After the months of torpor,
Weakness and ache and strain,
After this day's deep drowning
In stormy seas of pain—
To feel your hand, my baby,
Upon my bosom lain!

My little one, my baby,
What woes your touches quell!
It is the Christ-child coming
To save a soul from hell.
Out in the happy gardens
You bring me now to dwell.

My baby—O beloved,
Mine only you shall be,
Even as the soul our Lord's is,
Who died upon the tree.
Have I not won you, dearest,
By pain, as he won me?

So sweet, so soft, so little,
Such a wee helpless flower !
How may I shield you, dear one,
From the world's ruthless power,
And hold you close and warm here,
As now in your first hour?

What am I? I am Earth the mother,
With all her nebulous memories;
And the young Day, and Night her brother,
And every god that was and is.

As Eve I walked in paradise,
Dreaming of nations, braving death
For knowledge; nor begrudged the price
When the first baby first drew breath.

I sang Deborah's triumph song;
I struck the foe with Judith's sword;
'Twas I who to the angel said,
'Behold the handmaid of the Lord!'

I was fair Helen, she for whom
A nation was content to die;
And Cleopatra, in whose doom
The world went down with Antony.

I am the harlot in the street,
And the veiled nun all undefiled;
In me must queen and beggar meet,
Wise age hark to the little child.

I am the life that ever is,
And the new glory that shall be;
The pain that dies, and the brave bliss
That mounts to immortality.

I

THE lady in front of me in the car,
With little red coils close over her ears,
Is talking with her friend;
And the circle of ostrich foam around her hat,
Curving over like a wave,
Trembles with her little windy words.
What she is saying, I wonder,
That her feathers should tremble
And the soft fur of her coat should slip down over her shoulders?
Has her string of pearls been stolen,
Or maybe her husband?

II

He is drunk, that man -
Drunk as a lord, a lord of the bibulous past. [sic]
He shouts wittily from his end of the car to the man in the corner;
He bows to me with chivalrous apologies.
He philosophizes, plays with the wisdom of the ages,
Flings off his rags,
Displays his naked soul -
Athletic, beautiful, grotesque.
In the good time coming,
When men drink no more,
Shall we ever see a nude soul dancing
Stript and free
In the temple of his god?

III

She comes smiling into the car
With irridescent bubbles of children.
She blooms in the close plush seats
Like a narcissus in a bowl of stones.
She croons to a baby in her lap -
The trees come swinging by to listen,
And the electric lights in the ceiling are stars.

The Shadow-Child

Why do the wheels go whirring round,
Mother, mother?
Oh, mother, are they giants bound,
And will they growl forever?
Yes, fiery giants underground,
Daughter, little daughter,
Forever turn the wheels around,
And rumble-grumble ever.

Why do I pick the threads all day,
Mother, mother,
While sunshine children are at play?
And must I work forever?
Yes, shadow-child; the live-long day,
Daughter, little daughter,
Your hands must pick the threads away,
And feel the sunshine never.

Why do the birds sing in the sun,
Mother, mother,
If all day long I run and run,
Run with the wheels forever?
The birds may sing till day is done,
Daughter, little daughter,
But with the- wheels your feet must run—
Run with the wheels forever.

Why do I feel so tired each night,
Mother, mother?
The wheels are always buzzing bright;
Do they grow sleepy never?
Oh, baby thing, so soft and white,
Daughter, little daughter,
The big wheels grind us in their might,
And they will grind forever.

And is the white thread never spun,
Mother, mother?
And is the white cloth never done,
For you and me done never?
Oh yes, our thread will all be spun,
Daughter, little daughter,
When we lie down out in the sun,
And work no more forever.

And when will come that happy day,
Mother, mother?
Oh, shall we laugh and sing and play
Out in the sun forever?
Nay, shadow-child, we'll rest all day,
Daughter, little daughter,
Where green grass grows and roses gay,
There in the sun forever.

Night In State Street

Art thou he?—
The seer and sage, the hero and lover—yea,
The man of men, then away from the haughty
day
Come with me!

