Playing in the fire and twilight together,
My little son and I,
Suddenly--woefully--I stoop to catch him.
“Try, mother, try!”
Old Nurse Silence lifts a silent finger:
“Hush! cease your play!”
What happened? What in that tiny moment
Flew away?
The very acme of my woe,
The pivot of my pride,
My consolation, and my hope
Deferred, but not denied.
The substance of my every dream,
The riddle of my plight,
The very world epitomized
In turmoil and delight.
I wrote him a letter asking him for old times’ sake
To discharge my sick boy from the army;
But maybe he couldn’t read it.
Then I went to town and had James Garber,
Who wrote beautifully, write him a letter.
But maybe that was lost in the mails.
So I traveled all the way to Washington.
I was more than an hour finding the White House.
And when I found it they turned me away,
Hiding their smiles.
Then I thought: “Oh, well, he ain’t the same as when I boarded him
And he and my husband worked together
And all of us called him Abe, there in Menard.”
As a last attempt I turned to a guard and said:
“Please say it’s old Aunt Hannah Armstrong
From Illinois, come to see him about her sick boy
I was a peasant girl from Germany,
Blue-eyed, rosy, happy and strong.
And the first place I worked was at Thomas Greene’s.
On a summer’s day when she was away
He stole into the kitchen and took me
Right in his arms and kissed me on my throat,
I turning my head. Then neither of us
Seemed to know what happened.
And I cried for what would become of me.
And cried and cried as my secret began to show.
One day Mrs. Greene said she understood,
And would make no trouble for me,
And, being childless, would adopt it.
(He had given her a farm to be still.)
So she hid in the house and sent out rumors,
As if it were going to happen to her.
What have you given me for my strong sons?
O scion of kings!
In new veins the blood of old kings runs cold.
Your people thinking of old victories, lose the lust of conquest,
Your men guard what they have.
Your women nurse their silver pots.
Dead beauty mocks hot blood!
What shall these women conceive of their chill loves
But still more pots?
But I have conceived of you new men;
Boys brave from the breast,
Running and striving like no children of your House,
And with their brave new brains
Making new myth.
My people were without, while yours were kings.
They sang the song of exile in low places
This is what my lover said,
" I kissed your hat because it touched your head,
I kissed your shiny shoes, I'll kiss you all,
I love your house, I'll kiss your wall.
I wish that I could kiss that burning coal
Because it's in your fire, dear Soul! "
My little Son is my fond lover —
It seems no time ago since he was born.
I know he will be quick and happy to discover
The world of other women, and leave me forlorn!
Sometimes I think that I'll be scarcely human
If I can brook his chosen woman!
Poor son of strife —
Child of inequality and growth —
You will never learn; you have only to live.
You will never know the peace of order,
Routine will crush you.
Safe toil has always thought of time,
But you will work in utter concentration.
Fierce as fire.
You will find no steady excellence:
You will spend your life in a ditch, grubbing for grains of gold.
Remember, my dear son,
That gold is gold.
You will find no steady virtue:
You will live sometimes with holy ecstasy, sometimes with shoddy sin.
You will keep no constant faith,
But with an agony of faithful longing you will hate a lie.