Friday, October 05, 2007

The World's Mother

Two Callings (1904)

And then the great voice rang out to the sun,
And all my terror left me, all my shame,
While every dream of joy from earliest youth
Came back and lived!—that joy unhoped was truth,
All joy, all hope, all truth, all peace grew one,
Life opened clear, and Love? Love was its name!

So when the great word ‘Mother!’ rang once more,
I saw at last its meaning and its place;
Not the blind passion of the brooding past,
But Mother - the World's Mother - come at last,
To love as she had never loved before
-To feed and guard and teach the human race.

The world was full of music clear and high!
The world was full of light! The world was free!
And I? Awake at last, in joy untold,
Saw Love and Duty broad as life unrolled—
Wide as the earth—unbounded as the sky—
Home was the World-—the World was Home to me!

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935)

Source: Gilman, The Home, its work and influence (New York: Charlton, 1910), p.xi, but written earlier, probably in 1904.
Thanks to Graham Brown for alerting me to this writer.

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