Ho—ho! to the night—
The spangled night that would the noon outstare.
Her skirts are fringed with light,
She is girdled and crowned with gems of fire that flare.
The city is dizzy with the thrill of her—
Her shining eyes and shadowy floating hair;
And curious winds her nebulous garments blur,
Blowing her moon-white limbs and bosom bare.

She beckons me—
Down the deep street she goes to keep her tryst.
Come—come—oh follow! oh see

The many-windowed walls uprear so high
They dim and quiver and float away in mist
Tangling the earth and sky.
And the pale stars go by
Like spirits masterful and still and strong,
Dragging the heavy nets of life along.

Down in the deep
Lightly the nets enmesh us with the swarm
Of huddled human things that, soft and warm,
Beat out so close the pulses of their lives.
We crowd and creep,
We jostle and push out of our halls and hives,
We chatter and laugh and weep.
Ah, do you hear
The choral of voices, each the secret hiding?
Do you see the warren of souls, each one abiding
In separate solitude, remote, austere?

Here in the glare of the street we cling together
Against the warning darkness, the still height Of the awful night.
We blow like a feather
From hope to hope along the winds of fate
Importunate.
The lettered lights that twinkle in and out
Lure us and laugh at us, beckon and flout,
Flashing their slangy symbols in our eyes,
Blurting their gaudy lies.
The bold shop-windows flaunt their empty wares—
Jewelled or tinselled shows of things,
The fripperies and furnishings
Wherein stark life will stifle her shiverings
Ere forth in the dawn she fares.

Ah, tyranny perilous!
Vain shows that master us!
See the gay girls fluttering wistfully,
Where waxen dummies grin in gowns of lace.
Watch yonder woman in black, whose dimmed eyes see
Soft baby things folded with tender grace.
And look at the children crowding and shouting there
Where dancing dolls jiggle and jerk and stare.
They hover and cling
Possessed by signs and shadows of the thing.
They moor their bark
Close to the shore and fathom not the dark—
The dark that glooms afar
Beyond the invisible star,
Beyond faith's boundaries,
The plausible was and is.

Come, ye adventurous,
Open your hearts to us!
You tiny newsboy, calling extras there,
Pitiful burden-bearer, pale with blight,
What of the night?—
The sullen night that brings you, little one,
So heavy a load of care,
While happier children sleep from sun to sun?
And you, wan youth, haggard and spent,
By mad thirst driven and rent—
Thirst of the body, thirst of the soul—
To what dark goal
Does reeling night lead you, her listless prey,
To gorge you and slay,
And hide forever from the searching day?
And you, furtive and flaunting girl,
Whose heavy-lidded eyes unfurl
Red signal fires, the while, demure,
Your brooding lips deny their lure—
Ah, does the lewd night lash you to her cave,
And will you never her ribald rage out-brave,
And rise no more forlorn
To greet the morn?

The street grows insolent.
With cries of dark delight
And gestures impudent
It rends the robe of night.
Up to the silent sky
It shouts the human cry.

The crowds push in and out
By all the open ways,
Eager to stare and shout
At vaudeville waifs of plays.
They drop their coins and laugh
At the wheezy phonograph,
They hush for the noisy drone
Of the croaking megaphone.
That litters life with jest
They pause that they may not go
On life's eternal quest.
They stifle truth with speech,
They mimic love with lust,
For the glitter of gilt they reach
And cover the gold with dust.
They stoop to the din and glare
Who have the lofty night for comrade rare.
They grope along the ground
Whose stature like the night with stars is crowned.

Oh piteous!
Oh struggle vain!
Of puppets emulous,
We strive and strain
To forge for our limbs a chain.
Come, thou deep-hearted Night, so dark and bright !
Come, holy Night, come, lawless, dissolute Night!
Come, human Night, hushing thy dreams divine!
Give me thy dreams, O Night—they shall be mine!—
Mine and this beggar's, though we lie to thee!
Mine and this harlot's, though from thee we
flee! Mine and this worldling's, though with might and right
We hide them from our sight.
Thy shadowed eyes the truth behold, and we—
We too shall know the truth, and so be free!
Even now—yea, now
Through lies and vanities we pry and peer.
Even now we bow
At little shrines where pale fires flicker and fleer.
Hark! in the echoing street
The drums that bang and beat,
Where the curb-stone preachers tell
The way to heaven and hell.
Look! in yon window there
A man through a glass astare
At atoms and embryos,
The source whence all life flows.
Search the beginning and end.
We may not choose but follow—
Yes, you and I and these—
The fume of the noisome hollow,
The gleam of the Pleiades.
Wherever one goes in quest
With his quest we are cursed or blest.
And the street, with its blazing mockery of
noon, Leads on to the quiet stars, to the lofty moon.

