Chapter V: Part II: Children of Freedom (1)

_O Freedom, beautiful beyond compare, thy kingdom is established!_

_Thou with thy feet on earth, thy brow among the stars, for ages us thy children_

_I, thy child, singing daylong nightlong, sing of joy in thee._

YORK MINSTER

Solid and ghostly in the pale winter morning—

Thy vast floor worn, worn by the tiny foot-falls of centuries,

The great grey Alps, thy columns, cutting sharply their strong lines against the delicate tracery of roof and window—

Solid and ghostly, in visionary beauty thou stretchest O nave,

All desolate—vast and desolate.

* * * * *

The murmurs of the outer world tremble faintly along the roof like the murmur of the sea in some vast sea-shell;

Below, nothing visible moves save one ancient verger, pacing to and fro or drowsing in his armchair by the stove.

* * * * *

But hark now; from behind the screen the droning mumble of morning prayers!

It ceases, and the thin boy-voices of the scanty choir take up the chant.

Strangely from its invisible source, like some river once running strong but now losing itself in runlets in the sand,

As from out the old mediæval world, faint and far comes sounding that refrain—

The quaint barbaric tentative uncertain-toned Gregoric refrain, soaring,

Soaring, soaring, through the great desolate nave wandering, in the ears of the one drowsy verger dying.

* * * * *

And all around over the world spreads winter,

Heavy and silent;

There is no music heard in the streets, nor sound of hope or of pleasuring—but pinched faces are there,

And in wretched homes reign cold and starvation.

* * * * *

The Church is dead. Snow covers the ground. Silence and heavy misery spread their wings dull against the faces of the people. The Church is dead.

* * * * *

All the long years of Christianity have come to this;

All the preaching and the prayers and the psalm-singing of centuries have come to this;

All the rapt outpourings of the soul to God, and hidden yearnings of ages, to this?

The Church is dead. Snow covers the ground. Snug in their firelit homes, with closed shutters and surrounded by every luxury, the Wealthy the Pious and the Respectable sit—

And without, the People are dying of cold and starvation.

* * * * *

A nation is dying—

Dying slowly and surely of Unbelief—and there can be no deadlier disease: no plague of the middle ages, no cholera epidemic, deadlier.

A nation is dying—

Rotting down piece-meal, lethargic even in its misery, weary and careworn even in its luxury, to the grave.

* * * * *

And I sit and sing.

All the dark winter night, and though the night were ten times pitchier than it is,

I sit and sing.

Though the gloom spread all around me, though the wan pinched faces plead terribly upon me, in the midst still I sit and sing: Joy! Joy!—for I have seen;

Deep in the wide wan eyes I have seen:

And what I have seen—is sufficient.

* * * * *

O what lies deeper far than the life and death of nations—

As the calm Ocean lies deep below the storms which vex its surface;

What all the ages and ages of human life on earth has never never failed;

What is to humanity as the sun rising in the morning is to nature—

Ever fresh and young and potent, creating new worlds for itself as it were by merely looking forth upon them;

What rises winged out of all graves—with laughter—leaving the long vistas of corpses behind; and out of the graves of nations;

What for each man rises out of his own grave, and is never vanquished;

Deep deep—below all words—in the eyes of these wan children,

I have seen—and that is sufficient.

* * * * *

O the fresh fresh air blowing!

Here on the summit of this leafless poplar, under the immense night, while the tender growing light just outlines the distant hills,

To sit and sing—for pure joy simply to sit and sing!

SUNDAY MORNING AFTER CHURCH

Sunday morning just after church—and a light warm wind from the North flutters laden with the scent of hay out to sea;

The sea lies crisp and calm, slate-green, stretching itself miles and miles to the wind—wonderful, ecstatic, pushing back with liquid-velvet paws upon the shore.

* * * * *

On the sea-side esplanade there is a good-sized crowd—perhaps a thousand grown men and women walking up and down on one exclusive and fashionable stretch of grass.

It is quite a sight. Scarlet parasols and blue and white lined with pink, tall hats shining speckless, kid-gloves reaching to the elbow—with glitter of gold and silver bangles, and soft sheen and rustle of dresses. All subdued and polite, colors carefully chosen, voices low, movements measured.

Let us take a seat here. How pleasant the air is! and the shade of the great clouds! and the dazzling effect of so many going to and fro!

Here comes one—her face not very easy to be seen for her parasol—but her chin is softly rounded, and the tinge and tissue of her skin most delicate. She wears a very light salmon-pink silk slashed with blue. She is with her mother and an elder sister, and seems to be doing her best, gentle child, to be the correct thing.

Here another of bolder sort—dark handsome eyes, just flashing often enough to keep him amused on the man who is walking beside her; lips a trifle too red, but contrasting well with the great yellow rose on her shoulder and the violet velveteen tunic; figure admirable, but her face somewhat wan beneath its petulance and inquisitiveness.

There goes an old beau, carefully brushed grizzled hair, faultless boots—knows everybody, a good-natured and amusing crony; here a grey-haired baronet and his wife, both demure and short-sighted (no question but they have been to church); there again, a few steps to the left, three young men arm in arm, carefully got up, exchanging whispered comments.

* * * * *

Hist! this elderly matron and her daughter are coming to sit beside us!

Heavy and heated, in rich silks deeply flounced and embroidered, and tight spindle-heeled boots—they seem glad of a rest.

The dress of the elder one especially is a study—the flounces, the innumerable quantity of beads, the formless mass of plaits and gathers, the wonderful arrangement of whale-bones in the body, the strict lacing down the back, the frills and lace round neck and shoulders, the several rings seen on the for a moment ungloved hand, the lump of trinkets suspended from her waist, and the usual headgear [—one cannot help thinking of the chaotic mass of human work this idle red easy-tempered woman carries about on her body].

