Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Page 175
I am alone — above all life — sole king
Of these white wastes. How pitiful and small
Becomes the outgrown world! I reign supreme,
And in this utter stillness and wide peace
Look calmly down upon the universe.
Surely that crest has changed! That pile of cloud
That covers half the sky, waves like a robe!
That large and gentle wind
Is like the passing of a presence here!
See how you massive mist-enshrouded peak
Is like the shape of an unmeasured foot,
The figure with the stars!
Ah! what is this? It moves, lifts, bends, is gone!
With what a shocking sense of littleness —
A reeling universe that changes place,
And falls to new relation over me —
I feel the unseen presence of the gods!
SONGS.
I.
O WORLD of green, all shining, shifting!
O world of blue, all living, lifting!
O world where glassy waters smoothly roll!
Fair earth, and heaven free,
Ye are but part of me —
Ye are my soul!
O woman nature, shining, shifting!
O woman creature, living, lifting!
Come soft and still to one who waits thee here!
Fair soul, both mine and free,
Ye who are part of me,
Appear! Appear!
II.
How could I choose but weep?
The poor bird lay asleep;
For lack of food, for lack of breath,
For lack of life he came to death —
How could I choose but weep?
How could I choose but smile?
There was no lack the while!
In bliss he did undo himself;
Where life was full he slew himself —
How could I choose but smile?
Would ye but understand! —
Joy is on every hand!
Ye shut your eyes and call it night,
Ye grope and fall in seas of light —
Would ye but understand!
HEAVEN.
THOU bright mirage, that o’er man’s arduous way
Hast hung in the hot sky, with fountains streaming,
Cool marble domes, and palm-fronds waving, gleaming,
Vision of rest and peace to end the day!
Now he is weariest, alone, astray,
Spent with long labor, led by thy sweet seeming,
Faint as the breath of Nature’s lightest dreaming,
Thou waverest and vanishest away!
Can Nature dream? Is God’s great sky deceiving?
Where joy like that the clouds above us show
Be sure the counterpart must lie below,
Sweeter than hope, more blessed than believing!
We lose the fair reflection of our home
Because so near its gates our feet have come!
BALLAD OF THE SUMMER SUN.
IT is said that human nature needeth hardship to be strong,
That highest growth has come to man in countries white with snow;
And they tell of truth and wisdom that to northern folk belong,
But the Lord of Peace and Blessing was not one!
Truth and Power and Beauty — Love that endeth tears —
Came to man in summer lands beneath a summer sun.
PIONEERS.
LONG have we sung our noble pioneers,
Vanguard of progress, heralds of the time,
Guardians of industry and art sublime,
Leaders of man down all the brightening years!
To them the danger, to their wives the tears,
While we sit safely in the city’s grime,
In old-world trammels of distress and crime,
Playing with words and thoughts, with doubts and fears.
Children of axe and gun! Ye take to-day
The baby steps of man’s first, feeblest age,
While we, thought-seekers of the printed page,
We lead the world down its untrodden way!
Ours the drear wastes and leagues of empty waves,
The lonely deaths, the undiscovered graves.
EXILES.
EXILED from home. The far sea rolls
Between them and the country of their birth;
The childhood-turning impulse of their souls
Pulls half across the earth.
Exiled from home. No mother to take care
That they work not too hard, grieve not too sore;
No older brother nor small sister fair;
No father any more.
Exiled from home; from all familiar things;
The low-browed roof, the grass-surrounded door;
Accustomed labors that gave daylight wings;
Loved steps on the worn floor.
Exiled from home. Young girls sent forth alone
When most their hearts need close companioning;
No love and hardly friendship may they own,
No voice of welcoming.
Blinded with homesick tears the exile stands;
To toil for alien household gods she comes;
A servant and a stranger in our lands,
Homeless within our homes.
A NEVADA DESERT.
AN aching, blinding, barren, endless plain,
Corpse-colored with white mould of alkali,
Hairy with sage-brush, slimy after rain,
Burnt with the sky’s hot scorn, and still again
Sullenly burning back against the sky.
Dull green, dull brown, dull purple, and dull gray,
The hard earth white with ages of despair,
But when the long procession of the days
Rolls musically down the waiting year,
Close-ranked, rich-robed, flower-garlanded and fair;
Broad brows of peace, deep eyes of soundless truth,
And lips of love, warm, steady, changeless love;
Each one more beautiful, till we forget
Our niggard fear of losing half an hour,
And learn to count on more and ever more,
In the remembered joy of yesterday,
In the full rapture of to-day’s delight,
And knowledge of the happiness to come,
We learn to let life pass without regret,
We learn to hold life softly and in peace,
We learn to meet life gladly, full of faith,
We learn what God is, and to trust in Him!
