Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Page 174
Let God out!
Shall we not open the human heart,
Never to close and stand apart?
God is a force to give way to!
God is a thing you have to do!
God can never be caught by prayer,
Hid in your heart and fastened there —
Let God through!
THANKSGIVING HYMN.
FOR CALIFORNIA.
OUR forefathers gave thanks to God,
In the land by the stormy sea,
For bread hard wrung from the iron sod
In cold and misery.
Though every day meant toil and strife,
In the land by the stormy sea,
They thanked their God for the gift of life —
How much the more should we!
Stem frost had they full many a day,
Strong ice on the stormy sea,
Long months of snow, gray clouds hung low,
And a cold wind endlessly;
Winter, and war with an alien race —
But they were alive and free!
And they thanked their God for his good grace —
How much the more should we!
For we have a land all sunny with gold,
A land by the summer sea;
Gold in the earth for our hands to hold,
Gold in blossom and tree;
Comfort, and plenty, and beauty, and peace,
From the mountains down to the sea.
They thanked their God for a year’s increase —
How much the more should we!
CHRISTMAS CAROL.
FOR LOS ANGELES.
ON the beautiful birthday of Jesus,
While the nations praising stand,
He goeth from city to city,
He walketh from land to land.
And the snow lies white and heavy,
And the ice lies wide and wan,
But the love of the blessed Christmas
Melts even the heart of man.
With love from the heart of Heaven,
In the power of his Holy Name,
To the City of the Queen of the Angels
The tender Christ-child came.
The land blushed red with roses,
The land laughed glad with grain,
And the little hills smiled softly
In the freshness after rain.
Land of the fig and olive!
Land of the fruitful vine!
His heart grew soft within him,
As he thought of Palestine,
Of the brooks with the banks of lilies,
Of the little doves of clay,
And of how he sat with his mother
At the end of a summer’s day,
His head on his mother’s bosom,
His hand in his mother’s hand,
Watching the golden sun go down
Across the shadowy land,
A moment’s life with human kind;
A moment, nothing more;
Eternity lies broad, behind,
Eternity before.
High on the Hills of Heaven,
Majestic, undefiled,
Forever and ever he lives, a God;
But once he lived, a Child!
And the child-heart leaps within him,
And the child-eyes softer grow,
When the land lies bright and sunny,
Like the land of long ago;
And the love of God is mingled
With the love of dear days gone,
When he comes to the city of his mother,
On the day her child was born!
NEW DUTY.
ONCE to God we owed it all,
God alone;
Bowing in eternal thrall,
Giving, sacrificing all,
Before the Throne.
Once we owed it to the King,
Served the crown;
Life, and love, and everything,
In allegiance to the King,
Laying down.
Now we owe it to Mankind,
To our Race;
Fullest fruit of soul and mind,
Heart and hand and all behind,
Now in place.
Loving-service, wide and free,
From the sod
Up in varying degree,
Through me and you — through you and me —
Up to God!
SEEKING.
I WENT to look for Love among the roses, the roses,
The pretty winged boy with the arrow and the bow;
In the fair and fragrant places,
‘Mid the Muses and the Graces,
At the feet of Aphrodite, with the roses all aglow.
Then I sought among the shrines where the rosy flames were leaping —
The rose and golden flames, never ceasing, never still —
For the boy so fair and slender,
The imperious, the tender,
With the whole world moving slowly to the music of his will.
Sought, and found not for my seeking, till the sweet quest led me further,
And before me rose the temple, marble-based and gold above,
Where the long procession marches
‘Neath the incense-clouded arches
In the world-compelling worship of the mighty God of Love.
Yea, I passed with bated breath to the holiest of holies,
And I lifted the great curtain from the
Inmost, the Most Fair,
Lost while still dear, still sweet, still met by glad affection,
An endless happiness in recollection.
And some have Love’s full cap as he doth give it —
Have it, and drink of it, and, ah, outlive it!
Full fed by Love’s delights, o’erwearied, sated,
They die, not hungry — only suffocated.
THE CUP.
AND yet, saith he, ye need but sip;
And who would die without a taste?
Just touch the goblet to the lip,
Then let the bright draught run to waste!
She set her lip to the beaker’s brim —
‘T was passing sweet. ‘T was passing mild!
