 Nature has the habit of now and then producing a type of human being far in advance of the times. An ideal for us to emulate, a being devoid of sham and compromising and to whom the truth is sacred. A being whose selfishness is so large that it takes in the whole human race and treats self only as one of the great mass, a being keen to sense all forms of wrong and powerful in denunciation of it, one who can reach into the future and draw it near. Such a being was Volterine DeClaire. What could be added to this splendid tribute by J. Fox to the memory of Volterine DeClaire? These admirable words express the sentiments of all the friends and comrades of that remarkable woman whose whole life was dedicated to a dominant idea. Like many other women in public life Volterine DeClaire was a voluminous letter-writer. Those letters addressed to her comrades, friends, and admirers would form her real biography. In them we trace her heroic struggles, her activity, her beliefs, her doubts, her mental changes. In short, her whole life mirrored in a manner no biographer will ever be able to equal. To collect and publish this correspondence, as a part of Volterine DeClaire's works, is impossible. The task is too big for the present undertaking. But let us hope that we will find time and means to publish at least a part of this correspondence in the near future. The average American still holds to the belief that anarchism is a foreign poison imported into the States from decadent Europe by criminal paranoics. Hence, the ridiculous attempts of our lawmakers to stamp out anarchy by passing a statute which forbids anarchists from other lands to enter the country. Those wise solans are ignorant of the fact that anarchist theories and ideas were propounded in our Commonwealth. Air Proudhon or Bakian ended the arena of intellectual struggle and formulated their thesis of perfect freedom and economic independence in Anarchy. Neither are they acquainted with the writings of Linze Spooner, Tressiah Warren, Stephen Pearl Andrews, William B. Green, or Benjamin Tucker, nor familiar with the propagandistic work of Albert R. Parsons, Diode Lum, C. L. James, Moses Harmon, Ross Winn, and a host of other anarchists who sprang from the native stock and soil. To call their attention to these facts is quite as futile as to point out that the toxin of revolt resounds in the writings of Emerson Theroux, Hawthorne Whitman, Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and other seers of America, just as futile as to prove to them that the pioneers in the movement for women's emancipation America were permeated with the anarchist thoughts and feelings. Hardened by a fierce struggle and strengthened by a vicious persecution, those brave champions of sex freedom defied the respectable mob by proclaiming their independence from prevailing camp and hypocrisy. They inaugurated the tremendous sex revolt among the American women, a purely native movement which has yet to find its historian. The Volterine Declare belongs to this gallant array of rebels who swore allegiance to the cause of universal liberty, thus forfeiting the respect of all honourable citizens and bringing upon their heads the persecution of the ruling class. In the real history of the struggle for human emancipation her name will be found among the foremost of her time. Born shortly after the close of the Civil War she witnessed during her life the most momentous transformation of the nation. She saw the change from an agricultural community into an industrial empire, the tremendous development of capital in this country with the accompanying misery and degradation of labour. Her life path was sketched as she reached the age of womanhood. She had to become a rebel. To stand outside of the struggle would have meant intellectual death. She chose the only way. Volterine Declare was born on November 17, 1866, in the town of Leslie, Michigan. She died on June 6, 1912 in Chicago. She came from French-American stock on her mother's side of Puritan descent. Her father, Auguste Declare, was a native of Western Flanders, but his family was of French origin. He emigrated to America in 1854. Being a free thinker and a great admirer of Voltaire, he insisted on the birth-day of the child that the new member of the family should be called Volterine. Though born in Leslie, the earliest recollections of Volterine were in the small town of St. John's in Clinton County. Her parents, having removed to that place a year after her birth, Volterine did not have a happy childhood. Her earliest life was embittered by want of the common necessities, which her parents, hard as they tried, could not provide. A vain of sadness can be traced in her earliest poems. The songs of a child of talent and great fantasy, a deep sorrow fell into her heart at the age of four, when the teacher of the primary school refused to admit her, because she was too young. But she soon succeeded in forcing her entrance into the temple of knowledge. An earnest student, she was graduated from the grammar school at the age of twelve. Strength of mind does not seem to have been a characteristic of Auguste Declare, for he recounted his libertarian ideas, returned to the fold of the church, and became obsessed with the idea that the highest vocation for a woman was the life of a nun. He determined to put the child into a convent. Thus began the great tragedy of Volterine's early life. Her beloved mother, a member of the Presbyterian church, opposed this idea with all her strength, but in vain. The will of the Lord of the household prevailed, and the child was sent to the convent of our Lady of Lake Huron at Sarnia, in the province of Ontario, Canada. Here she experienced four years of terrible ordeal, only after much repression, insubordination, and atonement. She forced her way back into the living world. In the sketch that makes you a anarchist, she tells us of the strange she underwent in that living tomb, how I pity myself now when I remember it. Poor lonesome little soul, battling solitary in the murk of religious superstition, unable to believe, and yet, in hourly fear of damnation, hot, savage, and eternal, if I do not instantly confess and profess. How well I recall the bitter energy with which I repelled my teachers and joined her, when I told her I did not wish to apologise for her judged fault, as I could not see that I had been wrong, and would not feel my words. It is not necessary, said she, that we should feel what we say, but it is always necessary that we obey our superiors. I will not lie! I answered hotly, and at the same time trembled, lest my disobedience had finally consigned me to torment. I struggled my way out at last, and was a free thinker when I left the institution three years later, though I had never seen a book, or heard a word, to help me in my loneliness. It had been like the valley of the shadow of death, and there are white scars on my soul yet, where ignorance and superstition burnt through their hellfire and those stifling days. Am I blasphemous? It is their word, not mine. Beside that battle of my young days all others have been easy, for whatever was without within my own will was supreme. It has owed no allegiance, and never shall. It has moved steadily in one direction, the knowledge and assertion of its own liberty, with all the responsibility falling thereon. During her stay at the convent, there was little communication between her and her parents. In a letter from Mrs. Eliza DeClaire, the mother of Fulterine, we are informed that she decided to run away from the convent after she had been there a few weeks. She escaped, before breakfast, and crossed the river to Port Huron, but, as she had no money, she started to walk home. After covering seventeen miles, she realised that she never could do it, so she turned around and walked back. And entering the house of an acquaintance in Port Huron asked for something to eat. They sent for her father, who afterwards took her back to the convent. What penance they inflicted, she never told. But at sixteen her health was so bad that the convent authorities let her come home for a vacation, telling her, however, that she would find her every movement watched, and that everything she said would be reported to them. The result was that she started at every sound, her hands shaking and her face pale as death. She was about five weeks from graduating at that time. When her vacation was over, she went back and finished her studies, and then she started for home again. But this time she had money enough for her fare, and she got home to stay—never to go back to the place that had been imprisoned to her. She had seen enough of the convent to decide for herself, that she could not be a nun. The child who had sung, There is a love supreme in the great hereafter, The buds of earth are blooming heaven, The smiles of the world are ripples of laughter, When back to its aid and the soul is given. And the tears of the world, though long and flowing, Water the fields of the by and by, They fall as dew on the sweet grass growing, When the fountains of sorrow and grief run dry. Though clouds hang over the furrows now sowing, There's a harvest sun-wreath in the after-sky. No love is wasted, no heart beats vainly, There's a vast perfection beyond the grave. Up the bays of heaven the stars shine plainly, The stars lying dim on the brow of the wave, And the lights of our loves, though they flicker and wane, They shall shine all undimmed in the ether-nave. For the altars of God are lit with souls, Fun to flaming with love where the star-wind rolls. Returned from the convent, a strong-minded free thinker, She was received with open arms by her mother, Almost as one returned from the grave. With the exception of the education derived from books, She knew no more than a child, Having almost no knowledge of practical things. Already in the convent, She had succeeded in impressing her strong personality upon her