Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

IN THIS OUR WORLD

IN THIS OUR WORLD

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN

BOSTON

SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1893, 1895

BY CHARLOTTE PERKINS STETSON

Copyright, 1898

BY SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY

Entered at Stationers’ Hall

Fifth edition, 1914

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.

CONTENTS.

THE WORLD.

BIRTH.

Lord, I am born!

I have built me a body

Whose ways are all open,

Whose currents run free,

From the life that is thine

Flowing ever within me,

To the life that is mine

Flowing outward through me.

I am clothed, and my raiment

Fits smooth to the spirit,

The soul moves unhindered,

The body is free;

And the thought that my body

Falls short of expressing,

In texture and color

Unfoldeth on me.

I am housed, O my Father!

My body is sheltered,

My spirit has room

’Twixt the whole world and me,

I am guarded with beauty and strength,

And within it

Is room for still union,

And birth floweth free.

And the union and birth

Of the house, ever growing,

Have built me a city—

Have born me a state—

Where I live manifold,

Many-voiced, many-hearted,

Never dead, never weary,

And oh! never parted!

The life of The Human,

So subtle—so great!

Lord, I am born!

From inmost to outmost

The ways are all open,

The currents run free,

From thy voice in my soul

To my joy in the people—

I thank thee, O God,

For this body thou gavest,

Which enfoldeth the earth—

Is enfolded by thee!

NATURE’S ANSWER.

I.

A man would build a house, and found a place

As fair as any on the earth’s fair face:

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 Mars;

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 love

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 FIRE.

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

Where I am king,

And fight the fire with fire!

My blaze is not as wide as the world,

Nor tall for the world to see;

But the flames I make

For life’s sweet sake,

Are between the fire and me.

That fire would burn in wantonness

All things that life must use;

Some things I lay

In the dragon’s way

And burn because I choose.

The sky is black, the air is red,

The earth is a flaming sea;

But I’m shielded well

In the seething hell,

By the fire that comes from me.

There is nothing on earth a man need fear,

Nothing so dark or dire;

Though the world is wide,

You have more inside,

You can fight the fire with fire!

THE SHIELD.

Fight! said the Leader. Stand and fight!

How dare you yield!

What is the pain of the bitter blows,

The ache and sting and the blood that flows,

To a losing field!

Yea, said they, you may stand and fight;

We needs must yield!

What is the danger and pain to you,

When every blow falls fair and true

On your magic shield?

The magical cuirass over your breast,

Leather and steel,

Guarded like that, of course you dare

To meet the storm of battle there—

But we can feel!

The Leader fell where he fought alone.

See the lifeblood start

Where one more blow has pierced too far,

Through a bosom hardened with scar on scar,—

The only shield, the only bar,

For that great heart!

TO THE PREACHER.

Preach about yesterday, Preacher!

The time so far away:

When the hand of Deity smote and slew,

And the heathen plagued the stiff-necked Jew;

Or when the Man of Sorrows came,

And blessed the people who cursed his name—

Preach about yesterday, Preacher!

Not about to-day!

Preach about to-morrow, Preacher!

Beyond this world’s decay:

Of the sheepfold Paradise we priced

When we pinned our faith to Jesus Christ;

Of those hot depths that shall receive

The goats who would not so believe—

Preach about to-morrow, Preacher,

Not about to-day!

Preach about the old sins, Preacher!

And the old virtues, too:

You must not steal nor take man’s life,

You must not covet your neighbor’s wife,

And woman must cling at every cost

To her one virtue, or she is lost—

Preach about the old sins, Preacher!

Not about the new!

Preach about the other man, Preacher!

The man we all can see!

The man of oaths, the man of strife,

The man who drinks and beats his wife,

Who helps his mates to fret and shirk

When all they need is to keep at work—

Preach about the other man, Preacher!

Not about me!

A TYPE.

I am too little, said the Wretch,

For any one to see.

Among the million men who do

This thing that I am doing too,

Why should they notice me?