The little lights go out now row on row,
The dim crowds glide away.
The shadowed street
Pillars the vaulted sky.
And Night, proud Night,
Rapt in her dreams, with stately tread and slow
Patrols the drowsy world. O friend complete,
How may we read her deep delight aright?

Art thou he—
The seer and sage, the hero and lover—yea,
The man of men, then even to the gates of day
Lead thou me!

E. H. M.
Nov. 17th, 1890—Feb. 13th, 1904

Still he lies,
Pale, wan, and strangely wise.
Under the white coverlet
He lies here sleeping yet,
Though it is day,
Though through the window flares the gaudy day.

With red red roses strewn—
Little red roses smelling sweet of June—
He sleeps the winter dawn away.
The pink and gilded valentines are there
He fingered yesterday;
The toy beasts guard him unaware—
Jumbo the elephant, and Watch the dog,
And Strawberry the big brown furry bear—
The three he kept with him,
Who always slept with him,
Sleep not but stare, like shore lights in a fog.
All is the same—
Table and chairs, the picture in its frame,
The books with covers gay,
And now, the day!—
There through the window flares the gaudy day.

Would it were night, since in my heart is night;
Softly-caressing, blinding, deadening night,
That won him from me! Would that we—we two,
Wound close together soft in folds of white,
Were buried deep in darkness! From the night
Love called him years ago—from the dim blue
Of shadow-souls that throng about the earth
Waiting for birth.
And when the moons were run,
Through blackest night, the windy night of pain,
We rose—we twain—
Into the path of the sun,
And saw God pass to light the world anew.
Now all is done,
The torch is burned away—
Yet it is day!
Now through the window flares the gaudy day.

Did you speak, little one?
At your locked lips I listen evermore.
Say, do you play upon the starry floor,
And pluck the anemone and asphodel
In happy groves, a happy child forever?
Will you not tell?
Or in some spirit world, melodious, clear,
Where life, at truce with death, shall perish never—
There, in high union with harmonious powers,
Will your fair soul to perfect stature rear
And wisdom of a man? And will you be
God's hero, riding out the sun-long hours
To bear to captive stars their liberty?
Or in the heaven of heavens,
Ringed round with seraphim by threes and sevens,
Wrapt deep in holiness intolerable,
Will you the glory of God in raptures tell
Of praise, praise—joy and praise,
Through the unending days?
My little one, will you not speak to me—
To me, who ever heard
Your softest baby word?
Will you tell nothing—nothing? Can you be
Forgetful now and shut your eyes away—
Now it is day,
Now through the window flares the gaudy day?

Me ignorant and impotent and blind !
I look before and after, and unwind
Intricate webs of thought,
By saints and sages wrought,
Only to weave a vapor of the mind
Here between you and me.
All weariness, except that on my breast
Your warm and rosy flesh could softly rest,
And now my dazed eyes see,
Tricked out in mockery,
A heap of ashes marbled with your smile.
Almost I hear the patter of little feet

Your dancing hours repeat.
Almost I hear
Your twitter of laughter at my ear,
And suddenly feel soft arms around me,
As though love crowned me.
Dreams of the night, softly they flit away,
For it is day—
Now through the window flares the gaudy day.

Alone—alone—
Smiling you dare set forth, quick to the call.
Out of my arms into that far unknown
Swiftly you run, nor seem to fear at all.
Don't you know we are one—yes, bone of bone,
Flesh of my flesh, soul of my very soul?
Whither thou goest I must go, or be
A coward thing, ever at war with thee,
Laggard and lost while thou art at the goal.
Ah, leave me not now at the sunrise hour!
Pause but to take my hand
And give the high indomitable command,
And I will mount with thee the topmost tower.
Show me the way,
Now it is day—
Now through the window flares the gaudy day.