* * * * *

I close my eyes for a moment. How pleasant still and soft the air is!

A vision goes past of dark and unspoken things—of criminals in prison, of rags and disease and destitution.

Naked and outcast forms hurry by;

The mother snatches some half-pence from her boy match-seller, and makes for the nearest gin-shop; squalid streets and courts are in the background, and filthy workshops;

Forms of humanity pass before me, unclothed; voices hover round, wordless;

Strange clinging voices call; through the long high arches floating, through the night strange voices call.

* * * * *

O freedom! O shadow and night! and forms half-shapen in the womb of night—to the outlet of deliverance!

* * * * *

These naked and outcast—I contemplate them long, undisguised; what they are is not hidden from me, I go back of them and beyond.

I pass as one among them, and feel the touch of their bodies, and of their arms twining—and turn down tired and sleep beside those who sleep;

Half-human, crazy, hungry, condemned, bitter-lipped, forsaken,

The young man with divine face so pale and misshapen I see—I see the poor thin body of the dying mother.

[She is ignorant and unlettered, but when she talks to me in perfect child-like trust of the future of her orphaned children I think I have heard the words of the profoundest Wisdom that ever were uttered.]

* * * * *

The rags fall off, the prison doors fly wide.

In vast phalanx, as out of night and oblivion,

Unclothed, majestic, with wounds and disfigurements, as of him who hung upon the Cross—

With stretched arms, shadow-gigantic and shining, as just alighted on the earth—they stand. I hear their voices call—

Strange wild and inarticulate—

Through the long high arches floating, through the night their voices call.

* * * * *

I open my eyes again. The gay crowd still glides past, exchanging greetings, the flounces and lace are still on the chair beside me. I catch the fluffy smell.

I rise and pass down towards the sea. It lies there, unnoticed as before, slate-green and solemn, stretching miles and miles away; but the wind has risen and is rising, and in the distance here and there it is fretful with sharp white teeth.

HIGH IN MY CHAMBER

High in my chamber I hear the deep bells chime—Midnight.

The great city sleeps with arms outstretched supine under the stars—deep-breathing, hushed;

Into the kennels of sleep are gone the loud-baying cares of day, and hunted man rests for a moment.

* * * * *

The spangled stream has gone.

The long procession of carriages through fashionable quarters, the stream of faces past gay shop-windows,

And high above them the weary face of the needle-woman straining the last hour of daylight—

All are gone.

Into the hidden chamber of the dark the stream of life has poured itself,

For the conception of a new day.

* * * * *

The note of sorrow sleeps;

The weary throbbing brain and heart are lulled—assuaged is the tossing sea;

The wretched prisoner—the prisoner of the needle and dingy attic—is released: she dreams her impossible dream;

The prisoners of here and there, and of Necessity gripping close as a vice, are at liberty: they roam out beyond the star-circled walls of time and hear strange secrets whispered.

* * * * *

But the hour swings onward.

To good and evil alike—to the watching and the sleeping heart alike;

To the mother as she lies beside her infant, sleeping, yet wakeful to its slightest movement; to the father as he sleeps beside the mother;

To the young man as he lies beside his new-made bride, worshiping sleepless on her bosom;

To the folded bud of childhood, sleeping deep as on a tranquil sea—to the bud just disclosed from Eden; and to the child-like relaxed sleep again of extreme old age;

The hour swings onward.

* * * * *

To the waking fever of remorse;

To the long cadaverous vigil of physical pain;

And to the long vigil of the heart-broken wife praying vainly for respite from thought;

The hour swings onward.

High in heaven over the supine city—over the wilderness of roofs beneath the stars—

The hour swings surely onward.

* * * * *

Again the great bell booms.

Blossoming out of silence the rich music swells—

Then dies away—the second stroke of midnight.

And now as if awoken by that note of warning, over the vast city clash a thousand brazen chattering tongues,

Ding, ding, clack, clack,

From far and near, from railway-tower and steeple—blurring the thoughtful night—ding ding, clack clack,

With scrambling stroke they hurry to tell the hour—and so straightway are silent.

But the great bell goes booming slowly on,

High in its tower in heaven among the stars,

Thoughtful, deep-voiced, alone—till it has finished.

* * * * *

So pass the hours, the spacious solemn hours, the shrill chattering hours,

Out into the night they pass, out into the morning,

For the conception of a new day.

2

High in my chamber I hear the deep bells chime,

Deep deep deep, past all mortal hearing, down in the kennels of sleep below the world—

The slow and muffled chime.

* * * * *

The strokes of the changing hours of Man,

The slow spacious thoughts of the changing generations—

Through the night rising I hear.

The thoughts of them who gather the generations into the great fold;

Through whose hearts the trampling millions pass—as surely indeed as through city streets;

The thoughts of them through whose hearts the weary exiles, the prisoners of time, pass, liberating their souls in prayer till the air is charged with lightning—

Through the night rising I hear.

* * * * *

These are they who dream the impossible dream—and it comes true;

Who hear the silent prayers, who accept the trampling millions, as the earth dreaming accepts the interminable feet of her children;

Who dream the dream which all men always declare futile;

Who dream the hour which is not yet on earth—

And lo! it strikes.

3

High in my chamber I hear the deep Bell chime.

* * * * *

Softly softly up through the universe,

Vibrant in every leaf soft-answering, scarce audible ascending,

The great undertone—the deep rich musical solvent, swelling over the world, saturated with love, soft like the winds of spring (O who will give it utterance?)—

Through the night rising I hear.

