The Old Road to Paradise/Women
WOMENFOLK
WOMEN
You fret and grieve and turn about To make this world and living out, With "This is so" and "That is so—" Ah, sirs, we learned it long ago!
If you should make an angel tell What Mary learned of Gabriel Yet could you know the flaming words That pierced her with the seven swords? And if some fiend-snake hissed you low All he told Eve where God's trees grow, Yet could you learn the thing she learned Who sobbing out of Eden turned?
We watched with smiling mother-eyes The while you stormed, and thought you wise, At God's great walls, as if you beat Like babes, with angry hands and feet; For God, who bound our feet and hands And laid us under your commands, Still left us silence, love, and pain, And dreams to hide and peace to gain. . . .
Why, when you search beyond a doubt The furthest star's last secret out, Some woman from her nook shall smile, Laying her needle down the while, "Dear, that old dream I told to you? You smiled . . . I thought you always knew!"
The thing we tell is no new thing, A wisdom born of suffering, That there is pain, and there is love, And God's great silence still above, And this is all—though you have hurled Your strength forever on the world. Quick, let us speak to you, ere yet Passed from our silence we forget, Like you, with crowds made deaf and blind, With dealing close to humankind: Be swift, for soon we too shall be With no more place for memory, Going unfettered as man goes And scarcely wounded more—who knows? And all our Vala-dreams shall lift Like Tyre-smoke and Atlantis-drift . . .······Listen, most dear, the while that we At once have speech and memory.