You, too, with your science, your titles, your books, and your long explanations
That tell me how I am come up out of the dust of the cycles,
Out of the sands of the sea, out of the unknown primeval forests,—
Out of the growth of the world have become the bud and the promise,
Out of the race of the beasts have arisen, proud and triumphant,—
You, if you knew how your words rumble round in the wheels of labor!
If you knew how my hammering heart beats, "Liar, liar, you lie!
Out of all buds of the earth we are most blasted and blighted!
What beast of all the beasts is not prouder and freer than we?"
You, too, who sing in high words of the glory of Man universal,
The beauty of sacrifice, debt of the future, the present immortal,
The glory of use, absorption by Death of the being in Being,
You, if you knew what jargon it makes, down here, would be quiet.
Oh, is there no one to find or to speak a meaning to me,
To me as I am,—the hard, the ignorant, withered-souled worker?
To me upon whom God and Science alike have stamped "failure,"
To me who know nothing but labor, nothing but sweat, dirt, and sorrow,
To me whom you scorn and despise, you up there who sing while I moan?
To me as I am,—for me as I am—not dying but living;
Not my future, my present! my body, my needs, my desires! Is there no one,
In the midst of this rushing of phantoms—of Gods, of Science, of Logic,
Of Philosophy, Morals, Religion, Economy,—all this that helps not,
All these ghosts at whose altars you worship, these ponderous, marrowless Fictions,
Is there no one who thinks, is there nothing to help this dull moaning me?
Philadelphia, April, 1893.
[MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT]
The dust of a hundred years
Is on thy breast,
And thy day and thy night of tears
Are centurine rest.
Thou to whom joy was dumb,
Life a broken rhyme,
Lo, thy smiling time is come,
And our weeping time.
Thou who hadst sponge and myrrh
And a bitter cross,
Smile, for the day is here
That we know our loss;—
Loss of thine undone deed,
Thy unfinished song,
Th' unspoken word for our need,
Th' unrighted wrong;
Smile, for we weep, we weep,
For the unsoothed pain,
The unbound wound burned deep,
That we might gain.
Mother of sorrowful eyes
In the dead old days,
Mother of many sighs,
Of pain-shod ways;
Mother of resolute feet
Through all the thorns,
Mother soul-strong, soul-sweet,—
Lo, after storms
Have broken and beat thy dust
For a hundred years,
Thy memory is made just,
And the just man hears.
Thy children kneel and repeat:
"Though dust be dust,
Though sod and coffin and sheet
And moth and rust
Have folded and molded and pressed,
Yet they cannot kill;
In the heart of the world at rest
She liveth still."
Philadelphia, April 27th, 1893.
[THE GODS AND THE PEOPLE]
What have you done, O skies,
That the millions should kneel to you?
Why should they lift wet eyes,
Grateful with human dew?