How Would You?

Half of our misery, half our pain, Half the dark background of our self-reproach, Is thought of how the world has sinned before. We, being one, one with all life, we feel The misdemeanors of uncounted time; We suffer in the foolishness and sins Of races just behind us,—burn with shame At their gross ignorance and murderous deeds; We suffer back of them in the long years Of squalid struggling savagery of beasts,— Beasts human and subhuman; back of them In helpless creatures eaten, hunted, torn; In submerged forests dying in the slime; And even back of that in endless years Of hot convulsions of dismembered lands, And slow constricting centuries of cold. So in our own lives, even to this day, We carry in the chambers of the mind The tale of errors, failures, and misdeeds That we call sins, of all our early lives. And the recurrent consciousness of this We call remorse. The unrelenting gauge, Now measuring past error,—this is shame. And in our feverish overconsciousness, A retroactive and preactive sense,— Fired with our self-made theories of sin,— We suffer, suffer, suffer—half alive, And half with the dead scars of suffering.

Friends, how would you, perhaps, have made the world? Would you have balanced the great forces so Their interaction would have bred no shock? No cosmic throes of newborn continents, No eras of the earth-encircling rain,— Uncounted scalding tears that fell and fell On molten worlds that hotly dashed them back In storms of fierce repudiated steam? Would you have made earth’s gems without the fire, Without the water, and without the weight Of crushing cubic miles of huddled rock? Would you have made one kind of plant to reign In all the earth, growing mast high, and then Keep it undying so, and end of plants? Would you have made one kind of animal To live on air and spare the tender grass, And stop him, somehow, when he grew so thick That even air fell short. Or would you have All plants and animals, and make them change By some metempsychosis not called death? For, having them, you have to have them change, For growth is change, and life is growth; and change Implies—in this world—what we miscall pain.

You, wiser, would have made mankind, no doubt, Not slowly, awfully, from dying brutes Up into living humanness at last, But fresh as Adam in the Hebrew tale; Only you would have left the serpent out, And left him, naked, in the garden still. Or somehow, dodging this, have still contrived That he should learn the whole curriculum And never miss a lesson—never fail— Be born, like Buddha, all accomplished, wise. Would you have chosen to begin life old, Well-balanced, cautious, knowing where to step, And so untortured by the memory Of childhood’s foolishness and youth’s mistakes? Or, born a child, to have experience Come to you softly without chance of loss, Recurring years each rolling to your hand In blissful innocent unconsciousness?

O dreamers with a Heaven and a Hell Standing at either end of your wild rush Away from the large peace of knowing God, Can you not see that all of it is good? Good, with the postulate that this is life,— And that is all we have to argue from. Childhood means error, the mistakes that teach; But only rod and threat and nurse’s tale, Make childhood’s errors bring us shame and sin. The race’s childhood grows by error too, And we are not attained to manhood yet. But grief and shame are only born of lies. Once see the lovely law that needs mistakes, And you are young forever. This is Life.

A MAN MUST LIVE.

A man must live. We justify Low shift and trick to treason high, A little vote for a little gold To a whole senate bought and sold, By that self-evident reply.

But is it so? Pray tell me why Life at such cost you have to buy? In what religion were you told A man must live?

There are times when a man must die. Imagine, for a battle-cry, From soldiers, with a sword to hold,— From soldiers, with the flag unrolled,— This coward’s whine, this liar’s lie,— A man must live!

IN DUTY BOUND.

In duty bound, a life hemmed in Whichever way the spirit turns to look; No chance of breaking out, except by sin; Not even room to shirk— Simply to live, and work.

An obligation pre-imposed, unsought, Yet binding with the force of natural law; The pressure of antagonistic thought; Aching within, each hour, A sense of wasting power.

A house with roof so darkly low The heavy rafters shut the sunlight out; One cannot stand erect without a blow; Until the soul inside Cries for a grave—more wide.

A consciousness that if this thing endure, The common joys of life will dull the pain; The high ideals of the grand and pure Die, as of course they must, Of long disuse and rust.

That is the worst. It takes supernal strength To hold the attitude that brings the pain; And they are few indeed but stoop at length To something less than best, To find, in stooping, rest.

DESIRE.

Lo, I desire! Sum of the ages’ growth— Fruit of evolving—king of life— I, holding in myself the outgrown past In all its ever-rising forms—desire. With the first grass-blade, I desire the sun; With every bird that breathes, I love the air; With fishes, joy in water; with my horse, Exult in motion; with all living flesh, Long for sweet food and warmth and mate and young; With the whole rising tide of that which is, Thirst for advancement,—crave and yearn for it! Yea, I desire! Then the compelling will Urges to action to attain desire. What action? Which desire? Am I a plant, Rooted and helpless, following the light Without volition? Or am I a beast, Led by desire into the hunter’s snare? Am I a savage, swayed by every wish, Brutal and feeble, a ferocious child? Stand back, Desire, and put your plea in words. No wordless wailing for the summer moon, No Gilpin race on some strong appetite, Stand here before the King, and make your plea. If Reason sees it just, you have your wish; If not, your wish is vain, plead as you will. The court is open, beggar! I am King!