Ah, dost thou rise before me,
Braver than I to meet the intrepid morn?
Dost thou implore me
To shut thy silent shadow-house forlorn,
And turn me from its locked and leaden gate
With heart elate?
Oh, shall I don my jewelled robe, and so,
With flourish of flutes and banners all aglow,
Forth to the triumph go?
The hills are hung with purple mist
Beyond thy sepulchre.
There death and life have newly kissed,
For thou art early astir.
There, wedded now who once were twain,
From truth to truth they rise,
And thou shalt lead me in their train
And teach me to be wise.
Not far, not far
I follow where thy footsteps are,
And take from thee
The cup of immortality.
Here in my little place—
My little house of time and space—
Why should I stay—
Now it is day,
Now through the window flares the day—the day?
In crimson and gold arrayed,
Royal and unafraid,
It comes as for the bridal of a queen;
And far before its feet
The dawn on pinions fleet
Spreads wide the path of life, with joy serene.
Beautiful art thou, beautiful and brave—
In vain they dig thy grave.
Thy soul in glory moves, the foremost one
To scale the sun.
And now—and now
I kiss thy tranquil brow,
And go apace
Out in the light to find thy dwelling place.
Now we are bound no more—
Beyond the farthest shore,
And never stray,
For it is day—
Now through the darkness flares the day—the day.

In crimson and gold arrayed,
Royal and unafraid,
It comes as for the bridal of a queen;
And far before its feet
The dawn on pinions fleet
Spreads wide the path of life, with joy serene.
Beautiful art thou, beautiful and brave—
In vain they dig thy grave.
Thy soul in glory moves, the foremost one
Toscale the sun.
And now—and now
I kiss thy tranquil brow,
And go apace
Out in the light to find thy dwelling place.
Now we are bound no more—
I follow thee beyond the rim of space,
Beyond the farthest shore,
And never stray,
Fir it is day—
Now through the darkness flares the day—the day.

A Letter From Peking

October I5th, 1910.
My friend, dear friend, why should I hear your voice
Over the Babel of voices, suddenly
Calling as from the new world to the old?
Hush!—are you weary? would you follow me?
Would you make dark the house, and shut the door,
Summon steam-pacing trains, wave-racing ships,
To bear you past the high assembled nations—
Past the loud cries, the plucking hands of the age—
Even to the East that drowses on her throne?

Come then—it's good to be alive today;
For yesterday is dead, and dim tomorrow
Flits like a ghost before us, threatening
Our peering eyes with mistily flapping wings.
Grandly the streets loom upward; huge skyscrapers
Catch at the glory of the sunrise, wear
The morning like a mantle, bare their heads
In praise and prayer. And with us on the pavement,
Above us in the air there, and below,
Under our feet, by train and tram and subway,
The people bear the burden of the age—
Each to his work, each to his love, his dream,
The little secret vision of his soul,
Veiled, muffled, trampled, baffled, but agleam:
Our people, eager to work, eager to laugh,
Eager to love—if but to love were easy,
Pausing not for the slow and difficult thing
As they push past their neighbors to the goal.

Now to the ship—down the long crowded wharves,
The tangle of souls and voices threading thinly
Through the slight gangway. Do you see her there—
Huge, black, incredible, fortress-walled in steel,
Hiding her heart of fire? She has no fear;
The fierce waves leap at her, the arrogant storms
Tease at her flying heels, the boastful winds
Front her in vain. Superb, invincible,
From world to world, over the ravenous ocean
Grandly she bears the fruitage of the time:
Rich fields of corn, mill-yields of goods, long train-loads
Of strong machines, man's hope and love and power
Sealed in a million letters, and at last
Even us, the little human mustard seeds—
Dark earth-specks with the kingdom of heaven within.

