Poetry

The Burial of My Past Self

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!

Night on the Graves

O’er the sweet, quiet homes in the silent grave-city,
Softly the dewdrops, the night-tears, fall;
Broadly about, like the wide arms of pity,
The silver-shot darkness lies over all.
Heroes, asleep ’neath the red-hearted rose-wreaths,
Leaf-crowned with honor, flower-crowned with rest,
Gently above you each moon-dripping bough breathes
A far-echoed whisper, “Sleep well; ye are blest.”

Oh! never, as long as the heart pulses quicker
At the dear name of Country may yours be forgot;
Nor may we, till the last puny life spark shall flicker,
Your deeds from the tablets of Memory blot!
Spirits afloat in the night-shrouds that bound us,
Souls of the “Has-Been” and of the “To-Be,”
Keep the fair light of Liberty shining around us,
Till our souls may go back to the mighty soul-sea.

We contrast light and darkness—light of God,
And darkness from the Stygian shades of hell;
Fumes of the pit infernal rising up
Have clouded o’er the brain, laid reason low;—
For when the eye looks on fair Nature’s face
And sees not God, then is she blind indeed!
No night so starless, even in its gloom,
As his who wanders on without a hope
In that great, just Hereafter all must meet!—
No heart so dull, so heavy, and so void,
As that which lives for this chill world alone!
No soul so groveling, unaspiring, base,
As that which, here, forgets the afterhere!
And still through all the darkness and the gloom
Its voice will not be stilled, its hopes be quenched;
It cries, it screams, it struggles in its chains,
And bleeds upon the altar of the mind—
Unwilling sacrifice to thought misled.
The soul that knows no God can know no peace.
Thus speaketh light, the herald of our God!
In that far dawn where shone each rolling world
First lit with shadowed splendor of the stars,
In that fair morning when Creation sang
Its praise of God, e’er yet it dreamed of sin,
Pure and untainted as the source of life
Man dwelt in Eden. There no shadows came,
No question of the goodness of our Lord,
Until the prince of darkness tempted man,
And, yielding to the newly born desire,
He fell! Sank in the mire of ignorance!
And Man, who put himself in Satan’s power,
Since then has wandered far in devious ways,
Seeing but now and then a glimpse of light,
Till Christ is come, the living Son of God!
Far in his heavenly home he viewed the world,
Saw all her sadness and her sufferings,
Saw all her woes, her struggles, and her search
For some path leading up from out the Night.
Within his breast the fount of tears was touched;
His great heart swelled with pity, and he said:
“Father, I go to save the world from sin.”
Ah! What power but a soul divinely clad
In purity, in holiness and love,
Could leave a home of happiness and light
For this lost World of suffering and death?
He came: the World tossed groaning in her sleep;
He touched her brow: the nightmare passed away;
He soothed her heart, red with the stain of sin;
And she forgot her guilt in penitence;
She washed the ruby out with pearls of tears.
He came, he suffered, and he died for us;
He felt the bitterest woes a soul can feel;
He probed the darkest depths of human grief;
He sounded all the deeps and shoals of pain;
Was cursed for all his love; thanked with the cross,
Whereon he hung nailed, bleeding, glorified,
As the last smoke of holocaust divine.
“Ah! This was all two thousand years ago!”
Two thousand years ago, and still he cries,
With voice sweet calling through the distant dark:
“O souls that labor, struggling in your pain,
Come unto me, and I will give you rest!
For every woe of yours, and every smart,
I, too, have felt:—the mockery, the shame,
The sneer, the scoffing lip, the hate, the lust,
The greed of gain, the jealousy of man,
Unstinted have been measured out to me.
I know them all, I feel them all with you!
And I have known the pangs of poverty,
The cry of hunger and the weary heart
Of childhood burdened with the weight of age!
O sufferers, ye all are mine to love!
