Читать книгу Stand Up, Ye Dead - Norman Maclean - Страница 19

And yet there were those who would have given all they had if to them there were given what these others spurned. They knew that the only abiding joy of life is the joy of little children. But that was denied them. They had boundless capacities of love and of sacrifice, but the opportunity of development came not to them. Few cries can pull at the heartstrings like the cry of the old maid:

'All day long I sit by the window and wait,

While the spring winds fling their roses everywhere,

And I hear the voice of my husband cry at the gate,

And the feet of my children tremulous on the stair.

'Hour by hour I dream at the window here,

While footsteps trip and falter adown the street,

And I hear my children murmuring, "Mother, dear!"

And the voice of my husband crying, "Sweet, oh sweet!"'

But they who had the opportunity went out pursuing the mirage of pleasure, and they wanted no voices crying 'Mother, mother.' And these others were left with their hunger—left to 'clasp air and kiss the wind for ever.' For the modest never attained in the days when the vulgar and the blatant received the incense and the crown. It was because the pure were disregarded that the cult of the empty cradle cast the glamour of its degeneration over the land.