DEEP BELOW DEEP

Deep below deep,

Tearless, impenetrably frozen in misery—

Is it a child or an old man?

[His face is the color of ashes: it is like a vacant spot without light.]

* * * * *

A child surely, by his top-heavy knock-kneed gait and perching semi-perceptive ways;

An old man, by the two deep horizontal furrows in his brow.

* * * * *

Come in my child out of the bitter wind, and sit awhile by my fire, and eat.

You need not speak or explain yourself: just sit down, and when you have eaten draw your chair close and get warm.

[Perhaps he will thaw, I think, and tell me the story of his life.]

But he sits silent—his hand in mine—with his head deep on his breast; and hardly moves—except once or twice to pick a bit of rag off the end of his trousers and throw it into the fire.

Now his cap is off I see it is a fine head—a well-formed head and brow with short light curling hair;

But when he lifts it his eyes are bleared and slow, with heavy lids, and they refuse to meet mine.

* * * * *

We sit awhile silent; then with slow fitful answers, only now and then volunteering a word:

* * * * *

It was my own fault:

I went into t’ pit when they did not want me to;

They gave me a good education—I can read and write well enew—but I would go into t’ pit.

The very first day I was crushed by a wagon and was laid up a twelve-month: It was my legs that was crushed—but I got over it.

Then my father died. My mother behaved very bad to me: I don’t live with them now. When I am in work I lodge down by the Brewery, but now I sleep where I can.

I have had twelve year at it. I am now twenty-three.

It was all right at first, but times have been very bad lately. When you work half time you can’t save nothing.

I have been out of work three months. They shortened hands, and I was thrown out. They don’t care: when times is bad they throw you out to make it worse.

There’s hundreds clemming one place or another, and they don’t care.

It’s all the same to them that’s well off themselves, and they have done it to spite us.

* * * * *

Silence.

Again the sunken head, again the impenetrable weary crushed frozen look—

There was no thaw or change whatever.

I knew him for many months, but there was no thaw or change to speak of.

EXCEPT THE LORD BUILD THE HOUSE

She lies, whom Money has killed, and the greed of Money,

The thrice-driven slave, whom a man has calmly tortured,

And cast away in the dust—and calls it not murder,

Because he only looked on; while his trusted lieutenants

Supply and Demand pinned the victim down—and her own mother Nature slew her!

* * * * *

The old story of the sewing machine—the treadle machine;

Ten hours a day and five shillings a week, a penny an hour or so—if the numbers were of importance.

Of course she fell ill. Indeed she had long been ailing, and the effort and the torture were slowly disorganising her frame; and already the grim question had been asked: “Might she have rest?” (—the doctor said _must_—and for many a month, too.)

And the answer came promptly as usual. “Have rest? —as much as she wanted! It was a pity, but of course if she could not work she could go. They would make no difficulty, as Supply would fill up her place as soon as vacant.”

One more struggle then. And now she _must_ go, for work is impossible, and Supply _has_ filled her place, and there is no difficulty—or difference—except to her.

For her only the hospital pallet, and the low moaning of the distant world;

For her only the fever and the wasting pain and the nightmare of the loud unceasing treadles;

And the strange contrast in quiet moments of the still chamber and the one kindly face of the house-surgeon, stethoscope in hand, at her bedside;

For her only, hour after hour, the dull throbbing recollection of the injustice of the world,

The bleak unlovely light of averted eyes thrown backwards and forwards over her whole life,

And the unstaunched wound of the soul which is their bitter denial.

And at last the lessening of the pain, and a sense of quietude and space, and through the murky tormented air of the great city a light, a ray of still hope on her eyes peacefully falling;

And then in a moment the passing of the light, and a silence in the long high-windowed ward;

And one with an aster or two and a few chrysanthemums and one with a blown white rain-bewept rose half-timidly coming,

To lay on her couch, with tears.

* * * * *

And so a grave.

In the dank smoke-blackened cemetery, in the dismal rain of the half-awakened winter day,

A grave, for her and her only.

* * * * *

And yet not for her only, but for thousands—

For hundreds of thousands—to lie undone, forsaken,

Tossed impatiently back from the whirling iron—

The broken wheels, or may be merely defective—

Who cares?—

That as they spin roll off and are lost in the darkness,

Run swiftly away (as if they were alive!) into the darkness, and are hidden;

Who cares? who cares?

Since for each one that is gone Supply will provide a thousand.

* * * * *

Who cares? who cares?

O tear-laden heart!

O blown white rose heavy with rain!

O sacred heart of the people!

Rose, of innumerable petals, through the long night ever blossoming!

Surely by thy fragrance wafted through the still night-air,

Surely by thy spirit exhaled over the sleeping world, I know,

Out of the bruised heart of thee exhaled, I know—

And the vision lifts itself before my eyes:—

* * * * *

_Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain who build it._

In vain millions of yards of calico and miles of lace-work turned out per annum;

In vain a people well clad in machine-made cloth and hosiery;

In vain a flourishing foreign trade and loose cash enough for a small war;

In vain universal congratulations and lectures on Political Economy;

In vain the steady whirr of wheels all over the land, and men and women serving stunted and pale before them, as natural as possible;

_Except Love build the house, they labor in vain who build it._

* * * * *

O rich and powerful of the earth!

Behold, your riches are all in vain—you are poorer than the poorest of these children!

Against one such whom you have wronged your armies your police and all the laws that you can frame shall not prevail.

