The Collected Poems of Charlotte Perkins Gilman - Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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ought to know,

       To point the way we ought to go,

       So audibly to bless and curse,

       That he who reads may run.

      Arrears

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      Our gratitude goes up in smoke,

       In incense smoke of prayer;

       We thank the Underlying Love,

       The Overarching Care—

       We do not thank the living men

       Who make our lives so fair.

      For long insolvent centuries

       We have been clothed and fed,

       By the spared captive, spared for once,

       By inches slain instead;

       He gave his service and is gone;

       Unthanked, unpaid, and dead.

      His labor built the world we love;

       Our highest flights to-day

       Rest on the service of the past,

       Which we can never pay;

       A long repudiated debt

       Blackens our upward way.

      Our fingers owed his fathers dead—

       Disgrace beyond repair!

       No late remorse, no new-found shame

       Can save our honor there:

       But we can now begin to pay

       The starved and stunted heir!

      We thank the Power above for all—

       Gladly we do, and should.

       But might we not save out a part

       Of our large gratitude,

       And give it to the power on earth—

       Where it will do some good?

      How Doth The Hat

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      How doth the hat loom large upon her head!

       Furred like a busby; plumed as hearses are;

       Armed with eye-spearing quills; bewebbed and hung

       With lacy, silky, downy draperies;

       With spread, wide-waggling feathers fronded high

       In bosky thickets of Cimmerian gloom.

      How doth the hat with colors dare the eye!

       Arrest—attract—allure—affront—appall!

       Vivid and varied as are paroquets;

       Dove-dull; one mass of white; all solid red;

       Black with the blackness of a mourning world—

       Compounded type of "Chaos and Old Night"!

      How doth the hat expand: wax wide, and swell!

       Such is its size that none can predicate

       Or hair, or head, or shoulders of the frame

       Below thIs bulk, this beauty-burying bulk;

       Trespassing rude on all who walk beside,

       Brutally blinding all who sit behind.

      How doth the hat's mere mass more monstrous grow

       Into a riot of repugnant shapes!

       Shapes ignominious, extreme, bizarre,

       Bulbous, distorted, unsymmetrical—

       Of no relation to the human head—

       To beauty, comfort, dignity or grace.

      Shape of a dishpan! Of a pail! A tub!

       Of an inverted wastebasket wherein

       The head finds lodgment most appropriate!

       Shape of a wide-spread wilted griddlecake!

       Shape of the body of an octopus

       Set sideways on a fireman's misplaced brim!

      How doth the hat show callous cruelty

       In decoration costing countless deaths;

       Carrying corpses for its ornaments;

       Wreath of dead humming-birds, dismembered gulls,

       The mother heron's breastknot, stiffened wings;

       Torn fragments of a world of wasted life.

      How doth the hat effect the minds of men?

       Patient bill-payers, chivalrously dumb!

       What does it indicate of woman's growth;

       Her sense of beauty, her intelligence,

       Her thought for others measured with herself,

       Her place and grade in human life to-day?

      Thanksgiving

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      I never thought much of the folks who pray

       The Lord to make them thankful for a meal

       Expecting Him to furnish all the food

       And then provide them with the gratitude

       They haven't grace to feel.

      I never thought much of this yearly thanks,

       Either for what once happened long ago,

       Or for "our constant mercies." To my mind

       If we're to thank a Power that's daily kind,

       Our annual's too slow.

      Suppose we spread Thanksgiving—hand it round—

       Give God an honest heartful every day;

       And, while we're being thankful, why not give

       Some gratitude to those by whom we live—

       As well as stingy pay?

      Thanksong

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      Thankful are we for life

       And the joy of living.

       Baby-pleasure of taking;

       Mother-glory of giving.

      Thankful are we for light

       And the joy of seeing.

       Stir of emotion strong,

       And the peace of being.

      Thankful are we for power,

       And the pride ensuing;

       Baby-pleasure of having,

       Father-glory of doing.

      Love

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      Not the child-god of our most childish past,

       Nor sympathy, nor worship, passionless;

       Nor gratitude, nor tenderest caress:

       Nor the post-mortal glamor priests have cast

      

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