Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre. Voltairine De Cleyre
are none to pity and none to care:
Our fellows have crushed us where we have stumbled;
They have made of our bodies a bleeding stair.
Loud rang the bells in the Christmas steeples;
We heard them ring through the bitter morn:
The promise of old to the weary peoples
Came floating sweetly—"Christ is born."
But the words were mocking, sorely mocking,
As we sought the sky through our freezing tears,
We children, who've hung the Christmas stocking,
And found it empty two thousand years.
No, there is naught in the old creed for us;
Love and peace are to those who win;
To them the delight of the golden chorus,
To us the hunger and shame and sin.
Why then live on since our lives are fruitless,
Since peace is certain and death is rest;
Since our masters tell us the strife is bootless,
And Nature scorns her unwelcome guest?
You who have climbed on our aching bodies,
You who have thought because we have toiled,
Priests of the creed of a newer goddess,
Searchers in depths where the Past was foiled.
Speak in the name of the faith that you cherish!
Give us the truth! We have bought it with woe!
Must we forever thus worthlessly perish,
Burned in the desert and lost in the snow?
Trampled, forsaken, foredoomed, and forgotten—
Helplessly tossed like the leaf in the storm?
Bred for the shambles, with curses begotten,
Useless to all save the rotting grave-worm?
Give us some anchor to stay our mad drifting!
Give, for your own sakes! for lo, where our blood,
A red tide to drown you, is steadily lifting!
Help! or you die in the terrible flood!
Philadelphia, 1893.
IN MEMORIAM
To Gen. M. M. Trumbull.
(No man better than Gen. Trumbull defended my martyred comrades in Chicago.)
Back to thy breast, O Mother, turns thy child,
He whom thou garmentedst in steel of truth,
And sent forth, strong in the glad heart of youth,
To sing the wakening song in ears beguiled
By tyrants' promises and flatterers' smiles;
These searched his eyes, and knew nor threats nor wiles
Might shake the steady stars within their blue,
Nor win one truckling word from off those lips—
No—not for gold nor praise, nor aught men do
To dash the Sun of Honor with eclipse,
O Mother Liberty, those eyes are dark,
And the brave lips are white and cold and dumb;
But fair in other souls, through time to come,
Fanned by thy breath glows the Immortal Spark.
Philadelphia, May, 1894.
THE WANDERING JEW
(The above poem was suggested by the reading of an article describing an interview with the "wandering Jew," in which he was represented as an incorrigible grumbler. The Jew has been, and will continue to be, the grumbler of earth—until the prophetic ideal of justice shall be realized: "BLESSED BE HE.")
"Go on."—"THOU shalt go on till I come."
Pale, ghostly Vision from the coffined years,
Planting the cross with thy world-wandering feet,
Stern Watcher through the centuries' storm and beat,
In those sad eyes, between those grooves of tears—
Those eyes like caves where sunlight never dwells
And stars but dimly shine—stand sentinels
That watch with patient hope, through weary days,
That somewhere, sometime, He indeed may "come,"
And thou at last find thee a resting place,
Blast-driven leaf of Man, within the tomb.
Aye, they have cursed thee with the bitter curse,
And driven thee with scourges o'er the world;
Tyrants have crushed thee, Ignorance has hurled
Its black anathema;—but Death's pale hearse,
That bore them graveward, passed them silently;
And vainly didst thou stretch thy hands and cry,
"Take me instead";—not yet for thee the time,
Not yet—not yet: thy bruised and mangled limbs
Must still drag on, still feed the Vulture, Crime,
With bleeding flesh, till rust its steel beak dims.
Aye, "till He come,"—He—freedom, justice, peace—
Till then shalt thou cry warning through the earth,
Unheeding pain, untouched by death and birth,
Proclaiming "Woe, woe, woe," till men shall cease
To seek for Christ within the senseless skies,
And, joyous, find him in each other's eyes.
Then shall be builded such a tomb for thee
Shall beggar kings' as diamonds outshine dew!
The Universal Heart of Man shall be
The sacred urn of "the accursed Jew."
Philadelphia, 1894.
THE FEAST OF VULTURES
(As the three Anarchists, Vaillant, Henry and Caserio, were led to their several executions, a voice from the prison cried loudly, "Vive l'anarchie!" Through watch and ward the cry escaped, and no man owned the voice; but the cry is still resounding through the world.)
A moan in the gloam in the air-peaks heard—
The Bird of Omen—the wild, fierce Bird,
Aflight
In the night,
Like a whizz of light,
Arrowy winging before the storm,
Far away flinging,
The whistling, singing,
White-curdled drops, wind-blown and warm,
From its beating, flapping,
Thunderous wings;