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!