The pulse-beats of my heart go out with you,
And every drop of agony that drips
From my nailed hands adown this bitter cross,
Cries out, ‘O God! accept the sacrifice,
And ope the gates of heaven to the world!’
Ye vermin of the garret, who do creep
Your weary lives away within its walls;
Ye children of the cellar, who behold
The sweet, pale light, strained through the lothsome air
And doled to you in tid-bits, as a thing
Too precious for your use; ye rats in mines,
Who knaw within the black and somber pits
To seek poor living for your little ones;
Ye women who stitch out your lonely lives,
Unmindful whether sun or stars keep watch;
Ye slaves of wheels; ye worms that bite the dust
Where pride and scorn have ground you ’neath the heel;
Ye Toilers of the earth, ye weary ones—
I know your sufferings, I feel your woes;
My peace I give you; in a little while
The pain will all be over, and the grave
Will sweetly close above your folded hands!
And then?—Ah, Death, no conqueror art thou!
For I have loosed thy chains; I have unbarred
The gates of heaven! In my Father’s house
Of many mansions I prepare a place;
And rest is there for every heart that toils!
Oh, all ye sick and wounded ones who grieve
For the lost health that ne’er may come again;
Ye who do toss upon a couch of pain,
Upon whose brow disease has laid his hand,
Within whose eyes the dull and heavy sight
Burns like a taper burning very low,
Upon whose lips the purple fever-kiss
Rests his hot breath, and dries the sickened palms,
Scorches the flesh and e’en the very air;
Ye who do grope along without the light;
Ye who do stumble, halting on your way;
Ye whom the world despises as unclean;
Know that the death-free soul has none of these:
The unbound spirit goes unto its God,
Pure, whole, and beauteous as newly born!
Oh, all ye mourners, weeping for the dead;
Your tears I gather as the grateful rain
Which rises from the sea and falls again,
To nurse the withering flowers from its touch;
No drop is ever lost! They fall again
To nurse the blossoms of some other heart!
I would not dry one single dew of grief:
The sorrow-freighted lashes which bespeak
The broken heart and soul are dear to me;
I mourn with them, and mourning so I find
The grief-bowed soul with weeping oft grows light!
But yet ye mourn for them not without hope:
Beyond the woes and sorrows of the earth,
As stars still shine though clouds obscure the sight,
The friends ye mourn as lost immortal live;
And ye shall meet and know their souls again,
Through death transfigured, through love glorified!
Oh, all ye patient waiters for reward,
Scorned and despised by those who know not worth,
I know your merit and I give you hope;
For in my Father’s law is justice found.
See how the seed-germ, toiling underground,
Waits patiently for time to burst its shell;
And by and by the golden sunlight warms
The dark, cold earth; the germ begins to shoot.
And upward trends until two small green leaves
Unfold and wave and drink the pure, fresh air.
The blossoms come and go with Summer’s breath,
And Autumn brings the fruit-time in her hand.
So ye, who patient watch and wait and hope,
Trusting the sun may bring the blossoms out,
Shall reap the fruited labor by and by.
I am your friend; I wait and hope with you,
Rejoice with you when the hard vict’ry’s won!
And still for you, O prisoners in cells,
I hold the dearest gifts of penitence,
Forgiveness and charity and hope!
I stretch the hands of mercy through the bars;
White hands—like doves they bring the branch of peace!
Repent, believe—and I will expiate
Upon this bitter cross all your deep guilt!
Oh, take my gift, accept my sacrifice!
I ask no other thing but only—trust!
Oh, all ye martyrs, bleeding in your chains;
Oh, all ye souls that live for others’ good;
Oh, all ye mourners, all ye guilty ones,
And all ye suffering ones, come unto me!
Ye are all my brothers, all my sisters, all!
And as I love one, so I love you all.
Accept my love, accept my sacrifice;
Make not my cross more bitter than it is
By shrinking from the peace I bring to you!”

