Some day, shall my thirsty life be watered, my starved heart fed,
my asking voice answered, my tired soul taken into the warmth of
another with the intoxicating sweetness of love?
It may be.
But I shall remember the sand and barrenness that is with me in my
Nothingness. The sand and barrenness and the memory of the anemone
lady are all that are in any degree mine.
And so then I shall remember it.
As I stand among the barren gulches in these days and look away at
the slow-awakening hills of Montana, I hear the high, swelling,
half-tired, half-hopeful song of the world. As I listen I know that
there are things, other than the Virtue and the Truth and the Love,
that are not for me. There is beyond me, like these, the unbreaking,
undying bond of human fellowship--a thing that is earth-old.
It is beyond me, and it is nothing to me.
In my intensest desires--in my widest longings--I never go beyond
_self_. The ego is the all.
Limitless legions of women and men in weariness and in joy are one.
They are killing each other and torturing each other, and going
down in sorrow to the dust. But they are one. Their right hands
are joined in unseen sympathy and kinship.
But my two hands are apart, and clasped together in an agony of
loneliness.
I have read of women who have been strongly, grandly brave. Sometimes
I have dreamed that I might be brave. The possibilities of this
life are magnificent.
To be saturated with this agony, I say at times, and to bear with
it all; not to sink beneath it, but to vanquish it, and to make
it the grace and comeliness of my entire life from the Beginning
to the End!
Perhaps a woman--a real woman--could do this.
But I?--No. I am not real--I do not seem _real_ to myself. In such
things as these my life is a blank.
There was Charlotte Corday--a heroine whom I admire above all the
heroines. And more than she was a heroine she was a woman. And she
had her agony. It was for love of her fair country.
To suffer and do and die for love of something! It is glorious!
What must be the exalted ecstasy of Charlotte Corday’s soul now!
And I--with all my manifold passions--I am a coward.
I have had moments when, vaguely and from far off, it seemed as if
there might be bravery and exaltation for me,--when I could rise
far over myself. I have felt unspeakable possibilities. While they
lasted--what wonderful emotion was it that I felt?
But they are not real.
They fade away--they fade away.
And again come the varied phenomena of my life to bewilder and
terrify me.
Confusion! Chaos! Damnation! They are not moments of exaltation
now. Poor little Mary MacLane!
“If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels
had been churches, and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces.”