Cheerfully wave they o'er valley and mountain,
Gladden the desert, and smile by the fountain;
Pale discontent in no young blossom lowers:--
Live like the flowers!
Meekly their buds in the heavy rain bending,
Softly their hues with the mellow light blending,
Gratefully welcoming sunlight and showers:--
Live like the flowers!
Freely their sweets on the wild breezes flinging,
While in their depths are new odors upspringing:--
(Blessedness twofold of Love's holy dowers,)
Live like the flowers!
Gladly they heed Who their brightness has given:
Blooming on earth, look they all up to heaven;
Humbly look up from their loveliest bowers:--
Live like the flowers!
Peacefully droop they when autumn is sighing;
Breathing mild fragrance around them in dying,
Sleep they in hope of Spring's freshening hours:--
Die like the flowers!
The prose-poem that follows was put into a rhymed version by several
unknown hands in periodicals of that day, so that at last I also wrote
one, in self-defense, to claim my own waif. But it was a prose-poem
that I intended it to be, and I think it is better so.
"BRING BACK MY FLOWERS."
On the bank of a rivulet sat a rosy child. Her lap was filled with
flowers, and a garland of rose-buds was twined around her neck. Her
face was as radiant as the sunshine that fell upon it, and her voice
was as clear as that of the bird which warbled at her side.
The little stream went singing on, and with every gush of its music the
child lifted a flower in her dimpled hand, and, with a merry laugh,
threw it upon the water. In her glee she forgot that her treasures were
growing less, and with the swift motion of childhood, she flung them
upon the sparkling tide, until every bud and blossom had disappeared.
Then, seeing her loss, she sprang to her feet, and bursting into tears,
called aloud to the stream, "Bring back my flowers!" But the stream
danced along, regardless of her sorrow; and as it bore the blooming
burden away, her words came back in a taunting echo, along its reedy
margin. And long after, amid the wailing of the breeze and the fitful
bursts of childish grief, was heard the fruitless cry, "Bring back my
flowers!"
Merry maiden, who art idly wasting the precious moments so bountifully
bestowed upon thee, see in the thoughtless child an emblem of thyself!
Each moment is a perfumed flower. Let its fragrance be diffused in
blessings around thee, and ascend as sweet incense to the beneficent
Giver!
Else, when thou hast carelessly flung them from thee, and seest them
receding on the swift waters of Time, thou wilt cry, in tones more
sorrowful than those of the weeping child, "Bring back my flowers!" And
thy only answer will be an echo from the shadowy Past,--"Bring back my
flowers!"
In the above, a reminiscence of my German studies comes back to me. I
was an admirer of Jean Paul, and one of my earliest attempts at
translation was his "New Year's Night of an Unhappy Man," with its yet
haunting glimpse of "a fair long paradise beyond the mountains." I am
not sure but the idea of trying my hand at a "prose-poem" came to me
from Richter, though it may have been from Herder or Krummacher, whom I
also enjoyed and attempted to translate.
I have a manuscript-book still, filled with these youthful efforts. I
even undertook to put German verse into English verse, not wincing at
the greatest--Goethe and Schiller. These studies were pursued in the
pleasant days of cloth-room leisure, when my work claimed me only seven
or eight hours in a day.
I suppose I should have tried to write,--perhaps I could not very well
have helped attempting it,--under any circumstances. My early efforts
would not, probably, have found their way into print, however, but for
the coincident publication of the two mill-girls' magazines, just as I
entered my teens. I fancy that almost everything any of us offered them
was published, though I never was let in to editorial secrets. The
editors of both magazines were my seniors, and I felt greatly honored
by their approval of my contributions.
One of the "Offering" editors was a Unitarian clergyman's daughter, and
had received an excellent education. The other was a remarkably
brilliant and original young woman, who wrote novels that were
published by the Harpers of New York while she was employed at Lowell.
The two had rooms together for a time, where the members of the
"Improvement Circle," chiefly composed of "Offering" writers, were
hospitably received.
The "Operatives' Magazine" and the "Lowell Offering" were united in the
year 1842, under the title of the "Lowell Offering and Magazine."
(And--to correct a mistake which has crept into print--I will say that
I never attained the honor of being editor of either of these
magazines. I was only one of their youngest contributors. The "Lowell
Offering" closed its existence when I was a little more than twenty
years old. The only continuous editing I have ever been engaged in was
upon "Our Young Folks." About twenty years ago I was editor-in-charge
of that magazine for a year or more, and I had previously been its
assistant-editor from its beginning. These explanatory items, however,
do not quite belong to my narrative, and I return to our magazines.)
