The Poetical Works of George Barlow :: :: University of Virginia Library

Man brings us flowers and brings us grief;
He twines for us love's myrtle leaf,
And wreathes about our brows the thorn.
We crave for love? Man gives us this?
Nay, he bestows but passion's kiss,
And tinges passion with his scorn!

Ten thousand years have passed away,
Or more years yet, the wise men say,
Since history on this earth began.
In all those years, what have we gained?
Deceived, misunderstood, disdained,
What shall we render back to man?

242

Love.—This our great prerogative,
Eternally we gain and give:
We bring God's sunlight from on high.
The earth was dark until we came;
We fill the earth with love's bright flame,
And steal the gold dawn from the sky.

By love we grow; by love we gain
The right to live, the right to reign:—
When man's wild wayward course is done
We then shall say to man: Behold,
While thine hand delved amid the mould
Our souls caught glory from the sun!

While thou wast watching earth with eyes
Most dim, we watched God in the skies
With gaze that daily grew more clear.
To conquer earth was all thy dream:
To build thy mills on every stream;
Through unconjectured waves to steer!

Where once were fields made bright with flowers
Grew grimy towns and sullen towers:
By river-banks great wharfs arose.

243

Where once were alder green and oak
Black factories loom, and chimneys smoke,
And engines break the morn's repose.

O maker of all hideous things,
'Twas well God sent us without wings
To dwell upon thine earth with thee—
Else, long ere this, our souls had fled
Beyond the waste of sunset red,
Beyond the green-blue waste of sea:

Else some remembrance of our home
Had lured us forth to soar and roam
Through silent leagues of star-sown air,
Compelling us to search for flowers
In airy fields and heavenly bowers,
Man having stripped earth's meadows bare!

II.

How couldst thou, having hid with steam
And smoke the skies where sweet stars gleam,
Discern the starlight in our look?
How couldst thou, having choked all flowers
In fields and woodlands, care for ours?
What cares the boulder for the brook?

244

Thou, slave of thine electric light,
Hast even invoked perennial night
To brood above thy city's spires;
Lest one vast arrow of the sun
Should pierce the fog, and leave not one
Unquenched, of thine ephemeral fires!

But we, who dreamed of higher things,
Were happy where the brown lark sings
Above the fields of golden grain.
At peace with God, we saw the showers
Rejoice the pale sun-stricken flowers,
And blessed God for his bounteous rain.

The poor fish panting out of reach
Of the cool water, on the beach,
With death's hues glittering on his side,
Him would we save: him back we threw,
And, smiling, saw the water blue
Receive him safe.—You would deride.

What pity for the tortured horse
Has man? He goads him on his course:
There is no mercy in his soul.—

245

God, when he made the dumb things, erred.
If he had let them speak one word,
Just to repudiate man's control!

And God, who made our womanhood
And made it at the outset good,
Erred too, in that he made us weak.
The strength was man's: the soul was ours.
God should have guarded his pale flowers
In heaven, and let man come to seek.

And yet...God hardly could have known
That man would claim us for his own;
Would hound the thought of God away:
Would change the form God made so sweet
Into the harlot of the street;
Teach those to curse, who once could pray.

Ah, piteous story of our wrongs!—
And yet to God the whole belongs:
We give to God and Christ the whole.
We trust God, till all sufferings end:
We have in Christ a deathless Friend,
An helper sweet, a kindred soul.

246

Christ by his perfect womanhood
Hath power to make all women good:
The fallen to lift, the sad to save.
Women who met his glances knew
That here at last was manhood true:
Fearless, to him their hearts they gave.

They called him “God;” for God was here.
The Godhood in a man makes dear
The man to woman. Woman's kiss
Is never given as mankind deems,
Absorbed in its own narrow dreams.
God in man—woman worships this.

Not all the flowers man brings to her
Make her forget Christ's sepulchre.
She whispers, “Lord, remember me!”
In every crown her brow has worn
Woman in secret plants a thorn,
In homage to Gethsemane.