="z3998:place">Mich.</abbr>, <time datetime="1886-05-30">1886 (Decoration Day)</time>.</p>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="the-christians-faith" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<header>
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">The Christian’s Faith</h2>
|
||
<p epub:type="bridgehead">(The two following poems were written at that period of my life when the questions of the existence of God and the divinity of Jesus had but recently been settled, and they present the pros and cons which had been repeating themselves over and over again in my brain for some years.)</p>
|
||
</header>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>We contrast light and darkness—light of God,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And darkness from the Stygian shades of hell;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Fumes of the pit infernal rising up</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Have clouded o’er the brain, laid reason low;—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>For when the eye looks on fair Nature’s face</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And sees not God, then is she blind indeed!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>No night so starless, even in its gloom,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>As his who wanders on without a hope</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>In that great, just Hereafter all must meet!—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>No heart so dull, so heavy, and so void,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>As that which lives for this chill world alone!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>No soul so groveling, unaspiring, base,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>As that which, here, forgets the afterhere!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And still through all the darkness and the gloom</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Its voice will not be stilled, its hopes be quenched;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>It cries, it screams, it struggles in its chains,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And bleeds upon the altar of the mind—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Unwilling sacrifice to thought misled.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The soul that knows no God can know no peace.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Thus speaketh light, the herald of our God!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>In that far dawn where shone each rolling world</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>First lit with shadowed splendor of the stars,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>In that fair morning when Creation sang</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Its praise of God, e’er yet it dreamed of sin,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Pure and untainted as the source of life</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Man dwelt in Eden. There no shadows came,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>No question of the goodness of our Lord,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Until the prince of darkness tempted man,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And, yielding to the newly born desire,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>He fell! Sank in the mire of ignorance!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And Man, who put himself in Satan’s power,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Since then has wandered far in devious ways,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Seeing but now and then a glimpse of light,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Till Christ is come, the living Son of God!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Far in his heavenly home he viewed the world,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Saw all her sadness and her sufferings,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Saw all her woes, her struggles, and her search</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>For some path leading up from out the Night.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Within his breast the fount of tears was touched;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>His great heart swelled with pity, and he said:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“Father, I go to save the world from sin.”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ah! What power but a soul divinely clad</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>In purity, in holiness and love,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Could leave a home of happiness and light</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>For this lost World of suffering and death?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>He came: the World tossed groaning in her sleep;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>He touched her brow: the nightmare passed away;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>He soothed her heart, red with the stain of sin;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And she forgot her guilt in penitence;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>She washed the ruby out with pearls of tears.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>He came, he suffered, and he died for us;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>He felt the bitterest woes a soul can feel;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>He probed the darkest depths of human grief;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>He sounded all the deeps and shoals of pain;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Was cursed for all his love; thanked with the cross,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Whereon he hung nailed, bleeding, glorified,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>As the last smoke of holocaust divine.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“Ah! This was all two thousand years ago!”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Two thousand years ago, and still he cries,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>With voice sweet calling through the distant dark:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“O souls that labor, struggling in your pain,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Come unto me, and I will give you rest!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>For every woe of yours, and every smart,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>I, too, have felt:—the mockery, the shame,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The sneer, the scoffing lip, the hate, the lust,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The greed of gain, the jealousy of man,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Unstinted have been measured out to me.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>I know them all, I feel them all with you!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And I have known the pangs of poverty,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The cry of hunger and the weary heart</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Of childhood burdened with the weight of age!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>O sufferers, ye all are mine to love!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The pulse-beats of my heart go out with you,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And every drop of agony that drips</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>From my nailed hands adown this bitter cross,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Cries out, ‘O God! accept the sacrifice,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And ope the gates of heaven to the world!’</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ye vermin of the garret, who do creep</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Your weary lives away within its walls;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ye children of the cellar, who behold</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The sweet, pale light, strained through the lothsome air</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And doled to you in tid-bits, as a thing</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Too precious for your use; ye rats in mines,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Who knaw within the black and somber pits</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To seek poor living for your little ones;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ye women who stitch out your lonely lives,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Unmindful whether sun or stars keep watch;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ye slaves of wheels; ye worms that bite the dust</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Where pride and scorn have ground you ’neath the heel;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ye Toilers of the earth, ye weary ones—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>I know your sufferings, I feel your woes;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>My peace I give you; in a little while</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The pain will all be over, and the grave</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Will sweetly close above your folded hands!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And then?—Ah, Death, no conqueror art thou!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>For I have loosed thy chains; I have unbarred</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The gates of heaven! In my Father’s house</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Of many mansions I prepare a place;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And rest is there for every heart that toils!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Oh, all ye sick and wounded ones who grieve</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>For the lost health that ne’er may come again;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ye who do toss upon a couch of pain,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Upon whose brow disease has laid his hand,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Within whose eyes the dull and heavy sight</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Burns like a taper burning very low,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Upon whose lips the purple fever-kiss</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Rests his hot breath, and dries the sickened palms,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Scorches the flesh and e’en the very air;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ye who do grope along without the light;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ye who do stumble, halting on your way;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ye whom the world despises as unclean;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Know that the death-free soul has none of these:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The unbound spirit goes unto its God,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Pure, whole, and beauteous as newly born!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Oh, all ye mourners, weeping for the dead;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Your tears I gather as the grateful rain</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Which rises from the sea and falls again,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To nurse the withering flowers from its touch;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>No drop is ever lost! They fall again</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To nurse the blossoms of some other heart!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>I would not dry one single dew of grief:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The sorrow-freighted lashes which bespeak</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The broken heart and soul are dear to me;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>I mourn with them, and mourning so I find</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The grief-bowed soul with weeping oft grows light!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>But yet ye mourn for them not without hope:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Beyond the woes and sorrows of the earth,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>As stars still shine though clouds obscure the sight,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The friends ye mourn as lost immortal live;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And ye shall meet and know their souls again,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Through death transfigured, through love glorified!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Oh, all ye patient waiters for reward,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Scorned and despised by those who know not worth,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>I know your merit and I give you hope;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>For in my Father’s law is justice found.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>See how the seed-germ, toiling underground,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Waits patiently for time to burst its shell;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And by and by the golden sunlight warms</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The dark, cold earth; the germ begins to shoot.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And upward trends until two small green leaves</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Unfold and wave and drink the pure, fresh air.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The blossoms come and go with Summer’s breath,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And Autumn brings the fruit-time in her hand.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>So ye, who patient watch and wait and hope,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Trusting the sun may bring the blossoms out,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Shall reap the fruited labor by and by.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>I am your friend; I wait and hope with you,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Rejoice with you when the hard vict’ry’s won!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And still for you, O prisoners in cells,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>I hold the dearest gifts of penitence,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Forgiveness and charity and hope!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>I stretch the hands of mercy through the bars;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>White hands—like doves they bring the branch of peace!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Repent, believe—and I will expiate</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Upon this bitter cross all your deep guilt!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Oh, take my gift, accept my sacrifice!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>I ask no other thing but only—trust!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Oh, all ye martyrs, bleeding in your chains;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Oh, all ye souls that live for others’ good;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Oh, all ye mourners, all ye guilty ones,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And all ye suffering ones, come unto me!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ye are all my brothers, all my sisters, all!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And as I love one, so I love you all.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Accept my love, accept my sacrifice;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Make not my cross more bitter than it is</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>By shrinking from the peace I bring to you!”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<footer>
|
||
<p><abbr>St.</abbr> Johns, <abbr epub:type="z3998:place">Mich.</abbr>, <time datetime="1887-04">April, 1887</time>.</p>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="the-freethinkers-plea" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">The Freethinker’s Plea</h2>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Grand eye of Liberty, light up my page!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Like promised morning after night of age</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Thy dawning youth breaks in the distant east!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Thy cloudy robes like silken curtains creased</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And swung in folds are floating fair and free!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The shadows of the cycles turn and flee;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The budding stars, bright minds that gemmed the night,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Are bursting into broad, bright-petaled light!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Sweet Liberty, how pure thy very breath!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>How dear in life, how doubly dear in death!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ah, slaves that suffer in your self-forged chains,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Praying your Christ to touch and heal your pains,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Tear off your shackling irons, unbind your eyes,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Seize the grand hopes that burn along the skies!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Worship not God in temples built of gloom;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Far sweeter incense is the flower-bloom</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Than all the fires that Sacrifice may light;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And grander is the star-dome gleaming bright</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>With glowing worlds, than all your altar lamps</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Pale flickering in your clammy, vaulted damps;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And richer is the broad, full, fair sun sheen,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Dripping its orient light in streams between</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The fretted shafting of the forest trees,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Throwing its golden kisses to the breeze,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Lifting the grasses with its finger-tips,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And pressing the young blossoms with warm lips,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Show’ring its glory over plain and hill,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Wreathing the storm and dancing in the rill;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Far richer in wild freedom falling there,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Shaking the tresses of its yellow hair,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Than all subdued within the dim half-light</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Of stained glass windows, drooping into night.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Oh, grander far the massive mountain walls</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Which bound the vista of the forest halls,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Than all the sculptured forms which guard the piles</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>That arch your tall, dim, gray, cathedral aisles!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And gladder is the carol of a bird</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Than all the anthems that were ever heard</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To steal in somber chanting from the tone</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Of master voices praising the Unknown.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>In the great wild, where foot of man ne’er trod,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>There find we Nature’s church and Nature’s God!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Here are no fetters! though is free as air;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Its flight may spread far as its wings may dare;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And through it all one voice cries, “God is love,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And love is God!” Around, within, above,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Behold the working of the perfect law—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The law immutable in which no flaw</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Exists, and from which no appeal is made;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ev’n as the sunlight chases far the shade</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And shadows chase the light in turn again,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>So every life is fraught with joy and pain;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The stinging thorn lies hid beside the rose;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The bud is blighted ere its leave unclose;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>So pleasure born of Hope may oft-time yield</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>A stinging smart of thorns, a barren field!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>But let it be: the buds will bloom again,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The fields will freshen in the summer rain;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And never storm scowls dark but still, somewhere,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>A bow is bending in the upper air.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Then learn the law if thou wouldst live aright;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And know no unseen power, no hand of might,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Can set aside the law which wheels the stars;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>No incompleteness its perfection mars;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The buds will wake in season, and the rain</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>will fall when clouds hang heavy, and again</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The snows will tremble when the winter’s breath</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Congeals the cloud-tears, as the touch of Death</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Congeals the last drop on the sufferer’s cheek.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Thus do all Nature’s tongues in chorus speak:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“Think not, O man, that thou canst e’er escape</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>One jot of Justice’s law, nor turn thy fate</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>By yielding sacrifice to the Unseen!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Purged by thyself alone canst thou be clean.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>One guide to happiness thou mayst learn:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>
|
||
<em>Love toward the world begets love in return.</em>
|
||