surroundings. Her teachers could not break her. They were therefore forced to respect her. In the polemic with the editor of the Catholic Buffalo Union and Times a few years ago, Volterine wrote, If you think that I, as your opponent, Deserve the benefit of truth, but as a stranger you doubt my veracity, I respectfully request you to submit this letter to Sister Mary Medard, my former teacher, now Superior S at Windsor, or to my reverend friend, Father Siegerfried, Overbrook Seminary, Overbrook Parr, who will tell you whether, in their opinion, my disposition to tell the truth may be trusted. Reaction from the repression and the cruel discipline of the Catholic Church helped to develop Volterine's inherent tendency towards free thought. The five-told murder of the Labour leaders in Chicago in 1887 shocked her mind so deeply that from that moment dates her development towards anarchism. When, in 1886, the bomb fell on Haymarket Square, and the anarchists were arrested, Volterine declared who, at that time, was a free-thought lecturer, shouted, They ought to be hanged! They were hanged, and now her body rests in world-time cemetery, near the grave of those martyrs. Speaking at a memorial meeting in the honour of those comrades in 1901, she said, For that ignorant, outrageous, blood-thirty sentence, I shall never forgive myself, though I know the dead men would have forgiven me, though I know those who loved them forgive me, but my own voice, as it sounded that night, will sound so in my ears till I die. A bitter reproach and a shame, I have only one word of expectation for myself, and the millions of others who did as I did that night. Ignorance She did not remain long in ignorance. In the making of Anarchist, she described why she became a convert to the idea, and why she entered the movement. Till then, she writes, I believed in the essential justice of the American law and trial by jury. After that, I never could. The infamy of that trial has passed into history, and the question it awakened as to the possibility of justice under the law has passed into a clamourous crying across the world. At the age of nineteen, Volterine had consecrated herself to the service of humanity. In her poem, The Burial of My Sparse Self, she thus bids farewell to her youthful life, and to now, humanity, I turn to you. I consecrate my service to the world, perish the old love, welcome to the new, broad as the space aisles with the stars of the world. Yet the pure and simple free-thought adaptation in this narrow circle could not suffice her. The spirit of rebellion, the spirit of anarchy, took hold of her soul. The idea of universal rebellion saved her, otherwise she might have stagnated, like so many of her contemporaries, suffocated in the narrow surroundings of their intellectual life. A lecture of Clarence Darrow, which she heard in 1887, led her to the study of socialism, and then there was for her but one step to anarchism. Diody Lum, the fellow-worker of the Chicago Martyrs, had undoubtedly the greatest influence in shaping her development. He was her teacher, her confidant, and comrade. His death in 1893 was a terrible blow to Volterine. Volterine spent the greater part of her life in Philadelphia. Here, among congenial friends, and later among the Jewish emigrants, she did her best work. In 1897 she went on a lecture tour to England and Scotland, and in 1902, after an insane youth had tried to take her life, she went for a short trip to Norway to recuperate from her ruins. Hers was a life of bitter economic struggle, and an unceasing fight with physical weakness, partly resulting from this very economic struggle. One wonders how, under such circumstances, she could have produced such an amount of work. Her poems, sketches, propagandistic articles, and essays, may be found in the open court. 20th century, magazine of poetry, truth, Lucifer, Boston investigator, rights of labour, truth seeker, liberty, Chicago liberal, free society, mother earth, and in the independent. She translated Jean Graves, Morriban society in Anarchy from the French, and left an unfinished translation of Louise Michel's work on the Paris Commune. In Mother Earth appeared her translations from the Jewish of Libyne and Petters. In collaboration with the Diales alum, she wrote a novel on social questions which, as unfortunately, remained unfinished. Volterine declares views on the sex question, on agnosticism, and free thought, on individualism and communism, and on non-resistance and direct action, and went many changes. In the year 1902, she wrote, the spread of Tolstoy's war and peace, and the slavery of our times, and the growth of the numerous Tolstoy clubs, having for their purpose the dissemination of the literature of non-resistance, is an evidence that many receive the idea that it is easier to conquer war with peace. I am one of these. I can see no end of retaliation, unless someone ceases to retaliate. She adds, however, but let no one mistake this for serve our submission or meek abnegation. My right shall be asserted, no matter what cost to me, and none shall trench upon it without my protest. But, as she used to quote a comrade Diales alum, events proved to be the true school masters. The last years of her life were filled with the spirit of direct action, and especially with the social importance of the Mexican Revolution. The splendid propaganda work of Wilhelmina C. Owen, in behalf of this tremendous upheaval inspired her to great effort. She, too, had found out by experience that only action counts, that only a direct participation in the struggle makes life worthwhile. Vulture in Declare was one of the most remarkable personalities of our time. She was born iconoclast, her spirit was too free, her taste to refine, to accept any idea that is the slightest degree of limitation. A great sadness, a knowledge that there is a universal pain, filled her heart. Through her own suffering, and through the suffering of others, she reached the highest exaltation of mind. She was conscious of all the vanities of life. In the service of the poor and depressed, she found her life mission in an exquisite tribute to her memory. Leonard D. Abbott calls Vulture in Declare, a priestess of pity and of vengeance, whose voice has a vibrant quality that is unique in literature. We are convinced that her writings will live as long as humanity exists. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Poor heart, so weary with thy bitter grief, so thou art dead at last silent and chill. The longed-for death dart came to thy relief, and there thou liest heart for ever still. Dead eyes, pain-pressed beneath their black-fringed paw. Dead cheeks, dark furrowed, with so many tears. So there art past far, far beyond recall. And all thy hopes are past, and all thy fears. Thy lips are closed at length in the long peace, pale lips, so long they have thy woe repressed. They seem even now, when life has run its lease, all dumbly pitiful in their mournful rest. And now I lay thee in thy silent tomb, printing thy brow with one last solemn kiss, laying upon thee one fair lily bloom. A symbol of thy rest, oh, rest is bliss. No, heart, I would not call thee back again. No, no, too much of suffering hast thou known. But yet, but yet, it was not all in vain. Thy unseen tears, thy solitary moan. For out of sorrow joy comes uppermost. Where breaks the thunder, soon the sky smiles blue. A better love replaces what is lost. And phantom sunlight pales before the true. The seed must burst before the German folds. The stars must fade before the morning wakes. Down in her depths, the mind the diamond holds. A new heart pulses when the old heart breaks. And now, humanity, I turn to you. I consecrate my service to the world. Parish the old love. Welcome to the new. Broad is the space isles where the stars are world. End of The Burial of My Past Self Recording by Pat Gembatista Night on the Graves From the Selected Works Poems by Walterine DeClaire Over the sweet quiet homes in the silent grave city Softly the dew drops, the night tears fall. Broadly about, like the wide arms of Petty, The silver-shot darkness lies over all. Heroes asleep underneath the red-hearted rose reeds. Leaf crowned with honour, flower crowned with rest. Gently above you, each moon-dripping bough breathes. A far echoed whisper. Sleep well, ye are blessed. O never, as long as the heart pulses quicker, At the dear name of country may yours be forgot. Nor may we, till the last puny life's spark, Shall flicker your deeds from the tablets of memory blot. Spirits afloat in the night shrouds that bound us, Souls of the has-been and of the to-be. Keep the fair light of liberty shining around us, Till our souls may go back to the mighty soul-sea. End of Night on the Graves Section 3 of Selected Works, Poems by Voltairene DeClaire This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Kalinda, The Christian's Faith from Selected Works, Poems by Voltairene DeClaire The two following poems were written at the period of my life when the questions of the existence of God and the divinity of Jesus had but recently been settled, and they present the pros and cons which had been repeating themselves over and over again in my brain for some years. We contrast light and darkness, light of God and darkness from the Stygian shades of hell. Fumes of the pit infernal rising up have clouded over the brain, laid reason low. For when the eye looks on fair nature's face and sees not God, then is she blind indeed. No night so starless, even in its gloom, as his who wanders on without a hope in that great just hereafter all must meet. No heart so dull, so heavy, and so void, as that which lives for this chill world alone. No soul so groveling, uninspiring, base, as that which here forgets the after here. And still through all the darkness and the gloom, its voice will not be stilled, its hopes be quenched. It cries, it screams, it struggles in its chains and bleeds upon the