Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Page 171
2
Soft hills, dark woods, smooth meadows richly green,
And cool tree-shaded lakes the hills between.
He built his house within this pleasant land,
A stately white-porched house, long years to stand;
But, rising from his paradise so fair,
Came fever in the night and killed him there.
“O lovely land!” he cried, “how could I know
That death was lurking under this fair show?”
And answered Nature, merciful and stern,
“I teach by killing; let the others learn !”
II.
A man would do great work, good work and true;
He gave all things he had, all things he knew;
He worked for all the world; his one desire
To make the people happier, better, higher;
Used his best wisdom, used his utmost strength;
And, dying in the struggle, found at length,
The giant evils he had fought the same,
And that the world he loved scarce knew his name.
“Has all my work been wrong? I meant so well!
I loved so much! “ he cried. “How could I tell?”
And answered Nature, merciful and stern,
“I teach by killing; let the others learn.”
III.
A maid was asked in marriage. Wise as fair,
She gave her answer with deep thought and prayer,
Expecting, in the holy name of wife,
Great work, great pain, and greater joy, in life.
She found such work as brainless slaves might do,
By day and night, long labor, never through;
Such pain — no language can her pain reveal;
It had no limit but her power to feel;
Such joy — life left in her sad soul’s employ
Neither the hope nor memory of joy.
Helpless, she died, with one despairing cry,.
“I thought it good; how could I tell the lie?”
And answered Nature, merciful and stern,
“I teach by killing; let the others learn.”
THE COMMONPLACE.
LIFE is so weary commonplace! Too fair
Were those young visions of the poet and seer.
Nothing exciting ever happens here.
Just eat and drink, and dress and chat;
Life is so tedious, slow, and flat,
And every day alike in everywhere!
Birth comes. Birth —
The breathing re-creation of the earth!
All earth, all sky, all God, life’s deep sweet whole,
Newborn again to each new soul!
“Oh, are you? What a shame! Too bad, my dear!
How well you stand it, too! It’s very queer
The dreadful trials women have to carry;
But you can’t always help it when you marry.
Oh, what a sweet layette! What lovely socks!
What an exquisite puff and powder box!
Who is your doctor? Yes, his skill’s immense —
But it’s a dreadful danger and expense!”
Love comes. Love —
And the world widens at the touch thereof;
Deepens and lightens till the answer true
To all life’s questions seems to glimmer through.
“Engaged? I knew it must be! What a ring!
Worth how much? Well, you are a lucky thing !
But how was Jack disposed of?”
“Jack? Oh, he
Was just as glad as I was to be free.
You might as well ask after George and Joe
And all the fellows that I used to know!
I don’t inquire for his past Kate and Carry —
Every one’s pleased. It’s time, you know, to marry.”
Life comes. Life —
Bearing within it wisdom, work, and strife.
To do, to strive, to know, and, with the knowing,
To find life’s widest purpose in our growing.
“How are you, Jim? Pleasant weather to-day!
How’s business?”
“Well, it doesn’t come my way.”
“Good-morning, Mrs. Smith! I hope you ‘re well!
Tell me the news!”
“The news? There’s none to tell.
The cook has left; the baby’s got a tooth;
John has gone fishing to renew his youth.
House-cleaning’s due — or else we’ll have to move!
How sweet you are in that! Good-bye, my love!”
Death comes. Death —
Love cries to love, and no man answereth.
Death the beginning, Death the endless end,
Life’s proof and first condition, Birth’s best friend.
“Yes, it’s a dreadful loss! No coming back!
Never again! How do I look in black?
And then he suffered so! Oh, yes, we all
Are well provided for. You ‘re kind to call,
And Mrs. Green has lost her baby too!
Dear me! How sad! And yet what could they do?
With such a hard time as they have, you know,
No doubt’t was better for the child to go!”
Life is so dreary commonplace. We bear
One dull yoke, in the country or the town.
We ‘re born, grow up, marry, and settle down.
I used to think — but then a man must live!
The Fates dole out the weary years they give,
And every day alike in everywhere.
HOMES. A SESTINA.
WE are the smiling comfortable homes
With happy families enthroned therein,
Where baby souls are brought to meet the world,
Where women end their duties and desires,
For which men labor as the goal of life,
That people worship now instead of God.
Do we not teach the child to worship God? —
Whose soul’s young range is bounded by the homes
Of those he loves, and where he learns that life
Is all constrained to serve the wants therein,
Domestic needs and personal desires,
These are the early limits of his world.
