A heart well used; a brain of fluent power.
She gloried in the crown of motherhood;
And chose a father fit to share her reign;
And the two, reverent, passionate, devout,
Gave me my entailed heritage full store,
The better for their loyal stewardship.
II.
I was well trained.
My schooling opened with my baby eyes,
Was breathed with my first breathing. Purest air,
All sunlight and sweet winds and waves were mine.
Life came to me translated to the tongue
That I could understand and profit by.
I drank in wisdom with unconscious sense;
Long centuries of labor, glorified
Into profound simplicity by art,
Grew mine in brief, bright hours of playtime there.
They taught me — all who ever lived before —
Taught me free use of body, use of brain,
And sent me forth a full developed man,
With easy mastery of his powers.
III.
And I am rich.
I revel in immeasurable wealth;
Sitting, aweary of one day’s delight
And picturing my endless treasures;
Those I have counted — those I draw from now —
And those beyond exhaustion still to come:
Running my fingers through the heaps of gems
And tossing them, for gifts, till hands are tired.
So rich, so rich beyond all fear or doubt
That no desire for my own private need
Can ever enter my untroubled mind.
I am secure as rolls the easy sun,
And there remains but this: To Act! To Do!
IV.
Shall I not work?
I, who am wholly free and have no care;
I, with such press of power at my command;
I, who stand here in front of human life
And feel the push of all the heaving past
Straining against my hand!
Immortal life,
Eternal, indestructible, the same
In flower, and beast, and savage, now in me
Urges and urges to expression new.
Work? Shall I take from those blind laboring years
Their painful fruit and not contribute now
My share of gifts so easy to our time?
Shall I receive so much, support the weight
Of age-long obligation, and not turn
In sheerest pride, and strive to set my mark
A little past the record made before?
Shall it be said, “He took, from all the world,
Of its accumulated countless wealth,
As much as he could hold, and never gave!
Spiritless Beggar! Pauper! Parasite!”
Life is not long enough to let me work
As I desire. But all the years will hold
Shall I pour forth. Perhaps it may be mine
To do some deed was never done before
And ease my obligation to the world!
WHERE WOMEN MEET
Where women meet! — The village well
Was once their place; the convent cell
For centuries asleep and slow,
Gave all the grouping they could know
Or market-place, to buy and sell.
Now year by year their numbers swell
In crowded halls, ‘neath chairman’s bell;
To aid the weak, to lift the low,
To urge the right — these efforts show
Where women meet.
New light, our shadows to dispel —
New power beyond all parallel
From motherhood combined shall flow
Helping our stumbling race to grow, —
And a clean happy world will tell
Where women meet.
TO THE INDIFFERENT WOMAN
You who are happy in a thousand homes,
Or overworked therein, to a dumb peace;
Whose souls are wholly centered in the life
Of that small group you personally love;
Who told you that you need not know or care
About the sin and sorrow of the world?
Do you believe the sorrow of the world
Does not concern you in your little homes? —
That you are licensed to avoid the care
And toil for human progress, human peace,
And the enlargement of our power of love
Until it covers every field of life?
The one first duty of all human life
Is to promote the progress of the world
In righteousness, in wisdom, truth and love;
And you ignore it, hidden in your homes,
Content to keep them in uncertain peace,
Content to leave all else without your care.
Yet you are mothers! and a mother’s care
Is the first step toward friendly human life,
Life where all nations in untroubled peace
Unite to raise the standard of the world
And make the happiness we seek in homes
Spread everywhere in strong and fruitful love.
You are content to keep that mighty love
In its first steps forever; the crude care
Of animals for mate and young and homes,
Instead of pouring it abroad in life,
Its mighty current feeding all the world
Till every human child can grow in peace.
You cannot keep your small domestic peace
Your little pool of undeveloped love,
While the neglected, starved, unmothered world
Struggles and fights for lack of mother’s care,
And its tempestuous, bitter, broken life
Beats in upon you in your selfish homes.
We all may have our homes in joy and peace
When woman’s life, in its rich power of love
Is joined with man’s to care for all the world.
ONE GIRL OF MANY
1.
One girl of many. Hungry from her birth
Half-fed. Half-clothed. Untaught of woman’s worth.
In joyless girlhood working for her bread.