altar of the mind, unwilling sacrifice to thought misled. The soul that knows no God can know no peace, thus speaketh light the herald of our God. In that far dawn where Sean reached rolling world, first lit with shadowed splendor of the stars, in that fair morning when creation sang its praise of God, ere yet it dreamed of sin. Pure and untainted as the source of life, man dwelt in Eden. There no shadows came, no question of the goodness of our Lord, until the Prince of Darkness tempted man, and yielding to the newly born desire he fell, sank in the mire of ignorance, and man who put himself in Satan's power since then has wandered far in devious ways. Seeing but now and then a glimpse of light, till Christ is come, the living Son of God. Far in his heavenly home he viewed the world, saw all her sadness and her sufferings, saw all her woes, her struggles, and her search for some path leading up from out the night. Within his breast the fount of tears was touched, his great heart swelled with pity, and he said, Father, I go to save the world from sin. Ah, what power but a soul divinely clad in purity, in holiness and love, could leave a home of happiness and light for this lost world of suffering and death. He came, the world tossed, groaning in her sleep. He touched her brow, the nightmare passed away. He soothed her heart, red with the stain of sin, and she forgot her guilt and penitence. She washed the ruby out with pearls of tears. He came, he suffered, and he died for us. He felt the bitterest woes a soul can feel. He probed the darkest depths of human grief. He sounded all the deeps and shoals of pain was cursed for all his love, thanked with the cross, whereon he hung, nailed, bleeding, glorified, as the last smoke of Holocaust divine. Ah, this was all two thousand years ago, two thousand years ago, and still he cries with voice sweet, calling through the distant dark. O souls that labor, struggling in your pain, come unto me, and I will give you rest. For every woe of yours and every smart I too have felt, the mockery, the shame, the sneer, the scoffing lip, the hate, the lust, the greed of gain, the jealousy of man, unstinted, have been measured out to me. I know them all, I feel them all with you. And I have known the pangs of poverty, the cry of hunger, and the weary heart of childhood burdened with the weight of age. O sufferers, ye are all mine to love, the pulse beats of my heart go out with you, and every drop of agony that drips from my nailed hands adorn this bitter cross cries out, O God, accept the sacrifice, and ope the gates of heaven to the world. Ye vermin of the garret, who do creep your weary lives away within its walls. Ye children of the cellar, who behold the sweet pale light strained through the loftsome air, and doled to you in tidbits, as a thing too precious for your use. Ye rats in mines, who gnaw within the black and somber pits to seek poor living for your little ones. Ye women who stitch out your lonely lives, unmindful whether sun or stars keep watch. Ye slaves of wheels, ye worms that bite the dust, where pride and scorn have ground you neath the heel. Ye toilers of the earth, ye weary ones. I know your sufferings, I feel your woes. My peace I give you. In a little while the pain will all be over, and the grave will sweetly close above your folded hands. And then? Ah death, no conqueror art thou. For I have loosed thy chains, I have unbarred the gates of heaven. In my father's house of many mansions I prepare a place, and rest is there for every heart that toils. O all ye sick and wounded ones, who grieve for the lost health that near may come again. Ye who do toss upon a couch of pain, upon whose brow disease has laid his hand, within whose eyes the dull and heavy sight burns like a taper burning very low, upon whose lips the purple fever kiss rests his hot breath, and dries the second palms, scorches the flesh, and in the very air. Ye who do grope along without the light, ye who do stumble halting on your way, ye whom the world despises as unclean, know that the death-free soul has none of these. The unbound spirit goes unto its God, pure, whole, and beauteous as newly born. O all ye mourners weeping for the dead, your tears I gather as the grateful rain which rises from the sea and falls again to nurse the withering flowers from its touch. No drop is ever lost. They fall again to nurse the blossoms of some other heart. I would not dry one single dew of grief. The sorrow-frighted lashes which bespeak the broken heart and soul are dear to me. I mourn with them, and mourning so, I find the grief-bowed soul with weeping oft grows light. But yet ye mourn for them not without hope, beyond the woes and sorrows of the earth. As stars still shine, though clouds obscure the sight, the frenzy you mourn as lost, immortal live, and ye shall meet and know their souls again, through death transfigured, through love glorified. O all ye patient waiters for reward, scorned and despised by those who know not worth. I know your merit, and I give you hope, for in my father's law is justice found. See how the seed-germ toiling underground waits patiently for time to burst its shell, and by and by the golden sunlight warms the dark cold earth the germ begins to shoot, and upward trends until two small green leaves unfold and wave and drink the pure fresh air. The blossoms come and go with summer's breath, and autumn brings the fruit-time in her hand. So ye who patient watch and wait and hope, trusting the sun may bring the blossoms out, shall reap the fruited labour by and by. I am your friend. I wait and hope with you. Rejoice with you when the hard victories won. And still for you, O prisoners in cells, I hold the dearest gifts of penitence, forgiveness and charity and hope. I stretch the hands of mercy through the bars, white hands, like doves they bring the branch of peace. Repent, believe, and I will expiate upon this bitter cross all your deep guilt. O take my gift, accept my sacrifice. I ask no other thing but only trust. O all ye martyrs bleeding in your chains. O all ye souls that live for others good. O all ye mourners, all ye guilty ones, all ye suffering ones, come unto me. Ye are all my brothers, all my sisters all. And as I love one, so I love you all. Accept my love, accept my sacrifice. Make not my cross more bitter than it is by shrinking from the peace I bring to you. St. John's, Michigan, April 1887. End of the Christian's Faith. Recording by Kalinda in Lüneburg, Germany on March 21st, 2009. Section 4 of the Selected Works, Poems by Votereen DeClaire. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Free Thinker's plea from Selected Works, Poems by Votereen DeClaire. Grand Eye of Liberty, light up my page. Like a promised morning after night of age, Thy dawning youth breaks in the distant east. Thy cloudy robes, like a silken curtain's creased and swung in folds, Are floating fair and free. By shadows of the cycles turn and flee, The barning stars, bright minds that jammed the night, Arbusting into broad, bright, patterned light. Sweet liberty, how pure thy very breath. How dear in life, how doubly dear in death. Ah slaves that suffer in your self-forged chains, Praying your Christ to touch and to heal your pains. Tear off your shackling irons, unbind your eyes. Seize the grand hopes that burn along the skies. Worship not God in temples built of gloom. Far sweeter incense is the flower bloom, Than all the fires that sacrifice my light. And the grandeur is the star dome gleaming bright, With the glowing worlds, the northern lamps, Pale flickering in your clammy, vaulted damps. And richer is the broad, full, fair sun-sheen, Dripping its orient light in streams, Between the fretted shofting of the forest trees, Throwing its golden kisses to the breeze, Lifting the grasses with its fingertips, And the pressing, the young blossoms with warm lips, Showering its glory over plain and hill, Raving the storm and dancing in the rill. Far richer in wider freedom falling there, Shaking the tresses of its yellow hair, The knoll subdued within the dim half-light Of its tainted glass windows, dropping into night. Oh, grand afar the massive mountain walls, Which abound the vista of the foresty halls, Than all the sculpture deforms, Which guard the piles that touch your tall, Dim grey cathedral aisles. And the glader is the carol of a bird, Than all the anthems that were ever heard To still in sombre chanting, From the tone of a master voice is praising the unknown. In the great wide, where foot of man air toward, There find away nature's church and nature's gout. Here are no fetters, though is free as air, Its flight may spread far as its wings may dare. And through it all one voice cries, God is love, and love is gout. Round within above behold the working of the perfect law, The law in mutable in which no flaw exists, And from which no appeal is made, Even as the sunlight chases far the shade, And the shadows who chased the light in turn again, So every life is fraught with joy and pain. The stinging thorn lies ahead beside the rose, The bud is blighted air, its leaf enclose. So pleasure, born of a hope, May of time yield a stinging smart of thorns, A barren field, but let it be. The buds will bloom again, The fields will freshen in the summer rain, And never storm as carls dark, But still somewhere a bow is bending in the upper air. Then learn the law if thou wouldst live right, And know no unseen power, no hand of might Can set aside the law which wills the stars. Know in completeness its perfection mars. The buds will wait in season, And the rain will fall when clouds hang heavy, And again those nose will tremble When the winter's breath congeals The cloud tears as the touch of death Congeals the luster drop on the sufferer's cheek. Thus do all nature's tongues in chorus speak. Think not, O man, that thou can stare, Escape one jot of a justice's law, Nor turn thy fate by yielding sacrifice to the unseen. Purged by thy