The Freethinker’s Plea

Grand eye of Liberty, light up my page!
Like promised morning after night of age
Thy dawning youth breaks in the distant east!
Thy cloudy robes like silken curtains creased
And swung in folds are floating fair and free!
The shadows of the cycles turn and flee;
The budding stars, bright minds that gemmed the night,
Are bursting into broad, bright-petaled light!
Sweet Liberty, how pure thy very breath!
How dear in life, how doubly dear in death!
Ah, slaves that suffer in your self-forged chains,
Praying your Christ to touch and heal your pains,
Tear off your shackling irons, unbind your eyes,
Seize the grand hopes that burn along the skies!
Worship not God in temples built of gloom;
Far sweeter incense is the flower-bloom
Than all the fires that Sacrifice may light;
And grander is the star-dome gleaming bright
With glowing worlds, than all your altar lamps
Pale flickering in your clammy, vaulted damps;
And richer is the broad, full, fair sun sheen,
Dripping its orient light in streams between
The fretted shafting of the forest trees,
Throwing its golden kisses to the breeze,
Lifting the grasses with its finger-tips,
And pressing the young blossoms with warm lips,
Show’ring its glory over plain and hill,
Wreathing the storm and dancing in the rill;
Far richer in wild freedom falling there,
Shaking the tresses of its yellow hair,
Than all subdued within the dim half-light
Of stained glass windows, drooping into night.
Oh, grander far the massive mountain walls
Which bound the vista of the forest halls,
Than all the sculptured forms which guard the piles
That arch your tall, dim, gray, cathedral aisles!
And gladder is the carol of a bird
Than all the anthems that were ever heard
To steal in somber chanting from the tone
Of master voices praising the Unknown.
In the great wild, where foot of man ne’er trod,
There find we Nature’s church and Nature’s God!
Here are no fetters! though is free as air;
Its flight may spread far as its wings may dare;
And through it all one voice cries, “God is love,
And love is God!” Around, within, above,
Behold the working of the perfect law—
The law immutable in which no flaw
Exists, and from which no appeal is made;
Ev’n as the sunlight chases far the shade
And shadows chase the light in turn again,
So every life is fraught with joy and pain;
The stinging thorn lies hid beside the rose;
The bud is blighted ere its leave unclose;
So pleasure born of Hope may oft-time yield
A stinging smart of thorns, a barren field!
But let it be: the buds will bloom again,
The fields will freshen in the summer rain;
And never storm scowls dark but still, somewhere,
A bow is bending in the upper air.
Then learn the law if thou wouldst live aright;
And know no unseen power, no hand of might,
Can set aside the law which wheels the stars;
No incompleteness its perfection mars;
The buds will wake in season, and the rain
will fall when clouds hang heavy, and again
The snows will tremble when the winter’s breath
Congeals the cloud-tears, as the touch of Death
Congeals the last drop on the sufferer’s cheek.
Thus do all Nature’s tongues in chorus speak:
“Think not, O man, that thou canst e’er escape
One jot of Justice’s law, nor turn thy fate
By yielding sacrifice to the Unseen!
Purged by thyself alone canst thou be clean.
One guide to happiness thou mayst learn:
Love toward the world begets love in return.
And if to others you the measure mete
Of love, be sure your harvest will be sweet;
But if ye sow broadcast the seed of hate,
Ye’ll reap again, albeit ye reap it late.
Then let your life-work swell the great flood-tide
Of love towards all the world; the world is wide,
The sea of life is broad; its waves stretch far;
No range, no barrier, its sweep may bar;
The world is filled, is trodden down with pain;
The sea of life is gathered up of rain—
A throat, a bed, a sink, for human tears,
A burial of hopes, a miasm of fears!
But see! the sun of love shines softly out,
Flinging its golden fingers all about,
Pressing its lips in loving, soft caress,
Upon the world’s pale cheek; the pain grows less,
The tears are dried upon the quivering lashes,
An answering sunbeam ’neath the white lids flashes!
The sea of life is dimpled o’er with smiles,
The sun of love the cloud of woe beguiles,
And turns its heavy brow to forehead fair,
Framed in the glory of its sun-gilt hair.
Be thine the warming touch, the kiss of love;
Vainly ye seek for comfort from above,
Vainly ye pray the Gods to ease your pain;
The heavy words fall back on you again!
Vainly ye cry for Christ to smooth your way;
The thorns sting sharper while ye kneeling pray!
Vainly ye look upon the world of woe,
And cry, “O God, avert the bitter blow!”
Ye cannot turn the lightning from its track,
Nor call one single little instant back;
The law swerves not, and with unerring aim
The shaft of justice falls; he bears the blame
Who violates the rule: do well your task,
For justice overtakes you all at last.
Vainly ye patient ones await reward,
Trusting th’ Almighty’s angel to record
Each bitter tear, each disappointed sigh;
Reward descends not, gifted from on high,
But is the outgrowth of the eternal law:
As from the earth the toiling seed-germs draw
The food which gives them life and strength to bear
The storms and suns which sweep the upper air,
So ye must draw from out the pregnant earth
The metal true wherewith to build your worth;
So shall ye brave the howling of the blast,
And smile triumphant o’er the storm at last.
Nor dream these trials are without their use;
Between your joys and griefs ye cannot choose,
And say your life with either is complete:
Ever the bitter mingles with the sweet.
The dews must press the petals down at night,
If in the dawning they would glisten bright;
If sunbeams needs must ripen out the grain
Not less the early blades must woo the rain:
If now your eyes be wet with weary tears,
Ye’ll gather them as gems in after years;
And if the rains now sodden down your path,
Ye’ll reap rich harvest in the aftermath.
Ye idle mourners, crying in your grief,
The souls ye weep have found the long relief:
Why grieve for those who fold their hands in peace?
Their sore-tried hearts have found a glad release;
Their spirits sink into the solemn sea!
Mourn ye the prisoner from his chains let free?
Nay, ope your ears unto the living cry
That pleads for living comfort! Hark, the sigh
Of million heartaches rising in your ears!
Kiss back the living woes, the living tears!
Go down into the felon’s gloomy cell;
Send there the ray of love: as tree-buds swell
When spring’s warm breath bids the cold winter cease,
So will his heart swell with the hope of peace.
Be filled with love, for love is Nature’s God;
The God which trembles in the tender sod,
The God which tints the sunset, lights the dew,
Sprinkles with stars the firmament’s broad blue,
And draws all hearts together in a free
Wide sweep of love, broad as the ether-sea.
No other law or guidance do we need;
The world’s our church, to do good is our creed.

