Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre. Voltairine De Cleyre
Like ants we crawl on our brief sand-hill,
Dreaming of "mighty things,"—
Lo, they crunch, like shells in the ocean's wrath,
In the rush of Time's awful wings.
The sun smiles gold, and the planets white,
And a billion stars smile, still;
Yet, fierce as we, each wheels towards death,
And cannot stay his will.
Then build, ye fools, your mighty things,
That Time shall set at naught;
Grow warm with the song the sweet Lie sings,
And the false bow your tears have wrought.
For us, a truce to Gods, loves, and hopes,
And a pledge to fire and wave;
A swifter whirl to the dance of death,
And a loud huzza for the Grave!
Philadelphia, 1892.
IN MEMORIAM
(To Dyer D. Lum, my friend and teacher, who died April 6, 1893.)
Great silent heart! These barren drops of grief
Are not for you, attained unto your rest;
This sterile salt upon the withered leaf
Of love, is mine—mine the dark burial guest.
Far, far within that deep, untroubled sea
We watched together, walking on the sands,
Your soul has melted—painless, silent, free;
Mine the wrung heart, mine the clasped, useless hands.
Into the whirl of life, where none remember,
I bear your image, ever unforgot;
The "Whip-poor-will," still "wailing in December,"
Cries the same cry—cries, cries, and ceases not.
The future years with all their waves of faces
Roll shoreward singing the great undertone;
Yours is not there;—in the old, well-loved places
I look, and pass, and watch the sea alone.
Alone along the gleaming, white sea-shore,
The sea-spume spraying thick around my head,
Through all the beat of waves and winds that roar,
I go, remembering that you are dead.
That you are dead, and nowhere is there one
Like unto you;—and nowhere Love leaps Death;—
And nowhere may the broken race be run;—
Nowhere unsealed the seal that none gainsaith.
Yet in my ear that deep, sweet undertone
Grows deeper, sweeter, solemner to me—
Dreaming your dreams, watching the light that shone
So whitely to you, yonder, on the sea.
Your voice is there, there in the great life-sound—
Your eyes are there, out there, within the light;
Your heart, within the pulsing Race-heart drowned,
Beats in the immortality of Right.
O Life, I love you for the love of him
Who showed me all your glory and your pain!
"Unto Nirvana"—so the deep tones sing—
And there—and there—we—shall—be—one—again.
Greensburg, Pa., April 9th, 1893.
OUT OF THE DARKNESS
Who am I? Only one of the commonest common people,
Only a worked-out body, a shriveled and withered soul,
What right have I to sing then? None; and I do not, I cannot.
Why ruin the rhythm and rhyme of the great world's songs with moaning?
I know not—nor why whistles must shriek, wheels ceaselessly mutter;
Nor why all I touch turns to clanging and clashing and discord;
I know not;—I know only this—I was born to this, live in it hourly,
Go round with it, hum with it, curse with it, would laugh with it, had it laughter;
It is my breath—and that breath goes outward from me in moaning.
O you, up there, I have heard you; I am "God's image defaced,"
"In heaven reward awaits me," "hereafter I shall be perfect";
Ages you've sung that song, but what is it to me, think you?
If you heard down here in the smoke and the smut, in the smear and the offal,
In the dust, in the mire, in the grime and in the slime, in the hideous darkness,
How the wheels turn your song into sounds of horror and loathing and cursing,
The offer of lust, the sneer of contempt and acceptance, thieves' whispers,
The laugh of the gambler, the suicide's gasp, the yell of the drunkard,
If you heard them down here you would cry, "The reward of such is damnation,"
If you heard them, I say, your song of "rewarded hereafter" would fail.
You, too, with your science, your titles, your books, and your long explanations
That tell me how I am come up out of the dust of the cycles,
Out of the sands of the sea, out of the unknown primeval forests—
Out of the growth of the world have become the bud and the promise,
Out of the race of the beasts have arisen, proud and triumphant—
You, if you knew how your words rumble round in the wheels of labor!
If you knew how my hammering heart beats, "Liar, liar, you lie!
Out of all buds of the earth we are most blasted and blighted!
What beast of all the beasts is not prouder and freer than we?"
You, too, who sing in high words of the glory of Man universal,
The beauty of sacrifice, debt of the future, the present immortal,
The glory of use, absorption by Death of the being in Being,
You, if you knew what jargon it makes, down here, would be quiet.
Oh, is there no one to find or to speak a meaning to me, To me as I am—the hard, the ignorant, withered-souled worker? To me upon whom God and Science alike have stamped "failure," To me who know nothing but labor, nothing but sweat, dirt, and sorrow, To me whom you scorn and despise, you up there who sing while I moan? To me as I am—for me as I am—not dying but living; Not my future, my present! my body, my needs, my desires! Is there no one, In the midst of this rushing of phantoms—of Gods, of Science, of Logic, Of Philosophy, Morals, Religion, Economy—all this that helps not, All these ghosts at whose altars you worship, these ponderous, marrowless Fictions, Is there no one who thinks, is there nothing to help this dull moaning me?
Philadelphia, April, 1893.
MARY