Gaily we tread the deck, softly we sleep,
Lightly we chatter away the idle days,
While strong hands, from dark hold to sunny mast,
Do our enormous tasks. And now at last
The world again, low chalky cliffs, the shore,
Parked England silvery green, her viny casements
And dewy lawns, her iron towns of toil
Smoke-bound, unfree. And London, stony London,
Gray storehouse of the heaped-up centuries,
Of hidden sins and valors, locked-in joys;
London the empire-hearted, grave with cares
Under her tawny sky that dulls the sun.

We linger not—swiftly the new age runs
And he must haste who takes her by the hand.
Over the Channel! Come! the little houses
And patchwork fields of France. Paris fullblown,
The red red rose of the world, whose golden heart
Lies bare to the greedy sun, whose petals droop
Ever so softly to the falling time,
Most lovely at the signal hour of change.
Germany then, the little patterned cities
Of the old time swept, garnished for the new;
The ancient halls hung with the ancient art,
And musical with high-stringed orchestras
Playing melodious prophecies; gay Berlin,
Garish, unmellowed, pale, but full of hope,
And proud desire.

Ah whither do they march,
These nations with the sweat upon their brows,
Huge burden-bearers, panoplied in steel,
Facing bleak mists of doubt? Will they cast
down Their heavy fears and bathe their brows in light
And freely run across the fields of dawn—
Children of joy, blood brothers born in love,
Valiant for peace as once for murderous war?
Nearer they draw, trimly the sharp rails cut
Their boundaries—twin scissor-blades of fate.
Swift steamers tie their ports together, bring
Tourist ambassadors from state to state.
Bold man-birds fly through the unsentineled air,
And cobweb wires invisible, more strong
Than chains of steel, are spun from tower to tower,
Bridging the oceans, linking capitals,
Binding men's hearts. O kings of the peopled earth,
O men, rulers of kings, dare you resist
Warriors of science, who are blazing trails
Your statesmenship must travel to new goals?
Laggards, beware lest the advancing myriads,
Bound for the promised land, trample you down!

Dark Russia, standing at the Asian gate,
Questions us with her eastward-peering eyes.
Proud Moscow from her hundred towers looks out—
Moscow, bejeweled with domes, magnificent,
Out of her past barbaric gazes far
Into the future, swings her Kremlin portal
To show the sad Siberian wilderness,
And bids us follow through the autumnal days.
Softly we slip along the garnered fields,
Past clustered villages, low-thatched and brown,
Each with a gay church gilded; shimmer down
The shining Urals, and salute at last
Great Asia where in solitude she waits
Under the northern star.

Her forest then,
Level and low; dark little pines, thin birches
Their leaves all golden on the silver stems.
And square-faced peasants crowding to the train,
Slow, sleepy-eyed, thick-bearded. Onward still
Through the stark plains; Baikal blue in its mountains,
The home of wheeling birds that dive and soar.
And by and by a dragon-guarded roof
With gay beasts perched along its tips, that lift
Like the slim corner of a pale new moon
Poised in the sky at sunset.

We have come
To the first gate of the world. The still Pacific
Glitters between the hills. Dark crowds astare
Greet us with chatter and laughter—beardless men
With shaven brows and long thin tasseled braids,
Clad in dim blue under the darkening sun.
The obliterating night curtains our eyes,
And when at last the red dawn draws the veil
A heavy wall looms over us gray and stern
With towered gates fortress-guarded. And our engine,
Steaming and shrieking past the caravans—
The shaggy ponies, little loaded asses,
The slow process camels pacing down—
Scatters the dust of time, pierces the wall,
And pauses under the shadow of yellow roofs
Where the Forbidden City, wide and still,
Lies dreaming in her sunrise-slanted woods.

Peking! She faces us with marble eyes
Inscrutable. She hearkens to our noise
And guards her secret. Shall we win her over—
We with our guns, our dark machines, our mansions
High piled over her lowly curving roofs;
We with our loud commands? Will she arise,
Weary of silence, wave her yellow flag,
Summon her myriads for the modern race,
The huge new tasks, the war for love and light?
Hush! If we wait and listen, will she speak,
Wise woman or child, veiled queen of the dragon throne?