THE BEDS OF FLEUR-DE-LYS.
HIGH-LYING, sea-blown stretches of green turf,
Wind-bitten close, salt-colored by the sea,
Low curve on curve spread far to the cool sky,
And, curving over them as long they lie,
Beds of wild fleur-de-lys.
Wide-flowing, self-sown, stealing near and far,
Breaking the green like islands in the sea;
Great stretches at your feet, and spots that bend
Dwindling over the horizon’s end,
Wild beds of fleur-de-lys.
The light keen wind streams on across the lifts,
Thin wind of western springtime by the sea;
The close turf smiles unmoved, but over her
Is the far-flying rustle and sweet stir
In beds of fleur-de-lys.
And here and there across the smooth, low grass
Tall maidens wander, thinking of the sea;
And bend, and bend, with light robes blown aside,
For the blue lily-flowers that bloom so wide,
The beds of fleur-de-lys.
THE PRESIDIO, SAN FRANCISCO.
IT IS GOOD TO BE ALIVE.
IT is good to be alive when the trees shine green,
And the steep red hills stand up against the sky;
Big sky, blue sky, with flying clouds between —
It i
s good to be alive and see the clouds drive by!
It is good to be alive when the strong winds blow,
The strong, sweet winds blowing straightly off the sea;
Great sea, green sea, with swinging ebb and flow —
It is good to be alive and see the waves roll free!
THE CHANGELESS YEAR.
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.
DOTH Autumn remind thee of sadness?
And Winter of wasting and pain?
Midsummer, of joy that was madness?
Spring, of hope that was vain?
Do the Seasons fly fast at thy laughter?
Do the Seasons lag slow if thou weep,
Till thou long’st for the land lying after
The River of Sleep?
Come here, where the West lieth golden
In the light of an infinite sun,
Where Summer doth Winter embolden
Till they reign here as one!
Here the Seasons tread soft and steal slowly;
A moment of question and doubt —
Is it Winter? Come faster! — come wholly! —
And Spring rusheth out!
We forget there are tempests and changes;
We forget there are days that are drear;
In a dream of delight, the soul ranges
Through the measureless year.
Still the land is with blossoms enfolden,
Still the sky burneth blue in its deeps;
Time noddeth, ‘mid poppies all golden,
And memory sleeps.
WHERE MEMORY SLEEPS.
RONDEAU.
WHERE memory sleeps the soul doth rise,
Free of that past where sorrow lies,
And storeth against future ills
The courage of the constant hills,
The comfort of the quiet skies.
Fair is this land to tired eyes,
Where summer sunlight never dies,
And summer’s peace the spirit fills,
Where memory sleeps.
Safe from the season’s changing cries
And chill of yearly sacrifice,
Great roses crowd the window-sills,
Calm roses that no winter kills.
The peaceful heart all pain denies,
Where memory sleeps.
CALIFORNIA OAR WINDOWS.
LARK songs ringing to Heaven,
Earth light clear as the sky;
Air like the breath of a greenhouse
With the greenhouse roof on high.
Flowers to see till you’re weary,
To travel in hours and hours;
Ranches of gold and purple,
Counties covered with flowers!
A rainbow, a running rainbow,
That flies at our side for hours;
A ribbon, a broidered ribbon,
A rainbow ribbon of flowers.
LIMITS.
ON sand — loose sand and shifting —
On sand — dry sand and drifting —
The city grows to the west;
Not till its border reaches
The ocean-beaten beaches
Will it rest.
On hills — steep hills and lonely,
That stop at cloudland only —
The city climbs to the sky;
Not till the souls who make it
Touch the clear light and take it,
Will it die.
POWELL STREET.
You start
From the town’s hot heart
To ride up Powell Street.
Hotel and theatre and crowding shops,
And Market’s cabled stream that never stops,
And the mixed hurrying beat
Of countless feet —
Take a front seat.
Before you rise
Six terraced hills, up to the low-hung skies;
Low where across the hill they seem to lie,
And then — how high!
Up you go slowly. To the right
A wide square, green and bright.
Above that green a broad facade,
Strongly and beautifully made,
In warm clear color standeth fair and true
Against the blue.
