Poems of Purpose | Page 2

sex; and for the wives,?The sisters, daughters, mothers of my friends?I held but holy thoughts. To fallen stars?(Of whom you told me in our last sweet talk,?Warning me of the dangers in my path)?I gave wide pity as you bade me to,?Saying their sins harked back to my base sex.
Now listen, mother mine: Ten years have passed?Since that clean-minded and pure-bodied youth,?Thinking to write his name upon the stars,?Went from your presence. He returns to you?Fallen from his altitude of thought,?Hiding deep scars of sins upon his soul,?His fair illusions shattered and destroyed.?And would you know the story of his fall?
He sat beside a good man's honoured wife?At her own table. She was beautiful?As woods in early autumn. Full of soft?And subtle witcheries of voice and look -?His senior, both in knowledge and in years.
The boyish admiration of his glance?Was white as April sunlight when it falls?Upon a blooming tree, until she leaned?So close her rounded body sent quick thrills?Along his nerves. He thought it accident,?And moved a little; soon she leaned again.?The half-hid beauties of her heaving breast?Rising and falling under scented lace,?The teasing tendrils of her fragrant hair,?With intermittent touches on his cheek,?Changed the boy's interest to a man's desire.?She saw that first young madness in his eyes?And smiled and fanned the flame. That was his fall;?And as some mangled fly may crawl away?And leave his wings behind him in the web,?So were his wings of faith in womanhood?Left in the meshes of her sensuous net.
The youth, forced into sudden manhood, went?Seeking the lost ideal of his dreams.?He met, in churches and in drawing-rooms,?Women who wore the mask of innocence?And basked in public favour, yet who seemed?To find their pleasure playing with men's hearts,?As children play with loaded guns. He heard?(Until the tale fell dull upon his ears)?The unsolicited complaints of wives?And mothers all unsatisfied with life,?While crowned with every blessing earth can give?Longing for God knows what to bring content,?And openly or with appealing look?Asking for sympathy. (The first blind step?That leads from wifely honour down to shame,?Is ofttimes hid with flowers of sympathy.)
He saw proud women who would flush and pale?With sense of outraged modesty if one?Spoke of the ancient sin before them, bare?To all men's sight, or flimsily conceal?By veils that bid adventurous eyes proceed,?Charms meant alone for lover and for child.?He saw chaste virgins tempt and tantalise,?Lure and deny, invite--and then refuse,?And drive men forth half crazed to wantons' arms.
Mother, you taught me there were but two kinds?Of women in the world--the good and bad.?But you have been too sheltered in the safe,?Old-fashioned sweetness of your quiet life,?To know how women of these modern days?Make licence of their new-found liberty.?Why, I have been more tempted and more shocked?By belles and beauties in the social whirl,?By trusted wives and mothers in their homes,?Than by the women of the underworld?Who sell their favours. Do you think me mad??No, mother; I am sane, but very sad.
I miss my boyhood's faith in woman's worth -?Torn from my heart, by 'good folks' of the earth.
THE YOUNGER BORN
The modern English-speaking young girl is the astonishment of the world and the despair of the older generation. Nothing like her has ever been seen or heard before. Alike in drawing-rooms and the amusement places of the people, she defies conventions in dress, speech, and conduct. She is bold, yet not immoral. She is immodest, yet she is chaste. She has no ideals, yet she is kind and generous. She is an anomaly and a paradox.
We are the little daughters of Time and the World his wife, We are not like the children, born in their younger life,?We are marred with our mother's follies and torn with our father's strife.
We are the little daughters of the modern world,?And Time, her spouse.?She has brought many children to our father's house?Before we came, when both our parents were content
With simple pleasures and with quiet homely ways.
Modest and mild?Were the fair daughters born to them in those fair days,
Modest and mild.
But Father Time grew restless and longed for a swifter pace, And our mother pushed out beside him at the cost of her tender grace, And life was no more living but just a headlong race.
And we are wild -?Yea, wild are we, the younger born of the World
Into life's vortex hurled.?With the milk of our mother's breast?We drank her own unrest,
And we learned our speech from Time?Who scoffs at the things sublime.?Time and the World have hurried so?They could not help their younger born to grow;?We only follow, follow where they go.
They left their high ideals behind them as they ran;?There was but one goal, pleasure, for Woman or for Man,?And they robbed the nights of slumber to lengthen the days' brief span.
We are the demi-virgins of the modern day;
All evil on the earth is