Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Page 173
Thirst for advancement, crave and yearn for it!
Yea, I desire t Then the compelling will
Urges to action to attain desire.
What action? Which desire? Am I a plant,
Rooted and helpless, following the light
Without volition? Or am I a beast,
Led by desire into the hunter’s snare?
Am I a savage, swayed by every wish,
Brutal and feeble, a ferocious child?
Stand back, Desire, and put your plea in words.
No wordless wailing for the summer moon,
No Gilpin race on some strong appetite,
Stand here before the King, and make your plea.
If Reason sees it just, you have your wish;
If not, your wish is vain, plead as you will.
The court is open, beggar! I am King!
WHY NOT?
WHY not look forward far as Plato looked
And see the beauty of our coming life,
As he saw that which might be ours to-day?
If his soul, then, could rise so far beyond
The brutal average of that old time,
When icy peaks of art stood sheer and high
In fat black valleys where the helot toiled;
If he, from that, could see so far ahead,
Could forecast days when Love and Justice both
Should watch the cradle of a healthy child,
And Wisdom walk with Beauty and pure Joy
In all the common ways of daily life,
Then may not we, from great heights hardly won,
Bright hills of liberty, broad plains of peace,
And flower-sweet valleys of warm human love,
Still broken by the chasms of despair
Where Poverty and Ignorance and Sin
Pollute the air of all, why not, from this,
Look on as Plato looked, and see the day
When his Republic and our Heaven, joined,
Shall make life what God meant it?
Ay, we do!
OUT OF THE GATE.
OUT of the glorious city gate
A great throng came.
A mighty throng that swelled and grew
Around a face that all men knew —
A man who bore a noted name —
Gathered to listen to his fate.
The Judge sat high. Unbroken black
Around, above, and at his back.
The people pressed for nearer place,
Longing, yet shamed, to watch that face;
And in a space before the throne
The prisoner stood, unbound, alone.
So thick they rose on every side,
There was no spot his face to hide.
Then came the Herald, crying clear,
That all the listening crowd should hear;
Crying aloud before the sun
What thing this fallen man had done.
He — who had held a ruler’s place
Among them, by their choice and grace —
He — fallen lower than the dust —
Had sinned against his public trust!
The Herald ceased. The Poet arose,
The Poet, whose awful art now shows
To this poor heart, and heart of every one,
The horror of the thing that he had done.
“O Citizen! Dweller in this high place!
Son of the city! Sharer in its pride !
Born in the light of its fair face!
By it fed, sheltered, taught, and glorified!
Raised to pure manhood by thy city’s care;
Made strong and beautiful and happy there;
Loving thy mother and thy father more
For the fair town which made them glad before;
Finding among its maidens thy sweet wife;
Owing to it thy power and place in life;
Raised by its people to the lofty stand
Where thou couldst execute their high command;
Trusted and honored, lifted over all,
So honored and so trusted, didst thou fall!
Against the people — who gave thee the power —
Thou hast misused it in an evil hour!
Against the city where thou owest all —
Thy city, man, within whose guarding wall
Lie all our life’s young glories — ay, the whole!
The home and cradle of the human soul!
Against thy city, beautiful and strong,
Thou, with the power it gave, hast done this wrong!”
Then rose the Judge. “Prisoner, thy case was tried
Fairly and fully in the courts inside.
Thy guilt was proven, and thou hast confessed,
And now the people’s voice must do the rest.
I speak the sentence which the people give:
It is permitted thee to freely live,
Redeem thy sin by service to the state,
But nevermore within this city’s gate !”
Back rolled the long procession, sad and slow,
Back where the city’s thousand banners blow.
The solemn music rises glad and clear
When the great gates before them open near,
Rises in triumph, sinks to sweet repose,
When the great gates behind them swing and close.
Free stands the prisoner, with a heart of stone.
The city gate is shut. He is alone.
THE MODERN SKELETON.
As kings of old in riotous royal feasts,
Among the piled up roses and the wine,
Wild music and soft-footed dancing girls,
The pearls and gold and barbarous luxury,
Used to show also a white skeleton,
To make life meeker in the sight of death,
To make joy sweeter by the thought thereof,
So our new kings in their high banqueting,
With the electric lustre unforeseen,
And unimagined costliness of flowers;
Rich wines of price and food as rare as gems,
And all the wondrous waste of artifice;
Midst high-bred elegance and jewelled ease
And beauty of rich raiment; they should set,
High before all, a sickly pauper child,
To keep the rich in mind of poverty,
The sure concomitant of their estate.