To My Mother

Some souls there are which never live their life;
Some suns there are which never pierce their cloud;
Some hearts there are which cup their perfume in,
And yield no incense to the outer air.
Cloud-shrouded, flower-cupped heart: such is thine own:
So dost thou live with all thy brightness hid;
So dost thou dwell with all thy perfume close;
Rich in thy treasured wealth, aye, rich indeed—
And they are wrong who say thou “dost not feel.”
But I—I need blue air and opened bloom;
To keep my music means that it must die;
And when the thrill, the joy, the love of life is gone,
I, too, am dead—a corpse, though not entombed.
Let me live then—but a while—the gloom soon comes,
The flower closes and the petals shut;
Through them the perfume slips out, like a soul—
The long, still sleep of death—and then the Grave.

Betrayed

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.

You say that Jesus so loved the world he died to redeem it from its sin:
It isn’t redeemed, or no one could be so fair without, and so black within.
I trusted his promise, I gave my life;—the truth of my love is known on high,
If there is a God who knows all things;—his promise was false, his love was a lie!
It was over soon, Oh! soon, the dream—and me, he had called “his life,” “his light,”
He drove me away with a sneering word, and you Christians said that “it served me right.”
I was proud, Mr. Chaplain, even then; I set my face in the teeth of Fate,
And resolved to live honestly, come what might, and sink beneath neither scorn nor hate.
Yes, and I prayed that the Christ above would help to bear the bitter cross,
And put something here, where my heart had been, to fill up the aching void of loss.

It’s easy for you to say what I should do, but none of you ever dream how hard
Is the way that you Christians make for us, with your “sin no more,” “trust the Lord.”
When for days and days you are turned from work with cold politeness, or open sneer,
You get so you don’t trust a far-off God, whose creatures are cold, and they, so near.
You hold your virtuous lives aloof, and refuse us your human help and hand,
And set us apart as accursèd things, marked with a burning, Cain-like brand.

But I didn’t bend, though many days I was weary and hungry, and worn and weak,
And for many a starless night I watched, through tears that grooved down my pallid cheek.
They are all dry now! They say I’m hard, because I never weep or moan!
You can’t draw blood when the heart’s bled out! you can’t find tears or sound in a stone!
And I don’t know why I should be mild and meek: no one has been very mild to me.
You say that Jesus would be—perhaps! but Heaven’s a long way off, you see.

That will do; I know what you’re going to say: “I can have it right here in this narrow cell.”
The soul is slow to accept Christ’s heav’n when his followers chain the body in hell.
Not but I’m just as well off here—better, perhaps, than I was outside.
The world was a prison-house to me, where I dwelt, defying and defied.

I don’t know but I’d think more of what you say, if they’d given us both a common lot;
If justice to me had been justice to him, and covered our names with an equal blot;
But they took him into the social court, and pitied, and said he’d been “led astray”;
In a month the stain on his name had passed, as a cloud that crosses the face of day!
He joined the Church, and he’s preaching now, just as you are, the love of God,
And the duty of sinners to kneel and pray, and humbly to kiss the chastening rod.
If they’d dealt with me as they dealt by him, may be I’d credit your Christian love;
If they’d dealt with him as they dealt by me, I’d have more faith in a just Above.

