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Augusta Davies Webster - Tired
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No not to-night, dear child; I cannot go; 
I`m busy, tired; they knew I should not come; 
you do not need me there. Dear, be content, 
and take your pleasure; you shall tell me of it. 
There, go to don your miracles of gauze, 
and come and show yourself a great pink cloud. 

So, she has gone with half a discontent; 
but it will die before her curls are shaped, 
and she`ll go forth intent on being pleased, 
and take her ponderous pastime like the rest— 
patient delightedly, prepared to talk 
in the right voice for the right length of time 
on any thing that anybody names, 
prepared to listen with the proper calm 
to any song that anybody sings; 
wedged in their chairs, all soberness and smiles, 
one steady sunshine like an August day: 
a band of very placid revellers, 
glad to be there but gladder still to go. 
She like the rest: it seems so strange to me, 
my simple peasant girl, my nature`s grace, 
one with the others; my wood violet 
stuck in a formal rose box at a show. 

Well, since it makes her happier. True I thought 
the artless girl, come from her cottage home 
knowing no world beyond her village streets, 
come stranger into our elaborate life 
with such a blithe and wondering ignorance 
as a young child`s who sees new things all day, 
would learn it my way and would turn to me 
out of the solemn follies "What are these? 
why must we live by drill and laugh by drill; 
may we not be ourselves then, you and I?" 
I thought she would have nestled here by me 
"I cannot feign, and let me stay with you." 
I thought she would have shed about my life 
the unalloyed sweet freshness of the fields 
pure from your cloying fashionable musks: 
but she "will do what other ladies do"— 
my sunburnt Madge I saw, with skirts pinned up, 
carrying her father`s dinner where he sat 
to take his noon-day rest beneath the hedge, 
and followed slowly for her clear loud song. 

And she did then, she says, as others did 
who were her like. `Tis logical enough: 
as every woman lives, (tush! as we all, 
following such granted patterns for our souls 
as for our hats and coats), she lived by rules 
how to be as her neighbours, though I, trained 
to my own different code, discerned it not 
(mistaking other laws for lawlessness, 
like raw and hasty travellers): and now 
why should she, in a new world, all unapt 
to judge its judgments, take so much on her 
she did not in her old world, pick and choose 
her pleasures and her tastes, her aims, her faiths, 
breaking her smooth path with the thorny points 
of upstart questions? She is just a bird 
born in a wicker cage and brought away 
into a gilded one: she does not pine 
to make her nest in uncontrolled far woods, 
but, unconceiving freedom, chirrups on, 
content to see her prison bars so bright. 

Yes, best for her; and, if not best for me, 
I`ve my fault in it too: she`s logical, 
but what am I, who, having chosen her 
for being all unlike the tutored type, 
next try and mould her to it—chose indeed 
my violet for being not a rose, 
then bade it hold itself as roses do, 
that passers by may note no difference? 
The peasant ways must go, the homely burr, 
the quaint strong English—ancient classic turns 
mixed up with rustic blunders and misuse, 
old grammar shot with daring grammarlessness; 
the village belle`s quick pertness, toss of head, 
and shriek of saucy laughter—graces there, 
and which a certain reckless gracefulness, 
half hoydenish, half fawnlike, made in her 
graces in even my eyes… there; the ease 
of quick companionship; the unsoftened "no`s;" 
the ready quarrels, ready makings up; 
all these must go, I would not have her mocked 
among the other women who have learned 
sweet level speech and quiet courtesies— 
and then they jarred upon me like the noise 
of music out of rule, which, heard at first, 
took the fresh ear with novel melody, 
but makes you restless, listened to too long, 
with missing looked for rhythms. So I teach, 
or let her learn, the way to speak, to look, 
to walk, to sit, to dance, to sing, to laugh, 
and then…… the prized dissimilarity 
was outer husk and not essential core: 
my wife is just the wife my any friend 
selects among my any friend`s good girls, 
(a duplicate except that here and there 
the rendering`s faulty or touched in too strong); 
my little rugged bit of gold I mined, 
cleared from its quartz and dross and pieced for use 
with recognized alloy, is minted down 
one of a million stamped and current coins. 

My poor dear Madge, it half seems treasonous 
to let regret touch any thought of you, 
loyal and loving to me as you are; 
and you are very very dear to me, 
I could not spare you, would not change your love 
to have the rich ideal of my hope 
in any other woman; as you are 
I love you, being you. And for the rest, 
if I, my theory`s too eager fool, 
mistook the freedom of blunt ignorance 
for one with freedom of the instructed will, 
and took yours for a nature made to keep 
its hardiness in culture, gaining strength 
to be itself more fully; if I looked 
for some rare perfectness of natural gifts, 
developing not changed, pruned and not dwarfed; 
if I believed you would be that to me 
so many men have sung by women`s names 
and known no woman for, where is your fault, 
who did but give yourself as you were then, 
and with so true a giving? Violet, 
whose is the blame if, rooted from your place, 
where you grew truly to your natural law, 
set by my hand in artificial soil, 
bound to unwonted props, whose blame if you 
are not quite violet and not quite rose? 