My sin is common as to breathe;

It rests on every back.

And surely I am not to blame

Where everybody does the same,—

Am not a bit more black!

And so he took his willing share

In a universal crime,

Thinking that no reproach could fall

On one who shared the fault of all,

Who did it all the time.

Then Genius came, and showed the world

What thing it was they did;

How their offence had reached the poles

With stench of slain unburied souls,

And all men cowered and hid.

Then Genius took that one poor Wretch

For now the time was ripe;

Stripped him of every shield and blind,

And nailed him up for all mankind

To study—as a type!

COMPROMISE.

It is well to fight and win—

If that may be;

It is well to fight and die therein—

For such go free;

It is ill to fight and find no grave

But a prison-cell;

To keep alive, yet live a slave—

Praise those who fell!

But worst of all are those who stand

With arms laid by,

Bannerless, helpless, no command,

No battle-cry.

They live to save unvalued breath,

With lowered eyes;

In place of victory, or death,—

A compromise!

PART OF THE BATTLE.

There is a moment when with splendid joy,

With flashing blade and roar of thundering guns

And colors waving wide where triumph stands,

The last redoubt is carried; we have won!

This is the battle! We have conquered now!

But the long hours of marching in the sun,

The longer hours of waiting in the dark,

Deadly dishonored work of hidden spy,

The dull details of commissariat,

Food, clothing, medicine, the hospital,

The way the transportation mules are fed,—

These are the battle too, and victory’s price.

And we, in days when no attack is feared

And none is hoped,—no sudden courage called,—

Should strengthen our intrenchments quietly,

Review the forces, exercise the troops,

Feeling the while, not “When will battle come?”

But, “This is battle! We are conquering now!”

STEP FASTER, PLEASE.

Of all most aggravating things,

If you are hot in haste,

Is to have a man in front of you

With half a day to waste.

There is this one thing that justifies

The man in the foremost place:

The fact that he is the man in front,

The leader of the race.

But, for Heaven’s sake, if you are ahead,

Don’t dawdle at your ease!

You set the pace for the man behind;

Step faster, please!

A NEW YEAR’S REMINDER.

Better have a tender conscience for the record of your house,

And your own share in the work which they have done,

Though your private conscience aches

With your personal mistakes,

And you don’t amount to very much alone,

Than to be yourself as spotless as a baby one year old,

Your domestic habits wholly free from blame,

While the company you stand with

Is a thing to curse a land with,

And your public life is undiluted shame.

For the deeds men do together are what saves the world to-day—

By our common public work we stand or fall—

And your fraction of the sin

Of the office you are in

Is the sin that’s going to damn you, after all!

OUT OF PLACE.

Cell, poor little cell,

Distended with pain,

Torn with the pressure

Of currents of effort

Resisted in vain;

Feeling sweep by you

The stream of nutrition,

Unable to take;

Crushed flat and inactive,

While shudder across you

Great forces that wake;

Alone—while far voices

Across all the shouting

Call you to your own;

Held fast, fastened close,

Surrounded, enveloped,

How you starve there alone!

Cell, poor little cell,

Let the pain pass—don’t hold it!

Let the effort pass through you!

Let go! And give way!

You will find your own place;

You will join your own people;

See the light of your day!

LITTLE CELL.

Little Cell! Little Cell! with a heart as big as heaven,

Remember that you are but a part!

This great longing in your soul

Is the longing of the whole,

And your work is not done with your heart!

Don’t imagine, Little Cell,

That the work you do so well

Is the only work the world needs to do!

You are wanted in your place

For the growing of the race,

But the growing does not all depend on you!

Little Cell! Little Cell! with a race’s whole ambition,

Remember there are others growing, too!

You’ve been noble, you’ve been strong;

Rest a while and come along;

Let the world take a turn and carry you!

THE CHILD SPEAKS.

