Poetry

Poor Heart, so weary with thy bitter grief! So thou art dead at last, silent and chill! The longed-for death-dart came to thy relief, And there thou liest, Heart, forever still.

Dead eyes, pain-pressed beneath their black-fringed pall! Dead cheeks, dark-furrowed with so many tears! So thou art passed far, far beyond recall, And all thy hopes are past, and all thy fears.

Thy lips are closed at length in the long peace! Pale lips! so long they have thy woe repressed, They seem even now when life has run its lease All dumbly pitiful in their mournful rest.

And now I lay thee in thy silent tomb, Printing thy brow with one last solemn kiss; Laying upon thee one fair lily bloom, A symbol of thy rest;⁠—oh, rest is bliss.

No, Heart, I would not call thee back again; No, no; too much of suffering hast thou known; But yet, but yet, it was not all in vain⁠— Thy unseen tears, thy solitary moan!

For out of sorrow joy comes uppermost; Where breaks the thunder soon the sky smiles blue; A better love replaces what is lost, And phantom sunlight pales before the true!

The seed must burst before the germ unfolds, The stars must fade before the morning wakes; Down in her depths the mine the diamond holds; A new heart pulses when the old heart breaks.

And now, Humanity, I turn to you; I consecrate my service to the world! Perish the old love, welcome to the new⁠— Broad as the space-aisles where the stars are whirled!

So, you’re the chaplain! You needn’t say what you have come for; I can guess. You’ve come to talk about Jesus’ love, and repentance and rest and forgiveness! You’ve come to say that my sin is great, yet greater the mercy Heaven will mete, If I, like Magdalen, bend my head, and pour my tears at your Saviour’s feet. Your promise is fair, but I’ve little faith: I relied on promises once before; They brought me to this⁠—this prison cell, with its iron-barred window, its grated door! Yet he, too, was fair who promised me, with his tender mouth and his Christ-like eyes; And his voice was as sweet as the summer wind that sighs through the arbors of Paradise. And he seemed to me all that was good and pure, and noble and strong, and true and brave! I had given the pulse of my heart for him, and deemed it a precious boon to crave.

Why do you clothe me with scarlet of shame? Why do you point with your finger of scorn? What is the crime that you hissingly name When you sneer in my ears, “Thou bastard born?”

Am I not as the rest of you, With a hope to reach, and a dream to live? With a soul to suffer, a heart to know The pangs that the thrusts of the heartless give?

I am no monster! Look at me⁠— Straight in my eyes, that they do not shrink! Is there aught in them you can see To merit this hemlock you make me drink?

This poison that scorches my soul like fire, That burns and burns until love is dry, And I shrivel with hate, as hot as a pyre, A corpse, while its smoke curls up to the sky?

Will you touch my hand? It is flesh like yours; Perhaps a little more brown and grimed, For it could not be white while the drawers’ and hewers’, My brothers, were calloused and darkened and slimed.

Yet touch it! It is no criminal’s hand! No children are toiling to keep it fair! It is free from the curse of the stolen land, It is clean of the theft of the sea and air!

It has set no seals to a murderous law, To sign a bitter, black league with death! No covenants false do these fingers draw In the name of “The State” to barter Faith!

It bears no stain of the yellow gold That earth’s wretches give as the cost of heaven! No priestly garment of silken fold I wear as the price of their “sins forgiven”!

A Soul, half through the Gate, said unto Life: “What dost thou offer me?” And Life replied: “Sorrow, unceasing struggle, disappointment; after these Darkness and silence.” The Soul said unto Death: “What dost thou offer me?” And Death replied: “In the beginning what Life gives at last.” Turning to Life: “And if I live and struggle?” “Others shall live and struggle after thee Counting it easier where thou hast passed.” “And by their struggles?” “Easier place shall be For others, still to rise to keener pain Of conquering Agony!”⁠—“And what have I To do with all these others? Who are they?” “Yourself!”⁠—“And all who went before?”⁠—“Yourself.” “The darkness and the silence, too, have end?” “They end in light and sound; peace ends in pain, Death ends in Me, and thou must glide from Self To Self, as light to shade and shade to light again. Choose!” The Soul, sighing, answered: “I will live.”

To say in my defense? Defense of what? Defense to whom? And why defense at all? Have I wronged any? Let that one accuse! Some priest there mutters I “have outraged God”! Let God then try me, and let none dare judge Himself as fit to put Heaven’s ermine on! Again I say, let the wronged one accuse. Aye, silence! There is none to answer me. And whom could I, a homeless, friendless tramp, To whom all doors are shut, all hearts are locked, All hands withheld⁠—whom could I wrong, indeed By taking that which benefited none And menaced all? Aye, since ye will it so, Know then your risk. But mark, ’tis not defense, ’Tis accusation that I hurl at you. See to’t that ye prepare your own defense. My life, I say, is an eternal threat To you and yours; and therefore it were well To have foreborne your unasked services. And why? Because I hate you! Every drop Of blood that circles in your plethoric veins Was wrung from out the gaunt and sapless trunks Of men like me, who in your cursed mills Were crushed like grapes within the wine-press ground. To us ye leave the empty skin of life; The heart of it, the sweet of it, ye pour To fête your dogs and mistresses withal! Your mistresses! Our daughters! Bought, for bread, To grace the flesh that once was father’s arms!