Women must weep :: :: University of Virginia Library

Only a cabin of mud,
Squalid and crazy and poor,
And with nowhere the grace of a leaf or a bud,
And the wind as a wolf at the door—
Prying and prowling,
Hungry and howling,
Cruel and cunning and bold—
As a wolf on a lamb left alone in the fold.
Only a cabin of clay,
Speckled with mould and the moss,
With the sinister leprosy-brand of decay,
With a pallet of straw and a cross.

158

Helpless the sufferer laid
Ragged, half cover'd, and low,
With the Rent, that had broken his body, unpaid,
At the mercy of man and the snow—
Shrouding and shifting,
Searching and sifting
Cranny and crevice and crack—
For it knew how to enter, but not to go back;
Tortured he was in his need,
Faint with his famishing wife,
With the babe at her breast she could fondle, not feed—
On the edge of the pitiless knife.

Greedy and griping the Rent,
Eating up pittance and purse,
Had consumed the small savings they treasured, and bent
Upon all they would do, like a curse;
Lurid and louring,
Dark and devouring,
Begging not merely a part,
But destroying the whole, while it prey'd on the heart;
Swallowing victuals and clothes,
Prompt to be satisfied first,
And bestowing receipt but in insult and oaths,
And when paid the last farthing athirst.

Bigger and bigger it grew,
Blacker and blacker it throve
On the mite they had slaved for, and fatness it drew
From the famine which ill with it strove;
Wreaking its wishes,
Scraping the dishes,
Licking with gluttonous tread,
And yet grudging and breaking the staff of their bread;
Pinching with ravenous grip,
Dragging them deep in the mire,
And denying the drop that would moisten the lip,
While it burn'd in the bosom as fire.

159

Higher and higher it rose,
Stronger and stronger it wax'd,
As it hurried him on to the ghastlier close,
Overstrain'd, over-tried, overtax'd;
Bruising and blanching,
Upas-like branching,
Sucking the sweetness from day,
While it poison'd the peace that it could not quite slay;
Haunting, an unbidden guest,
Dogging the bed and the board,
Like a skeleton, ever absorbing the best,
Till it left but the place of the hoard.

Blanket and picture and chair,
Table and linen and rag,
From the clock that had stopp'd on the rickety stair,
To the labourer's tools and his bag;
Firing and fuel,
Meal for the gruel,
Each disappeared down its throat,
From the one scarlet cape to the one winter coat;
Havoc it made of the room,
Gnawing at even the scraps,
While it shadow'd the rubbish remaining with doom,
And it tugg'd at the lingering wraps.

Feasting on comfort and hope,
Swelling more bloated and big,
Till it dangled above, as the hangman his rope.
And it spared not the wretches their pig;
Feeding on fasting,
Lusty and lasting,
Gathering all that they sow'd,
And yet craving for more and protesting they owed;
Starving away the poor mouse,
Scaring whatever would live,
Till it drank up the dungheap, and pull'd down the house,
And then telling the ruins to give.

160

Leeches lie still that have bled,
Fire may be peaceful an hour,
And the earthquake for ages repose in its bed,
And the grave doth not alway devour;
Sometime is sated
Plague the most hated,
Never the plague of the Rent,
Which from father to son is an evil unspent;
Crime hath profundities vast,
Lust shows abysses unlit,
But the hell in which man is with ev'rything cast,
Is the Rent with its bottomless pit.

Bear thesad sufferer might
All that a man could endure,
With the demons of darkness and misery fight,
In his patience and purpose secure;
Ring from curst labour
Music of tabor,
Wrestle down sickness and lack,
And the woes that the weak not the wicked attack;
He, in the stormiest throes,
Fought, though with poverty pent,
And had conquer'd a legion of dangers and foes,
But he could not the Moloch of Rent.

Bitter and blinding the flakes,
Greater and greater their cold,
As they tightened around with the coiling of snakes,
And they never relax'd in their hold;
Clammy and kissing,
Horrid and hissing,
Beautiful, terrible snow,
Coming on as the sea in its infinite flow;
Softer than childhood's caress,
Fairer than woman of face,
But yet deaf to the anguish of human distress,
And with doom in its tender embrace.

161

Stricken, and still must he rise?
Dying, and still must he bow
To the Law, that is wicked, although it be wise,
And no respite for him may allow?
Staggering, stumbling,
Tottering, tumbling,
Pierced by the funeral blast,
Though each labouring breath that he draws may be last?
Go from his litter of straw,
Under the yoke of the ban?—
As if man had been made for the pleasure of Law,
And not Law for the service of man!