Your palaces of splendor are reared from the beginning upon a foundation of lies, and the graves that you have dug for others shall be for your own burial.

* * * * *

The word is gone forth!

The wealth the power that you have coveted crumble from your grasp as in a dream.

You have thought to drive armies of starving slaves to win idleness and luxury for you;

But it shall be as a dream: they shall surely elude you.

Behold, your armies shall vanish away—even while the word is on your lips, while your hand of command is lifted,

Your armies shall vanish away like smoke, they shall surely surely elude you.

* * * * *

In Death shall they vanish away,

(O fragrance wafted through the still night-air!)

In Death shall they breathe through your bonds and become as the impalpable winds.

Like deserters at night stealing away in thousands out of a camp,

They shall pass a ghostly army to the other side:

Broken and worn and sick—a ghostly army shall they pass and vanish;

And ye shall dream that they are gone.

* * * * *

But they are not gone.

For with the morning, out of the ground,

Out of their mother Earth—star-thick, and ye cannot bind them more than ye can bind the stars—

Out of the heart of their mother, and out of the hearts of the asters and star-shaped chrysanthemums,

Arising—

Through the hollow air and down the rustling flowing rivers,

Over the meadows with the feet of the wind whitening the grass,

From the mystic chambers of their innumerable homes—out of the mystic doors—

Out of the doors of Death and Birth, in thousands, out of the doors of preparation,

Full-equipped hastening, from all sides swiftly gathering,

A radiant army into your great towns pouring,

Down your long streets striding, they shall return.

* * * * *

Spirits of awful knowledge,

(Clad anew with fleshly hands and feet, through sunlit eyes still glancing,)

And of deep-gathered silent age-long experience;

Spirits of the suffering brotherhood, spirits of awful authority—

Before whom materials shrivel and the accumulations of Custom are blown on the wind like chaff—

A self-appointed army they shall return:

* * * * *

Out of whom the word of transformation—

Whispered on many a half-awakened winter day to the silent earth alone—

Shall be spoken aloud as with a trumpet over the world—and the world shall be changed.

I COME FORTH FROM THE DARKNESS

I come forth from the darkness to smite Thee.—
Who art thou, insolent of all the earth,
With thy faint sneer for him who wins thee bread,
And him who clothes thee, and for him who toils
Daylong and nightlong dark in the earth for thee?
Coward, without a name!
Ignorant curse!—and yet with names as many
Alas! almost as Wealth has. Unclean life
That makest a blight wherever thou alightest!
I smite thee back.
Darest thou yet be seen? (How long, how long,
O patient suffering men will ye endure?)
Darest thou yet be seen?
I smite thee back. Go, return whence thou camest.
The gardens and the beautiful terraces,
The palaces and theatres and halls
Of our fair cities shall not see thee more.

* * * * *

From this day the word is gone forth which waited long to be spoken.

Who walks the streets shall see the lightning which is not in the clouds but in the eyes of men,

Poising itself to strike.

* * * * *

O shallow-pate, walking for ever in indifferent ignorance!

Thou with the languid averted eyes and impossible patronising airs,

Thou forged bank-note which the great winds will blow crackling into the coping of heaven,

Hast thou yet never opened wide thine eyes?

* * * * *

Thou at thy club or country seat or in thy study, or sitting in the front pew at church—so luxurious, refined, learned,

So pious—yet all out of other men’s labor;

Thou eager after elegant recognitions through the street hastening—

Vulgar and infidel—from her path the poor woman with her bundle impatiently pushing;

Thou in the household, in the shop, on the railway, with nameless airs the shameful difference marking;

Thou oily in the pulpit ever preaching: Peace, peace—where there is no peace;

Hast thou yet never opened wide thine eyes—

To see and still to see—to stare with astonishment

Over this wide and troubled Ocean, washing so near-importunate upon thee?

* * * * *

This strange thing that it throws up in thy path!

With wild eyes, bloodshot, haggard!

Hast thou observed it?—hast thou well regarded?

In thy smooth progress, say, hast well regarded?

* * * * *

What? and thou seest nothing?—O look look!

The grey old Ocean shivers in his sleep:

Dreamwalker by the perilous brink, O look!

The grey old Ocean shivers, turns his lids

Whose lashes are the lightning, and arises

Staggering from his hollows (Hear, O hear

The hoarse wolf-howling in the pitchy night).

The thunder of his footsteps shakes the interminable shore:

Dream-walker, look!

This white thing in thy path!

Art mad? O look!—the wild eyes seest thou not?

The warning arm?—no flimsy phantom this,

No pale stray figment of thy brain: but He.

* * * * *

Thus by the shore continually,

Pale spectral close-lipped haggard full in thy path warning He stands,

And thou complacent languid with averted eyes passest by him and onward, continually, to thy doom.

* * * * *

Thou shalt never open thine eyes: (deep flashes to deep:)

But the lightning which thou seest not shall wither thee up,

And suddenly, in a moment, the flood uprising shall erase thee.

* * * * *

O Deep flashing upward continually,

Wild beautiful Ocean of faces!

Ocean of glittering salt spray of tears!

Of proud perpetual faith glooming through the long night!

Ocean of day and night!

With white waves riding up continually,

White faces nearing through the gloom—eager in endless beauty!

Not lightnings only:

Tenderest phosphorescence over the wide-heaving surface gleaming,

This also is thine.

* * * * *

O pity! pity!

And it might draw the heart of a man in pity from him!