</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And if to others you the measure mete</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Of love, be sure your harvest will be sweet;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>But if ye sow broadcast the seed of hate,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ye’ll reap again, albeit ye reap it late.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Then let your life-work swell the great flood-tide</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Of love towards all the world; the world is wide,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The sea of life is broad; its waves stretch far;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>No range, no barrier, its sweep may bar;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The world is filled, is trodden down with pain;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The sea of life is gathered up of rain—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>A throat, a bed, a sink, for human tears,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>A burial of hopes, a miasm of fears!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>But see! the sun of love shines softly out,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Flinging its golden fingers all about,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Pressing its lips in loving, soft caress,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Upon the world’s pale cheek; the pain grows less,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The tears are dried upon the quivering lashes,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>An answering sunbeam ’neath the white lids flashes!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The sea of life is dimpled o’er with smiles,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The sun of love the cloud of woe beguiles,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And turns its heavy brow to forehead fair,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Framed in the glory of its sun-gilt hair.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Be thine the warming touch, the kiss of love;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Vainly ye seek for comfort from above,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Vainly ye pray the Gods to ease your pain;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The heavy words fall back on you again!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Vainly ye cry for Christ to smooth your way;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The thorns sting sharper while ye kneeling pray!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Vainly ye look upon the world of woe,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And cry, “O God, avert the bitter blow!”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ye cannot turn the lightning from its track,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Nor call one single little instant back;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The law swerves not, and with unerring aim</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The shaft of justice falls; he bears the blame</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Who violates the rule: do well your task,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>For justice overtakes you all at last.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Vainly ye patient ones await reward,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Trusting th’ Almighty’s angel to record</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Each bitter tear, each disappointed sigh;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Reward descends not, gifted from on high,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>But is the outgrowth of the eternal law:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>As from the earth the toiling seed-germs draw</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The food which gives them life and strength to bear</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The storms and suns which sweep the upper air,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>So ye must draw from out the pregnant earth</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The metal true wherewith to build your worth;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>So shall ye brave the howling of the blast,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And smile triumphant o’er the storm at last.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Nor dream these trials are without their use;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Between your joys and griefs ye cannot choose,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And say your life with either is complete:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ever the bitter mingles with the sweet.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The dews must press the petals down at night,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>If in the dawning they would glisten bright;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>If sunbeams needs must ripen out the grain</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Not less the early blades must woo the rain:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>If now your eyes be wet with weary tears,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ye’ll gather them as gems in after years;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And if the rains now sodden down your path,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ye’ll reap rich harvest in the aftermath.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ye idle mourners, crying in your grief,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The souls ye weep have found the long relief:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Why grieve for those who fold their hands in peace?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Their sore-tried hearts have found a glad release;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Their spirits sink into the solemn sea!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Mourn ye the prisoner from his chains let free?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Nay, ope your ears unto the living cry</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>That pleads for living comfort! Hark, the sigh</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Of million heartaches rising in your ears!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Kiss back the living woes, the living tears!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Go down into the felon’s gloomy cell;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Send there the ray of love: as tree-buds swell</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>When spring’s warm breath bids the cold winter cease,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>So will his heart swell with the hope of peace.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Be filled with love, for love is Nature’s God;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The God which trembles in the tender sod,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The God which tints the sunset, lights the dew,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Sprinkles with stars the firmament’s broad blue,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And draws all hearts together in a free</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Wide sweep of love, broad as the ether-sea.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>No other law or guidance do we need;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The world’s our church, to do good is our creed.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<footer>
|
||
<p><abbr>St.</abbr> Johns, <abbr epub:type="z3998:place">Mich.</abbr>, <time datetime="1887">1887</time>.</p>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="to-my-mother" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">To My Mother</h2>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Some souls there are which never live their life;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Some suns there are which never pierce their cloud;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Some hearts there are which cup their perfume in,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And yield no incense to the outer air.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Cloud-shrouded, flower-cupped heart: such is thine own:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>So dost thou live with all thy brightness hid;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>So dost thou dwell with all thy perfume close;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Rich in thy treasured wealth, aye, rich indeed—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And they are wrong who say thou “dost not feel.”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>But I—I need blue air and opened bloom;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To keep my music means that it must die;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And when the thrill, the joy, the love of life is gone,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>I, too, am dead—a corpse, though not entombed.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Let me live then—but a while—the gloom soon comes,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The flower closes and the petals shut;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Through them the perfume slips out, like a soul—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The long, still sleep of death—and then the Grave.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<footer>
|
||
<p>Cleveland, Ohio, <time datetime="1889-03">March, 1889</time>.</p>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="betrayed" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">Betrayed</h2>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>So, you’re the chaplain! You needn’t say what you have come for; I can guess.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>You’ve come to talk about Jesus’ love, and repentance and rest and forgiveness!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>You’ve come to say that my sin is great, yet greater the mercy Heaven will mete,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>If I, like Magdalen, bend my head, and pour my tears at your Saviour’s feet.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Your promise is fair, but I’ve little faith: I relied on promises once before;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>They brought me to this—this prison cell, with its iron-barred window, its grated door!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Yet he, too, was fair who promised me, with his tender mouth and his Christ-like eyes;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And his voice was as sweet as the summer wind that sighs through the arbors of Paradise.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And he seemed to me all that was good and pure, and noble and strong, and true and brave!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>I had given the pulse of my heart for him, and deemed it a precious boon to crave.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>You say that Jesus so loved the world he died to redeem it from its sin:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>It isn’t redeemed, or no one could be so fair without, and so black within.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>I trusted his promise, I gave my life;—the truth of my love is known on high,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>If there is a God who knows all things;—his promise was false, his <em>love</em> was a lie!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>It was over soon, Oh! soon, the dream—and me, he had called “his life,” “his light,”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>He drove me away with a sneering word, and you Christians said that “it served me right.”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>I was proud, <abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mr.</abbr> Chaplain, even then; I set my face in the teeth of Fate,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And resolved to live honestly, come what might, and sink beneath neither scorn nor hate.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Yes, and I prayed that the Christ above would help to bear the bitter cross,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And put something here, where my heart had been, to fill up the aching void of loss.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>It’s easy for you to say what I should do, but none of you ever dream how hard</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Is the way that you Christians make for us, with your “sin no more,” “trust the Lord.”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>When for days and days you are turned from work with cold politeness, or open sneer,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>You get so you don’t trust a far-off God, whose creatures are cold, and they, so near.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>You hold your virtuous lives aloof, and refuse us your human help and hand,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And set us apart as accursèd things, marked with a burning, Cain-like brand.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>But I didn’t bend, though many days I was weary and hungry, and worn and weak,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And for many a starless night I watched, through tears that grooved down my pallid cheek.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>They are all dry now! They say I’m hard, because I never weep or moan!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>You can’t draw blood when the heart’s bled out! you can’t find tears or sound in a stone!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And I don’t know why <em>I</em> should be mild and meek: no one has been very mild to me.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>You say that Jesus would be—perhaps! but Heaven’s a long way off, you see.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>That will do; I know what you’re going to say: “I can have it right here in this narrow cell.”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The <em>soul</em> is slow to accept Christ’s heav’n when his followers chain the body in hell.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Not but I’m just as well off here—better, perhaps, than I was outside.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The world was a prison-house to me, where I dwelt, defying and defied.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>I don’t know but I’d think more of what you say, if they’d given us both a common lot;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>If justice to me had been justice to him, and covered our names with an equal blot;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>But they took him into the social court, and pitied, and said he’d been “led astray”;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>In a month the stain on <em>his</em> name had passed, as a cloud that crosses the face of day!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>He joined the Church, and he’s preaching now, just as you are, the love of God,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And the duty of sinners to kneel and pray, and humbly to kiss the chastening rod.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>If they’d dealt with me as they dealt by him, may be I’d credit your Christian love;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>If they’d dealt with him as they dealt by me, I’d have more faith in a just Above.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>I don’t know, but sometimes I used to think that she, who was told there was no room</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>In the inn at Bethlehem, might look down with softened eyes thro’ the starless gloom.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Christ wasn’t a woman—he couldn’t know the pain and endurance of it; but <em>she</em>,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The mother who bore him, she might know, and Mary in Heaven might pity me.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Still that was useless: it didn’t bring a single mouthful for me to eat,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Nor work to get it, nor sheltering from the dreary wind and the howling street.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Heavenly pity won’t pass as coin, and earthly shame brings a higher pay.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Sometimes I was tempted to give it up, and go, like others, the easier way;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>But I didn’t; no, sir, I kept my oath, though my baby lay in my arms and cried,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And at last, to spare it—I poisoned it; and kissed its murdered lips when it died.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>I’d never seen him since it was born (he’d said that it wasn’t his, you know);</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>But I took its body and laid it down at the steps of his door, in the pallid glow</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Of the winter morning; and when he came, with a love-tune hummed on those lips of lies,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>It lay at his feet, with its pinched white face staring up at him from its dead, blue eyes;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>I hadn’t closed them; they were like his, and so was the mouth and the curled gold hair,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And every feature so like his own—for I am dark, sir, and he is fair.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>’Twas a moment of triumph, that showed me yet there was a passion I could feel,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>When I saw him bend o’er its meagre form, and, starting backwards, cry out and reel!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>If there <em>is</em> a time when all souls shall meet the reward of the deeds that are done in the clay,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>When accused and accuser stand face to face, he will cry out so in the Judgment Day!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>The rest? Oh, nothing. They hunted me, and with virtuous lawyers’ virtuous tears</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To a virtuous jury, convicted me; and I’m sentenced to stay here for twenty years.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Do I repent? Yes, I do; but wait till I tell you of what I repent, and why.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>I repent that I ever believed a man could be anything but a living lie!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>I repent because every noble thought, or hope, or ambition, or earthly trust,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Is as dead as dungeon-bleached bones in me—as dead as my child in its murdered dust!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Do I repent that I killed the babe? Am I repentant for that, you ask?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>I’ll answer the truth as I feel it, sir; I leave to others the pious mask.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Am I repentant because I saved its starving body from Famine’s teeth?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Because I hastened what time would do, to spare it pain and relieve its death?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Am I repentant because I held it were better a <em>grave</em> should have no name</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Than a <em>living being</em>, whose only care must come from a mother weighed with shame?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Am I repentant because I thought it were better the tiny form lay hid</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>From the heartless stings of a brutal world, unknown, unnamed, ’neath a coffin lid?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Am I repentant for the act, the last on earth in my power, to save</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>From the long-drawn misery of life, in the early death and the painless grave?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>I’m <em>glad</em> that I did it! Start if you will! I’ll repeat it over; I say I’m <em>glad</em>!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>No, I’m neither a fiend, nor a maniac—don’t look as if I were going mad!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Did I not love it? Yes, I loved with a strength that you, sir, can never feel;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>It’s only a strong love can kill to save, though itself be torn where time cannot heal.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>You see my hands—they are red with its blood! Yet I would have cut them, bit by bit,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And fed them, and smiled to see it eat, if that would have saved and nourished it!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“Beg!” I <em>did</em> beg—and “pray!” I <em>did</em> pray! God was as stony and hard as Earth,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And Christ was as deaf as the stars that watched, or the night that darkened above his birth!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And I—I feel stony now, too, like them; deaf to sorrow and mute to grief!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Am I heartless?—yes:—it-is-<em>all</em>-<strong>cut</strong>-<strong>out</strong>! Torn! Gone! All gone! Like my dead belief.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Do I not fear for the judgment hour? So unrepentant, so hard and cold?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Wait! It is little I trust in that; but if ever the scrolled sky shall be uprolled,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And the lives of men shall be read and known, and their acts be judged by their very worth,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And the Christ you speak of shall come again, and the thunders of Justice shake the earth,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>You will hear the cry, “Who murdered here? Come forth to the judgment, false heart and eyes,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>That pulsed with accursèd strength of lust, and loaded faith with envenomed lies!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Come forth to the judgment, haughty dames, who scathed the mother with your scorn,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And answer here, to the poisoned child, <em>who</em> decreed its murder ere it was born?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Come forth to the judgment ye who heaped the gold of earth in your treasured hoard,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And answer, ‘guilty,’ to those who stood all naked and starving, beneath your board.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Depart, accursèd! I know you not! Ye heeded not the command of Heaven,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>‘Unto the least of these ye give, it is even unto the Master given.’ ”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Judgment! Ah, sir, to see that day, I’d willingly pass thro’ a hundred hells!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>I’d believe, then, the Justice that hears each voice buried alive in these prison cells!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>But, no—it’s not that; that will never be! I trusted too long, and He answered not.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>There <em>is</em> no avenging God on high!—we live, we struggle, and—<em>we rot</em>.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span><em>Yet does Justice come!</em> and, O Future Years! sorely ye’ll reap, and in weary pain,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>When ye garner the sheaves that are sown to-day, when the clouds that are gathering fall in rain!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The time will come, aye! the time <em>will</em> come, when the child ye conceive in lust and shame,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Quickened, will mow you like swaths of grass, with a sickle born of Steel and Flame.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Aye, tremble, shrink, in your drunken den, coward, traitor, and Child of Lie!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The unerring avenger stands close to you, and the dread hour of parturition’s nigh!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Aye! wring your hands, for the air is black! thickly the cloud-troops whirl and swarm!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>See! yonder, on the horizon’s verge, play the lightning-shafts of the coming storm!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<footer>
|
||
<p>Adrian, <abbr epub:type="z3998:place">Mich.</abbr>, <time datetime="1889-07">July, 1889</time>.</p>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="optimism" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">Optimism</h2>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>There’s a love supreme in the great hereafter,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The buds of earth are blooms in heaven;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The smiles of the world are ripples of laughter</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">When back to its Aidenn the soul is given:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And the tears of the world, though long in flowing,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Water the fields of the by-and-by;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>They fall as dews on the sweet grass growing</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">When the fountains of sorrow and grief run dry.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Though clouds hang over the furrows now sowing</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">There’s a harvest sun-wreath in the After-sky!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>No love is wasted, no heart beats vainly,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">There’s a vast perfection beyond the grave;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Up the bays of heaven the stars shine plainly,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The stars lying dim on the brow of the wave.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And the lights of our loves, though they flicker and wane, they</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Shall shine all undimmed in the ether-nave.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>For the altars of God are lit with souls</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Fanned to flaming with love where the star-wind rolls.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<footer>
|
||