She`s happy though, I think: she does not bear 
the pain of my mistake, and shall not bear; 
and she`ll not ever guess of a mistake. 

Mistake—`tis a hard word. Well let it pass: 
it shall not wrong her: for was it in her 
or in myself I was mistaken most? 
What, I, who have been bold to hurl revolt 
at great Queen Bugaboo Society, 
did I not teach her suit and service first, 
wincing when she infringed some useless law? 
do I not wince to-day beside the fire 
at every word or gesture she shall use 
not scheduled in the warrant what to do? 
do I not bid her have the table thus, 
assort such viands, use such furniture, 
wear such a stuff at morning, such at night, 
all to the warrant of Queen Bugaboo, 
and feel a something missing when she fails, 
a discord setting all my teeth on edge? 
Why, what a score of small observances; 
mere fashionable tricks, are to my life 
the butter on the bread, without which salve 
the bit`s too coarse to swallow; what a score 
of other small observances and tricks, 
worn out of fashion or not yet come in, 
reek worse than garlic to my pampered taste, 
making the wholesomest food too difficult! 
And that which in an ancient yesterday 
was but some great man`s humour is to me 
duty by rote to-day. I had not felt 
my own life that punctilious copy-book, 
writ to stock patterns set to all a school, 
I have called usual lives, but my poor Madge 
has unawares informed me of myself. 

We can no other; `tis as natural 
to men to take this artificial kind 
as to the flowers, which, grown in neighbour ranks, 
taste the same winds and feed on the same soil, 
to take inoculation by the bees 
of one another`s dyes and be alike 
in new unlikeness to their primal types. 

Our gift is imitation and to share 
the subtle current of all sympathies; 
we breathe each other`s thoughts, as in a crowd 
we breathe each other`s breaths, unconsciously; 
and if there could be a mere human man 
to singly be creator, make the thing 
which none has hoped for near him, say the things 
which none has thought beside him, were there one 
to be the god we claim in our rash word 
original, needs were he such a one 
as we call savage, one apart in woods 
and friendless deserts, planning by himself 
some first instinctive art, or questioning 
blank ignorance and wonder into thoughts. 
And as for us, the men who live in days 
when what the West has whispered finds the East 
across an ocean in a breath of time; 
when the old era`s painful manuscripts, 
too choice and rare for less than sage`s needs, 
reach the new era changed to daily showers 
of schoolboys` text-books raining from the press; 
when we shake hands with our antipodes 
for being neighbour to us; when, like streets 
of the city where we are burghers, half the world 
is our admitted home, the other half 
our summer pleasure-grounds outside our walls; 
we, who are scholars of all times and lands, 
must be content, each several man, to feel 
we are no sovereign units each to rule 
the small world of himself, but knitted links, 
one drawing on the other in a chain— 
A bondage say, but have we not its worth, 
help, movement, and the chain grows lengthening on 
to span the universe? A braggart whim, 
were it a possible, if any link, 
breaking away from hundreds side by side, 
would be a separate spangle. 

                    Yet, alack, 
sometimes we links get drawn we know not where, 
but think there`s mud about us. Still the chain 
lies in God`s hands, though the sly devil comes 
and gives a crooked tug or so at times. 

Links in a chain—my metaphor goes well, 
convinces me where first I was convinced— 
links in a chain, drawing each other on: 
but never yet material metaphor 
would fit a mind`s whole thought, and the hitch comes 
where I bid mine good-bye. Links in a chain, 
but what of hearts and wills that are in us, 
hopes, aims, beliefs? must we go measuring them 
Ay "the world says," "so other people think," 
dock our near tastes and natures to the shapes 
in common wear, make lay figures of our lives, 
as women of their bodies, to be decked 
and draped or trimmed and swathed or let go bare 
by strict indefinite despots out of sight? 
Why, let us have that freedom we accord 
inanimate things, to grow each to his kind 
and to his best, cattle and servile beasts, 
to grow each to his kind and to his best; 
but we—oh, monstrous folly—we, designed 
each man so much unlike to all men else 
as one whole kind of beasts to other kinds, 
must train and pattern our reluctant souls 
into one liveried sameness! 

                    Oh, I am tired! 
tired, tired, of this bland smiling slavery, 
monotonous waste of life. And, while we fools 
are making curtsies and brave compliments 
to our rare century, and, courtierly, 
swaddling our strength in trammels of soft silk, 
the rotten depths grow rottener. Every day 
more crime, more pain, more horror. We are good 
no doubt, we "better classes"—oh, we boast 
our modern virtues in the dead men`s teeth 
that were our fathers—we are earnest now, 
and charitable, and we wash ourselves, 
and have a very fair morality; 
most well brought up, in fine, of any men 
that any age has nurtured, and besides 
so equal in our manners and our coats: 
and then the classes which, though bettering, 
are not quite better yet, are the most shrewd, 
most apt, most honest, most intelligent, 
that ever the world saw yet. True all of it 
for aught I know, some of it as I think, 
but underneath—great God, how many souls 
are born an hour as provender for hell! 

