Classic Poem

To whom shall I cry,
And who will hear my crying?
Nor father, brother, husband, son,
Nor God on high
Can ever know the pain
Of the woman-soul self-slain
That man may be strong and whole,
Draining his last deep draught of soul,
From her soul — dying:
Even my own
Quick mother-heart is cruel as stone,
When, with fear-blinded eyes
My soul from passion flies
Seeking for Paradise.

Mine the inexorable doom
Of rebel breast and tyrant womb,
And secret agonies
Of hope and fear that burn
Dry-eyed and staring, till in tears I turn
To my unborn child —
Who bids me laugh to die,
That he may live,
How I have given, and given! — and still shall give —
With deathly sweat of body and brain,
My uttermost self, and my uttermost soul,
Again and for ever again,
That, from the eternal fire
Of my self-sacrifice,
The soul of man may rise
Higher and higher
To God — his goal:

And now — for very Love —
I am become an infamy
O pity me,
Some sexless God in a clean heaven! —
I am become an infamy,
Since Heaven's mad mirth
Sent the first horror of birth
To tear out the heart of the innocent earth —
For my being was molten and cast
In the fire of unspeakable things,
I conceived in the Vast
And spawned in the slime,
And laboured in forests and caves forlorn,
Bearing the countless worlds I have borne,
Breeding a brood to conquer Time —
I myself am this Past
That has wrought me at last
To a thing of scorn —
A bright, earth-scented, wanton flower
That blooms an hour,
To tempt the fertilizing power
Of hovering wings —

Bear witness brutal stars — that shine
As coldly now as then —
In the first frenzy of mother-love,
Soul — and eternity
Were nothing to me,
If only my body could nourish the lips
Of the life that was more than mine —
What mattered my soul's eclipse
In the light of strange little eyes,
So blue and wonder-wise,
They seemed to listen to the skies.
Beyond my foolish lullabys.

Yet have I ever dreamed —
And waked to dream again — a dream
No man has ever understood:
For it has always seemed
In the last ecstasy of Love's embrace.
It was God's face
I kissed — dreaming of Motherhood.

And the god-like grace
Of my boy's sweet body and radiant face,
And his ultimate dower
Of wisdom and power
Are soul of my soul and bone of my bone
Not man's — nor God's — but mine alone,
And his great song that shakes the sky
But the echo of my lullaby.

Life is my immortality
And Death my heaven, here to die
For the deathless soul of my son,
And while my mother-dreams are free
To follow his spirit circling high
Wide-winged beyond mortality
— This is enough for me.

This is my victory
— That his seraphic eyes
Shining toward Paradise
Will surely scan the wistful Stars
Searching to see
Not God — but me,
Knowing at last the Mother is God
And God — but man.