<p><abbr>St.</abbr> Johns, Michigan, <time datetime="1889">1889</time>.</p>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="at-the-grave-in-waldheim" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">At the Grave in Waldheim</h2>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Quiet they lie in their shrouds of rest,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Their lids kissed close ’neath the lips of peace;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Over each pulseless and painless breast</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The hands lie folded and softly pressed,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>As a dead dove presses a broken nest;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Ah, broken hearts were the price of these!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>The lips of their anguish are cold and still,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">For them are the clouds and the gloom all past;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>No longer the woe of the world can thrill</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The chords of those tender hearts, or fill</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The silent dead-house! The “people’s will”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Has mapped asunder the strings at last.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>“The people’s will!” Ah, in years to come,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Dearly ye’ll weep that ye did not save!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Do ye not hear now the muffled drum,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The tramping feet and the ceaseless hum,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Of the million marchers—trembling, dumb,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">In their tread to a yawning, giant grave?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>And yet, ah! yet there’s a rift of white!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">’Tis breaking over the martyrs’ shrine!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Halt there, ye doomed ones—it scathes the night,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>As lightning darts from its scabbard bright</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And sweeps the face of the sky with light!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">“No more shall be spilled out the blood-red wine!”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>These are the words it has written there,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Keen as the lance of the northern morn;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The sword of Justice gleams in its glare,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And the arm of Justice, upraised and bare,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Is true to strike, aye, ’tis strong to dare;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">It will fall where the curse of our land is born.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>No more shall the necks of the nations be crushed,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">No more to dark Tyranny’s throne bend the knee;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>No more in abjection be ground to the dust!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>By their widows, their orphans, our dead comrades’ trust,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>By the brave heart-beats stilled, by the brave voices hushed,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">We swear that humanity yet shall be free!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<footer>
|
||
<p>Pittsburg, <time datetime="1889">1889</time>.</p>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="the-hurricane" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<header>
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">The Hurricane<a href="#note-1" id="noteref-1" epub:type="noteref">1</a></h2>
|
||
<blockquote epub:type="epigraph">
|
||
<p>“We are the birds of the coming storm.”</p>
|
||
<cite>August Spies</cite>
|
||
</blockquote>
|
||
</header>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>The tide is out, the wind blows off the shore;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Bare burn the white sands in the scorching sun;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The sea complains, but its great voice is low.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span class="i2">Bitter thy woes, O People,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">And the burden</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">Hardly to be borne!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">Wearily grows, O People,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">All the aching</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">Of thy pierced heart, bruised and torn!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">But yet thy time is not,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">And low thy moaning.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">Desert thy sands!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">Not yet is thy breath hot,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">Vengefully blowing;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">It wafts o’er lifted hands.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>The tide has turned; the vane veers slowly round;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Slow clouds are sweeping o’er the blinding light;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>White crests curl on the sea—its voice grows deep.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span class="i2">Angry thy heart, O People,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">And its bleeding</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">Fire-tipped with rising hate!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">Thy clasped hands part, O People,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">For thy praying</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">Warmed not the desolate!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">God did not hear thy moan:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">Now it is swelling</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">To a great drowning cry;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">A dark wind-cloud, a groan,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">Now backward veering</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">From that deaf sky!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>The tide flows in, the wind roars from the depths,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The whirled-white sand heaps with the foam-white waves;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Thundering the sea rolls o’er its shell-crunched wall!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span class="i2">Strong is thy rage, O People,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">In its fury</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">Hurling thy tyrants down!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">Thou metest wage, O People.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">Very swiftly,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">Now that thy hate is grown:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">Thy time at last is come;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">Thou heapest anguish,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">Where thou thyself wert bare!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">No longer to thy dumb</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">God clasped and kneeling,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">
|
||
<em>Thou answerest thine own prayer.</em>
|
||
</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<footer>
|
||
<p>Sea Isle City, <abbr epub:type="z3998:place">NJ</abbr>, <time datetime="1889-08">August, 1889</time>.</p>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="ut-sementem-feceris-ita-metes" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<header>
|
||
<h2 lang="la" epub:type="title" xml:lang="la">Ut Sementem Feceris, Ita Metes</h2>
|
||
<p epub:type="bridgehead">(To the Czar, on a woman, a political prisoner, being flogged to death in Siberia.)</p>
|
||
</header>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>How many drops must gather to the skies</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Before the cloud-burst comes, we may not know;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>How hot the fires in under hells must glow</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ere the volcano’s scalding lavas rise,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Can none say; but all wot the hour is sure!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Who dreams of vengeance has but to endure!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>He may not say how many blows must fall,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>How many lives be broken on the wheel,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>How many corpses stiffen ’neath the pall,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>How many martyrs fix the blood-red seal;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>But certain is the harvest time of Hate!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And when weak moans, by an indignant world</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Re-echoed, to a throne are backward hurled,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Who listens, hears the mutterings of Fate!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<footer>
|
||
<p>Philadelphia, <time datetime="1890-02">February, 1890</time>.</p>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="the-dirge-of-the-sea" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">The Dirge of the Sea</h2>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Come! Come! I have waited long!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">My love is old,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">My arms are strong;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">My heart is bold;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i4">I would woo thee, now,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i5">With the wave-kiss cold</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i6">On thy pallid brow;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Thou art mine, thou art mine! My very own!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Thine ears shall hear</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">My eternal moan;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">Always near</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i4">Thou’lt feel my lips,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i5">And the bathing tear</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i6">Where my sorrow drips.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Thou, my king forever, behold thy throne!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Reign in thy majesty, all alone.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span class="i2">None! None wept for thee,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">Nearing the verge</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i4">Of eternity!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i5">I, thy solemn dirge</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i6">Will chant for aye</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i7">Wide as the wave-merge</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i8">Into sky.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>I love thee! Thou art my chosen own!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Thy heart, like mine,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">Was cold as stone,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">Thine eyes could shine</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i4">Like my blue waves fair;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i5">Thy lips, like wine,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i6">Curved to kisses rare!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Hard as my waves were the eyes that shone,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And the wine as deadly! Come, love, alone!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span class="i2">Float! Float, on the swelling wave!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">Long is the hearse,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i4">Wide the grave;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i5">Thy pall is a curse</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i6">From the fading shore</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i7">A broken verse</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i8">From a heart wrung sore!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“Life’s stream’s wreck-strown!” Ah, like my own!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The words are low</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">As a dying groan;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">The voice thrills so,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i4">It might rouse thy breast</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i5">With pity’s glow,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i6">Wert thou like the rest!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>But thou, my hero, wert never known</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">To feel as a human; thou stoodst, alone.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span class="i2">Down! Down! Behold the wrecks!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">I strew the deep</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i4">With these human specks!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i5">No faith I keep</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i6">With their moral trust;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i7">See how I heap</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i8">Their crumbling dust!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>I sneered in their faces, my own, my own,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">As they knelt to pray</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">When the ships went down;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">I flung my spray</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i4">In their dying eyes,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i5">And laughed at the way</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i6">It drowned their cries!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>On the shore they heard the exultant tone,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And said: “The Sea laughs.” Ah, I laughed alone.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span class="i2">Now! Now, we twain shall go,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">Love-locked,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i4">Laughing so!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i5">The fools ye mocked</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i6">With your tender eyes,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i7">The trusts ye rocked</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i8">With your cradling lies,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>E’en like these wretches, my own, my own,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Shall rot in clay</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">Or crumbled bone,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">Thou shalt hold thy way,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i4">Day-kissed and fair,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i5">Where the wild waves play</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i6">In the sun-thick air!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>My arms, my kiss, my tears, my moan,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Ye shall know for aye, where we wander lone.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span class="i2">Love! Love! Thou wert like to me!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">Thy luring gaze</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i4">Rolled relentlessly!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i5">The marsh-light blaze</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i6">To some human soul,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i7">Down the darkn’ing maze</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i8">To Ruin’s goal.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ah, how ye crushed them, my beautiful own!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Like whistled leaves</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">Around thee strown,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">Whirled the dead beliefs</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i4">Of each long-mourned life!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i5">Here, no one grieves:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i6">Neither tears nor strife</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Appeal to the Sea, where its wrecks are thrown!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Thou shalt stand in their midst, and smile, alone!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span class="i2">Laugh! Laugh! O form of light!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">Death hides</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i4">Thy faithless sight!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i5">The flowing tides</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i6">Of thy heart are still;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i7">Yet are wrecks thy brides,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i8">For it is my will</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>That that which on earth made thy heaven, my own,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">May strew around</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">Thy eternal throne!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">The gurgling sound</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i4">Of the dying cry,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i5">The gushing wound</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i6">Of heart-agony,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Were thy joy in life! Now the Sea makes known</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Thy realm in death! Thy heaven, alone!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span class="i2">Years! Years, ye shall mix with me!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">Ye shall grow a part</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i4">Of the laughing Sea;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i5">Of the moaning heart</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i6">Of the glittered wave</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i7">Of the sun-gleam’s dart</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i8">In the ocean-grave.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Fair, cold, and faithless wert thou, my own!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">For that I love</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">Thy heart of stone!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">From the heights above</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i4">To the depths below,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i5">Where dread things move,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i6">There is naught can show</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>A life so trustless! Proud be thy crown!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Ruthless, like none, save the Sea, alone!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="bastard-born" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">Bastard Born</h2>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Why do you clothe me with scarlet of shame?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Why do you point with your finger of scorn?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>What is the crime that you hissingly name</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">When you sneer in my ears, “Thou bastard born?”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Am I not as the rest of you,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">With a hope to reach, and a dream to live?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>With a soul to suffer, a heart to know</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The pangs that the thrusts of the heartless give?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>I am no monster! Look at me—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Straight in my eyes, that they do not shrink!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Is there aught in them you can see</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">To merit this hemlock you make me drink?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>This poison that scorches my soul like fire,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">That burns and burns until love is dry,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And I shrivel with hate, as hot as a pyre,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">A corpse, while its smoke curls up to the sky?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Will you touch my hand? It is flesh like yours;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Perhaps a little more brown and grimed,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>For it could not be white while the drawers’ and hewers’,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">My brothers, were calloused and darkened and slimed.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Yet touch it! It is no criminal’s hand!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">No children are toiling to keep it fair!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>It is free from the curse of the stolen land,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">It is clean of the theft of the sea and air!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>It has set no seals to a murderous law,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">To sign a bitter, black league with death!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>No covenants false do these fingers draw</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">In the name of “The State” to barter Faith!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>It bears no stain of the yellow gold</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">That earth’s wretches give as the cost of heaven!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>No priestly garment of silken fold</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">I wear as the price of their “sins forgiven”!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Still do you shrink! Still I hear the hiss</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Between your teeth, and I feel the scorn</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>That flames in your gaze! Well, what is this,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">This crime I commit, being “bastard born”?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>What! You whisper my “eyes are gray,”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The “color of hers,” up there on the hill,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Where the white stone gleams, and the willow spray</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Falls over her grave in the starlight still!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>My “hands are shaped like” those quiet hands,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Folded away from their life, their care;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And the sheen that lies on my short, fair strands</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Gleams darkly down on her buried hair!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>My voice is toned like that silent tone</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">That might, if it could, break up through the sod</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>With such rebuke as would shame your stone,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Stirring the grass-roots in their clod!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>And my heart-beats thrill to the same strong chords;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And the blood that was hers is mine to-day;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And the thoughts she loved, I love; and the words</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">That meant most to her, to me most say!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>
|
||
<em>She was my mother—I her child!</em>
|
||