At each small sorrow wishing she were dead,
Yet gay at little pleasures. Sunlight seems
Most bright & warm where it most seldom gleams.
2.
One girl of many. Tawdry dress and old;
And not enough beneath to bar the cold.
The little that she had misspent because
She had no knowledge of our nature’s laws.
Thinking in ignorance that it was best
To wear a stylish look, and — bear the rest.
3.
One girl of many. With a human heart.
A woman’s too; with nerves that feel the smart
Of each new pain as keenly as your own.
The old ones, through long use, have softer grown.
And yet in spite of use she holds the thought
Of might-be joys more than, perhaps, she ought.
4.
One girl of many. But the fault is here;
Though she to all the others was so near;
One difference there was, which made a change.
No wrong thing, surely. Consequence most strange!
Alike in birth. Alike in life’s rough way.
She, through no evil, was more fair than they.
5.
So came the offer, “Leave this story cold
Where you may drudge and starve till you are old.
Come! I will give you rest. And food. And fire.
And fair apparel to your heart’s desire;
Shelter. Protection. Kindness. Peace & Love.
Has your life anything you hold above?”
6.
And she had not. In all her daily sight
The
re shone no vestige of the color White.
She had seen nothing in her narrow life
To make her venerate the title “Wife.”
She knew no reason why the thing was wrong;
And instinct grows debased in ages long.
7.
All things that she had ever yet desired
All dreams that her starved girlhood’s heart had fired
All that life held of yet unknown delight
Shone, to her ignorance, in colors bright.
Shone near at hand and sure. If she had known!
But she was ignorant. She was alone.
8.
And so she — sinned. I think we call it sin.
And found that every step she took therein
Made sinning easier and conscience weak.
And there was never one who cared to speak
A word to guide and warn her. If there were
I fear such help were thrown away on her.
9.
Only one girl of many. Of the street.
In lowest depths. The story grows unmeet
For wellbred ears. Sorrow and sin and shame
Over and over till the blackened name
Sank out of sight without a hand to save.
Sin, shame, and sorrow. Sickness, & the grave.
10.
Only one girl of many. Tis a need
Of man’s existence to repeat the deed.
Social necessity. Men cannot live
Without what these disgraceful creatures give.
Black shame. Dishonor. Misery & Sin.
And men find needed health & life therein.
THE DEPARTING HOUSEMAID
The housewife is held to her labors
By three great powers —
Love, that poureth like water
Through hours and hours.
Duty, high as the heavens,
Deep as the sea —
These, and the great compeller,
Necessity.
Duty holds her to housework,
Sin to be free;
These are the bonds of the housewife —
They bind not me!
The man is spurred to his labors
Of plow or sword,
By two of the great incentives —
Pride and Reward.
He in his work finds glory,
Height after height;
He in his work finds riches,
Gain and delight.
Triumph of world-wide conquest —
Profit in fee;
These spur man to his labors —
They spur not me!
I am the lowest of labor,
Ignorant, strong.
They on my ignorance reckoned,
Held me thus long.
Lately I grow to discover
Life’s broader way:
Nothing to hold me or spur me —
Why should I stay?
THE PAST PARENT & THE COMING CHILD
Turn now and look your parent in the face —
That face long misled with reverence compelled
Let us revere the truth and not a veil —
Off with it! Let the present lift its head
And see and know and judge the dwindling Past.
The garments of tradition hide the shape —
Which we were taught to honor as sublime —
Glory and strength of hallowed Golden Age —
Mythical Heroes merging into gods —
But keen eyed science with is newfound light
Pierces the myths and shows us — O forlorn! —
The low browed savage — and the chinless ape
Smaller than we — and weaker — and less wise —
Slow growing through a thousand senseless sins —
Forced on, reluctant, up historic stairs,
Resisting, holding back, delaying Time.
Holding Us back! Trying from age to age
To keep us still delinquent as itself!
To keep the Present subject to the Past!
O blessed light of truth that sets us free —
Free of those chains that drag along the years.
Let us forgive — forget and turn our face
For good and all ahead! And what awaits —
What looms so large — what grows, so fast, ahead —
O love and Pride! The Future’s splendid child!