THE LESSON OF DEATH.
TO S T. D.
In memory of one whose breath
Blessed all with words wise, loving, brave;
Whose life was service, and whose death
Unites our hearts around her grave.
Another blow has fallen, Lord —
Was it from thee?
Is it indeed thy fiery sword
That cuts our hearts? We know thy word;
We know by heart wherein it saith
“Whom the Lord loves he chasteneth” —
But also, in another breath,
This: “The wages of sin is death.”
How may we tell what pain is good,
In mercy sent?
And what is evil through and through,
Sure consequence of what we do,
Sure product of thy broken laws,
Certain effect of given cause,
Just punishment?
Not sin of those who suffer, Lord —
To them no sham.
For father’s sins our children die
With Justice sitting idly by;
The guilty thrive nor yet repent,
While sorrow strikes the innocent —
Whom shall we blame?
‘T is not that one alone is dead,
And these bereft.
For her, for them, we grieve indeed;
But there are other hearts that bleed!
All up and down the world so wide
We suffer, Lord, on every side,
We who are left.
See now, we bend our stricken hearts,
Knowing thy laws are wholly just,
Knowing thy love commands our trust,
Knowing that good is God alone,
That pain and sorrow are our own,
And seeking out of all our pain
To struggle up to God again —
Teach us thy will!
When shall we learn by common joy
Broad as the sun,
By common effort, common fear,
All common life that holds us near,
And this great bitter common pain
Coming again and yet again —
That we are one?
Yea, one. We cannot sin apart,
Suffer alone;
Nor keep our goodness to ourselves
Like precious things on hidden shelves.
Because we each live not our best,
Some one must suffer for the rest —
For we are one!
Our pain is but the voice of wrong —
Lord, help us hear!
Teach us to see the truth at last,
To mend our future from our past,
To know thy laws and find them friends,
Leading us safe to lovely ends,
Thine own hand near.
Not one by doing right alone
Can mend the way;
But we must all do right together,
Love, help, and serve each other, whether
We joy or suffer. So at last
Shall needless pain and death be past,
And we, thy children living here,
Be worthy of our father dear!
God speed the day!
Oh, help us, Father, from this loss
To learn thy will!
So shall our lost one live again;
So shall her life not pass in vain;
So shall we show in better living —
In loving, helping, doing, giving —
That she lives still!
FOR US.
IF we have not learned that God’s in man,
And man in God again;
That to love thy God is to love thy brother,
And to serve the Lord is to serve each other,
Then Christ was born in vain! —
If we have not learned that one man’s life
In all men lives again;
That each man’s battle, fought alone,
Is won or lost for every one,
Then Christ hath lived in vain!
If we have not learned that death’s no break
In life’s unceasing chain;
That the work in one life well begun
In others is finished, by others is done,
Then Christ hath died in vain!
if we have not learned of immortal life,
And a future free from pain;
The kingdom of God in the heart of man,
And the living world on Heaven’s plan,
Then Christ arose in vain!
THANKSGIVING.
WELL is it for the land whose people, yearly,
Turn to the Giver of all Good with praise,
Chanting glad hymns that thank him, loudly, clearly,
Rejoicing in the beauty of his ways.
Great name that means all perfectness and power!
We thank thee — not for mercy, nor release,
But for clear joy in sky and sea and flower,
In thy pure justice, and thy blessed peace.
We live; behind us the dark past; before,
A wide way full of light that thou dost give;
More light, more strength, more joy and ever more —
O God of joy! we thank thee that we live!
CHRISTMAS HYMN.
LISTEN not to the word that would have you believe
That the voice of the age is a moan;
That the red hand of wrong
Is triumphant and strong,
And that wrong is triumphant alone;
There was never a time on the face of the earth
When love was so near its own.
Do you think that the love which has died for the world
Has not lived for the world also?
Filling man with the fire
Of a boundless desire
To love all with a love that shall grow?
