Anna Wickham

THE SINGER

If I had peace to sit and sing,
Then I could make a lovely thing;
But I am stung with goads and whips,
So I build songs like iron ships.

Let it be something for my song,
If it is sometimes swift and strong.

GIFT TO A JADE

For love he offered me his perfect world. This world was so constricted, and so small, It had no sort of loveliness at all,

And I flung back the little silly ball.

At that cold moralist I hotly hurled

His perfect, pure, symmetrical, small world.

THE CONTEMPLATIVE QUARRY

My love is male and proper man
And what he'd have he'd get by chase,

So I must cheat as women can

And keep my love from off my face.

'Tis folly to my dawning thrifty thought

That I must run, who in the end am caught.

THE SILENCE

When I meet you, I greet you with a stare;
Like a poor shy child at a fair.

I will not let you love me, yet am I weak:
I love you so intensely that I cannot speak.
When you are gone, I stand apart

And whisper to your image in my heart.

THE TIRED MAN

I am a quiet gentleman,

And I would sit and dream;

But my wife is on the hillside,
Wild as a hill-stream.

I am a quiet gentleman,

And I would sit and think;

But my wife is walking the whirlwind Through night as black as ink.

Oh, give me a woman of my race
As well controlled as I,

And let us sit by the fire,

Patient till we die!

THE RECOMPENSE

Of every step I took in pain

I had some gain.

Of every night of blind excess

I had reward of half-dead idleness.

Back to the lone road

With the old load!

But rest at night is sweet

To wounded feet;

And when the day is long

There is miraculous reward of song.

Margaret Widdemer

THE BEGGARS

The little pitiful, worn, laughing faces,
Begging of life for joy!

I saw the little daughters of the poor,
Tense from the long day's working, strident, gay,
Hurrying to the picture-place. There curled
A hideous flushed beggar at the door,
Trading upon his horror, eyeless, maimed,
Complacent in his profitable mask.

They mocked his horror, but they gave to him
From the brief wealth of pay-night, and went in
To the cheap laughter and the tawdry thoughts
Thrown on the screen; in to the seeking hand
Covered by darkness, to the luring voice
Of Horror, boy-masked, whispering of rings,
Of silks, of feathers, bought-so cheap!-with just
Their slender starved child-bodies palpitant

For beauty, laughter, passion-that are life:

(A frock of satin for an hour's shame,

A coat of fur for two days' servitude;

"And the clothes last," the thought runs on, within

The poor warped girl-minds drugged with changeless days; "Who cares or knows after the hour is done?")—

Poor little beggars at life's door for joy!

The old man crouched there, eyeless, horrible,

Complacent in the marketable mask

That earned his comforts-and they gave to him!

But ah, the little painted, wistful faces
Questioning life for joy!

TERESINA'S FACE

He saw it last of all before they herded in the steerage,
Dark against the sunset where he lingered by the hold—
The tear-stained dusk-rose face of her, the little Teresina,
Sailing out to lands of gold:

Ah, his days were long, long days, still toiling in the vineyard,
Working for the gold to set him free to go to her,

Where gay it glowed, the flower-face of little Teresina,
Where all joy and riches were:

Hard to find one rose-face where the dark rose-faces cluster,

Where the outland laws are strange and outland voices humOnly one lad's hoping, and the word of Teresina,

Who would wait for him to come!

God grant he may not find her, since he may not win her freedom,
Nor yet be great enough to love, in such marred captive guise,
The patient painted face of her, the little Teresina,
With its cowed, all-knowing eyes!

GREEK FOLK SONG

Under dusky laurel leaf,

Scarlet leaf of rose,

I lie prone, who have known
All a woman knows.

Love and grief and motherhood,

Fame and mirth and scorn—

These are all shall befall

Any woman born.

Jewel-laden are my hands,

Tall my stone above-
Do not weep that I sleep,
Who was wise in love.

Where I walk, a shadow gray,
Through gray asphodel,
I am glad, who have had
All that life can tell.

Florence Wilkinson

OUR LADY OF IDLENESS

They in the darkness gather and ask
Her name, the mistress of their endless task.

The Toilers

Tinsel-makers in factory gloom,

Miners in ethylene pits,

Divers and druggists mixing poisonous bloom;

Huge hunters, men of brawn,

Half-naked creatures of the tropics,

Furred trappers stealing forth at Labrador dawn;

Catchers of beetles, sheep-men in bleak sheds,

Pearl-fishers perched on Indian coasts,

Children in stifling towers pulling threads;

Dark bunchy women pricking intricate laces,

Myopic jewelers' apprentices,

Arabs who chase the long-legged birds in sandy places:

They are her invisible slaves,

The genii of her costly wishes,

Climbing, descending, running under waves.

They strip earth's dimmest cell,
They burn and drown and stifle

To build her inconceivable and fragile shell.