And are we not the woman’s perfect world,
Prescribed by nature and ordained of God,
Beyond which she can have no right desires,
No need for service other than in homes?
For doth she not bring up her young therein?
And is not rearing young the end of life?
And man? What other need hath he in life
Than to go forth and labor in the world,
And struggle sore with other men therein?
Not to serve other men, nor yet his God,
But to maintain these comfortable homes,
The end of all a normal man’s desires.
Shall not the soul’s most measureless desires
Learn that the very flower and fruit of life
Lies all attained in comfortable homes,
With which life’s purpose is to dot the world
And consummate the utmost will of God,
By sitting down to eat and drink therein.
Yea, in the processes that work therein —
Fulfilment of our natural desires —
Surely man finds the proof that mighty God
For to maintain and reproduce his life
Created him and set him in the world;
And this high end is best attained in homes.
Are we not homes? And is not all therein?
Wring dry the world to meet our wide desires!
We crown all life! We are the aim of God!
A COMMON INFERENCE.
A NIGHT: mysterious, tender, quiet, deep;
Heavy with flowers; full of life asleep;
Thrilling with insect voices; thick with stars;
No cloud between the dewdrops and red Man;
The small earth whirling softly on her way,
The moonbeams and the waterfalls at play;
A million million worlds that move in peace,
A million mighty laws that never cease;
And one small ant-heap, hidden by small weeds,
Rich with eggs, slaves, and store of millet seeds.
They sleep beneath the sod
And trust in God.
A day: all glorious, royal, blazing bright;
Heavy with flowers; full of life and light;
Great fields of corn and sunshine; courteous trees;
Snow-sainted mountains; earth-embracing seas;
Wide golden deserts; slender silver streams;
Clear rainbows where the tossing fountain gleams;
And everywhere, in happiness and peace,
A million forms of life that never cease;
And one small ant-heap, crushed by passing tread,
Hath scarce enough alive to mourn the dead!
They shriek beneath the sod,
“There is no God!”
THE ROCK AND THE SEA.
THE ROCK.
I AM the Rock, presumptuous Sea!
I am set to encounter thee.
Angry and loud or gentle and still,
I am set here to limit thy power, and I will!
I am the Rock!
I am the Rock. From age to age
I scorn thy fury and dare thy rage.
Scarred by frost and worn by time,
Brown with weed and green with slime,
Thou may’st drench and defile me and spit in my face,
But while I am here thou keep’st thy place! I am the Rock!
I am the Rock, beguiling Sea! I know thou art fair as fair can be,
With golden glitter and silver sheen,
And bosom of blue and garments of green.
Thou may’st pat my cheek with baby hands,
And lap my feet in diamond sands,
And play before me as children play;
But plead as thou wilt, I bar the way!
I am the Rock!
I am the Rock. Black midnight falls;
The terrible breakers rise like walls;
With curling lips and gleaming teeth
They plunge and tear at my bones beneath.
Year upon year they grind and beat
In storms of thunder and storms of sleet,
Grind and beat and wrestle and tear,
But the rock they beat on is always there
I am the Rock!
THE SEA.
I am the Sea. I hold the land
As one holds an apple in his hand,
Hold it fast with sleepless eyes,
Watching the continents sink and rise.
Out of my bosom the mountains grow,
Back to its depths they crumble slow;
The earth is a helpless child to me.
I am the Sea!
I am the Sea. When I draw back
Blossom and verdure follow my track,
And the land I leave grows proud and fair,
For the wonderful race of man is there;
And the winds of heaven wail and cry
While the nations rise and reign and die,
Living and dying in folly and pain,
While the laws of the universe thunder in vain.
What is the folly of man to me?
I am the Sea.
I am the Sea. The earth I sway;
Granite to me is potter’s clay;
Under the touch of my careless waves
It rises in turrets and sinks in caves;
The iron cliffs that edge the land
I grind to pebbles and sift to sand,
And beach-grass bloweth and children play
In what were the rocks of yesterday.
It is but a moment of sport to me.
I am the Sea!
I am the Sea. In my bosom deep
Wealth and Wonder and Beauty sleep;
Wealth and Wonder and Beauty rise
In changing splendor of sunset skies,
And comfort the earth with rains and snows
Till waves the harvest and laughs the rose.
