By my windows which look out
On a polite and pleasant street,
There often pass
Women of the squalid quarter down the hill:
Creatures of timid faith and querulous doubt,
Brief love and little song and small deceit,
Brief sleep, long toil, a roof, a rag, and meat —
Patience behind unrealized defeat,
Mortgaged too deep to fate, alas!
To leave much scope for will.
And they are slow and large and ponderous,
And are not beautiful as all women should be,
For under life's incessant mockery
Those things that most make woman beauteous,
Serenity, wonder, gentleness, have quite gone.
Dull as a burdened river they go on,
With no complaint, no choice, no change, no thrill,
Brown clods with so much muscle, so much nerve,
A womb and two breasts each, who still must serve
As fate directs, until
Fate bids them be quite still.
I fancy they are quiet when they go.
And so
They pass, each folded in a sullen shawl,
Death's froward symbol, Life's ironic pall.