Out in the winter so wild,
Out unto scoffing and scorn,
With the tears of the woman, the wail of the child,
From their lone little resting-place torn;
Quaking and quivering,
Shabby and shivering,
Beaten as brutes on the mart,
By the gusts not as cold as a tyrannous heart;
Lost, beneath hedges to lie;
Hounded, through shadow and loss,
By the edict of Justice that spared not, to die;
And yet clinging, through all, to the Cross.

Moaning and gasping he fell,
Prone at his murderer's feet,
With a barbarous taunt for his burial-knell,
And the snow for his burial-sheet;
Outcast and slighted,
Blasted and blighted,
Kill'd by the sentence, that trod
On the duty of man and the teaching of God;
Dumb and beseeching, he sank,
Robb'd of humanity's right,
And yet holding the Cross that held him, as a plank
Going forth in the ocean of night.

162

Breathing one last solemn vow,
Dropping from agonized eye
One big passionate tear, that froze hard on his brow
Looking up at the witnessing sky;
Weary and wounded,
Crush'd and confounded,
Straight from the stillness she past,
To the future unknown and the turmoil, aghast;
Only a sister once more,
Only a pilgrim of pain,
From the shipwreck of want driven out from the shore,
By her brothers, to shipwreck again.

Homeless and hunted she toil'd,
Feeble and frail through the storm,
Of her husband and home with its shelter despoil'd,
A discrownèd and desolate form;
Shuddering, shrinking,
Sobbing and sinking,
Tatter'd, but splendidly fair,
With the courage that shines from heroic despair;
Clutching her darling, and still
Strong to protect it from harm,
With the might of a mother's invincible will,
And the love of a womanly arm.

Stripping herself of the shawl,
Needed by her not the least,
If she only might rescue her baby, and crawl
To some shelter, though shared by the beast;
Clasping and cuddling,
Hiding and huddling,
Close from the ills that beset,
The one jewel that bound her to misery yet;
Pressing it tight to her heart,
Giving it life from her own,
As though love such as hers would not let it depart,
If the fluttering wings should have flown.

163

Woman, unshielded, unharm'd,
Match'd with the mightiest power,
With the world to oppose her and still not alarm'd,
Blown about in the storm as a flower;
Drowning or stranded,
Sole, single-handed,
Fighting with numberless foes,
With the earth, with the heaven, that against her arose;
Fighting with devils and men,
Worn till she hardly could plod,
Till she seem'd to be exiled past pity and ken,
And deserted indeed by her God.

True to her babe to the end,
Tender when all things were rough,
Without fortune or strength or a hope or a friend,
And yet thus with her purpose enough;
Slipping and sliding
Royally riding
High on the whirlwind as throne,
And then tumbled and tost in the drift on the stone;
Faithful through buffets and pangs,
On if her senses might reel,
Though the frost in her flesh had set deeply its fangs,
And the blast cut as sharply as steel.

Resolute, vainly, to meet
Hosts that beleaguer'd her way
And with nought but a woman's poor tremulous feet,
That went evermore wildly astray;
Petting and pressing
Still the one blessing
Left, by the mother desired;
Though the flickering flame, even now, had expired;
Hope, of what never might be,
Fail'd, all unequal to strife—
Yea, it yielded to death and to darkness, and she
Drifted out to the yet darker life.

164

Never a morsel of bread,
Never a roof for her need,
But the sky that seem'd frowning so black on her head,
As if she had wrought murderous deed;
Nay, not a pillow
Softer than billow,
Arctic with frost and with shade,
From the region of hatred where all blossoms fade;
Never the plank of a hope,
Strong to upbear in the stress,
Nor a refuge to grasp like the life-saving rope,
But the hangman's last coil and caress.

Drifting away and away,
Far was she tost upon surge,
Of the infinite woe that no medicines allay,
Like the slave-driver's scorning and scourge;
Only another
Martyr and mother,
Thrown on the infamous street,
And despoil'd of the treasure that makes woman sweet;
Only a beautiful soul,
Doom'd to unbeautiful shame,
Like a ship without rudder, or hand to control,
Drifting out on a sea without name.

Justice, was this in thy name
Wrought beneath heaven and the sun,
Such a deed of such damnable vileness and shame,
That a fancy infernal would shun?
Cursèd yet lawful,
Sanction'd but awful,
Staring the world in the face,
And parading its grimness as if it were grace?
Laws, that are written in blood,
Waken the Giant from sleep;
When the fountains of flame, that avenge in their flood,
Overflow their Tartarean deep.

165

Mutterings now of the storm,
Stir in the stillness and gloom,
And the ghostly eclipse of the terrible Form
Has begun through the daylight to loom;
Horribly weaving,
Black with bereaving,
Garment of blood for the proud,
For the wealthy and wasteful and callous a shroud;
Now the claims binding as cords,
Clash in the workshops of night,
With the grinding of grievances sharper than swords,
And the perilous knowledge of might.