The Mother

Christmas! Christmas! merry Christmas! rang the bells. O God of grace!
In the stillness of the death-room motionless I kept my place,
While beneath my eyes a wanness came upon the little face,
And an empty smile that stung me, as the pallor grew apace.
Then, as if from some far distance, spake a voice: "The child is dead."
"Dead?" I cried. "Is God not good? What thing accursed is that you said?"
Swift I searched their eyes of pity, swaying, bowed, and all my soul,
Shrunken as a hand had crushed it, crumpled like a useless scroll
Read and done with, passed from sorrows: only with me lingered yet
Some dim sense of easeful comfort in the glad leave to forget.
But again life's scattered fragments, memories of joy and woe,
Tremulously came to oneness, as a storm-torn lake may grow
Quiet, winning back its pictures, when the wild winds cease to blow.
As if called for God's great audit came a vision of my years,
Broken gleams of youth and girlhood, all the woman's love and tears.
Marvelling, myself I saw as one another sees, and smiled,
Crooning o'er my baby dolls,—part a mother, part a child;
Then, half sorry, ceased to wonder why I left my silent brood,
Till the lessoning years went by me, and the instinct, love-renewed,
Stirred again life's stronger fibre, and were mine twain living things;
Bone of my bone! flesh of my flesh! Who on earth a title brings
Flawless as this mother-title, free from aught of mortal stain,
Innocent and pure possession, double-born of joy and pain?
Oh, what wonder these could help me, set me laughing, though I sobbed
As they drew my very heart out, and the laden breasts were robbed!
Tender buds of changeful pleasure came as come the buds of May,
Trivial, wondrous, unexpected, blossoming from day to day.
Ah! the clutch of tendril-fingers, that with nature's cunning knew
So to coil in sturdy grapple round the stem from which they grew.
Shall a man this joy discover? How the heart-wine to the brain
Rushed with shock of bliss when, startled, first I won this simple gain!
How I mocked those seeking fingers, eager for their earliest toy,
Telling none my new-found treasure! Miser of the mother's joy,
Quick I caught the first faint ripple, answering me with lip and eyes,
As I stooped with mirthful purpose, keen to capture fresh replies;
Oh, the pretty wonder o f it, when was born the art to smile,
Or the new, gay trick of laughter filled my eyes with tears the while,—
Helpful tears, love's final language, when the lips no more can say,
Tears, like kindly prophets, warning of another, darker day.
Thus my vision lost its gladness, and I stood on life's dim strand,
Watching where a little love-lark drifted slowly from the land;
For again the bells seemed ringing Christmas o'er the snow of dawn,
And my dreaming memory hurt me with a hot face, gray and drawn,
And with small hands locked in anguish. Ah! those days of helpless pain!
Mine the mother's wrathful sorrow. Ah! my child, hadst thou been Cain,
Father of the primal murder, black with every hideous thought,
Cruel were the retribution; for, alas! what good is wrought!
When the very torture ruins all the fine machine of thought?
So, with reeling brain I questioned, while the fevered cheek grew white,
And at last I seemed to pass with him, released, to death's dark night.
Seraph voices whispered round me. "God," they said, "hath set our task,—
Thou to question, we to answer: fear not; ask what thou wouldst ask."
Wildly beat my heart. Thought only, regnant, held its sober pace,
Whilst, a wingèd mind, I wandered in the bleak domain of space.
Then I sought and seeing marvelled at the mystery of time,
Where beneath me rolled the earth-star in its first chaotic slime,
As bewildering ages passing with their cyclic changes came,
Heaving land and 'whelming waters, ice and fierce volcanic flame,
Sway and shock of tireless atoms, pulsing with the throb of force,
Whilst the planet, rent and shaken, fled upon its mighty course.
Last, with calm of wonder hushed, I saw amid the surging strife
Rise the first faint stir of being and the tardy morn of life,—
Life in countless generations. Speechless, mercilessly dumb,
Swept by ravage of disaster, tribe on tribe in silence come,
Till the yearning sense found voices, and on hill, and shore, and plain,
Dreary from the battling myriads rose the birthright wail of pain.