self alone canst thou be clean, One guide to happiness thou mayst learn. Love toward the world begets love in return. And if, to others, you the measure meet of love, Be sure, your harvester will be sweet. But if ye so broadcast the seed of hate, Ye'll reap again, or beat ye'll reap it late. Then let your life of work swell the great flood, Tide of love towards all the world. The world is wide, the sea of life is broad, Its waves stretch far, no range, no barrier, its sweep may bar. The world is filled, is a trodden down with the pain, The sea of life is gathered up of rain, A throat, a bed, a sink for human tears, A burial of hopes in the asthma of fears. But see, the sun of love shines softly out, Flinging its golden fingers all about, Pressing its lips in loving, soft caress, Upon the world's paid cheek. The pain grows less, the tears are dried upon the quivering lashes, And answering a sun dim beneath the white lid's flashes. The sea of life is dimpled over with smiles, The sun of love the cloud of woe beguys, And it turns its heavy brow to forehead fair, Framed in the glory of its sun-guilt hair. Be thine the warming touch, the kiss of love, Veinly you seek for comfort from above, Veinly you pray the gods to ease your pain, The heavy words fall back on you again. Veinly you cry for Christ to smooth your way, The thorns sting sharper while you kneeling pray, Veinly you look upon the world awoe, And cry, Oh God, overt the bitter blow, Ye cannot eternal the lightning from its track, Nor call one single little listen back. The law swerves not, and with an airing aim, The shaft of justice falls. He bears the blame, who violates the rule. Do well your task, for justice overtakes you all at last. Veinly ye patient ones await reward, Trusting the Almighty's angel to record each bitter tear, Each disappointed sigh, rewarded his sense not, Gifted from on high, but is the outgrowth of the eternal law. As from the earth the toiling seed germs draw the food Which gives them life and strength To bear the storms and sands, Which sweepeth the upper air, So ye must adrew from out of the pregnant earth The mental tool we're with to build your worth. So shall ye brave the howling of the blast, And the smile triumphant telleth the storm at last. Nor dream these trials are without values, Between your joys and griefs ye cannot choose, And say your life with either is complete, Ever the bitter mangles with the sweet. The dews must press the petals down at night, If in the dawning they would glisten bright. If the sunbeams' needs must ripen out of the grain, Not less the early blades must woo the rain. If now your eyes be wet with the weary tears, Ye'll gather them as gems in after years. And if the rains now sodden down your path, Ye'll reap richer harvest in the aftermath. Ye idle mourners, crying in your grief, The souls ye weep have found the long relief. Why grieve for those who fold their hands in peace? Their sore-tied hearts have found a glad release. Their spirits sink into the solemn sea, Mourning ye the prisoner from his chains let free, Nay, o pure ears, unto the living cry, That pleads for living comfort. Hark, the sigh of million heartaches arising in your ears, Kiss back the living woes, the living tears, Go down into the felons' gloomy cell, Send there the ray of love, As the tree buds swell when spring's warm breath, Bids the cold winter seas, So will his heart as well with the hope of a peace. Be filled with love, if love is nature's God, The God which trembles in the tender salt, The God which attends the sunset, Lights the dew, sprinkles with the stars, The firmament's broad blue, And draws all heart together in a free wide sweep of love. Broad as the ether sea, no other law guidance do we need. The world's our church, to do good is our creed. End of The Free Thinker's Plee, Recorded by Cedro Baldelli in Rome, March 2009 Section 5 of Selected Works, Poems by Walterine DeClaire This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. To my mother, from Selected Works, Poems by Walterine DeClaire, Some souls there are which never live their life, Some sons there are which never pierce their cloud, Some hearts there are which cup there perfume in, And yield no incense to the outer air, Cloud shrouded, flower cupped heart, such as thine own. So does thou live with all thy brightness hid, So does thou dwell with all thy perfume close, Rich in thy treasured wealth, I, rich indeed, And they are wrong who say thou dost not feel. But I, I need blue air and opened bloom, To keep my music means that it must die, And when the thrill, the joy, the love of life is gone, I too am dead, a corpse, Though not entombed. Let me live, then, but a while, the gloom soon comes, The flower closes and the petals shut, Through them the perfume slips out like a soul, The long, still sleep of death, and then the grave. End of To My Mother, recording by Rhonda Federman. Section 6 of Selected Works, Poems by Valterine DeClaire. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Betrayed from Selected Works, Poems by Valterine DeClaire. So you're the chaplain. You needn't say what you have come for. I can guess. You've come to talk about Jesus' love and repentance and rest and forgiveness. You've come to say that my sin is great. Yet greater the mercy heaven will meet if I, like Magdalene, bend my head and pour my tears at your Savior's feet. Your promise is fair, but I have little faith. I relied on promises once before. They brought me to this, this prison cell with its iron-barred window, its graded door. Yet he, too, was fair who promised me, with his tender mouth and his Christ-like eyes. And his voice was as sweet as the summer wind that sighs through the arbors of paradise. And he seemed to me all that was good and pure and noble and strong and true and brave. I had given the pulse of my heart for him and deemed it a precious boon to crave. You say that Jesus so loved the world he died to redeem it from its sin. It isn't redeemed, or no one could be so fair without and so black within. I trusted his promise. I gave my life. The truth of my love is known on high. If there is a God who knows all things, his promise was false. His love was a lie. It was over soon. Oh, soon the dream and me. He had called his life, his light. He drove me away with a sneering word. And you Christians said that it served me right. I was proud, Mr. Chaplin, even then. I set my face in the teeth of fate and resolved to live honestly, come what might, and sink beneath neither scorn nor hate. Yes, and I prayed that the Christ above would help to bear the bitter cross and put something here where my heart had been to fill up the aching void of loss. It's easy for you to say what I should do, but none of you ever dream how hard is the way that you Christians make for us. With your sin no more. Trust the Lord. When for days and days you are turned from work with cold politeness or open sneer, you get so you don't trust a far-off God whose creatures are cold and they so near. You hold your virtuous lives aloof and refuse us your human help in hand and set us apart as accursed things marked with a burning, cane-like brand. But I didn't bend, though many days I was weary and hungry and worn and weak and for many a starless night I watched through tears that grooved down my pallid cheek. They are all dry now. They say I'm hard because I never weep or moan. You can't draw blood when the heart split out. You can't find tears or sound in a stone. And I don't know why I should be mild and meek. No one has been very mild to me. You say that Jesus would be. Perhaps, but Heaven's a long way off, you see. That will do. I know what you're going to say. I can have it right here in this narrow cell. The soul is slow to accept Christ's heaven when his followers chain the body in hell. Not put on just as well off here, better perhaps than I was outside. The world was a prison house to me where I dwelt, defying and defied. I don't know but I'd think more of what you say if they'd given us both a common lot. If justice to me had been justice to him and covered our names with an equal blot, but they took him into the social court and pitied and said he'd been led astray. In a month the stain on his name had passed as a cloud that crosses the face of day. He joined the church and he's preaching now just as you are the love of God. And the duty of sinners to kneel and pray and humbly to kiss the chastening rod. If they'd dealt with me as they'd dealt by him, maybe I'd credit your Christian love. If they'd dealt with him as they'd dealt by me, I'd have more faith in a just above. I don't know but sometimes I used to think that she who was told there was no room in the inn at Bethlehem might look down with softened eyes through the starless gloom. Christ wasn't a woman. He couldn't know the pain and endurance of it. But she, the mother who bore him, she might know. And Mary in heaven might pity me. Still that was useless. It didn't bring a single mouthful for me to eat, nor work to get it, nor sheltering from the dreary wind and the howling street. Heavenly pity won't pass as coin and earthly shame brings a higher pay. Sometimes I was tempted to give it up and go like others the easier way. But I didn't. No, sir, I kept my oath, though my baby lay in my arms and cried. And at last, to spare it, I poisoned it and kissed its murdered lips when it died. I'd never seen him since it was born. He said it wasn't his, you know. But I took its body and laid it down at the steps of his door in the pallid glow of the winter morning. And when he came with a love tune hummed on those lips of lies, it lay at his feet, with its pinched white face staring up at him from its dead blue eyes. I hadn't closed them. They were like his, and so was the mouth and the curled gold hair. And every feature so like his own, for I am dark, sir, and he is fair. And he is fair. It was a moment of triumph that showed me yet there was a passion I