Get back! Give me air! Give me freedom and room,

The warm earth and bright water, the crowding sweet bloom

Of the flowers, and the measureless, marvellous sky,—

All of these all the time, and a shelter close by

Where silence and beauty and peace are my own

In a chamber alone.

Then bring me the others! “A child” is a crime;

It is “children” who grow through the beautiful time

Of their childhood up into the age you are in.

“A child” must needs suffer and sicken and sin;

The life of a child needs the life of its kind,

O ye stupid and blind!

Then the best of your heart and the best of your brain!

The face of all beauty! The soul without stain!

Your noblest! Your wisest! With us is the place

To consecrate life to the good of the race!

That our childhood may pass with the best you can give,

And our manhood so live!

The wisdom of years, the experience deep

That shall laugh with our waking and watch with our sleep,

The patience of age, the keen honor of youth,

To guide us in doing and teach us in truth,

With the garnered ripe fruit of the world at our feet,

Both the bitter and sweet!

What is this that you offer? One man’s narrow purse!

One woman’s strained life, and a heart straining worse!

Confined as in prisons—held down as in caves—

The teaching of tyrants—the service of slaves—

The garments of falsehood and bondage—the weight

Of your own evil state.

And what is this brought as atonement for these?

For our blind misdirection, our death and disease;

For the grief of our childhood, the loss and the wrong;

For the pain of our childhood, the agony strong;

For the shame and the sin and the sorrow thereof—

Dare you say it is love?

Love? First give freedom,—the right of the brute!

The air with its sunshine, the earth with its fruit.

Love? First give wisdom,—intelligent care,

That shall help to bring out all the good that is there.

Love? First give justice! There’s nothing above!

And then you may love!

TO A GOOD MANY.

O blind and selfish! Helpless as the beast

Who sees no meaning in a soul released

And given flesh to grow in—to work through!

Think you that God has nothing else to do

Than babble endlessly the same set phrase?

Are life’s great spreading, upward-reaching ways

Laid for the beasts to climb on till the top

Is reached in you, you think, and there you stop!

They were raised up, obedient to force

Which lifted them, unwitting of their course.

You have new power, new consciousness, new sight;

You can help God! You stand in the great light

Of seeing him at work. You can go on

And walk with him, and feel the glory won.

And here you sit, content to toil and strive

To keep your kind of animal alive!

Why, friends! God is not through!

The universe is not complete in you.

You’re just as bound to follow out his plan

And sink yourself in ever-growing Man

As ever were the earliest, crudest eggs

To grow to vertebrates with arms and legs.

Society holds not its present height

Merely that you may bring a child to light;

But you and yours live only in the plan

That’s working out a higher kind of man;

A higher kind of life, that shall let grow

New powers and nobler duties than you know.

Rise to the thought! Live in the widening race!

Help make the State more like God’s dwelling-place!

New paths for life divine, as yet untrod,—

A social body for the soul of God!

HOW WOULD YOU?

Half of our misery, half our pain,

Half the dark background of our self-reproach,

Is thought of how the world has sinned before.

We, being one, one with all life, we feel

The misdemeanors of uncounted time;

We suffer in the foolishness and sins

Of races just behind us,—burn with shame

At their gross ignorance and murderous deeds;

We suffer back of them in the long years

Of squalid struggling savagery of beasts,—

Beasts human and subhuman; back of them

In helpless creatures eaten, hunted, torn;

In submerged forests dying in the slime;

And even back of that in endless years

Of hot convulsions of dismembered lands,

And slow constricting centuries of cold.

So in our own lives, even to this day,

We carry in the chambers of the mind

The tale of errors, failures, and misdeeds

That we call sins, of all our early lives.

And the recurrent consciousness of this

We call remorse. The unrelenting gauge,

Now measuring past error,—this is shame.

And in our feverish overconsciousness,

A retroactive and preactive sense,—

Fired with our self-made theories of sin,—

We suffer, suffer, suffer—half alive,

And half with the dead scars of suffering.

Friends, how would you, perhaps, have made the world?