God of pity! Son of sorrows! Wherefore should a power unseen
Launch on years of needless anguish this great agonized machine?
Was Himself who willed this torment but a slave to law self-made?
Or had some mad angel demon here, unchecked and undismayed,
Leave to make of earth a Job; until the cruel game was played
Free to whirl the spinning earth-toy where his despot forces wrought,
While he watched each sense grow keener as the lifted creature bought
With the love-gift added sorrow, and there came to man's estate
Will, the helpless; thought, the bootless; all the death-ward war with fate?
Had this lord of trampled millions joy or grief, when first the mind,
Awful prize of contests endless, rose its giant foes to bind;
When his puppet tamed the forces that had helped its birth to breed,
And with growth of wisdom master, trained them to its growing need;
Last, upon the monster turning, on the serpent form of Pain,
Cried, "Bring forth no more in anguish;" with the arrows of the brain
Smote this brute thing that no use had save to teach him to refrain
When earth's baser instincts tempted, and the better thought was vain?
Then my soul one harshly answered, "Thou hast seen the whole of earth,
All its boundless years of misery, yea, its gladness and its mirth,
Yet thou hast a life created! Hadst thou not a choice? Why cast
Purity to life's mad chances, where defeat is sure at last?"
Low I moaned, "My tortured baby!" and a gentler voice replied,
"One alone thy soul can answer,—this, this only, is denied.
Yet take counsel of thy sadness. Should God give thy will a star
Freighted with eternal pleasure, free from agony and war,
Wouldst thou wish it? Think! Time is not for the souls who roam in space.
Speak! Thy will shall have its way. Be mother of one joyous race.
Choose! Yon time-worn world beneath thee thou shalt people free from guilt.
There nor pain nor death shall ruin, never there shall blood be split."
Then I trembled, hesitating, for I saw its beauty born,
Saw a Christ-like world of beings where no beast by beast was torn,
Where the morrows bred no sorrows, and the gentle knew not scorn.
"Yet," I said, "if life have meaning, and man must be, what shall lift
These but born for joy's inaction, these who crave no added gift?
Let the world you bid me people hurl forever through the gloom,
Tenantless, a blasted record of some huge funereal doom,
Sad with unremembered slaughter, but a cold and lonely tomb."

Deep and deeper grew the stillness, and I knew how vain my quest.
Not by God's supremest angel is that awful secret guessed.
Yet with dull reiteration, like the pendulum's dead throb,
Beat my heart; a moaning infant, all my body seemed to sob,
And a voice like to my baby's called to me across the night
As the darkness fell asunder, and I saw a wall of light
Barred with crucificial shadows whence a weary wind did blow
Shuddering. I felt it pass me heavy with its freight of woe.
Said a voice, "Behold God's dearest; also these no answer know.
These be they who paid in sorrow for the right to bid thee hear.
Had their lives in ease been cradled, had they never known a tear,
Feebly had their psalms of warning fallen upon the listening ear.
God the sun is God the shadow; and where pain is, God is near.
Take again thy life and use it with a sweetened sense of fear;
God is Father! God is Mother! Regent of a growing soul,
Free art thou to grant mere pleasure, free to teach it uncontrol.
Time is childhood! larger manhood bides beyond life's sunset hour,
Where far other foes are waiting; and with ever gladder power,
Still the lord of awful choice, O striving creature of the sod,
Thou shalt learn that imperfection is the noblest gift of God!
For they mock his ample purpose who but dream, beyond the sky,
Of a heaven where will may slumber, and the trained decision die
In the competence of answer found in death's immense reply."
Then my vision passed, and weeping, lo! I woke, of death bereft;
At my breast the baby brother, yonder there the dead I left.
For my heart two worlds divided: his, my lost one's; his, who pressed
Closer, waking all the mother, as he drew the aching breast,
While twain spirits, joy and sorrow, hovered o'er my plundered nest.