If he had eyes—to see, and still to see—

To and fro through the streets wandering starless,

Faces _not_ charged with lightning, but with sorrow, voiceless unsmiting distant-luminous,

(Auroral surely towards some greater day,)

Eyes wistful-ignorant—the bloom of youth so fast going never to return—

From dirt-bespattered countenances pathetically looking,

Trustful reliant eyes—and whom to rely on?

(Whom, these dumb thousands of years?)

Parted lips yearning,

Pale woman lips mute-appealing,

Through the gay street unnoticed passing,

From the haunts of fashion flying, from the blank stare of the houses of wealth and refinement,

To hide their sorrow where none shall understand,

Joyless, unaccusing.

(O lips, your accusation is it not heard in the topmost heaven?)

* * * * *

Faces of the world’s deliberate refusal;

Dead-pale faces, shrunken, as of leaves that the frost kills,

Going about to hide themselves from the sun, to lie rotting and rotting in the dark, like the leaves—

In the dark soil which their generations enrich.

* * * * *

Face of the stedfast eyes, growing ever paler—of the weary human shuttle,

Swift between factory and slum to the terrible engine-pulse of necessity alternating.

Sacred pathetic face of the aged slave, out of the world descending,

Of the old woman, mender of carpets—giver of much and receiver of little in this life;

Face of unquestioning submission, kindly consecrating face, out of the world at length with farewell benedictions descending,

Sublimely ignorant of all offence.

Weak face of the drunkard—soon to be labeled suicide;

Pale covert-eyed face of the thief;

Faces ever, faces riding up continually, eager in endless beauty,

O it might draw the heart of a man from him with pity to behold you.

* * * * *

But the world which has deliberately refused you, how shall it dare to pity you?

[O vulgar and infidel and shallow and insolent of all the earth, and ye who have taught yourselves so that ye _can_ give no help,

Come ye not here. Is it not sacred ground?

Come ye not here. Defile not with your pity.

Nay, for ye are smitten back and gone whence ye shall never return—

You and your pity—abolished into the void.]

Dumb awful prisoners! who except Death shall dare to pity you?

To kiss you with the close kiss of deliverance?

To take you up unto the mountain tops and show you the country you have conquered for men?

* * * * *

The word which waited so long to be spoken, behold it is gone forth.

Lo! shooting of swift auroral gleams,

Thoughts hither and thither spreading, coherent,

Words, hark! babbling multitudinous,

Waves to and fro in the sunlight flowing, lisping—

Louder and louder lisping—into one consent waking!

* * * * *

O hearts, not in vain!

Joy, joy—so long a stranger upon earth—

Joy is come up! see the great laughing Ocean!

The deep floor paved with flowers!

Joy is come up. Its waves flow over the world!

To and fro, to and fro, tossing, tumultuously dancing,

The sunlight-smitten waves flow over the world!

How is the great deep changed! Joy is come up.

Wealth the great gloom, the last worst tyranny,

Sinks—is gone down for ever. Arise! arise!

The gardens and the beautiful terraces,

The palaces and theatres and halls

Of our fair cities await your smiles, O Man:

Your solemn love which is their dignity,

Your earnest solemn love, their sacrament,

With outstretched arms they wait.

Arise, O Man!

The long inheritance of the ages waits:

Lo! the fair earth is thine—at length is thine.

Joy! Joy!

The light air and the nimble winds, the blue

Cloud-islanded seas of heaven, the great glad fields

Waving with golden grain, green orchards dusk

With pensive shadows—all the round earth is thine.

* * * * *

Child that shalt bless thy mother,

Joy, joy! The earth is thine.

SUNDAY MORNING NEAR A MANUFACTURING TOWN

Sunday, a still autumn morning, and all the roads on the outskirts are throng with people.

Where the streets begin to run wild towards the country, with patch-work of garden-allotments, and occasional hedgerows and overhanging trees, they go—

Pale-faced men and girls hardly escaped for an hour or two from breathing the eternal smoke.

* * * * *

The sun shines softly—it is very pleasant.

Here comes a whole family: the mother holds a baby to her breast, the father carries the little boy on his arm—two other children play around them;

There go two factory girls, with faded shawls thrown over their heads—their arms round each other’s necks; both have clear soft eyes, and both have fawn-colored opaque skins, marked with the small-pox;

Here shambling along in the opposite direction a group of ill-made boys, carrying dinner-kerchiefs crammed and purple-stained with blackberries. They have been out early and are returning.

Most of the men stand about in knots on the road or in their gardens, some smoking—some with fox-terriers and coursing-dogs.

Handsomely stand the yellow and the lilac dahlias on their tall stalks; and the marigolds and other flowers look well amid the green. The air is full of the scent of celery.

Some are banking up their celery-beds, some are getting potatos, others lie on their backs enjoying the lazy air, others are gathering flowers.

Here comes one with a nosegay of all sorts, here another with a great armful of dahlias nodding amid their leaves as he walks, here another with quantities of brown and yellow calceolaria—almost every one has a flower of some sort.

There is plenty of chaff as the groups of young mechanics pass the groups of chatting laughing girls—some go apart arm in arm together.

Withal the wan look of many faces there is I know not what sense of naturalness and wholesome feeling abroad to-day (the stuffy people are safe out of the way in church)—

The air is full of voices and laughter; from some of the neighboring cottages come sounds of music.

* * * * *

It is well. I welcome you, O crisp uprising life!

I welcome you, O crisp green shoot which the still bright morning has called forth!

It does not need much to see how deep your roots are fed in the strong soil of necessity;

Not much to see how native and fresh a life you indicate,

And that the limp decaying leaves and dead things of the earth will not overlie you much longer.