could feel when I saw him bend or its meager form and starting backwards. Cry out and reel. If there is a time when all soul shall meet the reward of the deeds that are done in the clay. When accused and accuser stand face to face, he will cry out so in the judgment day. The rest? Oh, nothing. They hunted me. And with virtuous lawyers, virtuous tears, to a virtuous jury convicted me. And I'm sentenced to stay here for twenty years. Do I repent? Yes, I do. But wait till I tell you of what I repent and why. I repent that I ever believed a man could be anything but a living lie. I repent because every noble thought or hope or ambition or earthly trust is as dead as dungeon bleached bones in me as dead as my child in its murdered dust. Do I repent that I killed the babe? Am I repentant for that? You ask. I'll answer the truth as I feel it, sir. I leave to others the pious mask. Am I repentant because I saved its starving body from Thammon's teeth? Because I hastened what time would do to spare it pain and relieve its death? Am I repentant because I hold it were better a grave should have no name than a living being whose only care must come from a mother waved with shame? Am I repentant because I thought it were better the tiny form lay hid from the heartless stings of a brutal world unknown, unnamed, meet the coffin lid? Am I repentant for the act the last on earth in my power to save from the long drawn misery of life in the early death and painless grave? I'm glad that I did it. Start if you will. I'll repeat it over. I say I'm glad. No, I'm neither a fiend nor a maniac. Don't look as if I were going mad. Did I not love it? Yes, I loved with a strength that you, sir, can never feel. It's only a strong love can kill to save, though itself be torn where time cannot heal. You see my hands. They are red with its blood. Yet I would have cut them bit by bit and fed them and smile to see it eat if that would have saved and nourished it. Beg. I did beg and pray. I did pray. God was as stony and hard as earth. And Christ was as deaf as the stars that watched or the night that darkened above his birth. And I, I feel stony now to like them deaf to sorrow and mute to grief. Am I heartless? Yes, it is all cut out, torn, gone, all gone. Like my dead belief. Do I not fear for the judgment hour? So unrepentant, so hard and cold. Wait, it is little I trust in that. But if ever the scrolled sky shall be uproled and the lives of men shall be read and known and their acts be judged by their very worth. And the Christ you speak of shall come again and the thunders of justice shake the earth. You will hear the cry. Who murdered here? Come forth to the judgment false heart and eyes that pulsed with a cursed strength of lust and loaded faith within venomed lies. Come forth to the judgment haughty dames who scathe the mother with your scorn and answer here to the poisoned child who decreed its murder ere it was born. Come forth to the judgment ye who heaped the golds of earth in your treasured hoard and answer guilty to those who stood all naked and starving beneath your board. Depart, accursed, I know you not. Ye heeded not the command of heaven. Unto the least of these ye give. It is even unto the master given judgment. Ah, sir, to see that day I'd willingly pass through a hundred hells. I'd believe then the justice that hears each voice buried alive in these prison cells. But no, it's not that. That will never be. I trusted too long and he answered not. There is no avenging God on high. We live, we struggle, and we rot. Yet does justice come and, oh, future years sorely yield reap and in weary pain when ye garner the sheaves that are sown today, when the clouds that are gathering fall in rain. The time will come, I. The time will come when the child ye conceive in lust and shame quickened will mow you like swaths of grass with a sickle born of steel and flame. I tremble, shrink in your drunken den, cowered traitor and child of lie. The unerring avenger stands close to you and the dread hour of parturition's nigh. I, ring your hands for the air is black, thickly the cloud troops whirl and swarm. See yonder on the horizon's verge play the lightning shafts of the coming storm. of the coming storm. End of Betrayed. There's a love supreme in the great hereafter. The buds of earth are blooms in heaven. The smiles of the world are ripples of laughter when back to its aiden the soul is given. And the tears of the world, though long and flowing, water the fields of the by and by. They fall as doos on the sweet grass growing when the fountains of sorrow and grief run dry. Though clouds hang over the furrows now sowing, there's a harvest sun wreath in the after sky. No love is wasted. No heart beats vainly. There's a vast perfection beyond the grave. Up the bays of heaven the stars shine plainly. The stars lying dim on the brow of the wave. And the lights of our loves, though they flicker and wane, they shall shine all undimmed in the other nave. For the altars of God are lit with souls, fanned who flaming with love with star-wind rolls. End of Optimism, Recording by Rhonda Federman. Section 8 of Selected Works, Poems by Valterine DeClaire. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. At the grave in Waldheim, from Selected Works, Poems by Valterine DeClaire, quiet they lie in their shrouds of rest, their lids kissed clothes beneath the lips of peace. Over each pulseless and painless breast, the hands lie folded and softly pressed, as a dead dove presses a broken nest. Ah, broken hearts were the price of these. The lips of their anguish are cold and still, for them are the clouds and the gloom all past. No longer the woe of the world can thrill the cords of those tender hearts or fill the silent dead house. The people's will has snapped asunder the strings at last. The people's will. Ah, in years to come dearly ye'll weep that ye did not save. Do ye not hear now the muffled drum, the tramping feet and the ceaseless hum of the million marchers, trembling, dumb in their tread to a yawning giant grave. And yet, ah, yet there's a rift of white, tis breaking over the martyr's shrine. Halt there ye doomed ones, its scathes the night, as lightning darts from its scabbard bright and sweeps the face of the sky with light. No more shall be spilled out the blood-red wine. These are the words it has written there, keen as the lance of the northern morn. The sword of justice gleams in its glare, and the arm of justice upraised and bare is true to strike. Aye, tis strong to dare. It will fall where the curse of our land is born. No more shall the necks of the nations be crushed. No more to dark tyranny's throne bend the knee. No more in objection be ground to the dust. By their widows, their orphans, our dead comrade's trust, by the brave heart beat stilled, by the brave voices hushed. We swear that humanity yet shall be free. End of At the Grave in Wal-Time, recording by Rhonda Thetterman. Section 9 of Selected Works, Poems, by Voltaireen DeClaire. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Lucy Perry. The Hurricane. From Selected Works, Poems, by Voltaireen DeClaire. We are the birds of the coming storm. August spies. The tide is out, the wind blows off the shore, Bear-burn the white sands in the scorching sun, The sea complains, but its great voices low. Bitter thy woes, O people, and the burden, Hardly to be born. Wearily grows, O people, all the aching Of thy pierced heart bruised and torn. But yet thy time is not, And lo thy moaning, desert thy sands. Not yet is thy breath hot, Vengefully blowing, It wafts over lifted hands. The tide has turned, The vein veers slowly round, Slow clouds are sweeping over the blinding light, White crests curl on the sea, Its voice grows deep. Angry thy heart, O people, and its bleeding, Fire-tipped with rising hate, Thy clasped hands part, O people, For thy praying warmed not the desolate. God did not hear thy moan, Now it is swelling, To a great drowning cry, A dark wind-cloud, a groan, Now backward veering from that deaf sky. The tide flows in, the wind roars from the depths, The world-white sand heaps with the foam-white waves, Thundering the sea-rolls over its shell-crunched wall. Strongest thy ray, O people, in its fury, Hurling thy tyrants down. Thou meetest way, O people, very swiftly, Now that thy hate is grown. Thy time at last is come, Thou heapest anguish where thou thyself work bare, No longer to thy dumb God clasped and kneeling, Thou answerest thine own prayer. C. Ile City, N. J. August 1889 Footnote. Since the death of the author, this poem has been put to music by the young American composer George Edwards. End of The Hurricane. Recording by Lucy Perry, in Bath, on February the 25th, 2009. Section 10 of Selected Works, Poems by Voltaireine De Clare This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Lucy Perry, Ut cementem fecheris itemetes, from Selected Works, Poems by Voltaireine De Clare To the Tsar, on a woman, a political prisoner, being flogged to death in Siberia. How many drops must gather to the skies before the cloud burst comes, we may not know. How hot the fires in under hell's must glow, ere the volcano's scalding labours rise, can non-say. But all what the hour is sure. Who dreams of vengeance hath but to endure. He may not say how many blows must fall, how many lives be broken on the wheel, how many corpses stiffened neath the pool, how many martyrs fix the blood-red seal. But certain is the harvest's time of hate. And when weak moans by an indignant world re-echoed to a throne of backward hurls, who listens, hears the mutterings of fate. Philadelphia, February 1890 End of Ut cementem fecheris itemetes, recording by Lucy Perry, in Bath, on February the 23rd 2009. Section 11 of Selected Works, Poems by Voltaireine De Clare This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Lucy Perry. Bastard Born, From Selected Works, Poems by Voltaireine De Clare Why do you clothe me with scarlet of shame? Why do