The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems Part 37

Ye vain Athenians, know this, that I By your hard laws am only made more free; Your unloved dames may sit at home and cry, But, being unwed, I meet you openly, A foreigner, you cannot wed with me; But I can win your hearts and sway your will, And make your free wives envious to see What power Aspasia wields, Milesian still.

Who would not be beloved of Pericles?

I could have had all Athens at my feet; And have them for my flatterers, when I please; Yet, one great man's great love is far more sweet!

He is my proper mate as I am his-- You see my young dreams were not all in vain-- And I have tasted of ineffable bliss, If I am stung at times with fiery pain.

It is not that I long to be a wife By your Athenian laws, and sit at home Behind a lattice, prisoner for life, With my lord left at liberty to roam; Nor is it that I crave the right to be At the symposium or the Agora known; My grievance is, that your proud dames to me Came to be taught, in secret and alone.

They fear; what _do_ they fear? is't me or you?

Am I not pure as any of them all?

But your laws are against me; and 'tis true, If fame is lowering, I have had a fall!

O, selfish men of Athens, shall the world Remember you, and pa.s.s my glory by?

Nay, 'til from their proud heights your names are hurled, Mine shall blaze with them on your Grecian sky.

Am I then boastful? It is half in scorn Of caring for your love, or for your praise, As women do, and must. Had I been born In this proud Athens, I had spent my days In jealousy of boys, and stolen hours With some Milesian, of a questioned place, Learning of her the use of woman's powers Usurped by men of this patrician race.

Alas! I would I were a child again, Steeped in dream langours by the purple sea; And Athens but the vision it was then, Its great men good, its n.o.ble women free: That I in some winged s.h.i.+p should strive to fly To reach this goal, and founder and go down!

O impious thought, how could I wish to die, With all that I have felt and learned unknown?

Nay, I am glad to be to future times As much Athenian as is Pericles; Proud to be named by men of other climes The friend and pupil of great Socrates.

What is the gossip of the city dames Behind their lattices to one like me?

More glorious than their high patrician names I hold my privilege of being free!

And yet I would that they were free as I; It angers me that women are so weak, Looking askance when ere they pa.s.s me by Lest on a chance their lords should see us speak; And coming next day to an audience In hope of learning to resemble me: They wish, they tell me, to learn eloquence-- The lesson they should learn is _liberty_.

O Athens, city of the beautiful, Home of all art, all elegance, all grace; Whose orators and poets sway the soul As the winds move the sea's unstable face; O wonderous city, nurse and home of mind, This is my oracle to you this day-- No generous growth from starved roots will you find, But fruitless blossoms weakening to decay.

You take my meaning? Sappho is no more, And no more Sapphos will be, in your time; The tree is dead on one side that before Ran with such burning sap of love and rhyme.

Your glorious city is the utmost flower Of a one-sided culture, that will spend Itself upon itself, 'till, hour by hour, It runs its sources dry, and so must end.

That race is doomed, behind whose lattices Its once free women are constrained to peer Upon the world of men with vacant eyes; It was not so in Homer's time, I hear.

But Eastern slaves have eaten of your store, Till in your homes all eating bread are slaves; They're built into your walls, beside your door, And bend beneath your lofty architraves.

A woman of the race that looks upon The sculptured emblems of captivity, Shall bear a slave or tyrant for a son; And none shall know the worth of liberty.

Am I seditious?--Nay, then, I will keep My lesson for your dames when next they steal On tip-toe to an audience. Pray sleep Securely, and dream well: we wish your weal!

Why, what vain prattle: but my heart is sore With thinking on the emptiness of things, And these Athenians, treacherous to the core, Who hung on Pericles with flatterings.

I would indeed I were a little child, Resting my tired limbs on the sunny sands In far Miletus, where the airs blow mild, And countless looms throb under busy hands.

The busy hand must calm the busy thought, And labor cool the pa.s.sions of the hour; To the tired weaver, when his web is wrought, What signifies the party last in power?

