Click in the field, then press CTRL+C to copy the HTML code
Copy
<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=349921" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>A Castaway</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Poor little diary, with its simple thoughts,<br>its good resolves, its "Studied French an hour,"<br>"Read Modern History," "Trimmed up my grey hat,"<br>"Darned stockings," "Tatted," "Practised my new song,"<br>"Went to the daily service," "Took Bess soup,"<br>"Went out to tea." Poor simple diary!<br>and did I write it? Was I this good girl,<br>this budding colourless young rose of home?<br>did I so live content in such a life,<br>seeing no larger scope, nor asking it,<br>than this small constant round -- old clothes to mend,<br>new clothes to make, then go and say my prayers,<br>or carry soup, or take a little walk<br>and pick the ragged-robins in the hedge?<br>Then for ambition, (was there ever life<br>that could forego that?) to improve my mind<br>and know French better and sing harder songs;<br>for gaiety, to go, in my best white<br>well washed and starched and freshened with new bows,<br>and take tea out to meet the clergyman.<br>No wishes and no cares, almost no hopes,<br>only the young girl's hazed and golden dreams<br>that veil the Future from her. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">So long since:<br>and now it seems a jest to talk of me<br>as if I could be one with her, of me<br>who am ...... me. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And what is that? My looking-glass<br>answers it passably; a woman sure,<br>no fiend, no slimy thing out of the pools,<br>a woman with a ripe and smiling lip<br>that has no venom in its touch I think,<br>with a white brow on which there is no brand;<br>a woman none dare call not beautiful,<br>not womanly in every woman's grace.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Aye let me feed upon my beauty thus,<br>be glad in it like painters when they see<br>at last the face they dreamed but could not find<br>look from their canvass on them, triumph in it,<br>the dearest thing I have. Why, 'tis my all,<br>let me make much of it: is it not this,<br>this beauty, my own curse at once and tool<br>to snare men's souls -- (I know what the good say<br>of beauty in such creatures) -- is it not this<br>that makes me feel myself a woman still,<br>some little pride, some little -- </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Here's a jest!<br>what word will fit the sense but modesty?<br>A wanton I but modest! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Modest, true;<br>I'm not drunk in the streets, ply not for hire<br>at infamous corners with my likenesses<br>of the humbler kind; yes, modesty's my word -- <br>'twould shape my mouth well too, I think I'll try:<br>"Sir, Mr What-you-will, Lord Who-knows-what,<br>my present lover or my next to come,<br>value me at my worth, fill your purse full,<br>for I am modest; yes, and honour me<br>as though your schoolgirl sister or your wife<br>could let her skirts brush mine or talk of me;<br>for I am modest." </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Well, I flout myself:<br>but yet, but yet -- </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Fie, poor fantastic fool,<br>why do I play the hypocrite alone,<br>who am no hypocrite with others by?<br>where should be my "But yet"? I am that thing<br>called half a dozen dainty names, and none<br>dainty enough to serve the turn and hide<br>the one coarse English worst that lurks beneath:<br>just that, no worse, no better. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And, for me,<br>I say let no one be above her trade;<br>I own my kindredship with any drab<br>who sells herself as I, although she crouch<br>in fetid garrets and I have a home<br>all velvet and marqueterie and pastilles,<br>although she hide her skeleton in rags<br>and I set fashions and wear cobweb lace:<br>the difference lies but in my choicer ware,<br>that I sell beauty and she ugliness;<br>our traffic's one -- I'm no sweet slaver-tongue<br>to gloze upon it and explain myself<br>a sort of fractious angel misconceived -- <br>our traffic's one: I own it. And what then?<br>I know of worse that are called honourable.