While each new knowledge is becoming yours!
So, let me firmly take away from you
The things you so persistently would view;
And when you stretch the hand that tells so much,
Rap your soft knuckles and exclaim, “Don’t touch!”
I’ll tell you what you ought to learn, and so,
A mother’s instinct-guided love I’ll show.
An ordinary child at best,
So neighbors tell;
Not very large and strong, not very well;
A victim to the measles and the croup,
Fevers that flush and chill, and coughs that whoop;
To unknown naughtiness and well-known pain;
No racial progress here — no special gain!
But I, your mother, see with other eyes;
I hold you second to none under skies,
This estimate, unbased on any fact,
Shall teach you how to feel and how to act,
Shall make you wise, and true, and strong, and so,
A mother’s instinct-guided love I’ll show.
THEY WANDERED FORTH.
THEY wandered forth in springtime woods,
Three women, thickly hung
With yards and yards of woollen goods —
To play that they were young!
The river raced with the racing air;
The woods were wild with song;
The glad birds darted everywhere —
And so they walked along!
Stiff-bodied, fat, oppressed with cloth,
Dull-colored, sad to see,
Slow-moving over the bright grass,
Their shapeless shadows fall and pass,
And dreaming not — alas! alas!
Of what dear life might be!
BABY LOVE.
BABY LOVE came prancing by,
Cap on head and sword on thigh,
Horse to ride and drum to beat,
All the world beneath his feet.
Mother Life was sitting there,
Hard at work and full of care,
Set of mouth and sad of eye.
Baby Love came prancing by.
Baby Love was very proud,
Very lively, very loud;
Mother Life arose in wrath,
Set an arm across his path.
Baby Love wept loud and long,
But his mother’s arm was strong.
Mother had to work, she said.
Baby Love was put to bed.
THE MARCH.
THE WOLF AT THE DOOR.
THERE’S a haunting horror near us
That nothing drives away:
Fierce lamping eyes at nightfall,
A crouching shade by day;
There’s a whining at the threshold,
There’s a scratching at the floor.
To work! To work! In Heaven’s name!
The wolf is at the door!
The day was long, the night was short,
The bed was hard and cold;
Still weary are the little ones,
Still weary are the old.
We are weary in our cradles
From our mother’s toil untold;
We are born to hoarded weariness
As some to hoarded gold.
We will not rise! We will not work!
Nothing the day can give
Is half so sweet as an hour of sleep;
Better to sleep than live!
What power can stir these heavy limbs?
What hope these dull hearts swell?
What fear more cold, what pain more sharp,
Than the life we know so well?
To die like a man by lead or steel
Is nothing that we should fear;
No human death would be worse to feel
Than the life that holds us here.
But this is a fear no heart can face —
A fate no man can dare —
To be run to earth and die by the teeth
Of the gnawing monster there!
The alow, relentless, padding step
That never goes astray —
The rustle in the underbrush —
The shadow in the way —
The straining flight — the long pursuit —
The steady gain behind —
Death-wearied man and tireless brute,
And the struggle wild and blind!
There’s a hot breath at the keyhole
And a tearing as of teeth!
Well do I know the bloodshot eyes
And the dripping jaws beneath!
There’s a whining at the threshold —
There’s a scratching at the floor —
To work! To work! In Heaven’s name!
The wolf is at the door!
THE LOST GAME.
CAME the big children to the little ones,
And unto them full pleasantly did say,
“Lo! we have spread for you a merry game,
And ye shall all be winners at the same.
Come now and play!”
Great is the game they enter in,
Rouge et Noir on a giant scale,
Red with blood and black with sin,
Where many must lose and few may win,
And the players never fail!
Said the strong children to the weaker ones,
“See, ye are many, and we are but few!
The mass of all the counters ye divide,
But few remain to share upon our side.
Play — as we do!”
Strange is the game they enter in,
Rouge et Noir on a field of pain!
And the silver white and the yellow gold
Pile and pile in the victor’s hold,
While the many play in vain!
Said the weak children to the stronger ones,
“See now, howe’er it fall, we lose our share!
And play we well or ill we always lose;
While ye gain always more than ye can use.
Bethink ye — is it fair?”