</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Could ten thousand priests have made us more?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Do you curse the bloom of the heather wild?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Do you trample the flowers and cry “impure”?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Do you shun the bird-songs’ silver shower?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Does their music arouse your curling scorn</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>That none but God blessed them? The whitest flower,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The purest song, were but “bastard born”!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span><em>This is my sin</em>—I was born of her!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1"><em>This is my crime</em>—that I reverence deep!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>God, that her pale corpse may not stir,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Press closer down on her lids—the sleep!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Would you have me hate her? Me, who knew</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">That the gentlest soul in the world looked there,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Out of the gray eyes that pitied you</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">E’en while you cursed her? The long brown hair</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>That waved from her forehead, has brushed my cheek,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">When her soft lips have drunk up my salt of grief;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And the voice, whose echo you hate, would speak</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The hush of pity and love’s relief!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>And those still hands that are folded now</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Have touched my sorrows for years away!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Would you have me question her whence and how</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The love-light streamed from her heart’s deep ray?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Do you question the sun that it gives its gold?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Do you scowl at the cloud when it pours its rain</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Till the fields that were withered and burnt and old</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Are fresh and tender and young again?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Do you search the source of the breeze that sweeps</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The rush of the fever from tortured brain?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Do you ask whence the perfume that round you creeps</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">When your soul is wrought to the quick with pain?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>She was my Sun, my Dew, my Air,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The highest, the purest, the holiest;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span><strong>Peace</strong>—was the shade of her beautiful hair,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1"><strong>Love</strong>—was all that I knew on her breast!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Would you have me forget? Or remembering</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Say that her love had bloomed from Hell?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Then <strong>Blessed be Hell</strong>! And let Heaven sing</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">“<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Te Deum laudamus</i>,” until it swell</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>And ring and roll to the utterest earth,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">That the damned are free—since out of sin</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Came the whiteness that shamed all ransomed worth</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Till God opened the gates, saying “Enter in!”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<hr/>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>What! In the face of the witness I bear</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">To her measureless love and her purity,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Still of your hate would you make me to share,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Despising that she gave life to me?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>You would have me stand at her helpless grave,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">To dig through its earth with a venomed dart!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>This is Honor! and Right! and Brave!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">To fling a stone at her pulseless heart!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>This is Virtue! To blast the lips</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Speechless beneath the Silence dread!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To lash with Slander’s scorpion whips</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The voiceless, defenseless, helpless dead!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<hr/>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>God! I turn to an adder now!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Back upon you I hurl your scorn!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Bind the scarlet upon your brow!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1"><em>Ye</em> it is, who are “bastard born”!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Touch me not! These hands of mine</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Despise your fairness—the leper’s white!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Tanned and hardened and black with grime,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">They are clean beside your souls to-night!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Basely born! ’Tis ye are base!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Ye who would guerdon holy trust</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>With slavish law to a tyrant race,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">To sow the earth with the seed of lust.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Base! By Heaven! Prate of peace,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">When your garments are red with the stain of wars.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Reeling with passion’s mad release</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">By your sickly gaslight damn the stars!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Blurred with wine ye behold the snow</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Smirched with the foulness that blots within!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>What of purity can ye know,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Ye tenfold children of Hell and Sin?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Ye to judge her! Ye to cast</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The stone of wrath from your house of glass!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Know ye the Law, that ye dare to blast</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The bell of gold with your clanging brass?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Know ye the harvest the reapers reap</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Who drop in the furrow the seed of scorn?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Out of this anguish ye harrow deep,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Ripens the sentence: “<em>Ye</em>, bastard born!”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Ay, sin-begotten, hear the curse;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Not mine—not hers—but the fatal Law!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“Who bids one suffer, shall suffer worse;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Who scourges, himself shall be scourgèd raw!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>“For the thoughts ye think, and the deeds ye do,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Move on, and on, till the flood is high,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And the dread dam bursts, and the waves roar through,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Hurling a cataract dirge to the sky!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>“To-night ye are deaf to the beggar’s prayer;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">To-morrow the thieves shall batter your wall!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ye shall feel the weight of a starved child’s care</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">When your warders under the Mob’s feet fall!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>“ ’Tis the roar of the whirlwind ye invoke</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">When ye scatter the wind of your brother’s moans;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>’Tis the red of your hate on your own head broke,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">When the blood of the murdered spatters the stones!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>“Hark ye! Out of the reeking slums,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Thick with the fetid stench of crime,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Boiling up through their sickening scums,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Bubbles that burst through the crimson wine,</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>“Voices burst—with terrible sound,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Crying the truth your dull souls ne’er saw!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span><em>We</em> are <em>your</em> sentence! The wheel turns round!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The bastard spawn of your bastard law!”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>This is bastard: That Man should say</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">How Love shall love, and how Life shall live!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Setting a tablet to groove God’s way,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Measuring how the divine shall give!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<hr/>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>O, Evil Hearts! Ye have maddened me,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">That I should interpret the voice of God!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Quiet! Quiet! O angered Sea!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Quiet! I go to her blessed sod!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<hr/>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Mother, Mother, I come to you!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Down in your grasses I press my face!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Under the kiss of their cold, pure dew,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">I may dream that I lie in the dear old place!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Mother, sweet Mother, take me back,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Into the bosom from whence I came!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Take me away from the cruel rack,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Take me out of the parching flame!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Fold me again with your beautiful hair,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Speak to this terrible heaving Sea!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Over me pour the soothing of prayer,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The words of the Love-child of Galilee:</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>“<strong>Peace—be still</strong>!” Still—could I but hear!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Softly—I listen.—O fierce heart, cease!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Softly—I breathe not—low—in my ear—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Mother, Mother—I heard you!—<strong>Peace</strong>!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<footer>
|
||
<p>Enterprise, Kansas, <time datetime="1891-01">January, 1891</time>.</p>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="i-am" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">I Am</h2>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>I am! The ages on the ages roll;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And what I am, I was, and I shall be:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">By slow growth filling higher Destiny,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And widening, ever, to the widening Goal.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>I am the Stone that slept; down deep in me</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">That old, old sleep has left its centurine trace;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>I am the Plant that dreamed; and lo! still see</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">That dream-life dwelling on the Human Face.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>I slept, I dreamed, I wakened: I am Man!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The hut grows Palaces; the depths breed light;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Still <strong>on</strong>! <em>Forms</em> pass; but <em>Form</em> yields kinglier Might!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The singer, dying where his song began,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">In Me yet lives; and yet again shall he</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Unseal the lips of greater songs To Be;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">For mine the thousand tongues of <strong>Immortality</strong>.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="life-or-death" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">Life or Death</h2>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>A Soul, half through the Gate, said unto Life:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“What dost thou offer me?” And Life replied:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“Sorrow, unceasing struggle, disappointment; after these</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Darkness and silence.” The Soul said unto Death:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“What dost <em>thou</em> offer me?” And Death replied:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“In the beginning what Life gives at last.”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Turning to Life: “And if I live and struggle?”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“Others shall live and struggle after thee</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Counting it easier where thou hast passed.”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“And by their struggles?” “Easier place shall be</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>For others, still to rise to keener pain</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Of conquering Agony!”—“And what have I</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To do with all these others? Who are they?”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“Yourself!”—“And all who went before?”—“Yourself.”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“The darkness and the silence, too, have end?”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“They end in light and sound; peace ends in pain,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Death ends in Me, and thou must glide from Self</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To Self, as light to shade and shade to light again.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Choose!” The Soul, sighing, answered: “I will live.”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="hymn" epub:type="z3998:hymn bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<header>
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">Hymn</h2>
|
||
<p epub:type="bridgehead">(This hymn was written at the request of a Christian Science friend who proposed to set it to music. It did not represent my beliefs either then or since, but rather what I wish might be my beliefs, had I not an inexorable capacity for seeing things as they are—a vast scheme of mutual murder, with no justice anywhere, and no God in the soul or out of it.)</p>
|
||
</header>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>I am at peace—no storm can ever touch me;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">On my clear heights the sunshine only falls;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Far, far below glides the phantom voice of sorrows,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">In peace-lifted light the Silence only calls.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ah, Soul, ascend! The mountain way, up-leading,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Bears to the heights whereon the Blest have trod!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Lay down the burden;—stanch the heart’s sad bleeding;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1"><strong>Be ye at peace</strong>, for know that Ye are God!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Not long the way, not far in a dim heaven;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">In the locked Self seek ye the guiding star:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Clear shine its rays, illumining the shadow;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">There, where God is, there, too, O Souls ye are.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ye are at one, and bound in Him forever,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Ev’n as the wave is bound in the great sea;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Never to drift beyond, below Him, never!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Whole as God is, so, even so, are ye.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<footer>
|
||
<p>Philadelphia, <time datetime="1892">1892</time>.</p>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="you-and-i" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<header>
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">You and I</h2>
|
||
<p epub:type="bridgehead">(A reply to “You and I in the Golden Weather,” by Dyer <abbr epub:type="z3998:given-name">D.</abbr> Lum.)</p>
|
||
</header>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>You and I, in the sere, brown weather,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">When clouds hang thick in the frowning sky,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>When rain-tears drip on the bloomless heather,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Unheeding the storm-blasts will walk together,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And look to each other—You and I.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>You and I, when the clouds are shriven</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">To show the cliff-broods of lightnings high;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>When over the ramparts, swift, thunder-driven,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Rush the bolts of Hate from a Hell-lit Heaven,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Will smile at each other—You and I.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>You and I, when the bolts are falling,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The hot air torn with the earth’s wild cries,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Will lean through the darkness where Death is calling,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Will search through the shadows where Night is palling,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And find the light in each other’s eyes.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>You and I, when black sheets of water</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Drench and tear us and drown our breath,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Below this laughter of Hell’s own daughter,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Above the smoke of the storm-girt slaughter,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Will hear each other and gleam at Death.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>You and I, in the gray night dying,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">When over the east-land the dawn-beams fly,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Down in the groans, in the low, faint crying,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Down where the thick blood is blackly lying,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Will reach out our weak arms, You and I.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>You and I, in the cold, white weather,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">When over our corpses the pale lights lie,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Will rest at last from the dread endeavor,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Pressed to each other, for parting—never!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Our dead lips together, You and I.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>You and I, when the years in flowing</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Have left us behind with all things that die,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>With the rot of our bones shall give soil for growing</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The loves of the Future, made sweet for blowing</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">By the dew of the kiss of a last good-bye!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<footer>
|
||
<p>Philadelphia, <time datetime="1892">1892</time>.</p>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="the-toast-of-despair" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">The Toast of Despair</h2>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>We have cried—and the Gods are silent;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">We have trusted—and been betrayed;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>We have loved—and the fruit was ashes;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">We have given—the gift was weighed.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>We know that the heavens are empty,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">That friendship and love are names;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>That truth is an ashen cinder,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The end of life’s burnt-out flames.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Vainly and long have we waited,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Through the night of the human roar,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>For a single song on the harp of Hope,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Or a ray from a day-lit shore.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Songs aye come floating, marvelous sweet,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And bow-dyed flashes gleam;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>But the sweets are Lies, and the weary feet</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Run after a marsh-light beam.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>In the hour of our need the song departs,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And the sea-moans of sorrow swell;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The siren mocks with a gurgling laugh</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">That is drowned in the deep death-knell.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>The light we chased with our stumbling feet</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">As the goal of happier years,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Swings high and low and vanishes—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The bow-dyes were of our tears.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>God is a lie, and Faith is a lie,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And a tenfold lie is Love;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Life is a problem without a why,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And never a thing to prove.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>It adds, and subtracts, and multiplies,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And divides without aim or end;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Its answers all false, though false-named true—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Wife, husband, lover, friend.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>We know it now, and we care no more;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">What matters life or death?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>We tiny insects emerge from earth,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Suffer, and yield our breath.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Like ants we crawl on our brief sand-hill,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Dreaming of “mighty things,”—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Lo, they crunch, like shells in the ocean’s wrath,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">In the rush of Time’s awful wings.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>The sun smiles gold, and the planets white,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And a billion stars smile, still;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Yet, fierce as we, each wheels towards death,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And cannot stay his will.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Then build, ye fools, your mighty things,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">That Time shall set at naught;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Grow warm with the song the sweet Lie sings,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And the false bow your tears have wrought.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>For us, a truce to Gods, loves, and hopes,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And a pledge to fire and wave;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>A swifter whirl to the dance of death,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And a loud huzza for the Grave!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<footer>