<br>Our lawyers, who, with noble eloquence<br>and virtuous outbursts, lie to hang a man,<br>or lie to save him, which way goes the fee:<br>our preachers, gloating on your future hell<br>for not believing what they doubt themselves:<br>our doctors, who sort poisons out by chance,<br>and wonder how they'll answer, and grow rich:<br>our journalists, whose business is to fib<br>and juggle truths and falsehoods to and fro:<br>our tradesmen, who must keep unspotted names<br>and cheat the least like stealing that they can:<br>our -- all of them, the virtuous worthy men<br>who feed on the world's follies, vices, wants,<br>and do their businesses of lies and shams<br>honestly, reputably, while the world<br>claps hands and cries "good luck," which of their trades,<br>their honourable trades, barefaced like mine,<br>all secrets brazened out, would shew more white? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And whom do I hurt more than they? as much?<br>The wives? Poor fools, what do I take from them<br>worth crying for or keeping? If they knew<br>what their fine husbands look like seen by eyes<br>that may perceive there are more men than one!<br>But, if they can, let them just take the pains<br>to keep them: 'tis not such a mighty task<br>to pin an idiot to your apron-string;<br>and wives have an advantage over us,<br>(the good and blind ones have), the smile or pout<br>leaves them no secret nausea at odd times.<br>Oh they could keep their husbands if they cared,<br>but 'tis an easier life to let them go,<br>and whimper at it for morality.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Oh! those shrill carping virtues, safely housed<br>from reach of even a smile that should put red<br>on a decorous cheek, who rail at us<br>with such a spiteful scorn and rancourousness,<br>(which maybe is half envy at the heart),<br>and boast themselves so measurelessly good<br>and us so measurelessly unlike them,<br>what is their wondrous merit that they stay<br>in comfortable homes whence not a soul<br>has ever thought of tempting them, and wear<br>no kisses but a husband's upon lips<br>there is no other man desires to kiss -- <br>refrain in fact from sin impossible?<br>How dare they hate us so? what have they done,<br>what borne, to prove them other than we are?<br>What right have they to scorn us -- glass-case saints,<br>Dianas under lock and key -- what right<br>more than the well-fed helpless barn-door fowl<br>to scorn the larcenous wild-birds? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Pshaw, let be!<br>Scorn or no scorn, what matter for their scorn?<br>I have outfaced my own -- that's harder work.<br>Aye let their virtuous malice dribble on -- <br>mock snowstorms on the stage -- I'm proof long since:<br>I have looked coolly on my what and why,<br>and I accept myself. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Oh I'll endorse<br>the shamefullest revilings mouthed at me,<br>cry "True! Oh perfect picture! Yes, that's I!"<br>and add a telling blackness here and there,<br>and then dare swear you, every nine of ten,<br>my judges and accusers, I'd not change<br>my conscience against yours, you who tread out<br>your devil's pilgrimage along the roads<br>that take in church and chapel, and arrange<br>a roundabout and decent way to hell. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Well, mine's a short way and a merry one:<br>so says my pious hash of ohs and ahs,<br>choice texts and choicer threats, appropriate names,<br>(Rahabs and Jezebels), some fierce Tartuffe<br>hurled at me through the post. We had rare fun<br>over that tract digested with champagne.<br>Where is it? where's my rich repertory<br>of insults biblical? 'I prey on souls' -- <br>only my men have oftenest none I think:<br>'I snare the simple ones' -- but in these days<br>there seem to be none simple and none snared,<br>and most men have their favourite sinnings planned<br>to do them civilly and sensibly:<br>'I braid my hair' -- but braids are out of date:<br>'I paint my cheeks' -- I always wear them pale:<br>'I -- ' </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Pshaw! the trash is savourless to-day:<br>one cannot laugh alone. There, let it burn.<br>What, does the windy dullard think one needs<br>his wisdom dove-tailed on to Solomon's,<br>his threats out-threatening God's, to teach the news<br>that those who need not sin have safer souls?<br>We know it, but we've bodies to save too;<br>and so we earn our living. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Well lit, tract!<br>at least you've made me a good leaping blaze.<br>Up, up, how the flame shoots! and now 'tis dead.<br>Oh proper finish, preaching to the last -- <br>no such bad omen either; sudden end,<br>and no sad withering horrible old age.<br>How one would clutch at youth to hold it tight!<br>and then to know it gone, to see it gone,<br>be taught its absence by harsh, careless looks,<br>to live forgotten, solitary, old -- <br>the cruellest word that ever woman learns.<br>Old -- that's to be nothing, or to be at best<br>a blurred memorial that in better days<br>there was a woman once with such a name.