She let her large eyes dwell on him,
And sipped again, and smiled.
So sweet! So mild! She scarce can tell
If she doth really drink or no;
Till the light doth fade and the shadows swell,
And the goblet lieth low.
O cup of dreams! O cup of doubt!
O cup of blinding joy and pain!
The taste that none would die without!
The draught that all the world must drain!
WHAT THEN?
SUPPOSE you write your heart out till the world
Sobs with one voice — what then?
Small agonies that round your heart-strings curled
Strung out for choice, that men
May pick a phrase, each for his own pet pain,
And thank the voice so come,
They being dumb. What then?
You have no sympathy? O endless claim!
No one that cares? What then?
Suppose you had — the whole world knew your name
And your affairs, and men
Ached with your headache, dreamed your dreadful dreams,
And, with your heart-break due,
Their hearts broke too. What then?
You think that people do not understand?
You suffer? Die? What then?
Unhappy child, look here, on either hand,
Look low or high, all men
Suffer and die, and keep it to themselves! They die — they suffer sore —
You suffer more? What then?
OUR LONELINESS.
THERE is no deeper grief than loneliness.
Our sharpest anguish at the death of friends
Is loneliness. Our agony of heart
When love has gone from us is loneliness.
The cryi
ng of a little child at night
In the big dark is crowding loneliness.
Slow death of woman on a Kansas farm;
The ache of those who think beyond their time
Pain unassuaged of isolated lives,
All this is loneliness.
Oh, we who are one body of one soul!
Great soul of man born into social form!
Should we not suffer at dismemberment?
A finger torn from brotherhood; an eye
Having no cause to see when set alone.
Our separation is the agony
Of uses unfulfilled — of thwarted law;
The forces of all nature throb and push,
Crying for their accustomed avenues;
And we, alone, have no excuse to be,
No reason for our being. We are dead
Before we die, and know it in our hearts.
Even the narrowest union has some joy,
Transient and shallow, limited and weak;
And joy of union strengthens with its strength
Deepens and widens as the union grows.
Hence the pure light of long-enduring love,
Lives blended slowly, softly, into one.
Hence civic pride, and glory in our states,
And the fierce thrill of patriotic fire
When millions feel as one!
When we shall learn
To live together fully; when each man
And woman works in conscious interchange
With all the world, union as wide as man,
No human soul can ever suffer more
The devastating grief of loneliness.
THE KEEPER OF THE LIGHT.
A LIGHTHOUSE keeper with a loving heart
Toiled at his service in the lonely tower,
Keeping his giant lenses clear and bright,
And feeding with pure oil the precious light
Whose power to save was as his own heart’s power.
He loved his kind, and being set alone
To help them by the means of this great light,
He poured his whole heart’s service into it,
And sent his love down the long beams that lit
The waste of broken water in the night.
He loved his kind, and joyed to see the ships
Come out of nowhere into his bright field,
And glide by safely with their living men,
Past him and out into the dark again,
To other hands their freight of joy to yield.
His work was noble and his work was done;
He kept the ships in safety and was glad;
And yet, late coming with the light’s supplies,
They found the love no longer in his eyes —
The keeper of the light had fallen mad.
IMMORTALITY.
WHEN I was grass, perhaps I may have wept
As every year the grass-blades paled and slept;
Or shrieked in anguish impotent, beneath
The smooth impartial cropping of great teeth —
I don’t remember much what came to pass
When I was grass.
When I was monkey, I’m afraid the trees
Weren’t always havens of contented ease;
Things killed us, and we never could tell why;
No doubt we blamed the earth or sea or sky —
I have forgotten my rebellion’s shape
When I was ape.
Now I have reached the comfortable skin
This stage of living is enveloped in,
And hold the spirit of my mighty race
Self-conscious prisoner under one white face,
I’m awfully afraid I’m going to die,
Now I am I.
So I have planned a hypothetic life
To pay me somehow for my toil and strife.
Blessed or damned, I someway must contrive
That I eternally be kept alive!
In this an endless, boundless bliss I see,
Eternal me!
When I was man, no doubt I used to care
About the little things that happened there,
And fret to see the years keep going by,
And nations, families, and persons die.
I didn’t much appreciate life’s plan
When I was man.
WASTE.