IN THE DRAWING ROOMS

In the drawing-rooms I saw scarce one that seemed at ease;

They were half-averted sad anxious faces, impossible pompous faces, drawling miowling faces, peaked faces well provided with blinkers,

And their owners kept standing first on one leg and then on the other.

* * * * *

I felt very depressed.

Wherever I went it was the same—it was like a nightmare—I could not escape from it.

Ever the same miowls and drawls, the same half-averted sad uneasy looks, the same immensely busy people doing really nothing, the same one-legged weary idling, mutual boredom, and vampire business.

In the street I could not escape it—at the soirée, the lecture room, the concert; I felt stifled; the sky above me was like lead, and the earth—I could have lain on it and cried as a child,

For I felt like one deprived of his natural food, exhausted, and faint with starvation.

[For indeed it is so, that man can not live by bread alone. This is the silent decree of immortality whereby into his body are wrought for its nourishment unseen intangible essences—of the faces of his fellows and of the touch of their bodies and the breath of their lives about him. Which avenues if they be shut—if the faces be like closed doors, and the hands be withdrawn, and the breath of society about him be corrupt—a man shall shrivel and die, as surely as an infant from its mother’s breasts forbidden.]

And at the railway station, and in the train flying over field and river through the dark, I could not escape that vampire horror.

* * * * *

Was this then the sum of life?

A grinning gibbering organisation of negations—a polite trap, and circle of endlessly complaisant faces bowing you back from all reality!

Was it that men should give all their precious time and energy to the plaiting of silken thongs and fetters innumerable—

To bind themselves prisoners—to condemn themselves to pick oakum of the strands of real life for ever?

Was it mere delusion and bottomless nightmare? really at last the much talked-of and speculated-about existence in two dimensions only?

* * * * *

And as I thought of the fields and rivers below me in the dark, returning life thrilled in a faint wave of laughter through me from the beautiful bounding earth;

And as a woman for the touch of a man,

So I cried in my soul even for the violence and outrage of Nature to deliver me from this barrenness.

* * * * *

Well, as it happened just then—and as we stopped at a small way-station—my eyes from their swoon-sleep opening encountered the grimy and oil-besmeared figure of a stoker.

Close at my elbow on the foot-plate of his engine he was standing, devouring bread and cheese,

And the firelight fell on him brightly as for a moment his eyes rested on mine.

* * * * *

That was all. But it was enough.

The youthful face, yet so experienced and calm, was enough;

The quiet look, the straight untroubled unseeking eyes, resting upon me—giving me without any ado the thing I needed.

[Indeed because they sought nothing and made no claim for themselves, therefore it was that they gave me all.]

* * * * *

For in a moment I felt the sting and torrent of Reality.

The swift nights out in the rain I felt, and the great black sky overhead, and the flashing of red and green lights in the forward distance,

The anxious straining for a glimpse sideways into the darkness—cap tied tightly on—the dash of cold and wet above, the heat below:

All this I felt, as it had been myself.

The weird look of hedgerows and trees in the wild glare as we pass, the straining and leaping of the engine, and the precious human freight madly borne behind,

The great world reeling by, the rails and the ballast ribbon-like unreeling—out of darkness arriving—phantasmal inexorable flawless!

[Stand firm, bridge of many arches while we pass swiftly over the tops of the trees!

Hold, ties and struts and well-braced girders, hold while our iron feet ring resounding over the river!

Hold firm, phantasmal world, even as thou dost—inexorably firm—whether for good or evil, hold!]

O the mad play!

And the dumb sense of tension when wife or sister or friend is one of the precious freight;

And the long hours of unremitted watchfulness, and the faithful unremitting service of the machinery;

And the faithful responsive wheeling of the stars, fulfilling the hours,

The slow lifting of the Moon through the clouds, the changes of light, west and east,

And the breaking of the morning.

* * * * *

All these in his eyes who stood there, lusty with well-knit loins, devouring bread and cheese—all these and something more:

Nature standing supreme and immensely indifferent in that man, yet condensed and prompt for decisive action:

True eyes, true interpreters, striking as a man wielding a sledge strikes, in whom long practice has ensured the absolute consent of all his muscles!

True eyes, true interpreters—of abounding gifts free givers—

Without wrigglings and contortions, without egotistic embarrassments, grimaces, innuendos,

Without constraint and without stint, free!

O eyes, O face, how in that moment without any ado you gave me all!

How in a moment the whole vampire brood of flat paralytic faces fled away, and you gave me back the great breasts of Nature, when I was rejected of others and like to die of starvation.

I do not forget.

It is not a little thing—though you passed away so quickly and were wholly unconscious of it.

* * * * *

It is not a little thing, you—wherever you are—following the plough, or clinging with your feet to the wet rigging, or nursing your babe through the long day when your husband is absent, or preparing supper for his return, or you on the foot-plate of your engine—

Who stand mediating there against Necessity, wringing favors and a little respite for your fellows, translating the laws for them, making a channel for the forces;

In whom through faithful use, through long patient and loyal exercise the channels have become clean—

[Clean and free the channels of your soul, though your body be smirched and oily—]

It is not a little thing that by such a life your face should become as a lantern of strength to men;

That wherever you go they should rise up stronger to the battle, and go forth with good courage.

Nay, it is very great.

* * * * *

I do not forget.

Indeed I worship none more than I worship you and such as you,

Who are no god sitting upon a jasper throne,

But the same toiling in disguise among the children of men and giving your own life for them.