Only, above, two purple domes rise bold,
Twin-budded spires, bright-tipped with balls of gold.
Past that, and up you glide,
Up, up, till, either side,
Wide earth and water stretch around — away —
The straits, the hills, and the low-lying, wide-spread,
dusky bay.
Great houses here,
Dull, opulent, severe.
Dives’ gold birds on guarding lamps a-wing —
Dead gold, that may not sing!
Fair on the other side
Smooth, steep-laid sweeps of turf and green boughs
waving wide.
This is the hilltop’s crown.
Below you, down
In blurred, dim streets, the market quarter lies,
Foul, narrow, torn with cries
Of tortured things in cages, and the smell
Of daily bloodshed rising; that is hell.
But up here on the crown of Powell Street
The air is sweet;
And the green swaying mass of eucalyptus bends
Like hands of friends,
To gladden you despite the mansions’ frown.
Then you go down.
Down, down, and round the turns to lower grades;
Lower in all ways; darkening with the shades
Of poverty, old youth, and unearned age,
And that quick squalor which so blots the page
Of San Francisco’s beauty, swift decay
Chasing the shallow grandeur of a day.
Here, like a noble lady of lost state,
Still calmly smiling at encroaching fate,
Amidst the squalor, rises Russian Hill,
Proud, isolated, lonely, lovely still.
So on you glide.
Till the blue straits lie wide
Before you; purple mountains loom across,
And islands green as moss;
With soft white fog-wreaths drifting, drifting through
To comfort you;
And light, low-singing waves that tell you reach
The end, North Beach.
FROM RUSSIAN HILL.
A STRANGE day — bright and still;
Strange for the stillness here,
For the strong trade-winds blow
With such a steady sweep it seems like rest,
Forever steadily across the crest
Of Russian Hill.
Still now and clear,
So clear you count the houses spreading wide
In the fair cities on the farther side
Of our broad bay;
And brown Goat Island lieth large between,
Its brownness brightening into sudden green
From rains of yesterday.
Blue? Blue above of Californian sky,
Which has no peer on earth for its pure flame;
Bright blue of bay and strait spread wide below,
And, past the low, dull hills that hem it so,
Blue as the sky, blue as the placid bay,
Blue mountains far away.
Thanks this year for the early rains that came,
To bless us, meaning Summer by and by.
This is our Spring-in-Autumn, making one
The Indian Summer tenderness of sun —
Its hazy stillness, and soft far-heard sound —
And the sweet riot of abundant spring,
The greenness flaming out from everything,
The sense of coming gladness in the ground.
From this high peace and purity look down;
Between you and the blueness lies the town.
Under those huddled roofs the heart of man
Beats warmer than this brooding day,
Spreads wider than
the hill-rimmed bay,
And throbs to tenderer life, were it but seen,
Than all this new-born, all-enfolding green!
Within that heart lives still
All that one guesses, dreams, and sees —
Sitting in sunlight, warm, at ease —
From this high island, Russian Hill.
AN UNUSUAL RAIN.
AGAIN!
Another day of rain!
It has rained for years.
It never clears.
The clouds come down so low
They drag and drip
Across each hill-top’s tip.
In progress slow
They blow in from the sea
Eternally;
Hang heavily and black,
And then roll back;
And rain and rain and rain,
Both drifting in and drifting out again.
They come down to the ground,
These clouds, where the ground is high;
And, lest the weather fiend forget
And leave one hidden spot unwet,
The fog comes up to the sky!
And all our pavement of planks and logs
Reeks with the rain and steeps in the fogs
Till the water rises and sinks and presses
Into your bonnets and shoes and dresses;
And every outdoor-going dunce
Is wet in forty ways at once.
Wet?
It’s wetter than being drowned
Dark?
Such darkness never was found
Since first the light was made. And cold?
O come to the land of grapes and gold,
Of fruit and flowers and sunshine gay,
When the rainy season’s under way!
And they tell you calmly, evermore,
They never had such rain before!
What’s that you say? Come out?
Why, see that sky! —
Oh, what a world! so clear! so high!
So clean and lovely all about;
The sunlight burning through and through,
And everything just blazing blue.
And look! the whole world blossoms again
The minute the sunshine follows the rain.
Warm sky — earth basking under —
Did it ever rain, I wonder?
THE HILLS.
THE flowing waves of our warm sea
Roll to the beach and die,
But the soul of the waves forever fills
The curving crests of our restless hills