We did not receive much criticism; perhaps it would have been better
for us if we had. But then we did lot set ourselves up to be literary;
though we enjoyed the freedom of writing what we pleased, and seeing
how it looked in print. It was good practice for us, and that was all
that we desired. We were complimented and quoted. When a Philadelphia
paper copied one of my little poems, suggesting some verbal
improvements, and predicting recognition for me in the future, I felt
for the first time that there might be such a thing as public opinion
worth caring for, in addition to doing one's best for its own sake.
Fame, indeed, never had much attraction for me, except as it took the
form of friendly recognition and the sympathetic approval of worthy
judges. I wished to do good and true things, but not such as would
subject me to the stare of coldly curious eyes. I could never imagine a
girl feeling any pleasure in placing herself "before the public." The
privilege of seclusion must be the last one a woman can willingly
sacrifice.
And, indeed, what we wrote was not remarkable,--perhaps no more so than
the usual school compositions of intelligent girls. It would hardly be
worth while to refer to it particularly, had not the Lowell girls and
their magazines been so frequently spoken of as something phenomenal.
But it was a perfectly natural outgrowth of those girls' previous life.
For what were we? Girls who were working in a factory for the time, to
be sure; but none of us had the least idea of continuing at that kind
of work permanently. Our composite photograph, had it been taken, would
have been the representative New England girlhood of those days. We had
all been fairly educated at public or private schools, and many of us
were resolutely bent upon obtaining a better education. Very few were
among us without some distinct plan for bettering the condition of
themselves and those they loved. For the first time, our young women
had come forth from their home retirement in a throng, each with her
own individual purpose. For twenty years or so, Lowell might have been
looked upon as a rather select industrial school for young people. The
girls there were just such girls as are knocking at the doors of young
women's colleges to-day. They had come to work with their hands, but
they could not hinder the working of their minds also. Their mental
activity was overflowing at every possible outlet.
Many of them were supporting themselves at schools like Bradford
Academy or Ipswich Seminary half the year, by working in the mills the
other half. Mount Holyoke Seminary broke upon the thoughts of many of
them as a vision of hope,--I remember being dazzled by it myself for a
while,--and Mary Lyon's name was honored nowhere more than among the
Lowell mill-girls. Meanwhile they were improving themselves and
preparing for their future in every possible way, by purchasing and
reading standard books, by attending lectures, and evening classes of
their own getting up, and by meeting each other for reading and
conversation.
That they should write was no more strange than that they should study,
or read, or think. And yet there were those to whom it seemed
incredible that a girl could, in the pauses of her work, put together
words with her pen that it would do to print; and after a while the
assertion was circulated, through some distant newspaper, that our
magazine was not written by ourselves at all, but by "Lowell lawyers."
This seemed almost too foolish a suggestion to contradict, but the
editor of the "Offering" thought it best to give the name and
occupation of some of the writers by way of refutation. It was for this
reason (much against my own wish) that my real name was first attached
to anything I wrote. I was then book-keeper in the cloth-room of the
Lawrence Mills. We had all used any fanciful signature we chose,
varying it as we pleased. After I began to read and love Wordsworth, my
favorite nom de plume was "Rotha." In the later numbers of the
magazine, the editor more frequently made us of my initials. One day I
was surprised by seeing my name in full in Griswold's "Female
Poet's;"--no great distinction, however, since there were a hundred
names or so, besides.
It seemed necessary to give these gossip items about myself; but the
real interest of every separate life-story is involved in the larger
life-history which is going on around it. We do not know ourselves
without our companions and surroundings. I cannot narrate my workmates'
separate experiences, but I know that because of having lived among
them, and because of having felt the beauty and power of their lives, I
am different from what I should otherwise have been, and it is my own
fault if I am not better for my life with them.
In recalling those years of my girlhood at Lowell, I often think that I
knew then what real society is better perhaps than ever since. For in
that large gathering together of young womanhood there were many choice
natures---some of the choicest in all our excellent New England, and
there were no false social standards to hold them apart. It is the best
society when people meet sincerely, on the ground of their deepest
sympathies and highest aspirations, without conventionality or cliques
or affectation; and it was in that way that these young girls met and
became acquainted with each other, almost of necessity.
There were all varieties of woman-nature among them, all degrees of
refinement and cultivation, and, of course, many sharp contrasts of
agreeable and disagreeable. It was not always the most cultivated,
however, who were the most companionable. There were gentle, untaught
girls, as fresh and simple as wild flowers, whose unpretending goodness
of heart was better to have than bookishness; girls who loved
everybody, and were loved by everybody. Those are the girls that I
remember best, and their memory is sweet as a breeze from the clover
fields.
As I recall the throngs of unknown girlish forms that used to pass and
repass me on the familiar road to the mill-gates, and also the few that
I knew so well, those with whom I worked, thought, read, wrote,
studied, and worshiped, my thoughts send a heartfelt greeting to them
all, wherever in God's beautiful, busy universe they may now be
scattered:--
"I am glad I have lived in the world with you!"