DOTH any man consider what we waste
Here in God’s garden? While the sea is full,
The sunlight smiles, and all the blessed earth
Offers her wealth to our intelligence.
We waste our food, enough for half the world,
In helpless luxury among the rich,
In helpless ignorance among the poor,
In spilling what we stop to quarrel for.
We waste our wealth in failing to produce,
In robbing of each other every day
In place of making things, our human crown.
We waste our strength, in endless effort poured
Like water on the sand, still toiling on
To make a million things we do not want.
We waste our lives, those which should still lead on,
Each new one gaining on the age behind,
In doing what we all have done before.
We waste our love, poured up into the sky,
Across the ocean, into desert lands,
Sunk in one narrow circle next ourselves,
While these, our brothers, suffer — are alone.
Ye may not pass the near to love the far;
Ye may not love the near and stop at that.
Love spreads through man, not over or around!
Yea, grievously we waste; and all the time
Humanity is wanting, wanting sore.
Waste not, my brothers, and ye shall not want!
WINGS.
A SENSE of wings —
Soft downy wings and fair —
Great wings that whistle as they sweep
Along the still gulfs — empty, deep —
Of thin blue air.
Doves’ wings that follow,
Doves’ wings that fold,
Doves’ wings that flutter down
To nestle in your hold.
Doves’ wings that settle,
Doves’ wings that rest,
Doves’ wings that brood so warm
Above the little nest.
Larks’ wings that rise and rise,
Climbing the rosy skies —
Fold and drop down
To birdlings brown.
Light wings of wood-birds, that one scarce believes
Moved in the leaves.
The quick, shy flight
Of wings that flee in fright —
A start as swift as light —
Only the shaken air
To tell that wings were there.
Broad wings that beat for many days
Above the land wastes and the water ways;
Beating steadily on and on,
Through dark and cold,
Through storms untold,
Till the far sun and summer land is won.
And wings —
Wings that unfold
With such wide sweep before your would-be hold —
Such glittering sweep of whiteness — sun on
snow —
Such mighty plumes — strong-ribbed, strongwebbed — strong-knit to go
From earth to heaven!
Hear the air flow back
In their wide track!
Feel the sweet wind these wings displace
Beat on your face!
See the great arc of light like rising rockets trail
They leave in leaving —
They avail —
These wings — for flight!
THE HEART OF THE WATER.
O THE ache in the heart of the water that lies
Underground in the desert, unopened, unknown,
While the seeds lie unbroken, th
e blossoms unblown,
And the traveller wanders — the traveller dies!
O the joy in the heart of the water that flows
From the well in the desert, a desert no more,
Bird-music and blossoms and harvest in store,
And the white shrine that showeth the traveller knows!
THE SHIP.
THE sunlight is mine! And the sea!
And the four wild winds that blow!
The winds of heaven that whistle free —
They are but slaves to carry me
Wherever I choose to go!
Fire for a power inside!
Air for a pathway free!
I traverse the earth in conquest wide;
The sea is my servant! The sea is my bride!
And the elements wait on me!
In dull green light, down-filtered sick and slow
Through miles of heavy water overhead,
With miles of heavy water yet below,
A ship lies, dead.
Shapeless and broken, swayed from side to side,
The helpless driftwood of an unknown tide.
AMONG THE GODS.
How close the air of valleys, and how close
The teeming little life that harbors there!
For me, I will climb mountains. Up and up,
Higher and higher, till I pant for breath
In that thin clearness. Still? There is no sound
Nor memory of sound upon these heights.
Oh! the great sunlight! The caressing sky,
The beauty, and the stillness, and the peace! see my pathway clear for miles below;
See where I fell, and set a friendly sign
To warn some other of the danger there.
The green small world is wide below me spread.
The great small world! Some things look large and fair
Which, in their midst, I could not even see;
And some look small which used to terrify.
Blessed these heights of freedom, wisdom, rest!
I will go higher yet.
A sea of cloud
Rolls soundless waves between me and the world.
This is the zone of everlasting snows,
And the sweet silence of the hills below
Is song and laughter to the silence here.
Great fields, huge peaks, long awful slopes of snow.
Alone, triumphant, man above the world,
I stand among these white eternities.
Sheer at my feet
Sink the unsounded, cloud-encumbered gulfs;
And shifting mists now veil and now reveal
The unknown fastnesses above me yet,