Читать книгу Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre - Voltairine De Cleyre - Страница 18

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The dust of a hundred years

Is on thy breast,

And thy day and thy night of tears

Are centurine rest.

Thou to whom joy was dumb,

Life a broken rhyme,

Lo, thy smiling time is come,

And our weeping time.

Thou who hadst sponge and myrrh

And a bitter cross,

Smile, for the day is here

That we know our loss;—

Loss of thine undone deed,

Thy unfinished song,

Th' unspoken word for our need,

Th' unrighted wrong;

Smile, for we weep, we weep,

For the unsoothed pain,

The unbound wound burned deep,

That we might gain.

Mother of sorrowful eyes

In the dead old days,

Mother of many sighs,

Of pain-shod ways;

Mother of resolute feet

Through all the thorns,

Mother soul-strong, soul-sweet—

Lo, after storms

Have broken and beat thy dust

For a hundred years,

Thy memory is made just,

And the just man hears.

Thy children kneel and repeat:

"Though dust be dust,

Though sod and coffin and sheet

And moth and rust

Have folded and molded and pressed,

Yet they cannot kill;

In the heart of the world at rest

She liveth still."

Philadelphia, April 27th, 1893.