Flower and forest and child of breath
With me have life — without me, death.
What if the ships go down in me?
I am the Sea!
THE LION PATH.
I DARE not!
Look! the road is very dark;
The trees stir softly and the bushes shake,
The long grass rustles, and the darkness moves
Here — there — beyond!
There’s something crept across the road just now !
And you would have me go?
Go there, through that live darkness, hideous
With stir of crouching forms that wait to kill?
Ah, look! See there! and there! and there again!
Great yellow glassy eyes, close to the ground!
Look! Now the clouds are lighter I can see
The long slow lashing of the sinewy tails,
And the set quiver of strong jaws that wait !
Go there? Not I! Who dares to go who sees
So perfectly the lions in the path?
Comes one who dares.
Afraid at first, yet bound
On such high errand as no fear could stay.
Forth goes he with the lions in his path.
And then — ?
He dared a death of agony,
Outnumbered battle with the king of beasts,
Long struggle in the horror of the night,
Dared and went forth to meet — O ye who fear !
Finding an empty road, and nothing there,
A wide, bare, common road, with homely fields,
And fences, and the dusty roadside trees —
Some spitting kittens, maybe, in the grass.
REINFORCEMENTS.
YEA, we despair. Because the night is long,
And all arms weary with the endless fight
With blind, black forces of insulted law
Which we continually disobey,
And know not how to honor if we would.
How can we fight when every effort fails,
And the vast hydra looms before us still
Headed as thickly as at dawn of day,
Fierce as when evening fell on us at war?
We are aweary, and no help appears;
No light, no knowledge, no sure way to kill
Our ancient enemy. Let us give o’er!
We do but fight with fate! Lay down your arms!
Retreat! Surrender! Better live as slaves
Than fight forever on a losing field!
Hold, ye faint-hearted! Ye are not alone!
Into your worn-out ranks of weary men
Come mighty reinforcements, even now!
Look where the dawn is kindling in the east,
Brave with the glory of the better day,
A countless host, an endless host, all fresh,
With unstained banners and unsullied shields,
With shining swords that point to victory,
And great young hearts that know not how to fear,
The Children come to save the weary world!
HEROISM.
IT takes great strength to train
To modern service your ancestral brain;
To lift the weight of the unnumbered years
Of dead men’s habits, methods, and ideas;
To hold that back with one hand, and support
With the other the weak steps of a new thought.
It takes great strength to bring your life up square
With your accepted thought, and hold it there;
Resisting the inertia that drags back
From new attempts to the old habit’s track.
It is so easy to drift back, to sink;
So hard to live abreast of what you think!
It takes great strength
to live where you belong
When other people think that you are wrong;
People you love, and who love you, and whose
Approval is a pleasure you would choose.
To bear this pressure and succeed at length
In living your belief — well, it takes strength.
And courage too. But what does courage mean
Save strength to help you face a pain foreseen?
Courage to undertake this lifelong strain
Of setting yours against your grandsire’s brain;
Dangerous risk of walking lone and free
Out of the easy paths that used to be,
And the fierce pain of hurting those we lave
When love meets truth, and truth must ride above?
But the best courage man has ever shown
Is daring to cut loose and think alone.
Dark as the unlit chambers of clear space
Where light shines back from no reflecting face.
Our sun’s wide glare, our heaven’s shining blue,
We owe to fog and dust they fumble through;
And our rich wisdom that we treasure so
Shines from the thousand things that we don’t know.
But to think new — it takes a courage grim
As led Columbus over the world’s rim.
To think it cost some courage. And to go —
Try it. It taxes every power you know.
It takes great love to stir a human heart
To live beyond the others and apart.
A love that is not shallow, is not small,
Is not for one, or two, but for them all.
Love that can wound love, for its higher need;
Love that can leave love though the heart may bleed;
Love that can lose love; family, and friend;
Yet steadfastly live, loving, to the end.
A love that asks no answer, that can live
Moved by one burning, deathless force, to give.
Love, strength, and courage. Courage, strength, and love,
The heroes of all time are built thereof.
FIRE WITH FERE.
THERE are creeping flames in the near-by grass;
There are leaping flames afar;
And the wind’s black breath
Is hot with death,
The worst of the deaths that are!
And north is fire and south is fire,
And east and west the same;
The sunlight chokes,
The whole earth smokes,
The only light is flame!
But what do I care for the girdle of death
With its wavering wall and spire!
I draw the ring