[Read before the Women's Prayer League of Portland,
Oregon, May 27, 1874.]
Do you hear the women praying, oh my brothers?
Do you hear what words they say?
These, this free-born nation's wives and mothers,
Bowing, where you proudly stand, to pray!
Can you coldly look upon their faces,
Pale, sad faces, seamed with frequent tears;
See their hands uplifted in their places--
Hands that toiled for all your boyhood's years?
Can you see your wives and daughters pleading
In the dust you spurn beneath your feet,
Baring hearts for years in secret bleeding,
To the scoffs and jestings of the street?
Can you hear, and yet not heed the crying
Of the children perishing for bread?
Born in fear, not love, and daily dying,
Cursed of God, they think, but cursed of _you_ instead?
Do you hear the women praying, oh my brothers?
Hear the oft-repeated burden of their prayer--
Hear them asking for one boon above all others--
_Not_ for vengeance on the wrongs they have to bear;
But imploring, as their Lord did, "God forgive them,
For they know not what they do;
Strike the sin, but spare the sinners--save them"--
Meaning, oh ye men and brothers, _you_!
For your heels have ground the women's faces;
You have coined their blood and tears for gold;
Have betrayed their kisses and embraces--
Returned their love with curses twentyfold;
Made the wife's crown one of thorns and not of honor,
Made her motherhood a pain and dread;
Heaped life's toil unrecompensed upon her;
Laid her sons upon her bosom, dead!
Do you hear the women praying, oh my brothers?
Have you not one word to say?
Will a _just_ God be as gentle as these mothers,
If you dare to say them nay?
Oh, ye men, God waits for _you_ to answer
The prayers that to him rise,
He waits to know if _you_ are just ere _He_ is--
There your deliverance lies!
Rise and assert the manhood of this nation,
Its courage, honor, might--
Wipe off the dust of our humiliation--
Dare nobly to do right!
Shall women plead from out the dust forever?
Will you not work, men, if you cannot pray?
Hold up the suppliant hands with your endeavor,
And seize the world's salvation while you may.
Yes, from the eastern to the western ocean,
The sound of prayer is heard;
And in our hearts great billows of emotion
At every breath are stirred.
From mountain tops of prayer down to sin's valley
The voice of women sounds the cry, "Come up!"
O, men and brothers, heed that cry, and rally--
Help us to dash to earth the deadly cup!
"OUR LIFE IS TWOFOLD."
Sweet, kiss my eyelids close, and let me lie,
On this old-fashioned sofa, in the dim
And purple twilight, shut out from the sky,
Which is too garish for my softer whim.
And while I, looking inward on my thought,
Tell thee what phantoms thicken in its air.
Twine thou thy gentle fingers, slumber-fraught,
With the loose shreds of my disheveled hair:
I shall see inly better if thou keep
My outer senses in a charmed sleep.
Sweet friend!--I love that pleasant name of friend--
We walk not ever singly, through the world;
But even as our shadow doth attend
Our going in the sunshine, and is furled
About us in the darkness--so that shade
Which haunts our other self, is faintly seen
Beside us in our gladness, and is made
To wrap us coldly life's bright hours between.
Unconsciously we court it. In our youth,
While yet our morning sky is pink with joy,
We, curious if our happiness be truth,
Try to discern the shadow of alloy.
O, I remember well the earliest time
A sorrow touched me, and I nursed it then;
Tho' but few summers of our northern clime
Had sunned my growth among the souls of men.
In an old wood, reputed for its age,
And for its beauty wild and picturesque;
The bound and goal of each day's pilgrimage,
Where were all forms of graceful and grotesque;
And countless hues, from the dark stately pine
That whispered its wild mysteries to my ear,
To the smooth silver of the birch-trees shine,
Showing between the aspens straight and fair;
With forest flowers, and delicate vines that crept
From the rich soil far up among the trees,
Seeking that light their boughs did intercept,
And dalliance and caresses of the breeze.
In midst of these, sheltered from sun and wind
Glimmered a lake, in long and shining curves,
Like a bright fillet that should serve to bind
That scene to earth--if she the gem deserves!
For gem it was, as proud upon her brow
As jewels on the forehead of a queen;
And one thought as one turned from it, of how
Eve exiled, must have missed some just such scene.
O, there I type my life! I used to sigh
Sitting on this side, with my lap piled up
With violets of the real sapphire dye,
For the gay gold of the bright buttercup
Spangling the green sod on the other side--
For the lake's breadth was but an arrow's flight,
And the brief distance did not serve to hide
What yet could not be reached except by sight.
Day after day I dreamed there, while my heart
Gathered up knowledge in its childish way,
Making fine pictures with unconscious art,
And learning beauty more and more each day.
Ever and ever haunted I that spot--
Sitting in dells scooped out between the hills,
That rising close around me, formed a grot
Fragrant with ferns, and musical with rills.
Far up above me grew the long-armed beech,
Dropping its branches down in graceful bent;
While farther up, beyond my utmost reach,
Stood dusky hemlocks, crowning the ascent.
And all about were sweeter sights and sounds
Than elsewhere, but in poet's dream, abounds.
Thus, and because my life was all too fair,
I sought to color it with thoughts I nursed
In sylvan solitudes: and in the air
Of these soft, silent influences, I first
Saw, or felt, rather, that the shadow fell
Upon my pathway from the light behind--
The light of youth's first joyousness. Ah, well,
If it had stayed there, nor been more unkind!
My earliest sorrow was a flower's death--
At which I wept until my swollen eyes
Refused to shed more tears--just that my wreath
One morn in autumn lacked its choicest dyes.
So, knowing what it was to have a loss,
I went on losing, and the shadow grew
Darker and longer, 'till it lies across
My pathway to the measure of my view.
We all remember sorrow's first impress--
No matter whether we had cause to grieve,
Or whether sad in very willfulness--
The lesson is the same that we receive.
And afterwards, when the great shadow falls--
The tempest--when the lightning's flash reveals
The darkness brooding o'er us, and appals
Hope by the terror of the stroke it deals--
_Then_, how the shadow hugs us in its fold!
We see no light behind, and none to come;
But dumbly shiver in the gloom and cold,
Or with despair lie down, and wait our doom.
Sweet, press thy cheek upon my own again--
Even now my life's dark ghost is haunting nigh:
Sing me to sleep with some old favorite strain--
Some gentle poet's loving lullaby;
For I would dream, and in my dream forget
Our twofold life is full of shadows set.