Part 16

When God had formed the Universe, He thought Of all the marvels therein to be wrought And to His aid then Motherhood was brought.

‘My lesser self, the feminine of Me, She will go forth throughout all time,’ quoth He, ‘And make My world what I would have it be.

‘For I am weary, having laboured so, And for a cycle of repose would go Into that silence which but God may know.

‘Therefore I leave the rounding of My plan To Motherhood; and that which I began Let woman finish in perfecting man.

‘She is the soil: the human Mother Earth: She is the sun, that calls the seed to earth. She is the gardener, who knows its worth.

‘From Me, all seed, of any kind must spring. Divine the growth such seed and soil will bring. For all is Me, and I am everything.’

Thus having spoken to Himself aloud, His glorious face upon His breast He bowed, And sought repose behind a wall of cloud.

Come forth, O God! though great Thy thought and good, In shaping woman for true Motherhood, Lord, speak again; she has not understood.

The centuries pass: the cycles roll along— The earth is peopled with a mighty throng, Yet men are fighting and the world goes wrong.

Lord, speak again, ere yet it be too late, Unloved, unwanted souls come through earth’s gate: The unborn child is given a dower of hate.

Thy world progresses in all ways save one. In Motherhood, for which it was begun, Lord, Lord, behold how little has been done!

Children are spawned like fishes in the sand. With ignorance and crime they fill the land. Lord, speak again, till mothers understand.

It is not all of Motherhood to know Conception pleasure or deliverance woe. Who plants the seed should help the shoot to grow.

Better a barren soil than weed and tare, Or sickly plants that die for want of care In poisonous jungles, void of sun and air.

True Motherhood is not alone to breed The human race; it is to know and heed Its holiest purpose and its highest need.

Lord, speak again, so woman shall be stirred With the full meaning of that mighty word True Motherhood. She has not rightly heard.

MY HEAVEN

Unhoused in deserts of accepted thought, And lost in jungles of confusing creeds, My soul strayed, homeless, finding its own needs Unsatisfied with what tradition taught.

The pros and cons, the little ifs and ands, The but and maybe, and the this and that, On which the churches thicken and grow fat, I found but structures built on shifting sands.

And all their heavens were strange and far away, And all their hells were made of human hate; And since for death I did not care to wait, A heaven I fashioned for myself one day.

Of happy thoughts I built it stone by stone, With joy of life I draped each spacious room, With love’s great light I drove away all gloom, And in the centre I made God a throne.

And this dear heaven I set within my heart, And carried it about with me alway, And then the changing dogmas of the day Seemed alien to my thoughts and held no part.

Now as I take my heaven from place to place I find new rooms by love’s revealing light, And death will give me but a larger sight To see my palace spreading into space.

LIFE

On a bleak, bald hill with a dull world under, The dreary world of the Commonplace, I have stood when the whole world seemed a blunder Of dotard Time, in an aimless race. With worry about me and want before me— Yet deep in my soul was a rapture spring That made me cry to the grey sky o’er me: ‘Oh, I know this life is a goodly thing!’

I have given sweet years to a thankless duty While cold and starving, though clothed and fed, For a young heart’s hunger for joy and beauty Is harder to bear than the need of bread. I have watched the wane of a sodden season, Which let hope wither, and made care thrive, And through it all, without earthly reason, I have thrilled with the glory of being alive.

And now I stand by the great sea’s splendour, Where love and beauty feed heart and eye. The brilliant light of the sun grows tender As it slants to the shore of the by and by. I prize each hour as a golden treasure— A pearl Time drops from a broken string: And all my ways are the ways of pleasure, And I know this life is a goodly thing.

And I know, too, that not in the seeing, Or having, or doing the things we would, Lies that deep rapture that comes from being At one with the Purpose which made all good. And not from Pleasure the heart may borrow That rare contentment for which we strive, Unless through trouble, and want, and sorrow It has thrilled with the glory of being alive.