I don’t know, but sometimes I used to think that she, who was told there was no room
In the inn at Bethlehem, might look down with softened eyes thro’ the starless gloom.
Christ wasn’t a woman—he couldn’t know the pain and endurance of it; but she,
The mother who bore him, she might know, and Mary in Heaven might pity me.
Still that was useless: it didn’t bring a single mouthful for me to eat,
Nor work to get it, nor sheltering from the dreary wind and the howling street.
Heavenly pity won’t pass as coin, and earthly shame brings a higher pay.
Sometimes I was tempted to give it up, and go, like others, the easier way;
But I didn’t; no, sir, I kept my oath, though my baby lay in my arms and cried,
And at last, to spare it—I poisoned it; and kissed its murdered lips when it died.
I’d never seen him since it was born (he’d said that it wasn’t his, you know);
But I took its body and laid it down at the steps of his door, in the pallid glow
Of the winter morning; and when he came, with a love-tune hummed on those lips of lies,
It lay at his feet, with its pinched white face staring up at him from its dead, blue eyes;
I hadn’t closed them; they were like his, and so was the mouth and the curled gold hair,
And every feature so like his own—for I am dark, sir, and he is fair.
’Twas a moment of triumph, that showed me yet there was a passion I could feel,
When I saw him bend o’er its meagre form, and, starting backwards, cry out and reel!
If there is a time when all souls shall meet the reward of the deeds that are done in the clay,
When accused and accuser stand face to face, he will cry out so in the Judgment Day!

The rest? Oh, nothing. They hunted me, and with virtuous lawyers’ virtuous tears
To a virtuous jury, convicted me; and I’m sentenced to stay here for twenty years.
Do I repent? Yes, I do; but wait till I tell you of what I repent, and why.
I repent that I ever believed a man could be anything but a living lie!
I repent because every noble thought, or hope, or ambition, or earthly trust,
Is as dead as dungeon-bleached bones in me—as dead as my child in its murdered dust!
Do I repent that I killed the babe? Am I repentant for that, you ask?
I’ll answer the truth as I feel it, sir; I leave to others the pious mask.
Am I repentant because I saved its starving body from Famine’s teeth?
Because I hastened what time would do, to spare it pain and relieve its death?
Am I repentant because I held it were better a grave should have no name
Than a living being, whose only care must come from a mother weighed with shame?
Am I repentant because I thought it were better the tiny form lay hid
From the heartless stings of a brutal world, unknown, unnamed, ’neath a coffin lid?
Am I repentant for the act, the last on earth in my power, to save
From the long-drawn misery of life, in the early death and the painless grave?
I’m glad that I did it! Start if you will! I’ll repeat it over; I say I’m glad!
No, I’m neither a fiend, nor a maniac—don’t look as if I were going mad!

Did I not love it? Yes, I loved with a strength that you, sir, can never feel;
It’s only a strong love can kill to save, though itself be torn where time cannot heal.
You see my hands—they are red with its blood! Yet I would have cut them, bit by bit,
And fed them, and smiled to see it eat, if that would have saved and nourished it!
“Beg!” I did beg—and “pray!” I did pray! God was as stony and hard as Earth,
And Christ was as deaf as the stars that watched, or the night that darkened above his birth!
And I—I feel stony now, too, like them; deaf to sorrow and mute to grief!
Am I heartless?—yes:—it-is-all-cut-out! Torn! Gone! All gone! Like my dead belief.

Do I not fear for the judgment hour? So unrepentant, so hard and cold?
Wait! It is little I trust in that; but if ever the scrolled sky shall be uprolled,
And the lives of men shall be read and known, and their acts be judged by their very worth,
And the Christ you speak of shall come again, and the thunders of Justice shake the earth,
You will hear the cry, “Who murdered here? Come forth to the judgment, false heart and eyes,
That pulsed with accursèd strength of lust, and loaded faith with envenomed lies!
Come forth to the judgment, haughty dames, who scathed the mother with your scorn,
And answer here, to the poisoned child, who decreed its murder ere it was born?
Come forth to the judgment ye who heaped the gold of earth in your treasured hoard,
And answer, ‘guilty,’ to those who stood all naked and starving, beneath your board.
Depart, accursèd! I know you not! Ye heeded not the command of Heaven,
‘Unto the least of these ye give, it is even unto the Master given.’ ”

Judgment! Ah, sir, to see that day, I’d willingly pass thro’ a hundred hells!
I’d believe, then, the Justice that hears each voice buried alive in these prison cells!
But, no—it’s not that; that will never be! I trusted too long, and He answered not.
There is no avenging God on high!—we live, we struggle, and—we rot.

Yet does Justice come! and, O Future Years! sorely ye’ll reap, and in weary pain,
When ye garner the sheaves that are sown to-day, when the clouds that are gathering fall in rain!
The time will come, aye! the time will come, when the child ye conceive in lust and shame,
Quickened, will mow you like swaths of grass, with a sickle born of Steel and Flame.
Aye, tremble, shrink, in your drunken den, coward, traitor, and Child of Lie!
The unerring avenger stands close to you, and the dread hour of parturition’s nigh!
Aye! wring your hands, for the air is black! thickly the cloud-troops whirl and swarm!
See! yonder, on the horizon’s verge, play the lightning-shafts of the coming storm!