Softly! No steamer, elbowing storms aside,
No engine nosing through the ancient wall,
No hurrying foot, no soul worn or at war,
Shall penetrate the Circle and the Square,
Set with sweet woods, the green wall and the blue,
And touch the three rings of the Temple of Heaven,
The terraced marble seat, cloud-carved and fair,
Where, at the Centre of the Earth, in peace,
The tranquil East, contemplative, serene,
Dwells with the sun and moon.

Hush—bare your head
And strip your spirit free. When you have won
The ultimate Wisdom, seek the wingèd portal
Once more. Then she, the sage, may rise to you,
Hold converse with you, pilgrim of the age,
And take you to her heart and bless your gifts,
And be as one with you forevermore.

Go sleep, my sweetie—rest—rest!
Oh soft little hand on mother's breast!
Oh soft little lips—the din's mos' gone-
Over and done, my dearie one!

What do I think, my brother? Look at me!
You make me laugh, sitting there solemneyed,
Full of opinions, theories!—asking me—
Look—with my baby at my breast—to tell you,
Blessed big uncle!—what I think—heaven help me!—
Of this and that. How could you think, I wonder,
If baby lips were tugging at your flesh,
Draining your life to flower the world?
Dear brother,
It's beautiful, that masculine pride of yours,
That runs the universe—oh yes, I know,
And longs to run it well. You travel, observe,
Experiment, make laws and governments,
Build strange machines and masterfully summon
The elemental powers to do your work—
Why?—so my girl here, darling hope of the race,
May pillow her round head in a softer bed,
And dance more lightly by and by—God bless her—.
Into her lover's arms.

Ah precious!—hungry still, my bird?
Coo, coo—yes, darling, mother heard.
Coo, coo—and is it true?—
Ever so true?

What do I think?
If I were arrogant, extravagant—
As men have never been!—what would I think,
Now in this hour of pride, with all the future
Safe in my arms? Almost I might dare whisper
That it's a woman's world—do they not say it
In the great book of science, the new song,
Epic of truth? Let me but hear the word
In reverence—almost a woman's world!
We hold the race within us, we enfold
Life in our arms, we do great nature's work;
So nature hoards and wastes for us, they say,
Contrives our essence from her richer store,
And makes the haughty male out of the rest—
You among others, with your politics,
Your grand reforms, your dreams ! Hush ! do you dare
Follow from seedling sea-drift up to man
Life's long procession, noting everywhere
How the encompassing mother mothers us,
And leaves your kind to shiver and drone and die?
Or else, in pity, the less vital tasks
She gives you—bids you serve us, fight for us,
Even sing for us; and cunningly contrive
Is heavy with strange erections, and the air
Is noisy with ideas.

Oh yes, I know—
You've got the upper hand, you run the world,
Think so at least; at many an icy hearth
You do your will with us; and we—poor chattels—
Meekly we take our fortune at your hands,
With never a royal word to prove us women,
Not slaves. Why do we yield, abase ourselves,
If we are nature's favorites, till even
The mighty mother who made us in her image
Rejects us, winnows her worthless chaff away:
Poor drudges, eating the heart of the race for bread;
Poor puppets, wilfully idle, wilfully barren,
Teasers of men—riff-raff and refuse all!

Why should we suffer this in a woman's world?
Good God, I wonder sometimes, hang my head
For our surrender. Ah, we clasp too close

The burden on our hearts, nor look abroad
Through our long windy night of passion and pain.
And still at dawn we rub our sleepy eyes,
Here at the hearth with morning in our arms—
Pink-dimpled baby morning, look at her!—
Waiting for you, our powerful delegates,
To chase the night away.

But is it strange?
Think but a moment, ask yourself, my brother—
You who tell me to think—what is our life,
Our woman's life? Out of delicious youth,
Murmurous, odorous, vague, full of delights
Half won, half apprehended, suddenly,
Like a still stream seized by the ruthless ocean,
We are drawn to the deeps. Love, marriage, motherhood—
We are drowned in the physical, sensual; washed over
With tide on tide of feeling warm and red—
The heart's-blood of the world. Little pitiless
Grip us within, throttle us, hold us down
Through the long moons of feebleness and pain.
Little souls adrift, gathering out of the void;
Bring us their nebulous dreams, vague, incoherent,
Far lightning-flashes caught from flaming stars.
No longer free, no more our own, or yours,
No longer of this world, but of all worlds,
We are borne by the vast tide, the tide of storms,
Life irresistible, universal, deep,
Out of that no-man's-land, that isle of pain,
Where birth and death fight in the dark together
For the new soul, the new little infant world, ,
Bearer of tidings, saviour of the race—
The child.