IN A MANUFACTURING TOWN

As I walked restless and despondent through the gloomy city,

And saw the eager unresting to and fro—as of ghosts in some sulphurous Hades;

And saw the crowds of tall chimneys going up, and the pall of smoke covering the sun, covering the earth, lying heavy against the very ground;

And saw the huge refuse-heaps writhing with children picking them over,

And the ghastly half-roofless smoke-blackened houses, and the black river flowing below;

As I saw these, and as I saw again far away the Capitalist quarter,

With its villa residences and its high-walled gardens and its well-appointed carriages, and its face turned away from the wriggling poverty which made it rich;

As I saw and remembered its drawing-room airs and affectations, and its wheezy pursy Church-going and its gas-reeking heavy-furnished rooms and its scent-bottles and its other abominations—

I shuddered:

For I felt stifled, like one who lies half-conscious—knowing not clearly the shape of the evil—in the grasp of some heavy nightmare.

* * * * *

Then out of the crowd descending towards me came a little ragged boy:

Came—from the background of dirt disengaging itself—an innocent wistful child-face, begrimed like the rest but strangely pale, and pensive before its time.

And in an instant (it was as if a trumpet had been blown in that place) I saw it all clearly, the lie I saw and the truth, the false dream and the awakening.

For the smoke-blackened walls and the tall chimneys, and the dreary habitations of the poor, and the drearier habitations of the rich, crumbled and conveyed themselves away as if by magic;

And instead, in the backward vista of that face, I saw the joy of free open life under the sun:

The green sun-delighting earth and rolling sea I saw,

The free sufficing life—sweet comradeship, few needs and common pleasures—the needless endless burdens all cast aside,

Not as a sentimental vision, but as a fact and a necessity existing, I saw

In the backward vista of that face.

* * * * *

Stronger than all combinations of Capital, wiser than all the Committees representative of Labor, the simple need and hunger of the human heart.

Nothing more is needed.

All the books of political economy ever written, all the proved impossibilities, are of no account.

The smoke-blackened walls and tall chimneys duly crumble and convey themselves away;

The falsehood of a gorged and satiated society curls and shrivels together like a withered leaf,

Before the forces which lie dormant in the pale and wistful face of a little child.

WHAT HAVE I TO DO WITH THEE

Weary with the restless burden of this world last night I fell

Dreaming on my couch, in Nature’s bosom, and the dream was well;

For with morning I awoke triumphant like a child in glee,

Singing: World, I prithee tell me, What have I to do with thee?

* * * * *

I who am a child, content if but with wonder and with love,

With the quiet Earth beneath me and the splendid Sun above,

To whom laughter comes unbidden in the watches of the night,

Whom a daisy in the meadow fills with ever new delight—

World, unquiet world I dwell in, with thy wearisome grimaces,

(Like an old and odious lover, who importunately paces

Ever up and down before one,) world of fashion, world of cant,

World of philanthropic schemes, committee-meetings, crazes, rant,

World of void affected duties, world quite dumb of love’s decree,

O thou solemn prig, pray tell me, What have I to do with thee?

* * * * *

I whom nature made rejoicing in my meed of strength and skill,

Proud with those I love to labor, lingering in the sweet air, till

Twilight brings the firelit home and faces, whom she counted free

To all her stores, nor stayed to reckon, whom she taught the mystery

Of the whole Earth inly heaving with desire hid at the core,

Whom she filled with tender grieving, whom she smote with passion sore—

World of brick walls in perspective, world of avenues of dirt,

World of hideous iron railings, stucco and the window-squirt,

World of pigmy men and women, dressed like monkeys, that go by,

World of squalid wealth, of grinning galvanised society,

World of dismal dinner-parties, footmen, intellectual talk,

Heavy-furnished rooms, gas, sofas, armchairs, girls that cannot walk,

Books that are not read, food music novels papers flung aside,

World of everything and nothing—nothing that will fill the void;

World that starts from manual labor, as from that which worse than damns,

Keeps reality at arm’s length, and is dying choked with shams,

World, in Art and Church and Science, sick with infidelity,

O thou dull old bore, I prithee, What have I to do with thee?

* * * * *

Who is master? Tell me that. Didst thou make me? or thinkest thou

By the bold array thou donnest, by thy frowns and puckered brow,

To impose that flam upon me? Nay! for far too clearly through

Thy false life and fancy make-up, through the artificial hue

Health paints not upon thy cheek, thy glassy eyes with sunken rims

Staring, and the meaningless spasmodic corpse-dance of thy limbs—

Right through thy whole being looking into what once was thy heart

I behold how hollow lifeless and corrupt a thing thou art.

* * * * *

Strange!—yet so it is—that stronger than a world on granite piled,

More than all Wealth and Tradition is the weak sigh of a child.

We—the future’s dreamers—come, and coming look thee in the face:

“World, to _Right-about_” we bid thee; “_March_—and quickly—into space!”

AS TO YOU O MOON

As to you O Moon—

I know very well that when the astronomers look at you through their telescopes they see only an aged and wrinkled body;

But though they measure your wrinkles never so carefully they do not see you personal and close—

As you disclosed yourself among the chimney-tops last night to the eyes of a child,

When you thought no one else was looking.

* * * * *

Gustily ran the wind down the bare comfortless street, the clouds flew in long wild streamers across your face, the few still on foot were hurrying homewards—

When, as between the wisps of rain O moon you shone out wonderfully bare and bright,

Lo! far down in the face of a boy I saw you.

* * * * *

Dashed with rain, wet with tears,

Stopping suddenly to lean his head against a wall, caught by your look—

The pale smudged face, the tense glittering eyes, never swerving a moment,

The curls fringing his dirty cap, the rare pale light of wonder and of suffering:

Yes, far down, as in a liquid pool in the woods, centuries down under the surface, as I passed I distinctly saw you.