<br>No, no, I could not bear it: death itself<br>shews kinder promise ...... even death itself,<br>since it must come one day -- </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Oh this grey gloom!<br>This rain, rain, rain, what wretched thoughts it brings!<br>Death: I'll not think of it. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Will no one come?<br>'Tis dreary work alone. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Why did I read<br>that silly diary? Now, sing song, ding dong,<br>come the old vexing echoes back again,<br>church bells and nursery good-books, back again<br>upon my shrinking ears that had forgotten -- <br>I hate the useless memories: 'tis fools' work<br>singing the hacknied dirge of 'better days:'<br>best take Now kindly, give the past good-bye,<br>whether it were a better or a worse. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yes, yes, I listened to the echoes once,<br>the echoes and the thoughts from the old days.<br>The worse for me: I lost my richest friend,<br>and that was all the difference. For the world<br>would not have that flight known. How they'd roar:<br>"What! Eulalie, when she refused us all,<br>'ill' and 'away,' was doing Magdalene,<br>tears, ashes, and her Bible, and then off<br>hide her in a Refuge ... for a week!"</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A wild whim that, to fancy I could change<br>my new self for my old, because I wished!<br>since then, when in my languid days there comes<br>that craving, like homesickness, to go back<br>to the good days, the dear old stupid days,<br>to the quiet and the innocence, I know<br>'tis a sick fancy and try palliatives.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What is it? You go back to the old home,<br>and 'tis not your home, has no place for you,<br>and, if it had, you could not fit you in it.<br>And could I fit me to my former self?<br>If I had had the wit, like some of us,<br>to sow my wild-oats into three per cents,<br>could I not find me shelter in the peace<br>of some far nook where none of them would come,<br>nor whisper travel from this scurrilous world,<br>that gloats and moralizes through its leers,<br>to blast me with my fashionable shame?<br>There I might -- oh my castle in the clouds!<br>and where's its rent? -- but there, were there a there,<br>I might again live the grave blameless life<br>among such simple pleasures, simple cares:<br>but could they be my pleasures, be my cares?<br>The blameless life, but never the content -- <br>never. How could I henceforth be content<br>in any life but one that sets the brain<br>in a hot merry fever with its stir?<br>what would there be in quiet rustic days,<br>each like the other, full of time to think,<br>to keep one bold enough to live at all?<br>Quiet is hell, I say -- as if a woman<br>could bear to sit alone, quiet all day,<br>and loathe herself, and sicken on her thoughts.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They tried it at the Refuge, and I failed:<br>I could not bear it. Dreary hideous room,<br>coarse pittance, prison rules, one might bear these<br>and keep one's purpose; but so much alone,<br>and then made faint and weak and fanciful<br>by change from pampering to half-famishing -- <br>good God, what thoughts come! Only one week more<br>and 'twould have ended: but in one day more<br>I must have killed myself. And I loathe death,<br>the dreadful foul corruption, with who knows<br>what future after it.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Well, I came back,<br>Back to my slough. Who says I had my choice?<br>Could I stay there to die of some mad death?<br>and if I rambled out into the world,<br>sinless but penniless, what else were that<br>but slower death, slow pining shivering death<br>by misery and hunger? Choice! what choice<br>of living well or ill? could I have that?<br>and who would give it me? I think indeed<br>some kind hand, a woman's -- I hate men -- <br>had stretched itself to help me to firm ground,<br>taken a chance and risked my falling back,<br>could have gone my way not falling back:<br>but, let her be all brave, all charitable,<br>how could she do it? Such a trifling boon,<br>little work to live by, 'tis not much,<br>and I might have found will enough to last:<br>but where's the work? More sempstresses than shirts;<br>and defter hands at white work than are mine<br>drop starved at last: dressmakers, milliners,<br>too many too they say; and then their trades<br>need skill, apprenticeship. And who so bold<br>as hire me for their humblest drudgery?<br>not even for scullery slut; not even, I think,<br>for governess, although they'd get me cheap.