|
||
<p>Philadelphia, <time datetime="1892">1892</time>.</p>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="the-new-hope" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">The New Hope</h2>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>I stand in the darkness waiting</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">For the light of the truth to shine;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The faith that you preach has failed me,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And your God is no longer mine.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>I have lifted my hands to heaven,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And besought him, with many a prayer,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To put down the evil doer</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And destroy the unrighteous snare.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>And still did the evil triumph,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And still was the right made wrong;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Till my trust began to waver,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Yet I prayed Him to keep it strong.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>I walked in the ways appointed,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">I treasured the preacher’s words,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And cried, aye, cried fast to heaven,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">For the armor his soldier girds.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Yes, I shut my eyes from seeing,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">I bound strong chains on my soul,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>That I might not judge of its witness,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Might not read the damning scroll.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>I said: All is well—God wills it—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">His wisdom is greater than mine,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>He sees with the perfect vision,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">His love is the love divine;</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Mine is a human standard,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">His is so far above</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>That I cannot see, nor feel, nor know</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The height of that infinite love;</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Yet will I trust my infinite Father,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Yet will I yield to Him</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Whose glory dwells in the uttermost,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Whose brightness makes all else dim.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>But though I prayed so loudly,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And though I cried very fast,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Though my eyes were shut, and my soul was bound,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The old faith could not last.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Still round my ears rolled the surge of life,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Still rose the awful din</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Of a world crushed under and trampled down</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">By the feet of the strong who win.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>The wild inarticulate anger</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Of a mad thing driven at bay,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Lashed into pain by a million strokes,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And seeing no help, no way.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>And under, and over, and through it,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">A menacing undertone,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>A fearful reverberation</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Repeating forever my own</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Sad prayer for the faith I had not,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Came the despairing cry,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“Oh God, see you not your children</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">That of hunger and cold they die?”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Now I know “It is finished;”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Never more shall I make moan</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To your God of the stars who feels our prayers,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">As our tears are felt by the stone,</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>What the future holds I know not,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">But this faith it cannot hold,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>For my thoughts are no longer the thoughts of a child,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Nor my hopes the hopes of old.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Help for earth is not in heaven,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Nor the hope of man in God,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Nor the truth that shall deliver</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">To be bought with another’s blood.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>By our own blood we must purchase,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">With our own feet the way;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>When we search out the strength of our own souls</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">No God shall say us “nay.”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Yes, I utter this profanation,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">I proclaim it loud to the sky,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Man is more than the angels,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Jehovah is less than I.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="in-memoriam-to-dyer-d-lum" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<header>
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">In Memoriam</h2>
|
||
<p epub:type="bridgehead">(To Dyer <abbr epub:type="z3998:given-name">D.</abbr> Lum, my friend and teacher, who died April 6, 1893.)</p>
|
||
</header>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Great silent heart! These barren drops of grief</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Are not for you, attained unto your rest;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>This sterile salt upon the withered leaf</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Of love, is mine—mine the dark burial guest.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Far, far within that deep, untroubled sea</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">We watched together, walking on the sands,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Your soul has melted—painless, silent, free;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Mine the wrung heart, mine the clasped, useless hands.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Into the whirl of life, where none remember,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">I bear your image, ever unforgot;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The “Whip-poor-will,” still “wailing in December,”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Cries the same cry—cries, cries, and ceases not.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>The future years with all their waves of faces</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Roll shoreward singing the great undertone;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Yours is not there;—in the old, well-loved places</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">I look, and pass, and watch the sea alone.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Alone along the gleaming, white sea-shore,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The sea-spume spraying thick around my head,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Through all the beat of waves and winds that roar,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">I go, remembering that you are dead.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>That you are dead, and nowhere is there one</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Like unto you;—and nowhere Love leaps Death;—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And nowhere may the broken race be run;—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Nowhere unsealed the seal that none gainsaith.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Yet in my ear that deep, sweet undertone</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Grows deeper, sweeter, solemner to me—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Dreaming your dreams, watching the light that shone</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">So whitely to you, yonder, on the sea.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Your voice is there, there in the great life-sound—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Your eyes are there, out there, within the light;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Your heart, within the pulsing Race-heart drowned,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Beats in the immortality of Right.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>O Life, I love you for the love of him</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Who showed me all your glory and your pain!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“Unto Nirvana”—so the deep tones sing—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And there—and there—we—shall—be—one—again.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<footer>
|
||
<p>Greensburg, <abbr epub:type="z3998:place">PA</abbr>, <time datetime="1893-04-09">April 9th, 1893</time>.</p>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="out-of-the-darkness" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">Out of the Darkness</h2>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Who am I? Only one of the commonest common people,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Only a worked-out body, a shriveled and withered soul,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>What right have I to sing then? None; and I do not, I cannot.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Why ruin the rhythm and rhyme of the great world’s songs with moaning?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>I know not—nor why whistles must shriek, wheels ceaselessly mutter;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Nor why all I touch turns to clanging and clashing and discord;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>I know not;—I know only this—I was born to this, live in it hourly,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Go round with it, hum with it, curse with it, would laugh with it, had it laughter;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>It is my breath—and that breath goes outward from me in moaning.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>O you, up there, I have heard you; I am “God’s image defaced,”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“In heaven reward awaits me,” “hereafter I shall be perfect”;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ages you’ve sung that song, but what is it to me, think you?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>If you heard down here in the smoke and the smut, in the smear and the offal,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>In the dust, in the mire, in the grime and in the slime, in the hideous darkness,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>How the wheels turn your song into sounds of horror and loathing and cursing,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The offer of lust, the sneer of contempt and acceptance, thieves’ whispers,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The laugh of the gambler, the suicide’s gasp, the yell of the drunkard,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>If you heard them down here you would cry, “The reward of such is damnation,”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>If you heard them, I say, your song of “rewarded hereafter” would fail.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>You, too, with your science, your titles, your books, and your long explanations</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>That tell me how I am come up out of the dust of the cycles,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Out of the sands of the sea, out of the unknown primeval forests—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Out of the growth of the world have become the bud and the promise,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Out of the race of the beasts have arisen, proud and triumphant—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>You, if you knew how your words rumble round in the wheels of labor!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>If you knew how my hammering heart beats, “Liar, liar, you lie!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Out of all buds of the earth we are most blasted and blighted!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>What beast of all the beasts is not prouder and freer than we?”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>You, too, who sing in high words of the glory of Man universal,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The beauty of sacrifice, debt of the future, the present immortal,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The glory of use, absorption by Death of the being in Being,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>You, if you knew what jargon it makes, down here, would be quiet.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Oh, is there no one to find or to speak a meaning to <em>me</em>,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To me as I am—the hard, the ignorant, withered-souled worker?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To me upon whom God and Science alike have stamped “failure,”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To me who know nothing but labor, nothing but sweat, dirt, and sorrow,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To me whom you scorn and despise, you up there who sing while I moan?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To me as I am—for me as I am—not dying but living;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span><em>Not</em> my future, my present! my body, my needs, my desires! Is there no one,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>In the midst of this rushing of phantoms—of Gods, of Science, of Logic,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Of Philosophy, Morals, Religion, Economy—all this that helps not,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>All these ghosts at whose altars you worship, these ponderous, marrowless Fictions,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Is there no one who thinks, is there nothing to help this dull moaning me?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<footer>
|
||
<p>Philadelphia, <time datetime="1893-04">April, 1893</time>.</p>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="mary-wollstonecraft" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">Mary Wollstonecraft</h2>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>The dust of a hundred years</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Is on thy breast,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And thy day and thy night of tears</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Are centurine rest.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Thou to whom joy was dumb,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Life a broken rhyme,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Lo, thy smiling time is come,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And our weeping time.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Thou who hadst sponge and myrrh</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And a bitter cross,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Smile, for the day is here</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">That we know our loss;—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Loss of thine undone deed,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Thy unfinished song,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Th’ unspoken word for our need,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Th’ unrighted wrong;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Smile, for we weep, we weep,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">For the unsoothed pain,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The unbound wound burned deep,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">That we might gain.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Mother of sorrowful eyes</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">In the dead old days,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Mother of many sighs,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Of pain-shod ways;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Mother of resolute feet</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Through all the thorns,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Mother soul-strong, soul-sweet—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Lo, after storms</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Have broken and beat thy dust</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">For a hundred years,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Thy memory is made just,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And the just man hears.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Thy children kneel and repeat:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">“Though dust be dust,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Though sod and coffin and sheet</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And moth and rust</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Have folded and molded and pressed,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Yet they cannot kill;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>In the heart of the world at rest</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">She liveth still.”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<footer>
|
||
<p>Philadelphia, <time datetime="1893-04-27">April 27th, 1893</time>.</p>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="the-gods-and-the-people" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">The Gods and the People</h2>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>What have you done, O skies,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>That the millions should kneel to you?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Why should they lift wet eyes,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Grateful with human dew?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Why should they clasp their hands,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And bow at thy shrines, O heaven,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Thanking thy high commands</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>For the mercies that thou hast given?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>What have those mercies been,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>O thou, who art called the Good,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Who trod through a world of sin,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And stood where the felon stood?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>What is that wondrous peace</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Vouchsafed to the child of dust,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>For whom all doubt shall cease</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>In the light of thy perfect trust?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>How hast Thou heard their prayers</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Smoking up from the bleeding sod,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Who, crushed by their weight of cares,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Cried up to Thee, Most High God?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<hr/>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Where the swamps of Humanity sicken,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Read the answer, in dumb, white scars!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>You, Skies, gave the sore and the stricken</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The light of your far-off stars!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>The children who plead are driven,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Shelterless, through the street,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Receiving the mercy of Heaven</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Hard-frozen in glittering sleet!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>The women who prayed for pity,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Who called on the saving Name,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Through the walks of your merciless city</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Are crying the rent of shame.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>The starving, who gazed on the plenty</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>In which they might not share,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Have died in their hunger, rent by</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The anguish of unheard prayer!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>The weary who plead for remission,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>For a moment, only, release,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Have sunk, with unheeded petition:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>This is the Christ-pledged Peace.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>These are the mercies of Heaven,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>These are the answers of God,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To the prayers of the agony-shriven,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>From the paths where the millions plod!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>The silent scorn of the sightless!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The callous ear of the deaf!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The wrath of might to the mightless!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The shroud, and the mourning sheaf!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Light—to behold their squalor!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Breath—to draw in life’s pain!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Voices to plead and call for</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Heaven’s help!—hearts to bleed—in vain!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<hr/>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>What have you done, O Church,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>That the weary should bless your name?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Should come with faith’s holy torch</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To light up your altar’d fane?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Why should they kiss the folds</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Of the garment of your High Priest?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Or bow to the chalice that holds</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The wine of your Sacred Feast?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Have you blown out the breath of their sighs?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Have you strengthened the weak, the ill?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Have you wiped the dark tears from their eyes,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And bade their sobbings be still?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Have you touched, have you known, have you felt,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Have you bent and softly smiled</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>In the face of the woman, who dwelt</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>In lewdness—to feed her child?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Have you heard the cry in the night</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Going up from the outraged heart,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Masked from the social sight</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>By the cloak that but angered the smart?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Have you heard the children’s moan,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>By the light of the skies denied?