Then, wonder of wonders, comes
The change. All glowing, from his great white throne
God stoops to us; we see the splendor, we hear
The thronging harps, we feel here in our arms
His presence forming softly, clasping close
Into a little tender human thing—
Our own, ours, ours. Then suddenly for a moment
We are swept away by joy magnificent,
And from high heaven watch the brave world go by.

Read the old story—it's our Bethlehem.
We couch in a manger, bring forth young like beasts
In blood and shame and agony, and then
Rise with the living God safe in our arms.
Well, after that what are your grand affairs,
Your brave ideas, your dreams? We scarcely heed
Your world-building, we leave you to your work,
Praising your strength, your imperious leadership,
Your craft that skims the sea and wings the
And sends love-words all round the girdled world
Before these blue eyes, almost locked in sleep,
Open to make the dawn. Oh wonderful
Your power and cunning! Should we envy you
The triumph, the high renown, when in our arms
We hold all life—even you, the doer, the present,
And this, the ultimate future of our dreams?

Look—she's asleep. Isn't she a drop of dew
Mirroring moonlight? Or a velvet petal
Dropped from the almond tree all pearly pink
That grows in Sahuaro Valley? Or a spring,
Cool, still, where all the birds of the air shall drink
Before it flows through the wide fields of the world,
The thick dark woods, to wander who knows where,
Love-led, love-nourished? Oh, be wise for her,
My brother! Smooth her flowery-scented ways—
We give you this to do.

But if you falter,
If, blinded by the dust and smothered in spoils,
You strive for trophies and forget the goal,
Must I not rise out of my sheltered seat
At last? When I can empty my arms of her,
Turn from the happy garden where I dwell
And look over the world, what do I see
Under the cloud-capped towers and pinnacles?
Cities I see where little children drudge
The strength of the race away; gaunt factories
Where girls and boys are withered at the loom,
The wheel, the furnace; festering tenements
Where babies—tiny tender things like mine—
Are born in filth and darkness, to endure
Starved little wretched lives, or die like rats
While their pale mothers earn a pitiful dole
By day and night in the one huddled room.
In sulphurous mines, in roaring steam-driven mills
Where human hearts are broken on the
wheel; In jails where law wreaks a self-righteous vengeance
On the less masterful crimes; in gaudy brothels,
Where daughters of the race—yes, mine and yours,
Once dewy in their mothers' arms like this—
Rot into slaves of lust; in all dark places,
Unaware of love, unvisited of the sun,
I count the agonies of our lorded world.
I see that delicate lovely thing called life—
My charge, my woman's business, God forgive me!—
Crushed into clay, mortared with blood and tears,
For modern civilization, huge sky-scraper,
To tower its many-windowed stories on.
And through those glaring windows I behold
A riot of waste, a sickening glut, an orgy—
Life turned once more to loathing and despair.
So, though I bear my baby in my arms,
Now must I tread the crowded ways of the world.
Help me to rise, give me your powerful hand,
My brother; lead me forth to do my part,
Too long content to rest here in my garden
Love-sheltered. Mea culpa—I have sinned.
Vast is the world, our steel-blown, power-driven world;
Too huge a grand machine for half the race
To build, and run, and guard from rust and filth,
While we, the other half, cling to the hearth,
Selfishly guard our own, and give no aid
Through the long heat and burden of the day.
Now we are summoned, for the hour is struck.
We have over-strained your strength, we have over-trusted
Your zeal. Now must we take our burden back—
The burden of life you bear but fitfully—
And nourish on warm breasts the suffering

Come, curly pearly one, my bird,
My primrose folding up at night/
Sleep warm and tight!
Never a word
Till it is light!
Softly, softly, down in your bed,
Round little toes to round little head,
Sleep, sleep, my weary one,
Mother's dearie one!