But here in Athens, 'twixt philosophers Who reason on the nature of the soul; And all the vain array of orators, Who strove to hold the people in control.

Between the poets, artists, critics, all, Who form a faction or who found a school, We weave Penelope's web with hearts of gall, And my poor brain is oft the weary tool.

Yet do I choose this life. What is to me Peace or good fame, away from all of these, But living death? I do choose liberty, And leave to Athens' dames their soulless ease.

The time shall come, when Athens is no more, And you and all your G.o.ds have pa.s.sed away; That other men, upon another sh.o.r.e, Shall from your errors learn a better way.

To them eternal justice will reveal Eternal truth, and in its better light All that your legal falsehoods now conceal, Will stand forth clearly in the whole world's sight.

A REPRIMAND.

Behold my soul? She sits so far above you Your wildest dream has never glanced so high; Yet in the old-time when you said, "I love you,"

How fairly we were mated, eye to eye How long we dallied on in flowery meadows, By languid lakes of purely sensuous dreams, Steeped in enchanted mists, beguiled by shadows, Casting sweet flowers upon loitering streams, My memory owns, and yours; mine with deep shame, Yours with a sigh that life is not the same.

What parted us, to leave you in the valley And send me struggling to the mountain-top?

Too weak for duty, even love failed to rally The manhood that should float your pinions up.

On my spent feet are many half-healed bruises, My limbs are wasted with their heavy toil, But I have learned adversity's "sweet uses,"

And brought my soul up pure through every soil; _Have I_ no right to scorn the man's dead power That leaves you far below me at this hour?

Scorn you I do, while pitying even more The ign.o.ble weakness of a strength debased.

Do I yet mourn the faith that died of yore-- The trust by timorous treachery effaced?

Through all, and over all, my soul mounts free To heights of peace you cannot hope to gain, Sings to the stars its mountain minstrelsy, And smiles down proudly on your murky plain; 'Tis vain to invite you--yet come up, come up, Conquer your way toward the mountain-top!

TO MRS. ----.

I cannot find the meaning out That lies in wrong and pain and strife; I know not why we grope through grief, Tear-blind, to touch the higher life.

I see the world so subtly fair, My heart with beauty often aches; But ere I quiet this sweet pain, Some cross so presses, the heart breaks.

To-day, this lovely golden day, When heaven and earth are steeped in calm; When every lightest air that blows, Sheds its delicious freight of balm.

If I but ope my lips, I sob; If but an eyelid lift, I weep; I deprecate all good or ill, And only wish for endless sleep.

For who, I ask, has set my feet In all these dark and troubled ways?

And who denies my soul's desire, When with its might it cries and prays?

In my unconscious veins there runs Perchance, some old ancestral taint; In Eve _I_ sinned: poor Eve and I!

We each may utter one complaint:--

One and the same--for knowledge came Too late to save _her_ paradise; And I my paradise have lost; Forsooth because _I_ am not wise.

O vain traditions! small the aid We women gather from your lore: Why, when the world was lost, did death Not come our children's birth before?

It had been better to have died, Sole prey of death, and ended so; Than to have dragged through endless time, One long, unbroken trail of woe.

To suffer, yet not expiate; To die at last, yet not atone; To mourn our heirs.h.i.+p to a guilt, Erased by innocent blood alone!

You lift your hands in shocked surprise; You say enough I have not prayed: Can prayer go back through centuries, And change the web of fate one braid?

Nay, own the truth, and say that we Are but the bonded slaves of doom; Unconscious to the cradle came, Unwilling must go to the tomb.

Your woman's hands are void of help, Though my soul should be stung to death; Could I avert one pang from you, Imploring with my latest breath?

And men!--we suffer any wrong That men, or mad, or blind, may do;-- Let me alone in my despair!

There is no help for me or you.

I wait to find the meaning out That lies beyond the bitter end; Comfort yourself with 'wearying heaven, I ask no comfort, oh my friend!