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Answer, O Walls of Stone,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>In the name of your Crucified!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<hr/>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Out of the clay of their heart-break,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>From the red dew of its sod,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>You have mortar’d your brick, for Christ’s sake,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And reared a palace to God!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Your painters have dipped their brushes</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>In the tears and the blood of the race,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Whom, <strong>living</strong>, your dark frown crushes—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And limned—a <strong>dead</strong> Savior’s face!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>You have seized, in the name of God, the</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Child’s crust from famine’s dole;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>You have taken the price of its body</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And sung a mass for its soul!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>You have smiled on the man, who, deceiving,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Paid exemption to ease your wrath!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>You have cursed the poor fool who believed him,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Though her body lay prone in your path!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>You have laid the seal on the lip!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>You have bid us to be content!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To bow ’neath our master’s whip,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And give thanks for the scourge—“heav’n sent.”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>These, O Church, are your thanks;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>These are the fruits without flaw,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>That flow from the chosen ranks</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Who keep in your perfect law;</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Doors hard-locked on the homeless!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Stained glass windows for bread!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>On the living, the law of dumbness,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And the law of need, for—the <em>dead</em>!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Better the dead, who, not needing,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Go down to the vaults of the Earth,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Than the living whose hearts lie bleeding,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Crushed by you at their very birth.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<hr/>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>What have you done, O State,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>That the toilers should shout your ways;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Should light up the fires of their hate</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>If a “traitor” should dare dispraise?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>How do you guard the trust</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>That the people repose in you?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Do you keep to the law of the just,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And hold to the changeless true?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>What do you mean when you say</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“The home of the free and brave”?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>How free are your people, pray?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Have you no such thing as a slave?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>What are the lauded “rights,”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Broad-sealed, by your Sovereign Grace?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>What are the love-feeding sights</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>You yield to your subject race?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<hr/>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>The rights!—Ah! the right to toil,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>That another, idle, may reap;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The right to make fruitful the soil</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And a meagre pittance to keep!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>The right of a woman to own</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Her body, spotlessly pure,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And starve in the street—alone!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The right of the wronged—to endure!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>The right of the slave—to his yoke!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The right of the hungry—to pray!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The right of the toiler—to vote</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>For the master who buys his day!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>You have sold the sun and the air!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>You have dealt in the price of blood!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>You have taken the lion’s share</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>While the lion is fierce for food!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>You have laid the load of the strong</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>On the helpless, the young, the weak!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>You have trod out the purple of wrong;—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Beware where its wrath shall wreak!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>“Let the Voice of the People be heard!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>O⸺” You strangled it with your rope!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Denied the last dying word,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>While your Trap and your Gallows spoke!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>But a thousand voices rise</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Where the words of the martyr fell;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The seed springs fast to the Skies</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Watered deep from that bloody well!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<hr/>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Hark! Low down you will hear</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The storm in the underground!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Listen, Tyrants, and fear!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Quake at that muffled sound!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>“Heavens, that mocked our dust,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Smile on, in your pitiless blue!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Silent as you are to us,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>So silent are we to you!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>“Churches that scourged our brains!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Priests that locked fast our hands!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>We planted the torch in your chains:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Now gather the burning brands!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>“States that have given us <strong>law</strong>,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>When we asked for <strong>the right to earn bread</strong>!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The Sword that Damocles saw</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>By a hair swings over your head!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>“What ye have sown ye shall reap:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Teardrops, and Blood, and Hate,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Gaunt gather before your Seat,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And knock at your palace gate!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>“There are murderers on your Thrones!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>There are thieves in your Justice-halls!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>White Leprosy cancers their stones,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And gnaws at their worm-eaten walls!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>“And the Hand of Belshazzar’s Feast</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Writes over, in flaming light:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span><strong>Thought’s kingdom no more to the Priest</strong>;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span><strong>Nor the Law of Right unto Might.</strong>”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="john-p-altgeld" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<header>
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">John <abbr epub:type="z3998:given-name">P.</abbr> Altgeld</h2>
|
||
<p epub:type="bridgehead">(After an incarceration of six long years in Joliet state prison for an act of which they were entirely innocent, namely, the throwing of the Haymarket bomb, in Chicago, May 4th, 1886, Oscar Neebe, Michael Schwab and Samuel Fielden, were liberated by <abbr>Gov.</abbr> Altgeld, who thus sacrificed his political career to an act of justice.)</p>
|
||
</header>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>There was a tableau! Liberty’s clear light</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Shone never on a braver scene than that.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Here was a prison, there a Man who sat</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>High in the Halls of state! Beyond, the might</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Of ignorance and Mobs, whose hireling press</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Yells at their bidding like the slaver’s hounds,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Ready with coarse caprice to curse or bless,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To make or unmake rulers!—Lo, there sounds</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">A grating of the doors! And three poor men,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Helpless and hated, having naught to give,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Come from their long-sealed tomb, look up, and live,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And thank this Man that they are free again.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And He—to all the world this Man dares say,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">“Curse as you will! I have been just this day.”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<footer>
|
||
<p>Philadelphia, <time datetime="1893-06">June, 1893</time>.</p>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="the-cry-of-the-unfit" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">The Cry of the Unfit</h2>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>The gods have left us, the creeds have crumbled;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">There are none to pity and none to care:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Our fellows have crushed us where we have stumbled;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">They have made of our bodies a bleeding stair.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Loud rang the bells in the Christmas steeples;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">We heard them ring through the bitter morn:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The promise of old to the weary peoples</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Came floating sweetly—“Christ is born.”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>But the words were mocking, sorely mocking,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">As we sought the sky through our freezing tears,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>We children, who’ve hung the Christmas stocking,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And found it empty two thousand years.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>No, there is naught in the old creed for us;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Love and peace are to those who win;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To them the delight of the golden chorus,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">To us the hunger and shame and sin.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Why then live on since our lives are fruitless,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Since peace is certain and death is rest;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Since our masters tell us the strife is bootless,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And Nature scorns her unwelcome guest?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>You who have climbed on our aching bodies,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">You who have thought because we have toiled,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Priests of the creed of a newer goddess,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Searchers in depths where the Past was foiled.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Speak in the name of the faith that you cherish!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Give us the truth! We have bought it with woe!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Must we forever thus worthlessly perish,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Burned in the desert and lost in the snow?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Trampled, forsaken, foredoomed, and forgotten—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Helplessly tossed like the leaf in the storm?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Bred for the shambles, with curses begotten,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Useless to all save the rotting grave-worm?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Give us some anchor to stay our mad drifting!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Give, for your own sakes! for lo, where our blood,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>A red tide to drown you, is steadily lifting!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Help! or you die in the terrible flood!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<footer>
|
||
<p>Philadelphia, <time datetime="1893">1893</time>.</p>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="in-memoriam-to-gen-m-m-trumbull" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<header>
|
||
<hgroup>
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">In Memoriam</h2>
|
||
<p epub:type="subtitle">To <abbr>Gen.</abbr> <abbr epub:type="z3998:given-name">M. M.</abbr> Trumbull</p>
|
||
</hgroup>
|
||
<p epub:type="bridgehead">(No man better than <abbr>Gen.</abbr> Trumbull defended my martyred comrades in Chicago.)</p>
|
||
</header>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Back to thy breast, O Mother, turns thy child,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">He whom thou garmentedst in steel of truth,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And sent forth, strong in the glad heart of youth,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To sing the wakening song in ears beguiled</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>By tyrants’ promises and flatterers’ smiles;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>These searched his eyes, and knew nor threats nor wiles</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Might shake the steady stars within their blue,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Nor win one truckling word from off those lips—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">No—not for gold nor praise, nor aught men do</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To dash the Sun of Honor with eclipse,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>O Mother Liberty, those eyes are dark,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And the brave lips are white and cold and dumb;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">But fair in other souls, through time to come,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Fanned by thy breath glows the Immortal Spark.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<footer>
|
||
<p>Philadelphia, <time datetime="1894-05">May, 1894</time>.</p>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="the-wandering-jew" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<header>
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">The Wandering Jew</h2>
|
||
<p epub:type="bridgehead">(The above poem was suggested by the reading of an article describing an interview with the “wandering Jew,” in which he was represented as an incorrigible grumbler. The Jew has been, and will continue to be, the grumbler of earth—until the prophetic ideal of justice shall be realized: “<strong>Blessed be he.</strong>”)</p>
|
||
<blockquote epub:type="epigraph">
|
||
<p>“Go on.”—“<strong>Thou</strong> shalt go on till I come.”</p>
|
||
</blockquote>
|
||
</header>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Pale, ghostly Vision from the coffined years,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Planting the cross with thy world-wandering feet,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Stern Watcher through the centuries’ storm and beat,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>In those sad eyes, between those grooves of tears—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Those eyes like caves where sunlight never dwells</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And stars but dimly shine—stand sentinels</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>That watch with patient hope, through weary days,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">That somewhere, sometime, He indeed may “come,”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And thou at last find thee a resting place,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Blast-driven leaf of Man, within the tomb.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Aye, they have cursed thee with the bitter curse,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And driven thee with scourges o’er the world;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Tyrants have crushed thee, Ignorance has hurled</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Its black anathema;—but Death’s pale hearse,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">That bore them graveward, passed them silently;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And vainly didst thou stretch thy hands and cry,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“Take me instead”;—not yet for thee the time,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Not yet—not yet: thy bruised and mangled limbs</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Must still drag on, still feed the Vulture, Crime,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">With bleeding flesh, till rust its steel beak dims.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Aye, “till He come,”—<strong>He—freedom, justice, peace</strong>—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Till then shalt thou cry warning through the earth,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Unheeding pain, untouched by death and birth,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Proclaiming “Woe, woe, woe,” till men shall cease</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">To seek for Christ within the senseless skies,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And, joyous, find him in each other’s eyes.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Then shall be builded such a tomb for thee</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Shall beggar kings’ as diamonds outshine dew!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The Universal Heart of Man shall be</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The sacred urn of “the accursed Jew.”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<footer>
|
||
<p>Philadelphia, <time datetime="1894">1894</time>.</p>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="the-feast-of-vultures" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<header>
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">The Feast of Vultures</h2>
|
||
<p epub:type="bridgehead">(As the three Anarchists, Vaillant, Henry and Caserio, were led to their several executions, a voice from the prison cried loudly, “<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Vive l’anarchie!</i>” Through watch and ward the cry escaped, and no man owned the voice; but the cry is still resounding through the world.)</p>
|
||
</header>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>A moan in the gloam in the air-peaks heard—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The Bird of Omen—the wild, fierce Bird,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Aflight</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">In the night,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">Like a whizz of light,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Arrowy winging before the storm,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">Far away flinging,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">The whistling, singing,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>White-curdled drops, wind-blown and warm,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">From its beating, flapping,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">Thunderous wings;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">Crashing and clapping</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">The split night swings,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">And rocks and totters,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">Bled of its levin,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">And reels and mutters</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">A curse to Heaven!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Reels and mutters and rolls and dies,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>With a wild light streaking its black, blind eyes.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span class="i2">Far, far, far,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">Through the red, mad morn,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">Like a hurtling star,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">Through the air upborne,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">The Herald-Singer,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">The Terror-Bringer,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Speeds—and behind, through the cloud-rags torn,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Gather and wheel a million wings,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Clanging as iron where the hammer rings;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">The whipped sky shivers,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">The White Gate shakes,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">The ripped throne quivers,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">The dumb God wakes,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And feels in his heart the talon-stings—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The dead bodies hurled from beaks for slings.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">“Ruin! Ruin!” the Whirlwind cries,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And it leaps at his throat and tears his eyes;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“Death for death, as ye long have dealt;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The heads of your victims your heads shall pelt;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The blood ye wrung to get drunk upon,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Drink, and be poisoned! On, Herald, on!”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span class="i2">Behold, behold,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">How a moan is grown!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>A cry hurled high ’gainst a scaffold’s joist!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The Voice of Defiance—the loud, wild Voice!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Whirled</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">Through the world,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">A smoke-wreath curled</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>(Breath ’round hot kisses) around a fire!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">See! the ground hisses</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">With curses, and glisses</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>With red-streaming blood-clots of long-frozen ire,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">Waked by the flying</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">Wild voice as it passes;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">Groaning and crying,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">The surge of the masses</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">Rolls and flashes</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">With thunderous roar—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">Seams and lashes</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">The livid shore—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Seams and lashes and crunches and beats,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And drags a ragged wall to its howling retreats!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span class="i2">Swift, swift, swift,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">’Thwart the blood-rain’s fall,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">Through the fire-shot rift</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">Of the broken wall,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">The prophet-crying</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">The storm-strong sighing,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Flies—and from under Night’s lifted pall,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Swarming, menace ten million darts,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Uplifting fragments of human shards!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span class="i2">Ah, white teeth chatter,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">And dumb jaws fall,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">While winged fires scatter</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i3">Till gloom gulfs all</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Save the boom of the cannon that storm the forts</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>That the people bombard with their comrades’ hearts;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">“Vengeance! Vengeance!” the voices scream,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And the vulture pinions whirl and stream!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“Knife for knife, as ye long have dealt;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The edge ye whetted for us be felt,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Ye chopper of necks, on your own, your own!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Bare it, Coward! On, Prophet, on!”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span class="i2">Behold how high</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i2">Rolls a prison cry!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<footer>
