Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre. Voltairine De Cleyre

It's only a strong love can kill to save, tho' itself be torn where time cannot heal.

       You see my hands—they are red with its blood! Yet I would have cut them, bit by bit,

       And fed them, and smiled to see it eat, if that would have saved and nourished it!

       "Beg!" I did beg—and "pray!" I did pray! God was as stony and hard as Earth, And Christ was as deaf as the stars that watched, or the night that darkened above his birth! And I—I feel stony now, too, like them; deaf to sorrow and mute to grief! Am I heartless?—yes:—it-is-all-cut-OUT! Torn! Gone! All gone! Like my dead belief.

      Do I not fear for the judgment hour? So unrepentant, so hard and cold?

       Wait! It is little I trust in that; but if ever the scrolled sky shall be uprolled,

       And the lives of men shall be read and known, and their acts be judged by their very worth,

       And the Christ you speak of shall come again, and the thunders of Justice shake the earth,

       You will hear the cry, "Who murdered here? Come forth to the judgment, false heart and eyes,

       That pulsed with accurséd strength of lust, and loaded faith with envenomed lies!

       Come forth to the judgment, haughty dames, who scathed the mother with your scorn,

       And answer here, to the poisoned child, who decreed its murder ere it was born? Come forth to the judgment ye who heaped the gold of earth in your treasured hoard, And answer, 'guilty,' to those who stood all naked and starving, beneath your board. Depart, accurséd! I know you not! Ye heeded not the command of Heaven, 'Unto the least of these ye give, it is even unto the Master given.'"

      Judgment! Ah, sir, to see that day, I'd willingly pass thro' a hundred hells!

       I'd believe, then, the Justice that hears each voice buried alive in these prison cells!

       But, no—it's not that; that will never be! I trusted too long, and He answered not.

       There is no avenging God on high!—we live, we struggle, and—we rot.

      Yet does Justice come! and, O Future Years! sorely ye'll reap, and in weary pain, When ye garner the sheaves that are sown to-day, when the clouds that are gathering fall in rain! The time will come, aye! the time will come, when the child ye conceive in lust and shame, Quickened, will mow you like swaths of grass, with a sickle born of Steel and Flame. Aye, tremble, shrink, in your drunken den, coward, traitor, and Child of Lie! The unerring avenger stands close to you, and the dread hour of parturition's nigh! Aye! wring your hands, for the air is black! thickly the cloud-troops whirl and swarm! See! yonder, on the horizon's verge, play the lightning-shafts of the coming storm!

      Adrian, Mich., July, 1889.

OPTIMISM

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      There's a love supreme in the great hereafter,

       The buds of earth are blooms in heaven;

       The smiles of the world are ripples of laughter

       When back to its Aidenn the soul is given:

       And the tears of the world, though long in flowing,

       Water the fields of the bye-and-bye;

       They fall as dews on the sweet grass growing

       When the fountains of sorrow and grief run dry.

       Though clouds hang over the furrows now sowing

       There's a harvest sun-wreath in the After-sky!

      No love is wasted, no heart beats vainly,

       There's a vast perfection beyond the grave;

       Up the bays of heaven the stars shine plainly,

       The stars lying dim on the brow of the wave.

       And the lights of our loves, though they flicker and wane, they

       Shall shine all undimmed in the ether-nave.

       For the altars of God are lit with souls

       Fanned to flaming with love where the star-wind rolls.

      St. Johns, Michigan, 1889.

AT THE GRAVE IN WALDHEIM

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      Quiet they lie in their shrouds of rest,

       Their lids kissed close 'neath the lips of peace;

       Over each pulseless and painless breast

       The hands lie folded and softly pressed,

       As a dead dove presses a broken nest;

       Ah, broken hearts were the price of these!

      The lips of their anguish are cold and still,

       For them are the clouds and the gloom all past;

       No longer the woe of the world can thrill

       The chords of those tender hearts, or fill

       The silent dead-house! The "people's will"

       Has mapped asunder the strings at last.

      "The people's will!" Ah, in years to come,

       Dearly ye'll weep that ye did not save!

       Do ye not hear now the muffled drum,

       The tramping feet and the ceaseless hum,

       Of the million marchers—trembling, dumb,

       In their tread to a yawning, giant grave?

      And yet, ah! yet there's a rift of white!

       'Tis breaking over the martyrs' shrine!

       Halt there, ye doomed ones—it scathes the night,

       As lightning darts from its scabbard bright

       And sweeps the face of the sky with light!

       "No more shall be spilled out the blood-red wine!"

      These are the words it has written there,

       Keen as the lance of the northern morn;

       The sword of Justice gleams in its glare,

       And the arm of Justice, upraised and bare,

       Is true to strike, aye, 'tis strong to dare;

       It will fall where the curse of our land is born.

      No more shall the necks of the nations be crushed,

       No more to dark Tyranny's throne bend the knee;

       No more in abjection be ground to the dust!

       By their widows, their orphans, our dead comrades' trust,

       By the brave heart-beats stilled, by the brave voices hushed,

       We swear that humanity yet shall be free!

      Pittsburg, 1889.

THE HURRICANE[A]

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      ("We are the birds of the coming storm."—August Spies.)

      The tide is out, the wind blows off the shore;

       Bare burn the white sands in the scorching sun;

       The sea complains, but its great voice is low.

      Bitter thy woes, O People,