you point with your finger of scorn? What is the crime that you hissingly name when you sneer in my ears, Thou Bastard Born? Am I not as the rest of you, with a hope to reach and a dream to live? With a soul to suffer, a heart to know the pangs that the thrusts of the heartless give? I am no monster. Look at me, straight in my eyes that they do not shrink. Is there ought in them you can see, to merit this hemlock you make me drink? This poison that scorches my soul like fire, that burns and burns until love is dry, and I shrivel with hate as hot as a pyre, a corpse while its smoke curls up to the sky. Will you touch my hand? It is flesh like yours, perhaps a little more brown and grime'd. For it could not be white while the drawers and hues my brothers were calloused and darkened and slimed. Yet touch it. It is no criminal's hand. No children are toiling to keep it fair. It is free from the curse of the stolen land. It is clean of the theft of the sea and air. It has set no seals to a murderous law to sign a bitter black league with death. No covenants false do these fingers draw, in the name of the state's debath of faith. It bears no stain of the yellow gold that earth's wretches give as the cost of heaven. No priestly garment of silk and fold I wear as the price of their sins forgiven. Still do you shrink, still I hear the hiss between your teeth, and I feel the scorn that flames in your gaze. Well, what is this, this crime I commit, being bastard-born? What, you whisper, my eyes are grey, the colour of hers up there on the hill, where the white stone gleams and the willow spray falls over her grave and the starlight still. My hands are shaped like those quiet hands, folded away from their life, their care, and the sheen that lies on my short, fair strands gleams darkly down on her buried hair. My voice is toned like that silent tone that might, if it could, break up through the sod, with such rebukers would shame your stones, stirring the grass-roots in their clod. And my heart beats thrilled to the same strong chords and the blood that was hers is mine to-day, and the thoughts she loved I love, and the words that meant most to her to me most say. She was my mother, I her child. Could ten thousand priests have made us more? Do you curse the bloom of the heather wild? Do you trample the flowers and cry impure? Do you shun the birdsong, silver-shower? Does their music arouse your curling scorn, that none but God bless them? The whitest flower, the purest song, were but bastard-born. This is my sin, I was born of her. This is my crime, that I reverence deep, God, that her pale corpse may not stir, Press closer down on her lids, the sleep. Would you have me hate her? Me who knew that the gentlest soul in the world looked there, out of the grey eyes that pitted you, Even while you cursed her, the long brown hair, That waved from her forehead has brushed my cheek, When her soft lips have drunk up my salt of grief, And the voice whose echo you hate would speak, The hush of pity and love's relief. And those still hands that have folded now Have touched my sorrows for years away. Would you have me question her wence and how the love-light streamed From her heart's deep ray? Do you question the sun that it gives its gold? Do you scowl at the cloud when it pours its rain, Till the fields that were withered and burnt and old Are fresh and tender and young again? Do you search the source of the breeze that sweeps the rush of fever From the tortured brain? Do you ask wence the perfume That round you creeps when your soul is wrought To the quick with pain? She was my sun, my dew, my air. The highest, the purest, the holiest place Was the shade of her beautiful hair. Love was all that I knew on her breast. Would you have me forget? Or, remembering, say, That her love had bloomed from hell? Then blessed be hell, And let heaven sing till day and louder must until it swell. And drink and roll to the utterest earth, That they're damned of free, Since out of sin came the whiteness The shamed all ransomed worth, Till God opened the gates, saying, Enter in. What, in the face of the witness I bear To her meagreless love and her purity? Still of your hate would you make me share, Despising that she gave life to me? You would have me stand at her helpless grave, To dig through its earth with a venom dart. This is honour and right and brave, To fling a stone at her pulseless heart. This is virtue? To blast the lips speechless Beneath the silent dread? To lash with slander's scorpion wings The voiceless, defenseless, helpless dead? God, I turn to an adder now. Back upon you, I hurl your scorn. Find the scarlet upon your brow. Ye it is who are bastard-born. Touch me not. These hands of mine despise your fairness. The leper's white, tanned and hardened And black with grime, They are clean beside your souls tonight. Basely-born, it is ye our base, Ye who would gird and holy trust With slavish law to attire and race, To sow the earth with the seed of lust. Base, by heaven, crate of peace, When your garments are red with a stain of wars, Reeling with passions mad release, By your sickly gaslight dam the stars. Blurred with wine ye behold to snow, Smurched with the foulness that blots within. What of purity can ye know, Ye tenfold children of hell and sin? Ye to judge her, ye to cast the stone of wrath From your house of glass. No ye the law that ye dare to blast The bell of gold with your clanging brass. No ye the harvest that reapers reap, Who drop in the furrow the seeds of scorn, Out of this anguish ye harrow deep, Ripens the sentence, ye bastard-born. I, sin begotten, hear the curse, Not mine, not hers, but the fatal law. Who bids one suffer shall suffer worse, Who scourges himself shall be scourged raw. For the thoughts ye think in the DG do move on and on till the flood is high, And the dread dam bursts and the waves roar through, Hurling a cataract dirge to the sky. Tonight ye adept to the beggar's prayer, Tomorrow the thieves shall batter your wall. Ye shall feel the weight of a staffed child's care, When your ward is under the mob's feetfall. Tis the roar of the whirlwind ye invoke, When ye scatter the wind of your brother's moans. Tis the red of your hate on your own head broke, When the blood of the murdered splatters the stones. Hark ye, out of the reeking slums, Thick with the petted stench of crime, Boiling up through the thickening scums, Bubbles that burst through the crimson wine. Voices burst with terrible sound, Crying the truth your dull souls never saw. We are your sentence, the wheel turns round, The bastard-spawn of your bastard-law. This is bastard that man should say How love shall love and how life shall live. Setting a tablet to groove God's way, Measuring how the divine shall give. O evil heart, ye have maddened me, That I should interpret the voice of God. Quiet, quiet, O angered sea, Quiet I go to her blessed sod. Mother, mother, I come to you, Down in your grass as I press my face. Under the kiss of their cold pure dew, I may dream that I lie in the dear old place. Mother, sweet mother, take me back, Into the bosom from whence I came. Take me away from the crawl-rack, Take me out of the parching flame. Fold me again with your beautiful hair, Speak to this terrible heaving sea. Over me pour the soothing prayer, The words of the love-child of Galilee. Peace, be still, Still I could but hear. Softly I listen, O fierce heart cease, Softly I breathe, not low in my ear. Mother, mother, I heard you, Peace. ENTERPRISE CANCES, JANUARY 1891 This hymn was written at the request of a Christian science friend who proposed to set it to music. It did not represent my beliefs either then or since, but rather what I wish might be my beliefs had a not and inexorable capacity for seeing things as they are, a vast scheme of mutual murder with no justice anywhere and no God in the soul or out of it. I am at peace. No storm can ever touch me. On my clear hides the sunshine only falls, Far, far below glides the phantom voice of sorrows. In the peace-lifted light the silence only calls. Ah, so ascent the mountain way, a pleading, Bills to the hide whereon the blessed have trod, Lay down the burden, stanch the heart's sad bleeding, Be ye at peace, for know that ye are God. Not long the way, not far in a dim heaven, In the locked self seek ye the guiding star. Clear shine its rays, Illuminating the shadow, There, there God is, there too, O souls ye are. Ye are at one and bound in him forever, Even as the wave is bound in the great sea, Never to drift beyond, below him never, Whole as God is, so even so are ye. You and I, in the seer-brown weather When clouds hang thick in the frowning sky, When rain-tears drip on the bloomless heather, On heating the storm-blast will walk together And look to each other. You and I. You and I, when the clouds are shriven, To show the cliff-broods of lightning's high, When over the ramparts swift, thunder-driven Rush the bolts of hate from a hell-lit heaven, Will smile at each other. You and I. You and I, when the bolts are falling, The hot air torn with the earth's wild cries, Will lean through the darkness where death is calling, Will search through the shadows where night is pawling, And find the light in each other's eyes. You and I, when black sheets of water drench And tear us and drown our breath Below this laughter of hell's own daughter, Above the smoke of the storm-girt slaughter, Will hear each other and gleam at death. You and I, in the gray night dying, When over the east land the dawn beams fly, Down in the groans in the low faint crying, Down where the thick blood is blackly lying, Will reach out our weak arms. You and I. You and I, in the cold white weather, When over our corpses the pale lights lie, Will rest at last from the dread endeavor, Press to each other, for parting never. Our dead lips together. You and I. You and I, when the years in flowing Have left us behind with all things that die, With the rot of our