|
||
<p>Philadelphia, <time datetime="1894-08">August 1894</time>.</p>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="the-suicides-defense" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<header>
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">The Suicide’s Defense</h2>
|
||
<p epub:type="bridgehead">(Of all the stupidities wherewith the law-making power has signaled its own incapacity for dealing with the disorders of society, none appears so utterly stupid as the law which punishes an attempted suicide. To the question “What have you to say in your defense?” I conceive the poor wretch might reply as follows:)</p>
|
||
</header>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>To say in my defense? Defense of what?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Defense to whom? And why defense at all?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Have I wronged any? Let that one accuse!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Some priest there mutters I “have outraged God”!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Let God then try me, and let none dare judge</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Himself as fit to put Heaven’s ermine on!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Again I say, let the wronged one accuse.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Aye, silence! There is none to answer me.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And whom could I, a homeless, friendless tramp,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To whom all doors are shut, all hearts are locked,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>All hands withheld—whom could I wrong, indeed</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>By taking that which benefited none</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And menaced all?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i5">Aye, since ye will it so,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Know then your risk. But mark, ’tis not defense,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>’Tis accusation that I hurl at you.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>See to’t that ye prepare your own defense.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>My life, I say, is an eternal threat</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To you and yours; and therefore it were well</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To have foreborne your unasked services.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And why? Because I hate you! Every drop</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Of blood that circles in your plethoric veins</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Was wrung from out the gaunt and sapless trunks</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Of men like me, who in your cursed mills</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Were crushed like grapes within the wine-press ground.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To us ye leave the empty skin of life;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The heart of it, the sweet of it, ye pour</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To fête your dogs and mistresses withal!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Your mistresses! Our daughters! Bought, for bread,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To grace the flesh that once was father’s arms!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Yes, I accuse you that ye murdered me!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ye killed the Man—and this that speaks to you</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Is but the beast that ye have made of me!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>What! Is it life to creep and crawl and beg,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And slink for shelter where rats congregate?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And for one’s ideal dream of a fat meal?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Is it, then, life, to group like pigs in sties,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And bury decency in common filth,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Because, forsooth, your income must be made,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Though human flesh rot in your plague-rid dens?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Is it, then, life, to wait another’s nod,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>For leave to turn yourself to gold for him?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Would it be life to you? And was I less</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Than you? Was I not born with hopes and dreams</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And pains and passions even as were you?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>But these ye have denied. Ye seized the earth,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Though it was none of yours, and said: “Hereon</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Shall none rest, walk or work, till first to me</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ye render tribute!” Every art of man,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Born to make light of the burdens of the world,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ye also seized, and made a tenfold curse</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To crush the man beneath the thing he made.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Houses, machines, and lands—all, all are yours;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And us you do not need. When we ask work</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ye shake your heads. Homes?—Ye evict us. Bread?—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“Here, officer, this fellow’s begging. Jail’s</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The place for him!” After the stripes, what next?—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Poison!—I took it!—Now you say ’twas sin</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To take this life which troubled you so much.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Sin to escape insult, starvation, brands</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Of felony, inflicted for the crime</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Of asking food! Ye hypocrites! Within</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Your secret hearts the sin is that I <em>failed</em>!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Because I failed ye judge me to the stripes,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And the hard toil denied when I was free.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>So be it. But beware!—A prison cell’s</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>An evil bed to grow morality!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Black swamps breed black miasms; sickly soils</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Yield poison fruit; snakes warmed to life will sting.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>This time I was content to go alone;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Perchance the next I shall not be so kind.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<footer>
|
||
<p>Philadelphia, <time datetime="1894-09">September, 1894</time>.</p>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="a-novel-of-color" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<header>
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Novel of Color</h2>
|
||
<p epub:type="bridgehead">(The following is a true and particular account of what happened on the night of December 11, 1895; but it is likely to be unintelligible to all save the Chipmunks and the Elephant, who, however, will no doubt recognize themselves.)</p>
|
||
</header>
|
||
<section id="a-novel-of-color-1" epub:type="chapter">
|
||
<header>
|
||
<p epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">I</p>
|
||
</header>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Chipmunks three sat on a tree,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And they were as green as green could be;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>They cracked nuts early, they cracked nuts late,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And chirruped and chirruped, and ate and ate;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“ ’Tis a pity of chipmunks without nuts,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And a gnawing hunger in their guts;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>But they should be wise like you and me,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And color themselves to suit the tree.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ah chee, ah chee, ah chee, ah chee!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Gay chaps are we, we chipmunks three!”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>An elephant white in sorry plight,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Hungry and dirty and sad bedight,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Straggled one day on the nutting ground;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“Lo,” chattered the chipmunks, “our chance is found!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Behold the beast’s color; were he as we,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Green and sleek and nut-full were he!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>But the beast is big, and the beast is white,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And his skin full of emptiness serves him right!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ah chee, ah chee, ah chee, ah chee!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Let us ‘sit on him, sit on him,’ chipmunks three.”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
</section>
|
||
<section id="a-novel-of-color-2" epub:type="chapter">
|
||
<header>
|
||
<p epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">II</p>
|
||
</header>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Three chipmunks green right gay were seen</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To leap on the beast his brows between;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>They munched at his ears and chiffered his chin,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And sat and sat and sat on him!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Not a single available spot of hide</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Where a well-sleeked chipmunk could sit with pride,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>But was chipped and chipped and chip-chip-munked,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Till aught but an elephant must have flunked.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“Ah chee, ah chee, ah chee, ah chee!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>What a ride we’re having, we chipmunks three!”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
</section>
|
||
<section id="a-novel-of-color-3" epub:type="chapter">
|
||
<header>
|
||
<p epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">III</p>
|
||
</header>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span class="i3">Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-f-f-f-f-f!!!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
</section>
|
||
<section id="a-novel-of-color-4" epub:type="chapter">
|
||
<header>
|
||
<p epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">IV</p>
|
||
</header>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>“What was it blew? Ah whew, ah whew!”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Three green chipmunks have all turned blue!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The elephant smiles a peaceful smile,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And lifts off a tree-trunk sans haste or guile.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“Seize him, seize him! He’s stealing our tree!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>We’re undone, undone,” shriek the chipmunks three.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The elephant calmly upraised his trunk,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And said, “Did I hear a green chipmunk?”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<hr/>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>“Ah chee, ah chee, ah chee, ah choo!”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“Chippy, you’re blue!” “So’re you!” “So’re you!”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
</section>
|
||
<footer>
|
||
<p>Philadelphia, <time datetime="1895-12">December, 1895</time>.</p>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="germinal" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<header>
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">Germinal</h2>
|
||
<p epub:type="bridgehead">(The last word of Angiolillo.)</p>
|
||
</header>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Germinal!—The Field of Mars is plowing,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And hard the steel that cuts, and hot the breath</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Of the great Oxen, straining flanks and bowing</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Beneath his goad, who guides the share of Death.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Germinal!—The Dragon’s teeth are sowing,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And stern and white the sower flings the seed</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>He shall not gather, though full swift the growing;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Straight down Death’s furrow treads, and does not heed.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Germinal!—The Helmet Heads are springing</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Far up the Field of Mars in gleaming files;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>With wild war notes the bursting earth is ringing.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<hr/>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Within his grave the sower sleeps, and smiles.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<footer>
|
||
<p>London, <time datetime="1897-10">October, 1897</time>.</p>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="light-upon-waldheim" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<header>
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">“Light Upon Waldheim”</h2>
|
||
<p epub:type="bridgehead">(The figure on the monument over the grave of the Chicago martyrs in Waldheim Cemetery is a warrior woman, dropping with her left hand a crown upon the forehead of a fallen man just past his agony, and with her right drawing a dagger from her bosom.)</p>
|
||
</header>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Light upon Waldheim! And the earth is gray;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">A bitter wind is driving from the north;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The stone is cold, and strange cold whispers say:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">“What do ye here with Death? Go forth! Go forth!”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Is this thy word, O Mother, with stern eyes,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Crowning thy dead with stone-caressing touch?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>May we not weep o’er him that martyred lies,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Slain in our name, for that he loved us much?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>May we not linger till the day is broad?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Nay, none are stirring in this stinging dawn—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>None but poor wretches that make no moan to God:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">What use are these, O thou with dagger drawn?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>“Go forth, go forth! Stand not to weep for these,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Till, weakened with your weeping, like the snow</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ye melt, dissolving in a coward peace!”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Light upon Waldheim! Brother, let us go!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<footer>
|
||
<p>London, <time datetime="1897-10">October, 1897</time>.</p>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="loves-compensation" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">Love’s Compensation</h2>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>I went before God, and he said,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">“What fruit of the life I gave?”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“Father,” I said, “it is dead,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And nothing grows on the grave.”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Wroth was the Lord and stern:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">“Hadst thou not to answer me?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Shall the fruitless root not burn,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And be wasted utterly?”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>“Father,” I said, “forgive!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">For thou knowest what I have done;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>That another’s life might live</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Mine turned to a barren stone.”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>But the Father of Life sent fire</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And burned the root in the grave;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And the pain in my heart is dire</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">For the thing that I could not save.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>For the thing it was laid on me</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">By the Lord of Life to bring;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Fruit of the ungrown tree</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">That died for no watering.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Another has gone to God,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And his fruit has pleased Him well;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>For he sitteth high, while I—plod</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The dry ways down towards hell.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Though thou knowest, thou knowest, Lord,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Whose tears made that fruit’s root wet;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Yet thou drivest me forth with a sword,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And thy Guards by the Gate are set.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Thou wilt give me up to the fire,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And none shall deliver me;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>For I followed my heart’s desire,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And I labored not for thee:</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>I labored for him thou hast set</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">On thy right hand, high and fair;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Thou lovest him, Lord; and yet</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">’Twas my love won Him there.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>But this is the thing that hath been,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Hath been since the world began—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>That love against self must sin,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And a woman die for a man.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>And this is the thing that shall be,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Shall be till the whole world die,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span><em>Kismet</em>:—My doom is on me!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Why murmur since I am I?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<footer>
|
||
<p>Philadelphia, <time datetime="1898-08">August, 1898</time>.</p>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="santa-agueda" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<header>
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">Santa Agueda</h2>
|
||
<p epub:type="bridgehead">(Where the torturer Canovas breathed his last.)</p>
|
||
</header>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Santa Agueda, thou that wast accursed</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">With presence of a demon dressed in Man,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Blessed art thou, for on thy stones there ran</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The vampire blood from bitter torture nursed;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Along thy streets there flashed the lightning-burst,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“Delivered!” flaming on from eye to eye,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Though lips said “killed,” and all thy gateways hearsed</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>In lying black, made mourning mockery.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Blessed art thou! From thee went forth the cry,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">“Vengeance yet loves, Renunciation hates,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And justice smites: <em>the torturer shall die</em>;”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Across his path the steel-nerved slayer waits</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“And both shall burn together,”—one in light</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Of unconsuming hell and reddened night;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And one with feet on hell and brow dawn-rayed, <em>pure white</em>.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<footer>
|
||
<p>Philadelphia, <time datetime="1898-08">August, 1898</time>.</p>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="the-road-builders" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<header>
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">The Road Builders</h2>
|
||
<p epub:type="bridgehead">(“Who built the beautiful roads?” queried a friend of the present order, as we walked one day along the macadamised driveway of Fairmount Park.)</p>
|
||