Would you have balanced the great forces so

Their interaction would have bred no shock?

No cosmic throes of newborn continents,

No eras of the earth-encircling rain,—

Uncounted scalding tears that fell and fell

On molten worlds that hotly dashed them back

In storms of fierce repudiated steam?

Would you have made earth’s gems without the fire,

Without the water, and without the weight

Of crushing cubic miles of huddled rock?

Would you have made one kind of plant to reign

In all the earth, growing mast high, and then

Keep it undying so, and end of plants?

Would you have made one kind of animal

To live on air and spare the tender grass,

And stop him, somehow, when he grew so thick

That even air fell short. Or would you have

All plants and animals, and make them change

By some metempsychosis not called death?

For, having them, you have to have them change,

For growth is change, and life is growth; and change

Implies—in this world—what we miscall pain.

You, wiser, would have made mankind, no doubt,

Not slowly, awfully, from dying brutes

Up into living humanness at last,

But fresh as Adam in the Hebrew tale;

Only you would have left the serpent out,

And left him, naked, in the garden still.

Or somehow, dodging this, have still contrived

That he should learn the whole curriculum

And never miss a lesson—never fail—

Be born, like Buddha, all accomplished, wise.

Would you have chosen to begin life old,

Well-balanced, cautious, knowing where to step,

And so untortured by the memory

Of childhood’s foolishness and youth’s mistakes?

Or, born a child, to have experience

Come to you softly without chance of loss,

Recurring years each rolling to your hand

In blissful innocent unconsciousness?

O dreamers with a Heaven and a Hell

Standing at either end of your wild rush

Away from the large peace of knowing God,

Can you not see that all of it is good?

Good, with the postulate that this is life,—

And that is all we have to argue from.

Childhood means error, the mistakes that teach;

But only rod and threat and nurse’s tale,

Make childhood’s errors bring us shame and sin.

The race’s childhood grows by error too,

And we are not attained to manhood yet.

But grief and shame are only born of lies.

Once see the lovely law that needs mistakes,

And you are young forever. This is Life.

A MAN MUST LIVE.

A man must live. We justify

Low shift and trick to treason high,

A little vote for a little gold

To a whole senate bought and sold,

By that self-evident reply.

But is it so? Pray tell me why

Life at such cost you have to buy?

In what religion were you told

A man must live?

There are times when a man must die.

Imagine, for a battle-cry,

From soldiers, with a sword to hold,—

From soldiers, with the flag unrolled,—

This coward’s whine, this liar’s lie,—

A man must live!

IN DUTY BOUND.

In duty bound, a life hemmed in

Whichever way the spirit turns to look;

No chance of breaking out, except by sin;

Not even room to shirk—

Simply to live, and work.

An obligation pre-imposed, unsought,

Yet binding with the force of natural law;

The pressure of antagonistic thought;

Aching within, each hour,

A sense of wasting power.

A house with roof so darkly low

The heavy rafters shut the sunlight out;

One cannot stand erect without a blow;

Until the soul inside

Cries for a grave—more wide.

A consciousness that if this thing endure,

The common joys of life will dull the pain;

The high ideals of the grand and pure

Die, as of course they must,

Of long disuse and rust.

That is the worst. It takes supernal strength

To hold the attitude that brings the pain;

And they are few indeed but stoop at length

To something less than best,

To find, in stooping, rest.

DESIRE.

Lo, I desire! Sum of the ages’ growth—

Fruit of evolving—king of life—

I, holding in myself the outgrown past

In all its ever-rising forms—desire.

With the first grass-blade, I desire the sun;

With every bird that breathes, I love the air;

With fishes, joy in water; with my horse,

Exult in motion; with all living flesh,

Long for sweet food and warmth and mate and young;

With the whole rising tide of that which is,

Thirst for advancement,—crave and yearn for it!

Yea, I desire! 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 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 shame.

For father’s sins our children die

With Justice sitting idly by;

The guilty thrive nor yet repent,