bones Shall give soil for growing the loves of the future, Made sweet for blowing, By the dew of the kiss of a last goodbye. End of U and I, Recording by Rhonda Federman And the gods are silent. We have trusted and been betrayed. We have loved, and the fruit was ashes. We have given, the gift was weighed. We know that the heavens are empty, That friendship and love are names, That truth is an ashen cinder, The end of life's burnt-out flames. Vainly and long have we waited, Through the night of the human roar, For a single song on the harp of hope, Or a ray from a day-lit shore. Songs, I, come floating, Marvelous sweet, And bow-died flashes gleam. But the sweets are lies, And the weary feet run after a marsh-light beam. In the hour of our need the song departs, And the seamones of sorrow swell. The siren mocks with a gurgling laugh That is drowned in the deep death knell. The light we chased with our stumbling feet As the goal of happier years Swings high and low and vanishes. The bow dies were of our tears. God is a lie, and faith is a lie, And a tenfold lie is love. Life is a problem without a why, And never a thing to prove. It adds and subtracts and multiplies And divides without aim or end. It's answers all false, though false named true, Wife, husband, lover, friend. We know it now, and we care no more. What matters life or death? We tiny insects emerge from earth, Suffer and yield our breath. Like ants we crawl on our brief sand-hill, Dreaming of mighty things. Low they crunch like shells In the ocean's wrath, In the rush of time's awful wings. The sun smiles gold, And the planets white, And a billion stars smile still. Yet fierce as we are, each wheels towards death, And cannot stay his will. Then build ye fools your mighty things, That time shall set at naught. Grow warm with this song the sweet lies sings, And the false bow your tears have wrought. For us a truce to God's loves and hopes, And a pledge to fire and wave, A swifter whirl to the dance of death, And a loud hazzah for the grave. End of The Toast of Despair, Recording by Rhonda Fetterman. Section 15 of Selected Works, Poems by Valterine DeClaire. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. In Memoriam to Dyer D. Lum, From Selected Works, Poems by Valterine DeClaire. Great, silent heart, These barren drops of grief are not for you, Attained unto your rest. This sterile salt upon the withered leaf of love Is mine. Mine the dark burial guest. Far, far within that deep, untroubled sea we watch together, Walking on the sands. Your soul has melted, Painless, silent, free. Mine, the rung heart. Mine, the clasped, useless hands into the world of life, Where none remember I bear your image ever un-forgot. The whipper will still, whaling in December, Cries the same cry, Cries, cries, and ceases not. The future years with all their waves Of faces roll shoreward, singing the great undertone. Yours is not there. In the old, well-loved places I look and pass, And watch the sea alone. Alone among the gleaming white seashore, The sea spumes spraying thick around my head. Thick around my head. Through all the beat of waves and wind that roar, I go, remembering that you are dead. That you are dead, And nowhere is there one like unto you, And nowhere love leaps death. And nowhere may the broken race be run. Nowhere unsealed, the seal that none gain saith. Yet in my ear that deep, sweet undertone Grows deeper, sweeter, solemner to me. Dreaming your dreams, watching the light that shone so whitely to you, Yonder, on the sea. Your voice is there, there in the great life's sound. Your eyes are there, out there, within the light. Your heart, within the pulsing, race-heart, drowned, beats in the immortality of right. Oh, life, I love you for the love of him, Who showed me all your glory and your pain. Untune, Irvana, so the deep tones sing. And there, and there, we shall be one again. End of Immemorium to Dire D. Lum. Recording by Rhonda Thetterman. Section 16 of Selected Works, Poems by Valterine DeClaire. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Out of the Darkness from Selected Works, Poems by Valterine DeClaire. Who am I? Only one of the commonest, common people. Only a worked-out body, a shriveled and withered soul. What right have I to sing, then? None, and I do not. I cannot. Why ruin the rhythm and rhyme of the great world's songs with moaning? I know not. Nor why whistles must shriek, wheels ceaselessly mutter. Nor why all I touch turns to clanging and clashing and discord. I know not. I know only this. I was born to this. Live in it hourly. Go round with it, hum with it, curse with it, would laugh with it, had it laughter. It is my breath, and that breath goes outward from me in moaning. Oh, you up there. I have heard you. I am God's image defaced. In heaven reward awaits me. Hereafter I shall be perfect. Ages, you've sung that song. But what is it to me, think you? If you heard down here in the smoke and the smut, in the smear and the awful, in the dust and the mire and the grime and in the slime, in the hideous darkness, how the wheels turn your song into sounds of horror and loathing and cursing. The offer of lust, the sneer of contempt and acceptance, thieves whispers, the laugh of the gambler, the suicides gasp, the yell of the drunkard. If you heard them down here, you would cry the reward of such as damnation. If you heard them, I say, your song of rewarded hereafter would fail. You, too, with your science, your titles, your books, and your long explanations, that tell me how I am to come up out of the dust of the cycles, out of the sands of the sea, out of the unknown primeval forests, out of the growth of the world have become the bud and the promise, out of the race of the beasts have arisen, proud and triumphant. You, if you knew how your words rumble round in the wheels of labor, if you knew how my hammering heart beats, liar, liar, you lie. Out of all buds of the earth we are most blasted and blighted. What beast of all the beasts is not prouder and freer than we? You, too, who sing in the high words of the glory of man universal, the beauty of sacrifice, debt of the future, the present immortal, the glory of use, absorption by death of the being in being. You, if you knew what jargon it makes down here would be quiet. Oh, is there no one to find or to speak a meaning to me, to me as I am, the hard, the ignorant, withered, sold worker, to me upon whom God and science alike have stamped failure, to me who know nothing but labor, nothing but sweat, dirt, and sorrow, to me whom you scorn and despise, you up there who sing while I moan, to me as I am, for me as I am, not dying, but living, not my future, my present, my body, my needs, my desires, is there no one in the midst of this rushing of phantoms, of gods, of science, of logic, a philosophy, morals, religion, economy, all this that helps not, all these ghosts at whose altars you worship, these ponderous, marvellous fictions, is there no one who thinks, is there nothing to help this dull moaning me and of out of the darkness? Recording by Rhonda Federman. Section 17 of Selected Works, Poems by Valterine DeClaire. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Mary Wollstonecraft from Selected Works, Poems by Valterine DeClaire. The dust of a hundred years is on thy breast, and thy day and thy night of tears are centering rest. Thou to whom joy was dumb, life a broken rhyme. Lo, thy smiling time is come, an hour weeping time. Thou who had sponge and myrrh and a bitter cross, smile, for the day is here that we know our loss. Loss of thine undone deed, thy unfinished song, the unspoken word for our need, the unrighted wrong. Smile, for we weep, we weep for the unsoothed pain, the unbound wound burn deep that we might gain. Mother of sorrowful eyes in the dead old days, mother of many sighs of pain-shod ways, mother of resolute feet through all of the thorns, mother soul strong, soul sweet. Lo, after storms have broken and beat thy dust for a hundred years, thy memory is made just, and the just man hears. Thy children kneel and repeat, though dust be dust, though sod and coffin and sheet and moth and rust have folded and molded and pressed, yet they cannot kill. In the heart of the world at rest, she liveth still. End of Mary Wollstonecraft, Recording by Rhonda Federman. What have you done, O skies, that the millions should kneel to you? Why should they lift wet eyes, grateful with human dew? Why should they clasp their hands and bow at thy shrines, O heaven, thanking thy high commands for the mercies that thou hast given? What have those mercies been, O thou who art called the good, who trod through a world of sin and stood where the felon stood? What is that wondrous peace vouchsafed to the child of dust, for whom all doubt shall cease in the light of thy perfect trust? How has thou heard their prayers, smoking up from the bleeding sod, who, crushed by their weight of cares, cried up to thee most high God? Where the swamps of humanity sicken, read the answer in dumb white scars. You, skies, gave the sore and the stricken the light of your far-off stars, the children who plead are driven shelterless through the street, receiving the mercy of heaven, hard-frozen in glittering sleet. The women who prayed for pity, who called on the saving name, through the walks of your merciless city, are crying the rent of shame. The starving, who gazed on the plenty in which they might not share, have died in their hunger, rent by the anguish of unheard prayer. The weary, who plead for remission for a moment only, release, have sunk with unheeded petition. This the Christ-pledged peace. These are the mercies of heaven. These are the answer of God to the prayers of the Agony Shrivan, from the paths where the millions plod. The silent scorn of the cyclous, the callous ear of the deaf, the wrath of might to the mightless, the shroud and the morning sheath. Light to behold their squalor, breath to draw in life's pain, voices