Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre. Voltairine De Cleyre

Do you curse the bloom of the heather wild? Do you trample the flowers and cry "impure"?

      Do you shun the bird-songs' silver shower?

       Does their music arouse your curling scorn

       That none but God blessed them? The whitest flower,

       The purest song, were but "bastard born"!

      This is my sin—I was born of her! This is my crime—that I reverence deep! God, that her pale corpse may not stir, Press closer down on her lids—the sleep!

      Would you have me hate her? Me, who knew

       That the gentlest soul in the world looked there,

       Out of the gray eyes that pitied you

       E'en while you cursed her? The long brown hair

      That waved from her forehead, has brushed my cheek,

       When her soft lips have drunk up my salt of grief;

       And the voice, whose echo you hate, would speak

       The hush of pity and love's relief!

      And those still hands that are folded now

       Have touched my sorrows for years away!

       Would you have me question her whence and how

       The love-light streamed from her heart's deep ray?

      Do you question the sun that it gives its gold?

       Do you scowl at the cloud when it pours its rain

       Till the fields that were withered and burnt and old

       Are fresh and tender and young again?

      Do you search the source of the breeze that sweeps

       The rush of the fever from tortured brain?

       Do you ask whence the perfume that round you creeps

       When your soul is wrought to the quick with pain?

      She was my Sun, my Dew, my Air,

       The highest, the purest, the holiest;

       Peace—was the shade of her beautiful hair,

       Love—was all that I knew on her breast!

      Would you have me forget? Or remembering

       Say that her love had bloomed from Hell?

       Then Blessed be Hell! And let Heaven sing

       "Te Deum laudamus," until it swell

      And ring and roll to the utterest earth,

       That the damned are free—since out of sin

       Came the whiteness that shamed all ransomed worth

       Till God opened the gates, saying "Enter in!"

      What! In the face of the witness I bear

       To her measureless love and her purity,

       Still of your hate would you make me to share,

       Despising that she gave life to me?

      You would have me stand at her helpless grave,

       To dig through its earth with a venomed dart!

       This is Honor! and Right! and Brave!

       To fling a stone at her pulseless heart!

      This is Virtue! To blast the lips

       Speechless beneath the Silence dread!

       To lash with Slander's scorpion whips

       The voiceless, defenseless, helpless dead!

      God! I turn to an adder now!

       Back upon you I hurl your scorn!

       Bind the scarlet upon your brow!

       Ye it is, who are "bastard born"!

      Touch me not! These hands of mine

       Despise your fairness—the leper's white!

       Tanned and hardened and black with grime,

       They are clean beside your souls to-night!

      Basely born! 'Tis ye are base!

       Ye who would guerdon holy trust

       With slavish law to a tyrant race,

       To sow the earth with the seed of lust.

      Base! By Heaven! Prate of peace,

       When your garments are red with the stain of wars.

       Reeling with passion's mad release

       By your sickly gaslight damn the stars!

      Blurred with wine ye behold the snow

       Smirched with the foulness that blots within!

       What of purity can ye know,

       Ye ten-fold children of Hell and Sin?

      Ye to judge her! Ye to cast

       The stone of wrath from your house of glass!

       Know ye the Law, that ye dare to blast

       The bell of gold with your clanging brass?

      Know ye the harvest the reapers reap

       Who drop in the furrow the seed of scorn?

       Out of this anguish ye harrow deep,

       Ripens the sentence: "Ye, bastard born!"

      Ay, sin-begotten, hear the curse;

       Not mine—not hers—but the fatal Law!

       "Who bids one suffer, shall suffer worse;

       Who scourges, himself shall be scourgèd raw!

      "For the thoughts ye think, and the deeds ye do,

       Move on, and on, till the flood is high,

       And the dread dam bursts, and the waves roar through,

       Hurling a cataract dirge to the sky!

      "To-night ye are deaf to the beggar's prayer;

       To-morrow the thieves shall batter your wall!

       Ye shall feel the weight of a starved child's care

       When your warders under the Mob's feet fall!

      "'Tis the roar of the whirlwind ye invoke

       When ye scatter the wind of your brother's moans;

       'Tis the red of your hate on your own head broke,

       When the blood of the murdered spatters the stones!

      "Hark ye! Out of the reeking slums,

       Thick with the fetid stench of crime,

       Boiling up through their sickening scums,

       Bubbles that burst through the crimson wine,

      "Voices burst—with terrible sound,

       Crying the truth your dull souls ne'er saw!

       We are your sentence! The wheel turns round! The bastard spawn of your bastard law!"

      This is bastard: That Man should say

       How Love shall love, and how Life shall live!

       Setting a tablet to groove God's way,

       Measuring how the divine shall give!

      O, Evil Hearts! Ye have maddened me,

       That I should interpret the voice of God!

       Quiet! Quiet! O angered Sea!

       Quiet! I go to her blessed sod!

      Mother, Mother, I come to you!

       Down in your grasses I press my face!

       Under the kiss of their cold, pure dew,

       I may dream that I lie in the dear old