MATRIATISM
Small is the thought of “Fatherland,”
With all its pride and worth;
With all its history of death;
Of fire and sword and wasted breath —
By the great new thought which quickeneth —
The thought of “Mother Earth.”
Man fights for wealth and rule and pride,
For the “name” that is his alone;
Comes woman, wakening to her power,
Comes woman, opening the hour
That sees life as one growing flower,
All children as her own.
Fathers have fought for their Fatherland
With slaughter and death and dearth,
But mothers, in service and love’s increase,
Will labor together for our release,
From a war-stained past to a world at peace,
Our fair, sweet Mother Earth.
THE SOURCE
Behind us lies a long forgetfulness —
Past upon past deep buried in the brain;
No memories penetrate those ages old,
Lift the uncounted curtains, fold on fold,
And let us see our earliest days again.
Could they — what wonder, interest, delight,
Clouded with shame for those dark, stumbling years,
In tracing up that long unbroken line,
That slow development of life divine,
From beast to man — the triumph and the tears!
Yet always one unfailing source of power —
However low we go or high we come,
However crude or cruel, weak or blind,
Through every change, in every age, we find
The Mother and the Baby and the Home.
I AM HUMAN
I was deprived in childhood — robbed of my birthright fair!
I have never had what belonged to me, and they stole from my scanty
share.
I have suffered — oh, how I have suffered!
Outrage and loss and pain!
Are the Heavens deaf? Is God a lie, that such black wrongs remain?
What matter! ah, what matter! what shall it count to me?
These things that “I” have suffered — what is that I to “We”?
We — We who are Human — life that is old as Time —
Life of the blended nations; life that is now sublime!
Life that has buried billions and poured forth billions more —
Life that has suffered for ages, and rejoices as never before!
Life that carries its evils, disease and sorrow and sin.
By the power of eternal progress — the progress we all are in;
That bears with its weak and little, its errors of church and state,
By the strength and truth and virtue of its all uncounted great!
Human! am I not Human! Is not the world’s life mine?
Shall the fate of a single creature disturb that calm divine?
The little “I” that suffered was but a part of me —
A fraction slight as a wavelet light on a world-encircling sea.
I may sorrow for it, as for others; there is pain man should not bear,
But the joy and the power of Human Life makes that an easy care.
We may mend it and remove it — we may make all men glad,
So soon as we turn our common power to help the separate sad,
When we lift our soul from the microscope of personal concern
And let the light of Human Love have room to shine and burn.
In the wealth of power and the peace of power and the joy that power
can give.
I have climbed the way of the ages in the steps that must be trod;
And I stand of the very threshold of a world that knows its God.
Hark! was some one crying? Does some one yet complain?
We cannot go on to our splendid day while any in want remain.
Hush! It is easy to aid you; the power and the instant will.
Wisdom and limitless love are mine; bring me your cup to fill!
Come! To riches and beauty, and freedom that none can bar —
Were you myself a thousand times — see what you really are!
THE COMING DAY
As the strong, sweet light of the morning,
As the strong, sweet air of the sea,
As the strong, sweet music of the air among the leaves,
Comes the voice of our goodwill to a weary world that grieves,
Crying, Be glad! Be free!
Youth is shining within us like the morning,
Power is rising within us like the sea,
Love is coming like the mighty wind that sweeps disease away —
Love that shall be in the future — love that is, that is to-day,
Brothers! Be glad! Be free!
THIS IS THE YEAR
Forget all the Buried and welcome the Born!
These that are coming are Real!
Plough for the Beautiful Dream of the Corn —
Build the Ideal!
Changeless the Past, but the Future is ours —
Open for us to endow;
Fruit of our purposes, proof of our powers —
Work for it Now!
All we desire is for us to create —
Here in our hands, here!
This is the Hour that is Never Too Late!
This is The Year!
THOUGHTS AND FACTS
Once we thought the world was flat,
What of that?
It was just as globose then,
Under unbelieving men,
As our later folk have found it,
By success in running round it.
What we think may guide our acts,
But it does not alter facts.
We thought women made and meant
For man’s content;
Rib-made secondary things,
Not the stuff for priests and kings.
Greatly we admired the plan
Of “God’s last best gift to man.”
Now we’re learning, somewhat late,
Female life to antedate
Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Page 190