to plead and call for heaven's help, hearts to bleed in vain. What have you done, O Church, that the weary should bless your name? Should come with faith's holy torch to light up your altered vain? Why should they kiss the folds of the garment of your high priest, or bow to the chalice that holds the wine of your sacred feast? Have you blown out the breath of their sighs? Have you strengthened the weak, the ill? Have you wiped the dark tears from their eyes, and bade their sobbing's be still? Have you touched? Have you known? Have you felt? Have you felt? Have you bent and softly smiled in the face of the woman who dwelt in lewdness to feed her child? Have you heard the cry in the night, going up from the outraged heart, masked from the social sight by the cloak that but angered the smart? Have you heard the children's moan by the light of the skies denied? Answer, O walls of stone, in the name of your crucified! Out of the clay of their heartbreak, from the red dew of its sod, you have mortared your brick for Christ's sake, and reared a palace to God. Your painters have dipped their brushes in the tears and the blood of the race, whom, living, your dark frown crushes, and limbed a dead Saviour's face. You have seized in the name of God the child's crust from famine's dole. You have taken the price of its body, and sung a mass for its soul. You have smiled on the man, who, deceiving, paid exemption to ease your wrath. You have cursed the poor fool who believed him, though her body lay prone in your path. You have laid the seal on the lip. You have bid us to be content, to bow neath our master's whip, and give thanks for the scourge heaven sent. These, O church, are your thanks. These are the fruits without flaw, that flow from the chosen ranks, who keep in your perfect law. Doors hard-locked on the homeless, stained glass windows for bread, on the living the law of dumbness, and the law of need, for the dead. Better the dead, who not need, than the dead, than the dead, or not needing, go down to the vaults of the earth, than the living whose hearts lie bleeding, crushed by you at their very birth. What have you done, O state, that the toilers should shout your ways, should light up the fires of their hate, if a traitor should dare dispraise? How do you guard the trust that the people repose in you? Do you keep to the law of the just, and hold to the changeless true? What do you mean when you say the home of the free and brave? How free are your people, pray? Have you no such thing as a slave? What are the lauded rites, broad-sealed by your sovereign grace? What are the love-feeding sights you yield to your subject race? The rites are the right to toil that another idol may reap, the right to make fruitful the soil and a meagre pittance to keep, the right of a woman to own her body spotlessly pure and starve in the street alone, the right of the wronged to endure, the right of the slave to his yoke, the right of the hungry to pray, the right of the toiler to vote for the master who buys his day. You have sold the sun and the air, you have dealt in the price of blood, you have taken the lion's share while the lion is fierce for food, you have laid the load of the strong on the helpless, the young, the weak, you have trod out the purple of wrong, beware where its wrath shall wreak. Let the voice of the people be heard, oh, you strangled it with your rope, denied the last dying word while your trap and your gallows spoke. But a thousand voices rise where the words of the martyr fell, the seed springs fast to the skies, watered deep from that bloody well. Hark, low down, you will hear the storm in the underground. Listen, tyrants, and fear, quake at that muffled sound. Heavens that mocked our dust, smile on in your pitiless blue, silent as you are to us, so silent are we to you. Churches that scourged our brains, priests that locked fast our hands, we planted the torch in your chains, now gather the burning brands. States that have given us law when we asked for the right to earn bread, the sword that Damocles saw by a hair swings over your head. What ye have sown ye shall reap, teardrops and blood and hate, gaunt gather before your seat and knock at your palace gate. There are murderers on your thrones, there are thieves in your justice halls, white leprosy cancers their stones and gnaws at their worm-eaten walls, and the hand of Belchazar's feast writes over in flaming light, thoughts kingdom no more to the priest, nor the law of right unto might, end of the gods and the people. Recording by Ruth Golding Section 19 of Selected Works, Poems by Valterine DeClaire. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. John P. Altguild from Selected Works, Poems by Valterine DeClaire. After an incarceration of six long years in Joliet State Prison for an act of which they were entirely innocent, namely the throwing of the Haymarket bomb in Chicago May 4th, 1886, Oscar Nieb, Michael Schwab, and Samuel Fieldon were liberated by Governor Altguild, who thus sacrificed his political career to an act of justice. There was a tableau. Liberty's clear light shone never on a braver scene than that. Here was a prison. There a man who sat high in the halls of state. Beyond the might of ignorance and mobs whose hireling press yells at their bidding like the slaver's hounds, ready with coarse caprice to curse or bless to make or unmake rulers. Low, there sounds a grating of the doors. And three poor men, helpless and hated, having not to give, come from their long sealed tomb. Look up and live, and thank this man that they are free again. And he, to all the world this man dares say, Curse as you will, I have been just this day. End of John P. Altguild, Recording by Rhonda Federman. The cry of the unfit from selected works, poems by Valtorine DeClaire. The gods have left us. The creeds have crumbled. There are none to pity and none to care. Our fellows have crushed us where we have stumbled. They have made of our bodies a bleeding stare. Loud rang the bells and the Christmas steeples. We heard them ring through the bitter morn. The promise of old to the weary peoples came floating sweetly. Christ is born. But the words were mocking, sorely mocking, as we sought the sky through our freezing tears. We children who've hung the Christmas stocking and found it empty two thousand years. No, there is not in the old creed for us. Love and peace are to those who win. To them the delight of the golden chorus. To us the hunger and shame and sin. Why then, Levon, since our lives are fruitless, since peace is certain and death is rest, since our masters tell us the strife is bootless and nature scorns her unwelcome guest. You who have climbed on our aching bodies, you who have thought because we have toiled, priests of the creed of a newer goddess, searchers in depths where the past was foiled, speak in the name of the faith that you cherish, give us the truth we have bought it with woe. Must we forever thus worthily perish, burned in the desert and lost in the snow, trampled, forsaken, fordoomed and forgotten, helplessly tossed like the leaf in the storm, bred for the shambles with curses begotten, useless to all save the rotting grave worm. Give us some anchor to stay our mad drifting, give for your own sakes for low where our blood a red tide to drown you is steadily lifting. Help or you die in the terrible flood. End of The Cry of the Unfit. Recording by Rhonda Federman. Please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Calinda. In Memoriam to General M. M. Trumbull. From Selected Works, Poems by Volta Rene DeClaire. No man better than General Trumbull defended my martyred comrades in Chicago. Back to thy breast, O mother, turns thy child. He whom thou garmentedst in steel of truth and sent forth strong in the glad heart of youth, to sing the wakening song in ears beguiled by tyrant's promises and flatterer's smiles. These searched his eyes and knew, nor threats nor wiles, might shake the steady stars within their blue, nor win one truckling word from off those lips. No, not for gold nor praise, nor ought men do to dash the sun of honor with eclipse. O mother Liberty, those eyes are dark, and the brave lips are white and cold and dumb. But fair in other souls, through time to come, fanned by the breath glows the immortal spark. Philadelphia, May 1894. End of In Memoriam to General M. M. Trumbull. Section 22 of Selected Works, Poems by Volta Rene DeClaire. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Wandering Jew from Selected Works, Poems by Volta Rene DeClaire. Go on. Thou shalt go on till I come. Pell ghostly vision from the coffin to years, planting thy cross with thy world-wandering feet, stern watcher through the century's storm and beat. In those sad eyes, between those grooves of tears, those eyes like caves where sunlight never dwells and stars but dimly shine, stand sentinels that watch with patient hope through weary days, that somewhere, sometime, he indeed may come, and thou at last find thee a resting place, blast-driven leaf of man within the tomb. I, they have cursed thee with the bitter curse, and driven thee with scourges or the world. Tyrants have crushed thee, ignorance has hurled its black anathema, but death's pale hearse, that bore them graveward, passed them silently, and vainly didst thou stretch thy hand and cry, take me instead. Not yet for thee the time, not yet, not yet. Thy bruised and mangled limbs must still drag on, still feed the vulture, crime with bleeding flesh, till rust its steel beak dims. I, till he come, he, freedom, justice, peace, till then shall thou cry warning through the earth, unheating pain, untouched by death and birth, proclaiming, whoa, whoa, whoa, till men shall cease to seek for Christ within the senseless skies, and joyous find him in each other's eyes. Then shall be builded such a tomb for thee, shall beggar kings, as diamonds outshine do. The universal heart of man shall be the sacred urn of the earth.