If my dark grandam had but known,
Or yet my wild grandsir,
Or the lord that lured the maid away
That was my sad mother,

O had they known, O had they dreamed
What gift it was they gave,
Would they have stayed their wild, wild love,
Nor made my years their slave?

Must they have stopped their hungry lips
From love at thought of me?
O life, O life, how may we learn
Thy strangest mystery?

Nay, they knew not, as we scarce know;
Their souls, O let them rest;
My life is pupil unto pain—
With him I make my quest.

Because white hands clasped white hands,
And white arms wound white arms,
I'm wandering through the wide world,
Driven by those same heart-storms.

Because white arms wound white arms
Must mine hang quivering, bare,
All fain to reach and clasp again
White arms again as fair.

Did they that clasped desire me?
O no, 't was heart on heart,
'T was lip to lip and life for life—
Now living is my part.

Did they that loved stand awed at
My masked inheritance?
They laughed and called the echo …
I am a child of chance.

O 't was not they through whom I breathed
That laid alone the spell;
Behold the people of our land
Live but to buy and sell.

To buy and sell—they call it life;
But I had gifts to give;
I said, “O let me give my gifts,
Thus only may I live.”

But I must sell my gift of gifts,
And I must buy again,
And fierce is traffic, fierce as war,
And numbers too its slain.

I had so much to give to life,
But when my gift was sold,
Came those who measured my heart's blood
Into their cups of gold.

They trade in life; we that would live

What shall repay for waste of life?
What shall repay for pain?
O what shall give the land its food
If the young wheat have no rain?
How shall the reaper call it good,
If trampled it hath lain?

O what shall give the land its men
If children fight its wars,
If youth to the market-place they bring,
And man his manhood mars
To give some king a golden ring,
Or his lords their gilded stars?

A great Injustice walks abroad,
Unchained, unterrified.
Who shall rejoice beside
The poison of his dragon-breath,
The early blight, the daily death,
(Behold, thus have I died).

A great Injustice walks abroad,
And makes the strong more strong,
Until the hurt, whose song
I sing, shall learn their hidden strength,
And healed by hope, arise at length,
And rend the ancient wrong.

And sometimes I have little dreams,
Faint and fair and far away;
With them I play.
O dare I tell
Of the ones I love well?
I love most the unreal,
The never-to-be.
They cry to me,
“Little sister, can you not feel
How it is with us—
Wandering, squandering thus
All our sweet beauty,
And, never, never to be?”

O yes, I best can feel
You, the unreal,
For you are—me!
Me, and all that I may not be.
Strong I am and straight and fair,
Strong and long and gold my hair,
(This doth but seem,
It is my dream).
And I dance

O sweetest dreams, I reach to you!
You fade, you fail, you were not true.

Back from my lovely dream-garden,
I'm sent to seek the real again.

The real—here in my little room
A red, red rose of pain doth bloom,

A red, red rose of pain doth glow,
And it is real and all I know.

A wild, wild poison-rose of pain,
That I must tend in vain, in vain.

Whose hand should plant the burning rose?
O my seared soul—who knows, who knows?

The Sisters sing, “O Mary hear;
Sweet Mother, intercede.”
But Jesu's mother does not heed:
She has been dead this many a year.

The Sisters sing, “O Mary hear,
Thou who art Motherhood.” …
The dumb earth spawns her struggling brood
To waste, unnumbered, year by year.

Mary, mother of Christ's body,
I have no songs to sing to thee;
The long, long years for thy grief's rack:
Mine eyes turn forward and not back.

The long, long past from thee to me
Is full of mothers' misery,
And griefs of girls and Stranger Sons—
The long, long hope before us runs.

The incense they have burned to thee,
O puzzling strange it is to me:
Slaughter of sons in thy son's name,
And motherhood turned to maiden's shame.

Mary, mother of misery,
Here I give thanks—girl that I be—
No son of mine shall drain the cup

How long I've lain below the Christ
That hangs upon the wall,
His suffering o'er my suffering:
Was his indeed for all?

Ah me, the weary, weary hours
So slowly by us file,
And not yet has the sad Christ learned—
As I have learned—to smile.