* * * * *

I should like to know what you were doing there,

You old moon, with your magic down in that boy’s soul so powerfully working,

While all the time the appearance of you was journeying up above in the sky!

I should like to know how many thousands and thousands you have looked at like that, so quietly and calm-deceptively:

Why, the reflected light is in their eyes yet—pale sleepless maidens looking out from ivied casements, choral processions winding upwards at dusk to the groves of Ashtoreth, cave-dwellers ages ago sitting at the mouths of their caves—I see the glitter of sparkles as from an immense ocean.

* * * * *

You are an artful old (heavenly) body!

One might almost think that there really was nothing behind those wrinkles,

And that the effluences of gravitation and magnetism which the astronomers think so much of were really the last word to be said about you—as a child might know an elderly dame by the camphor bag which she carried in her pocket, and nothing more.

Yet I fancy that as you jog along round the earth you take very good note in your quiet way of the limpid faces looking up at you, peering deep—centuries down—into each;

I fancy that you are not ill-pleased to pass as you do for a harmless old lady—plucking thus with the less hindrance the flowers that you love;

I fancy that somewhere among the niches and chasms of those rugged craters you surely treasure them up, sacred and faithful, against a day that we little dream of;

Anyhow I see plainly that like all created things you do not yield yourself up as to what you are at the first or the thousandth onset,

And that the scientific people for all their telescopes know as little about you as any one—

Perhaps less than most.

* * * * *

How curious the mystery of creation, the juggle of the open daylight! and all things sworn conspirators to that end!

Lo! the quiet moon in the sky—yet to a child it has told its secret.

SQUINANCY-WORT

What have I done?—
I am a little flower,
Out of many a one
That twinkles forth after each passing shower.
White, with a blushful glow,
In the sweet meadows I grow,
Or innocent over the hill tops sport and run.—
What have I done?

Many an age agone,
Before man walked on earth,
I was. In the sun I shone;
I shook in the wind with mirth;
And danced on the high tops looking out seaward—where I had birth
Web-footed monsters came
And into the darkness went
In ponderous tournament,
Many an age agone.
But on the high tops I dwelt ever the same,
With sisters many a one,
Guiltless of sin and shame!—
What have I done?

What have I done?—_Man_ came,
Evolutional upstart one!
With the gift of giving a name
To everything under the sun.
What have I done?—Man came
(They say nothing sticks like dirt),
Looked at me with eyes of blame,
And called me “Squinancy-wort.”

What have I done? I linger
(I cannot say that I live)
In the happy lands of my birth;
Passers-by point with the finger;
For me the light of the sun
Is darkened. Oh, what would I give
To creep away and hide my shame in the earth!—
What have I done?

Yet there is hope. I have seen
Many changes since I began.
The web-footed beasts have been
(Dear beasts!)—and gone, being part of some wider plan.
Perhaps in his infinite mercy God will remove this Man!

_Not of myself—I have no power of myself_—

_But out of you who read do I write these words_;

_And whether you understand them or not is nothing to me: I sort rather with those who do not read them._

LO! I OPEN A DOOR

Lo! I open a door.

Through all suffering, through being an outcast myself, in prison and condemned,

Lying on the floor of existence as one accursed and outlawed—

Who shall not pass by me into joy eternal?

BY THIS HEART

By this heart sacred for you O children—for you a few years beating;

By the deep yearnings of it, flowing, following you—and the world made holy wherever you have trod;

By the firm pulse of it, and by its silent-dropping dark tears;

By its weakness and by its immortal strength;

By the love with which it encloses, in which it continually laves you;

By you greater yourselves; and by the love which I see flowing surely from you to me;

By these I put all evil aside

And I approach you, nearer, nearer—even so nearer than all thought—

And remain with you, doubting fearing nothing.

* * * * *

For fear I put away from you, and the wretched unrest of the world;

And from the Maya of appearances I deliver you: believe me here is deliverance;

[And not here only, in this inch of space and time, but wherever....]—

And I show you the inheritance of the riches of all time.

* * * * *

Yet sorrow, the gift of gifts, revealer of eternal joy, I give you not;

But One shall come in the night-time, bringing it, to transmute the world for you,

Taking you by the hand, even while you live, through the great gate of Death into Elysian fields.

There as the nightingale through the night beside his mate sings,

In the soft dark—filled with the spirit of the stars and of the flowing river and the wafted fragrance of the fields: the sunlit memories of the day about him, and above him his own voice in the clear height poised unfaltering—

So in perfect contentment thro’ all your mortal work

Shall your spirit sublimely sing.

AS ONE WHO FROM A HIGH CLIFF

I look upon my life as from afar:
I hear its murmur, mark its changeful sheen,
(As one who from a high cliff marks the waves
He just now rode on,)
Beautiful, gleaming, shot with hues from heaven,
With strange pale lustre—beautiful indeed,
O God, from this great eminence of Death.

TO ONE IN TROUBLE

The Lord of heaven and earth, out of darkness, out of silence, by ways that thou understandest not, shall redeem thy soul.

THESE WAVES OR YOUR GREAT HEART

You battling with your own heart, speaking the words of peace in vain,—

* * * * *

The convulsive waves heave and break, do they not?

They go moaning down the dark shore, bitterly, unabating,

Heavily with weary thud falling falling—into the darkness falling.

* * * * *

O heart!

This is the ocean that is broken (on its surface) with measureless never-ending unrest.

O heart!

This is the wide and immense ocean: over which who shall sail?

O child!

You that shiver there in the night-wind by the dread white-lipped shore!