Strange is the game they enter in,
Rouge et Noir, and the bank is strong! Play they well or play they wide
The gold is still on the banker’s side,
And the game endureth long,
Said the strong children, each aside to each,
“The game is slow — our gains are all too small!”
Play we together now, ‘gainst them apart;
So shall these dull ones lose it from the start,
And we shall gain it all!”
Strange is the game that now they win,
Rouge et Noir with a new design!
What can the many players do
Whose wits are weak and counters few
When the Power and the Gold combine t
Said the weak children to the stronger ones,
“We care not for the game!
For play as we may our chance is small,
And play as ye may ye have it all.
The end’s the same!”
Strange is the game the world doth play,
Rouge et Noir, with the counters gold,
Red with blood and black with sin;
Few and fewer are they that win
As the ages pass untold,
Said the strong children to the weaker ones,
“Ye lose in laziness! ye lose in sleep!
Flay faster now and make the counters spin!
Play well, as we, and ye in time shall win!
Play fast! Play deep!”
Strange is the game of Rouge et Noir,
Never a point have the little ones won.
The winners are strong and flushed with gain,
The losers are weak with want and pain,
And still the game goes on.
But those rich players grew so very few,
So many grew the poor ones, that one day
They rose up from that table, side by side,
Calm, coun
tless, terrible — they rose and cried
In one great voice that shook the heavens wide,
“WE WILL NOT PLAY!”
Where is the game of Rouge et Noir?
Where is the wealth of yesterday?
What availeth the power ye tell,
And the skill in the game ye play so well t
If the players will not play?
THE LOOKER-ON.
THE world was full of the battle,
The whole world far and wide;
Men and women and children
Were fighting on either side.
I was sent from the hottest combat
With a message of life and death,
Black with smoke and red with blood,
Weary and out of breath,
Forced to linger a moment,
And bind a stubborn wound,
Cursing the hurt that kept me back
From the fiery battle-ground.
When I found a cheerful stranger,
Calm, critical, serene,
Well sheltered from all danger,
Painting a battle-scene.
He was cordially glad to see me —
The coolly smiling wretch —
And inquired with admiration,
“Do you mind if I make a sketch?”
So he had me down in a minute,
With murmurs of real delight;
My “color” was “delicious,”
My “action” was “just right!”
And he prattled on with ardor
Of the moving scene below;
Of the “values” of the smoke-wreaths,
And “the splendid rush and go.”
Of the headlong desperate charges
Where a thousand lives were spent;
Of the “massing” in the foreground
With the “middle distance” blent.
Said I, “You speak serenely
Of the living death in view.
These are human creatures dying —
Are you not human too?
“This is a present battle,
Where all men strive to-day.
How does it chance you sit apart?
Which is your banner — say!”
His fresh cheek blanched a little,
But he answered with a smile
That he fought not on either side;
He was watching a little while.
“Watching!” said I, “and neutral!
Neutral in times like these!”
And I plucked him off his sketching stool
And brought him to his knees.
I stripped him of his travelling cloak
And showed him to the sky:
By his uniform — a traitor!
By his handiwork — a spy!
I dragged him back to the field he left;
To the fate he was fitted for.
We have no place for lookers on
When all the world’s at war!
THE OLD-TIME WAIL.
An Associated Press despatch describes the utterance of a Farmers’ Alliance meeting in Kansas as consisting mostly of “the old-time wail of distress.”
STILL Dives hath no peace. Broken his slumber,
His feasts are troubled, and his pleasures fail;
For still he hears from voices without number
The same old wail.
They gather yet in field and town and city,
The people, discontented, bitter, pale,
And murmur of oppression, pain, and pity,
The old-time wail.
And weary Dives, jaded in his pleasures,
Finding the endless clamor tiresome, stale —
Would gladly give a part of his wide treasures
To quiet that old wail.
Old? Yes, as old as Egypt. Sounding lowly
From naked millions, in the desert hid,
Starving and bleeding while they builded, slowly,
The Pharaohs’ pyramid.
As old as Rome. That endless empire’s minions
Raised ever and again the same dull cry;
And even Caesar’s eagle bent his pinions
While it disturbed the sky.
As old as the Dark Ages. The lean peasant,
Numerous, patient, still as time went by
Made his lord’s pastimes something less than pleasant
With that unceasing cry.