<br>And after all it would be something hard,<br>with the marts for decent women overfull,<br>if I could elbow in and snatch a chance<br>and oust some good girl so, who then perforce<br>must come and snatch her chance among our crowd.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Why, if the worthy men who think all's done<br>if we'll but come where we can hear them preach,<br>could bring us all, or any half of us,<br>into their fold, teach all us wandering sheep,<br>or only half of us, to stand in rows<br>and baa them hymns and moral songs, good lack,<br>what would they do with us? what could they do?<br>Just think! with were't but half of us on hand<br>to find work for ... or husbands. Would they try<br>to ship us to the colonies for wives?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Well, well; I know the wise ones talk and talk:<br>"Here's cause, here's cure:" "No, here it is and here:"<br>and find society to blame, or law,<br>the Church, the men, the women, too few schools,<br>too many schools, too much, too little taught:<br>somewhere or somehow someone is to blame:<br>but I say all the fault's with God himself<br>who puts too many women in the world.<br>We ought to die off reasonably and leave<br>as many as the men want, none to waste.<br>Here's cause; the woman's superfluity:<br>and for the cure, why, if it were the law,<br>say, every year, in due percentages,<br>balancing them with men as the times need,<br>to kill off female infants, 'twould make room;<br>and some of us would not have lost too much,<br>losing life ere we know what it can mean.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The other day I saw a woman weep<br>beside her dead child's bed: the little thing<br>lay smiling, and the mother wailed half mad,<br>shrieking to God to give it back again.<br>I could have laughed aloud: the little girl<br>living had but her mother's life to live;<br>there she lay smiling, and her mother wept<br>to know her gone!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">My mother would have wept.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Oh mother, mother, did you ever dream,<br>you good grave simple mother, you pure soul<br>no evil could come nigh, did you once dream<br>in all your dying cares for your lone girl<br>left to fight out her fortune all alone<br>that there would be this danger? -- for your girl,<br>taught by you, lapped in a sweet ignorance,<br>scarcely more wise of what things sin could be<br>than some young child a summer six months old<br>where in the north the summer makes a day,<br>of what is darkness ... darkness that will come<br>to-morrow suddenly. Thank God at least<br>for this much of my life, that when you died,<br>that when you kissed me dying, not a thought<br>of this made sorrow for you, that I too<br>was pure of even fear. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Oh yes, I thought,<br>still new in my insipid treadmill life,<br>(my father so late dead), and hopeful still<br>here might be something pleasant somewhere in it,<br>some sudden fairy come, no doubt, to turn<br>any pumpkin to a chariot, I thought then<br>that I might plod, and plod, and drum the sounds<br>of useless facts into unwilling ears,<br>tease children with dull questions half the day,<br>then con dull answers in my room at night<br>ready for next day's questions, mend quill pens<br>and cut my fingers, add up sums done wrong<br>and never get them right; teach, teach, and teach -- <br>what I half knew, or not at all -- teach, teach<br>for years, a lifetime -- I! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And yet, who knows?<br>it might have been, for I was patient once,<br>and willing, and meant well; it might have been<br>had I but still clung on in my first place -- <br>a safe dull place, where mostly there were smiles<br>but never merry-makings; where all days<br>jogged on sedately busy, with no haste;<br>where all seemed measured out, but margins broad:<br>a dull home but a peaceful, where I felt<br>my pupils would be dear young sisters soon,<br>and felt their mother take me to her heart,<br>motherly to all lonely harmless things.<br>But I must have a conscience, must blurt out<br>my great discovery of my ignorance!<br>And who required it of me? And who gained?<br>What did it matter for a more or less<br>the girls learnt in their schoolbooks, to forget<br>in their first season? We did well together:<br>they loved me and I them: but I went off<br>to housemaid's pay, six crossgrained brats to teach,<br>wrangles and jangles, doubts, disgrace ... then this;<br>and they had a perfection found for them,<br>who has all ladies' learning in her head<br>abridged and scheduled, speaks five languages,<br>knows botany and conchology and globes,<br>draws, paints, plays, sings, embroiders, teaches all<br>on a patent method never known to fail:<br>and now they're finished and, I hear, poor things,<br>are the worst dancers and worst dressers out.