</header>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>I saw them toiling in the blistering sun,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Their dull, dark faces leaning toward the stone,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Their knotted fingers grasping the rude tools,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Their rounded shoulders narrowing in their chest,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The sweat drops dripping in great painful beads.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>I saw one fall, his forehead on the rock,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The helpless hand still clutching at the spade,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The slack mouth full of earth.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span class="i9">And he was dead.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>His comrades gently turned his face, until</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The fierce sun glittered hard upon his eyes,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Wide open, staring at the cruel sky.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The blood yet ran upon the jagged stone;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>But it was ended. He was quite, quite dead:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Driven to death beneath the burning sun,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Driven to death upon the road he built.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>He was no “hero,” he; a poor, black man,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Taking “the will of God” and asking naught;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Think of him thus, when next your horse’s feet</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Strike out the flint spark from the gleaming road;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Think that for this, this common thing, The Road,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>A human creature died; ’tis a blood gift,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>To an o’erreaching world that does not thank.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ignorant, mean and soulless was he? Well—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Still human; and you drive upon his corpse.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<footer>
|
||
<p>Philadelphia, <time datetime="1900-07-24">July 24, 1900</time>.</p>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="angiolillo" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">Angiolillo</h2>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>We are the souls that crept and cried in the days when they tortured men;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>His was the spirit that walked erect, and met the beast in its den.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Ours are the eyes that were dim with tears for the thing they shrunk to see;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>His was the glance that was crystal keen with the light that makes men free.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Ours are the hands that were wrung in pain, in helpless pain and shame;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>His was the resolute hand that struck, steady and keen to its aim.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Ours are the lips that quivered with rage, that cursed and prayed in a breath:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>His was the mouth that opened but once to speak from the throat of Death.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>“Assassin, Assassin!” the World cries out, with a shake of its dotard head;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“Germinal!” rings back the grave where lies the Dead that is not dead.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>“Germinal, Germinal,” sings the Wind that is driving before the Storm;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“Few are the drops that have fallen yet—scattered, but red and warm.”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>“Germinal, Germinal,” sing the Fields, where furrows of men are plowed;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“Ye shall gather a harvest over-rich, when the ear at the full is bowed.”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Springing, springing, at every breath, the Word of invincible strife,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The word of the Dead, that is calling loud down the battle ranks of Life!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>For these are the Dead that live, though the earth upon them lie:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>But the doers of deeds of the Night of the Dead, they are the Live that die.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<footer>
|
||
<p>Torresdale, <abbr epub:type="z3998:place">PA</abbr>, <time datetime="1900-08-01">August 1, 1900</time>.</p>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="ave-et-vale" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<h2 lang="la" epub:type="title" xml:lang="la">Ave et Vale</h2>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Comrades, what matter the watch-night tells</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">That a New Year comes or goes?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>What to us are the crashing bells</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">That clang out the Century’s close?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>What to us is the gala dress?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The whirl of the dancing feet?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The glitter and blare in the laughing press,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And din of the merry street?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Do we not know that our brothers die</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">In the cold and the dark to-night?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Shelterless faces turned toward the sky</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Will not see the New Year’s light!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Wandering children, lonely, lost,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Drift away on the human sea,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>While the price of their lives in a glass is tossed</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And drunk in a revelry!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Ah, know we not in their feasting halls</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Where the loud laugh echoes again,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>That brick and stone in the mortared walls</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Are the bones of murdered men?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Slowly murdered! By day and day,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The beauty and strength are reft,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Till the Man is sapped and sucked away,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And a Human Rind is left!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>A Human Rind, with old, thin hair,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And old, thin voice to pray</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>For alms in the bitter winter air—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">A knife at his heart alway.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>And the pure in heart are impure in flesh</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">For the cost of a little food:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Lo, when the Gleaner of Time shall thresh,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Let these be accounted good.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>For these are they who in bitter blame</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Eat the bread whose salt is sin;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Whose bosoms are burned with the scarlet shame,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Till their hearts are seared within.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>The cowardly jests of a hundred years</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Will be thrown where they pass to-night,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Too callous for hate, and too dry for tears,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The saddest of human blight.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Do we forget them, these broken ones,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">That our watch to-night is set?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Nay, we smile in the face of the year that comes</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">
|
||
<em>Because we do not forget.</em>
|
||
</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>We do not forget the tramp on the track,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Thrust out in the wind-swept waste,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The curses of Man upon his back,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And the curse of God in his face.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>The stare in the eyes of the buried man</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Face down in the fallen mine;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The despair of the child whose bare feet ran</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">To tread out the rich man’s wine;</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>The solemn light in the dying gaze</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Of the babe at the empty breast,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The wax accusation, the sombre glaze</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Of its frozen and rigid rest;</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>They are all in the smile that we turn to the east</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">To welcome the Century’s dawn;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>They are all in our greeting to Night’s high priest,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">As we bid the Old Year begone.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Begone and have done, and go down and be dead</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Deep drowned in your sea of tears!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>We smile as you die, for we wait the red</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Morn-gleam of a hundred-years</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>That shall see the end of the age-old wrong—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The reapers that have not sown—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The reapers of men with their sickles strong</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Who gather, but have not strown.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>For the earth shall be his and the fruits thereof</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And to him the corn and wine,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Who labors the hills with an even love</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And knows not “thine and mine.”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>And the silk shall be to the hand that weaves,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The pearl to him who dives,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>The home to the builder; and all life’s sheaves</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">To the builder of human lives.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>And none go blind that another see,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Or die that another live;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And none insult with a charity</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">That is not theirs to give.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>For each of his plenty shall freely share</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And take at another’s hand:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Equals breathing the Common Air</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And toiling the Common Land.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>A dream? A vision? Aye, what you will;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Let it be to you as it seems:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Of this Nightmare Real we have our fill;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">To-night is for “pleasant dreams.”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Dreams that shall waken the hope that sleeps</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And knock at each torpid Heart</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Till it beat drum taps, and the blood that creeps</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">With a lion’s spring upstart!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>For who are we to be bound and drowned</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">In this river of human blood?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Who are we to lie in a swound,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Half sunk in the river mud?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Are we not they who delve and blast</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And hammer and build and burn?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Without us not a nail made fast!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Not a wheel in the world should turn!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Must we, the Giant, await the grace</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">That is dealt by the puny hand</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Of him who sits in the feasting place,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">While we, his Blind Jest, stand</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Between the pillars? Nay, not so:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Aye, if such thing were true,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Better were Gaza again, to show</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">What the giant’s rage may do!</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>But yet not this: it were wiser far</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">To enter the feasting hall</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>And say to the Masters, “These things are</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Not for you alone, but all.”</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>And this shall be in the Century</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">That opes on our eyes to-night;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>So here’s to the struggle, if it must be,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And to him who fights the fight.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>And here’s to the dauntless, jubilant throat</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">That loud to its Comrade sings,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Till over the earth shrills the mustering note,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">And the World Strike’s signal rings.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<footer>
|
||
<p>Philadelphia, <time datetime="1901-01-01">January 1, 1901</time>.</p>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="marsh-bloom" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<header>
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">Marsh-Bloom</h2>
|
||
<p epub:type="bridgehead">(To Gaetano Bresci.)</p>
|
||
</header>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Requiem, requiem, requiem,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Blood-red blossom of poison stem</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Broken for Man,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Swamp-sunk leafage and dungeon bloom,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Seeded bearer of royal doom,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">What now is the ban?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>What to thee is the island grave?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>With desert wind and desolate wave</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Will they silence Death?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Can they weight thee now with the heaviest stone?</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Can they lay aught on thee with “Be alone,”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">That hast conquered breath?</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Lo, “it is finished”—a man for a king!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Mark you well who have done this thing:</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">The flower has roots;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Bitter and rank grow the things of the sea;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Ye shall know what sap ran thick in the tree</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">When ye pluck its fruits.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Requiem, requiem, requiem,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Sleep on, sleep on, accursed of them</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Who work our pain;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>A wild Marsh-blossom shall blow again</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>From a buried root in the slime of men,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">On the day of the Great Red Rain.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<footer>
|
||
<p>Philadelphia, <time datetime="1901-07">July, 1901</time>.</p>
|
||
</footer>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<article id="written-in-red" epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||
<header>
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">Written—in—Red<a href="#note-2" id="noteref-2" epub:type="noteref">2</a></h2>
|
||
<p epub:type="bridgehead">(To Our Living Dead in Mexico’s Struggle.)</p>
|
||
</header>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Written in red their protest stands,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>For the Gods of the World to see;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>On the dooming wall their bodiless hands</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Have blazoned “Upharsin,” and flaring brands</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Illumine the message: “Seize the lands!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Open the prisons and make men free!”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Flame out the living words of the dead</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Written—in—red.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Gods of the World! Their mouths are dumb!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Your guns have spoken and they are dust.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>But the shrouded Living, whose hearts were numb,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Have felt the beat of a wakening drum</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Within them sounding—the Dead Men’s tongue—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Calling: “Smite off the ancient rust!”</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Have beheld “Resurrexit,” the word of the Dead,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Written—in—red.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>Bear it aloft, O roaring flame!</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Skyward aloft, where all may see.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>Slaves of the World! Our cause is the same;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>One is the immemorial shame;</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>One is the struggle, and in One name—</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span><strong>Manhood</strong>—we battle to set men free.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>“Uncurse us the Land!” burn the words of the Dead,</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span class="i1">Written—in—red.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
</article>
|
||
<section id="endnotes" epub:type="endnotes backmatter">
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">Endnotes</h2>
|
||
<ol>
|
||
<li id="note-1" epub:type="endnote">
|
||
<p>Since the death of the author this poem has been put to music by the young American composer, George Edwards. <a href="#noteref-1" epub:type="backlink">↩</a></p>
|
||
</li>
|
||
<li id="note-2" epub:type="endnote">
|
||
<p>Voltairine de Cleyre’s last poem. <a href="#noteref-2" epub:type="backlink">↩</a></p>
|
||
</li>
|
||
</ol>
|
||
</section>
|
||
<section id="colophon" epub:type="colophon backmatter">
|
||
<header>
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">Colophon</h2>
|
||
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epub:type="z3998:publisher-logo se:image.color-depth.black-on-transparent"/>
|
||
</header>
|
||
<p><i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Poetry</i><br/>
|
||
was published in <time>1914</time> by<br/>
|
||
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltairine_de_Cleyre">Voltairine de Cleyre</a>.</p>
|
||
<p>This ebook was produced for<br/>
|
||
<a href="https://standardebooks.org/">Standard Ebooks</a><br/>
|
||
by<br/>
|
||
<a href="https://weijiarhymeswith.asia/">Weijia Cheng</a>,<br/>
|
||
and is based on transcriptions from<br/>
|
||
<a href="https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/voltairine-de-cleyre/poetry#transcriptions">various sources</a><br/>
|
||
and on digital scans from<br/>
|
||
<a href="https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/voltairine-de-cleyre/poetry#page-scans">various sources</a>.</p>
|
||
<p>The cover page is adapted from<br/>
|
||
<i epub:type="se:name.visual-art.painting">Ruin of Eldena in the Giant Mountains</i>,<br/>
|
||
a painting completed in <time>1834</time> by<br/>
|
||
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspar_David_Friedrich">Caspar David Friedrich</a>.<br/>
|
||
The cover and title pages feature the<br/>
|
||
<b epub:type="se:name.visual-art.typeface">League Spartan</b> and <b epub:type="se:name.visual-art.typeface">Sorts Mill Goudy</b><br/>
|
||
typefaces created in <time>2014</time> and <time>2009</time> by<br/>
|
||
<a href="https://www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com/">The League of Moveable Type</a>.</p>
|
||
<p>The first edition of this ebook was released on<br/>
|
||
<time datetime="2022-04-12T02:48:07Z">April 12, 2022, 2:48 <abbr class="eoc">a.m.</abbr></time><br/>
|
||
You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at<br/>
|
||
<a href="https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/voltairine-de-cleyre/poetry">standardebooks.org/ebooks/voltairine-de-cleyre/poetry</a>.</p>
|
||
<p>The volunteer-driven Standard Ebooks project relies on readers like you to submit typos, corrections, and other improvements. Anyone can contribute at <a href="https://standardebooks.org/">standardebooks.org</a>.</p>
|
||
</section>
|
||
<section id="uncopyright" epub:type="copyright-page backmatter">
|
||
<h2 epub:type="title">Uncopyright</h2>
|
||
<blockquote epub:type="z3998:verse">
|
||
<p>
|
||
<span>May you do good and not evil.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others.</span>
|
||
<br/>
|
||
<span>May you share freely, never taking more than you give.</span>
|
||
</p>
|
||
</blockquote>
|
||
<p>Copyright pages exist to tell you that you <em>can’t</em> do something. Unlike them, this Uncopyright page exists to tell you that the writing and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the United States public domain; that is, they are believed to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. The United States public domain represents our collective cultural heritage, and items in it are free for anyone in the United States to do almost anything at all with, without having to get permission.</p>
|
||
<p>Copyright laws are different all over the world, and the source text or artwork in this ebook may still be copyrighted in other countries. If you’re not located in the United States, you must check your local laws before using this ebook. Standard Ebooks makes no representations regarding the copyright status of the source text or artwork in this ebook in any country other than the United States.</p>
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<p>Non-authorship activities performed on items that are in the public domain—so-called “sweat of the brow” work—don’t create a new copyright. That means that nobody can claim a new copyright on an item that is in the public domain for, among other things, work like digitization, markup, or typography. Regardless, the contributors to this ebook release their contributions under the terms in the <a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/">CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication</a>, thus dedicating to the worldwide public domain all of the work they’ve done on this ebook, including but not limited to metadata, the titlepage, imprint, colophon, this Uncopyright, and any changes or enhancements to, or markup on, the original text and artwork. This dedication doesn’t change the copyright status of the source text or artwork. We make this dedication in the interest of enriching our global cultural heritage, to promote free and libre culture around the world, and to give back to the unrestricted culture that has given all of us so much.</p>
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