It grew in volume down the crowding ages;
Unheeded still, and unappeased, it swelled.
And now it pleads in vain, and now it rages —
The answer still withheld.
A century ago it shrieked and clamored
Till trembled emperors and kings grew pale;
At gates of palaces it roared and hammered,
The same old wail.
It got no final answer, though its passion
Altered the face of Europe, monarchs slew;
But ere it sank to silence, in some fashion
Others were wailing, too.
And now in broad America we hear it,
From crowded street, from boundless hill and vale.
Hear, Dives! Have ye not some cause to fear it,
This old-time wail?
Loader, my brother! Let us wail no longer
Like those past sufferers whose hearts did break.
We are a wiser race, a braver, stronger —
Let us not ask, but take!
So Dives shall have no distress soever,
No sound of anguished voice by land or sea;
The-old time wail shall so be stilled forever,
And Dives shall not be!
FREE LAND IS NOT ENOUGH.
FREE land is not enough. In earliest days
When man, the baby, from the earth’s bare breast
Drew for himself his simple sustenance,
Then freedom and his effort were enough.
The world to which a man is born to-day
Is a constructed, human, man-built world.
As the first savage needed the free wood,
We need the road, the ship, the bridge, the house,
The government, society, and church,
These are the basis of our life to-day,
As much necessities to modern man
As was the forest to his ancestor.
To say to the new-born, “Take here your land;
In primal freedom settle where you will,
And work your own salvation in the world,”
Is but to put the last come upon earth
Back with the dim forerunners of his race
To climb the race’s stairway in one life!
Allied society owes to the young —
The new men come to carry on the world —
Account for all the past, the deeds, the keys,
Full access to the riches of the earth.
Why? That these new ones may not be compelled,
Each for himself, to do our work again —
But reach their manhood even with to-day,
And gain to-morrow sooner. To go on —
To start from where we are and go ahead —
That is true progress, true humanity!
WHO IS TO BLAME?
WHO was to blame in that old time
Of the unnoticed groan,
When prisoners without proof of crime
Rotted in dungeons wet with slime,
And died unknown?
When torture was a common thing,
When fire could speak,
When the flayed wretch hung quivering,
And rack-strained tendons, string by string,
Snapped with a shriek?
Is it the Headsman, following still
The laws his masters give?
Is it the Church or King who kill?
Or just the People, by whose will
Church, King, and Headsman live?
The People, bowing slavish knee
With tribute fruits of earth;
/> The People, gathering to see
The stake, the axe, the gallows-tree,
In brutal mirth!
The People, countenancing pain
By willing presence there;
The People — you might shriek in vain,
Poor son of Abel or of Cain —
The People did not care!
And now, in this fair age we ‘re in,
Who is to blame?
When men go mad and women sin
Because the life they struggle in
Enforces shame!
When torture is so deep, so wide —
The kind we give —
So long drawn out, so well supplied,
That men die now by suicide,
Rather than live!
Is it the Rich Man, grinding still
The faces of the poor?
Is it our System which must kill?
Or just the People, by whose will
That system can endure?
The People, bowing slavish knee
With tribute fruits of earth;
The People, who can bear to see
In crime and death and poverty
Fair ground for mirth!
The People, countenancing pain
By willing presence there;
The People — you may shriek in vain —
Protest, rebel, beseech, complain —
The People do not care!
Each man and woman feels the weight
Of their own private share;
But for the suffering of the state,
That falls on all men soon or late,
The People do not care!
IF A MAN MAY NOT EAT NEITHER CAN HE WORK.
How can he work? He never has been taught
The free use of what faculties he had.
Why should he work? Who ever yet has thought
To give a love of working to the lad.
How can he work? His life has felt the lack
Of all that makes us work; the proud, the free,
Each saying to the world, “I give you back
Part of the glory you have given me!”
Why should he work? He has no honor high,
Born of great trust and wealth and sense of power
Honor, that makes us yearn before we die
To add our labor to the world’s rich dower.
How can he work? He has no inner strength
Urging him on to action, no desire
To strain and wrestle, to achieve at length,
Burning in all his veins, a hidden fire.
Why should he work? There is no debt behind
That man’s nobility most longs to pay;
No claim upon him, only the one blind
Brute instinct that his dinner lies that way.
Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Page 181