It was not for nothing the White Christ was born
Two thousand years ago.
The power that gave birth to the Son of the King
All life doth move and thrill,
Every age as’t is passed
Coming nearer at last
To the law of that wonderful will,
As our God so loved the world that day,
Our God so loves it still.
The love that fed poverty, making it thrive,
Is learning a lovelier way.
We have seen that the poor
Need be with us no more,
And that sin may be driven away;
The love that has carried the martyrs to death
Is entering life to-day.
The spirit of Christ is awake and alive,
In the work of the world it is shown,
Crying loud, crying clear,
That the Kingdom is here,
And that all men are heirs to the throne!
There was never a time since the making of man
When love was so near its own!
CHRISTMAS.
SLOW, slow and weak,
As first the tongue began to speak,
The hand to serve, the heart to feel,
Grew up among our mutual deeds,
Great flower out-topping all the weeds,
Sweet fruit that meets all human needs,
Our love — our common weal.
It spread so wide, so high,
We saw it broad against the sky,
Down shining where we trod;
It stormed our new-born consciousness,
Omnipotent to heal and bless,
Till we conceived — we could no less,
It was the love of God!
Came there a man at length
Whose heart so swelled with the great strength
Of love that would have way,
That in his body he fulfilled
The utmost service love had willed;
And the great stream, so held, so spilled,
Pours on until to-day.
Still we look back to this grand dream,
Still stoop to drink at this wide stream,
Wider each year we live;
And on one yearly blessed day,
Seek not to earn and not to pay,
But to let love have its one way,
To quench our thirst to give!
Brothers, cease not to bless the name
Of him who loved through death and shame.
We cannot praise amiss;
But not in vain was sown the seed;
Look wide where thousands toil and bleed,
Where men meet death for common need —
Hath no man loved but this?
Yea, all men love; we love to-day
Wide as the human race has sway,
Ever more deep, more dear;
No stream, an everlasting sea,
Beating and throbbing to be free,
To give it forth there needs must be
One Christmas all the year
THE LIVING GOD.
THE Living God. The God that made the world
Made it, and stood aside to watch and wait,
Arranging a predestined plan
To save the erring soul of man —
Undying destiny — unswerving fate.
I see his hand in the path of life,
His law to doom and save,
His love divine in the hopes that shine
Beyond the sinner’s grave,
His care that sendeth sun and rain,
His wisdom giving rest,
His price of sin that we may not win
The heaven of the blest.
Not near enough! Not clear enough!
O God, come nearer still!
I long for thee! Be strong for me!
Teach me to know thy will!
The Living God. The God that makes the world,
Makes it — is making it in all its worth;
His spirit speaking sure and slow
In the real universe we know,
God living in the earth.
I feel his breath in the blowing wind,
His pulse in the swinging sea,
And the sunlit sod is the breast of God
Whose strength we feel and see.
His tenderness in the springing grass,
His beauty in the flowers,
His living love in the sun above,
All here, and near, and ours!
Not near enough! Not clear enough!
O God, come nearer still!
I long for thee! Be strong for me!
Teach me to know thy will!
The Living God. The God that is the world.
The world? The world is man, the work of man.
Then — dare I follow what I see? —
Then — by thy Glory — it must be
That we are in thy plan?
That strength divine in the work we do?
That love in our mothers’ eyes?
That wisdom clear in our thinking here?
That power to help us rise?
God in the daily work we’ve done,
In the daily path we’ve trod?
Stand still, my heart, for I am a part —
I too — of the Living God!
Ah, clear as light! As near! As bright!
O God! My God! My Own!
Command thou me! I stand for thee!
And I do not stand alone!
A PRAYER.
O GOD! I cannot ask thee to forgive;
I have done wrong.
Thy law is just; thy law must live,
Whoso doth wrong must suffer pain.
But help me to do right again,
Again be strong.
GIVE WAY!
SHALL we not open the human heart,
Swing the doors till the hinges start;
Stop our worrying doubt and din,
Hunting heaven and dodging sin?
There is no need to search so wide,
Open the door and stand aside —
Let God in!
Shall we not open the human heart
To loving labor in field and mart;
Working together for all about,
The glad, large labor that knows not doubt?
Can He be held in our narrow rim?
Do the work that is work for Him —