<br>And where's their profit of those prison years<br>all gone to make them wise in lesson books?<br>who wants his wife to know weeds' Latin names?<br>who ever chose a girl for saying dates?<br>or asked if she had learned to trace a map? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Well, well, the silly rules this silly world<br>makes about women! This is one of them.<br>Why must there be pretence of teaching them<br>what no one ever cares that they should know,<br>what, grown out of the schoolroom, they cast off<br>like the schoolroom pinafore, no better fit<br>for any use of real grown-up life,<br>for any use to her who seeks or waits<br>the husband and the home, for any use,<br>for any shallowest pretence of use,<br>to her who has them? Do I not know this,<br>I like my betters, that a woman's life,<br>her natural life, her good life, her one life,<br>is in her husband, God on earth to her,<br>and what she knows and what she can and is<br>is only good as it brings good to him?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Oh God, do I not know it? I the thing<br>of shame and rottenness, the animal<br>that feed men's lusts and prey on them, I, I,<br>who should not dare to take the name of wife<br>on my polluted lips, who in the word<br>hear but my own reviling, I know that.<br>I could have lived by that rule, how content:<br>my pleasure to make him some pleasure, pride<br>to be as he would have me, duty, care,<br>to fit all to his taste, rule my small sphere<br>to his intention; then to lean on him,<br>be guided, tutored, loved -- no not that word,<br>that loved which between men and women means<br>all selfishness, all putrid talk, all lust,<br>all vanity, all idiocy -- not loved<br>but cared for. I've been loved myself, I think,<br>some once or twice since my poor mother died,<br>but cared for, never: -- that a word for homes,<br>kind homes, good homes, where simple children come<br>and ask their mother is this right or wrong,<br>because they know she's perfect, cannot err;<br>their father told them so, and he knows all,<br>being so wise and good and wonderful,<br>even enough to scold even her at times<br>and tell her everything she does not know.<br>Ah the sweet nursery logic! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Fool! thrice fool!<br>do I hanker after that too? Fancy me<br>infallible nursery saint, live code of law!<br>me preaching! teaching innocence to be good!<br>a mother! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet the baby thing that woke<br>and wailed an hour or two, and then was dead,<br>was mine, and had he lived ...... why then my name<br>would have been mother. But 'twas well he died:<br>I could have been no mother, I, lost then<br>beyond his saving. Had he come before<br>and lived, come to me in the doubtful days<br>when shame and boldness had not grown one sense,<br>for his sake, with the courage come of him,<br>I might have struggled back. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But how? But how?<br>His father would not then have let me go:<br>his time had not yet come to make an end<br>of my 'for ever' with a hireling's fee<br>and civil light dismissal. None but him<br>to claim a bit of bread of if I went,<br>child or no child: would he have given it me?<br>He! no; he had not done with me. No help,<br>no help, no help. Some ways can be trodden back,<br>but never our way, we who one wild day<br>have given goodbye to what in our deep hearts<br>the lowest woman still holds best in life,<br>good name -- good name though given by the world<br>that mouths and garbles with its decent prate,<br>and wraps it in respectable grave shams,<br>and patches conscience partly by the rule<br>of what one's neighbour thinks but something more<br>by what his eyes are sharp enough to see.<br>How I could scorn it with its Pharisees,<br>if it could not scorn me: but yet, but yet -- <br>oh God, if I could look it in the face! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Oh I am wild, am ill, I think, to night:<br>will no one come and laugh with me? No feast,<br>no merriment to-night. So long alone!<br>Will no one come? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">At least there's a new dress<br>to try, and grumble at -- they never fit<br>to one's ideal. Yes, a new rich dress,<br>with lace like this too, that's a soothing balm<br>for any fretting woman, cannot fail,<br>I've heard men say it ... and they know so well<br>what's in all women's hearts, especially<br>women like me. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">No help! no help! no help!<br>How could it be? It was too late long since -- <br>even at the first too late. Whose blame is that?<br>there are some kindly people in the world,<br>but what can they do? If one hurls oneself<br>into a quicksand, what can be the end,<br>but that one sinks and sinks? Cry out for help?<br>Ah yes, and, if it came, who is so strong<br>to strain from the firm ground and lift one out?<br>And how, so firmly clutching the stretched hand,<br>as death's pursuing terror bids, even so,<br>how can one reach firm land, having to foot<br>the treacherous crumbling soil that slides and gives<br>and sucks one in again? Impossible path!<br>No, why waste struggles, I or any one?<br>what is must be. What then? I, where I am,<br>sinking and sinking; let the wise pass by<br>and keep their wisdom for an apter use,<br>let me sink merrily as I best may.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Only, I think, my brother -- I forgot<br>he stopped his brotherhood some years ago -- <br>but if he had been just so much less good<br>as to remember mercy. Did he think<br>how once I was his sister, prizing him<br>as sisters do, content to learn for him<br>the lesson girls with brothers all must learn,<br>to do without? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">I have heard girls lament<br>that doing so without all things one would,<br>but I saw never aught to murmur at,<br>for men must be made ready for their work,<br>and women all have more or less their chance<br>of husbands to work for them, keep them safe<br>like summer roses in soft greenhouse air<br>that never guess 'tis winter out of doors:<br>no, I saw never aught to murmur at,<br>content with stinted fare and shabby clothes<br>and cloistered silent life to save expense,<br>teaching myself out of my borrowed books,<br>while he for some one pastime, (needful true<br>to keep him of his rank, 'twas not his fault),<br>spent in a month what could have given me<br>my teachers for a year. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Twas no one's fault:<br>for could he be launched forth on the rude sea<br>of this contentious world and left to find<br>oars and the boatman's skill by some good chance?<br>'Twas no one's fault: yet still he might have thought<br>of our so different youths, and owned at least<br>'tis pitiful when a mere nerveless girl,<br>untutored, must put forth upon that sea,<br>not in the woman's true place, the wife's place,<br>to trust a husband and be borne along,<br>but impotent blind pilot to herself.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Merciless, merciless -- like the prudent world<br>that will not have the flawed soul prank itself<br>with a hoped second virtue, will not have<br>the woman fallen once lift up herself ......<br>lest she should fall again. Oh how his taunts,<br>his loathing fierce reproaches, scarred and seared,<br>like branding iron hissing in a wound!<br>And it was true -- that killed me: and I felt<br>a hideous hopeless shame kill out my heart,<br>and knew myself for ever that he said,<br>that which I was -- Oh it was true, true, true.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">No, not true then. I was not all that then.<br>Oh, I have drifted on before mad winds<br>6 and made ignoble shipwreck, not to-day<br>could any breeze of heaven prosper me<br>into the track again, nor any hand<br>snatch me out of the whirlpool I have reached;<br>but then? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Nay he judged very well: he knew<br>repentance was too dear a luxury<br>for a beggar's buying, knew it earns no bread -- <br>and knew me a too base and nerveless thing<br>to bear my first fault's sequel and just die.<br>And how could he have helped me? Held my hand,<br>owned me for his, fronted the angry world<br>clothed with my ignominy? Or maybe<br>taken me to his home to damn him worse?<br>What did I look for? for what less would serve<br>that he could do, a man without a purse?<br>He meant me well, he sent me that five pounds,<br>much to him then; and, if he bade me work<br>and never vex him more with news of me,<br>we both knew him too poor for pensioners.<br>I see he did his best; I could wish now<br>sending it back I had professed some thanks. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But there! I was too wretched to be meek:<br>it seemed to me as if he, every one,<br>the whole great world, were guilty of my guilt,<br>abettors and avengers: in my heart<br>I gibed them back their gibings; I was wild. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">I see clear now and know one has one's life<br>in hand at first to spend or spare or give<br>like any other coin; spend it or give<br>or drop it in the mire, can the world see<br>you get your value for it, or bar back<br>the hurrying of its marts to grope it up<br>and give it back to you for better use?<br>And if you spend or give that is your choice;<br>and if you let it slip that's your choice too,<br>you should have held it firmer. Yours the blame,<br>and not another's, not the indifferent world's<br>which goes on steadily, statistically,<br>and count by censuses not separate souls -- <br>and if it somehow needs to its worst use<br>so many lives of women, useless else,<br>it buys us of ourselves, we could hold back,<br>free all of us to starve, and some of us,<br>(those who have done no ill and are in luck),<br>to slave their lives out and have food and clothes<br>until they grow unserviceably old. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Oh I blame no one -- scarcely even myself.<br>It was to be: the very good in me<br>has always turned to hurt; all I thought right<br>at the hot moment, judged of afterwards,<br>shows reckless. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Why, look at it, had I taken<br>the pay my dead child's father offered me<br>for having been its mother, I could then<br>have kept life in me, (many have to do it,<br>that swarm in the back alleys, on no more,<br>cold sometimes, mostly hungry, but they live);<br>I could have gained a respite trying it,<br>and maybe found at last some humble work<br>to eke the pittance out. Not I, forsooth,<br>I must have spirit, must have womanly pride,<br>must dash back his contemptuous wages, I,<br>who had not scorned to earn them, dash them back<br>the fiercer that he dared to count our boy<br>in my appraising: and yet now I think<br>I might have taken it for my dead boy's sake;<br>it would have been his gift. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But I went forth<br>with my fine scorn, and whither did it lead?<br>Money's the root of evil do they say?<br>money is virtue, strength: money to me<br>would then have been repentance: could I live<br>upon my idiot's pride? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Well, it fell soon.<br>I had prayed Edward might believe me dead,<br>and yet I begged of him -- That's like me too,<br>beg of him and then send him back his alms!<br>What if he gave as to a whining wretch<br>that holds her hand and lies? I am less to him<br>than such a one; her rags do him no wrong,<br>but I, I, wrong him merely that I live,<br>being his sister. Could I not at least<br>have still let him forget me? But 'tis past:<br>and naturally he may hope I am long dead. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Good God! to think that we were what we were<br>one to the other ... and now! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">He has done well;<br>married a sort of heiress, I have heard,<br>a dapper little madam, dimple cheeked<br>and dimple brained, who makes him a good wife -- <br>No doubt she'd never own but just to him,<br>and in a whisper, she can even suspect<br>that we exist, we other women things:<br>what would she say if she could learn one day<br>she has a sister-in-law! So he and I<br>must stand apart till doomsday. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But the jest,<br>to think how she would look! -- Her fright, poor thing!<br>The notion! -- I could laugh outright ...... or else,<br>for I feel near it, roll on the ground and sob. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Well, after all, there's not much difference<br>between the two sometimes. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Was that the bell?<br>Some one at last, thank goodness. There's a voice,<br>and that's a pleasure. Whose though? Ah I know.<br>Why did she come alone, the cackling goose?<br>why not have brought her sister? -- she tells more<br>and titters less. No matter; half a loaf<br>is better than no bread. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Oh, is it you?<br>Most welcome, dear: one gets so moped alone.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Augusta+Davies+Webster">Augusta Davies Webster</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=349921" data-title="A Castaway de Augusta Davies Webster" data-description="Poor little diary, with its simple thoughts, its good resolves, its "Studied French an hour," "Read Modern History," "Trimmed up my grey hat," "Darned stockings," "Tatted," "Practised my new s..."></div> </div> </div>
solid border
dashed border
dotted border
double border
groove border
ridge border
inset border
outset border
no border
blue
green
red
purple
cyan
gold
silver
black