Oh horrible days! our goodness growing ripe, 
a spreading scent of sweets, but with no power 
to disinfect the spreading foulnesses; 
and by mere birth-rate vice made multiplex! 
From the murk lanes, and from the fetid courts, 
and from the shameful dens where poverty 
hobnobs with wolfish crime, out of the reek 
of lust and filth, out of the festering homes 
of pestilence and famine, the hoarse cry 
grows multitudinous, the cavernous cry 
of shame and ignorance hunger and greed 
become despair and devilishness….. And we 
gravely thank God for culture and new lights! 

Most horrible days: and we who know the worst, 
(or dream it, sitting in our easy chairs, 
sorry that all men have not easy chairs,) 
and would do somewhat, do it all amiss. 
We pelt our broad-cast gold into the mire, 
then comes a scramble, foul grows fouler yet; 
with a Samaritan hand we feed and feed 
the daughters of the horseleech, drunkenness 
and dissolute idleness, that cry "give, give," 
sucking the lifeblood from our people`s heart; 
we pension beggars, buy the burglar tools 
and the sot gin, and pay the harlot`s rent: 
societies, committees, vestry rooms, 
with fingers in our purses, lavish wealth, 
past common counting, to keep up the tale 
of pauper legions and bribe new recruits, 
sow coin that, like the pestilent dragon`s teeth, 
bear us a poisonous crop of human harm: 
all all endeavours go, like witches` prayers, 
backwards against the meaning, and bring down 
the counter-curse of blessings that were asked. 

What should we do? I know not; but I think 
there`s moral in a hackneyed classic tale: 
when the great gulf still yawned, after the gold 
and treasures had been thrown, there came a man 
and gave himself, and then the great gulf closed. 

But how? how? And I know not; but I think 
if the strong pith and freshness of our lives 
were not so sucked and dried away, our span 
not maimed and dwarfed, our sight not warped untrue, 
by eating custom, petty disciplines, 
footlight perspectives cramped to suit our stage, 
if we were men, not types and portraitures 
and imitative shadows, some of us 
might learn— 

                    Learn, learn, and if we learned, 
saw by what boldness, or what sacrifice, 
or what endurance, or what vehemence, 
the goal of our beginning might be reached, 
the padded skeleton we call the world, 
that mumming glib Duessa who usurps 
the true world`s rule and rights, would trip us up 
with half a league of silken barriers 
too soft for us to break and breaking us. 
Oh, but I know it, I, who time by time, 
fierce with the turbulent goodness of my youth, 
rushed to the clamourous call of new crusades, 
and time by time dropped baffled and worn weak 
before a rampart as of dancing pumps, 
a wind as if it blew from ladies` fans, 
till now I sit a weary man growing old 
among the ruins of his purposes, 
hopeless of any good to be by him. 

Oh, with how full a hope, when morning glowed, 
I donned my armour, who at night ride back 
foolish and broken! I have set myself 
to fight with shadows stronger than a man, 
being impalpable and everywhere, 
and striking done no hurt but to myself; 
and I have ridden at ranks in adamant 
and fallen, strained and useless, under foot; 
and I have sieged impenetrable walls 
and waited day by day till I grew faint; 
and never have I triumphed in my cause, 
whether it were a great one, or a dream, 
a pettish whim, or too divinely large: 
for if I strove against contagious ills 
cankering the core of us or but at spots 
that fleck the smooth gloss of our drawingrooms, 
and if I rose to claim some wide desire 
of general good or but my own escape 
from some small prickings of our social gyves, 
always I was against the multitude, 
against strong Custom`s army plodding on, 
unconquerable, calm, like a great stream 
whose power is that its waters drift one way. 

Tired, tired—grown sick of battle and defeat, 
lying in harbour, like a man worn out 
by storms, and yet not patient of my rest: 
how if I went to some kind southern clime 
where, as they say, lost in long summer dreams, 
the mind grows careless with sun-drunkenness 
and sleeps and wakens softly like a child? 
Would Madge be over sorry to come out 
into free loneliness with me a while? 
clear tints and sunshine, glowing seas and skies, 
beauty of mountains and of girdled plains, 
the strangeness of new peoples, change and rest, 
would these atone to her for so much lost 
which she counts precious? For she loves that round 
of treadmill ceremonies, mimic tasks, 
we make our women`s lives—Good heavens what work 
to set the creatures to, whom we declare 
God purposed for companions to us men… 
companions to each other only now, 
their business but to waste each other`s time. 
So much to do among us, and we spend 
so many human souls on only this! 
in petty actress parts in the long game 
(grave foolery like children playing school, 
setting themselves hard tasks and punishments,) 
that lasts till death and is Society: 
the sunlight working hours all chopped and chipped 
in stray ten minutes by some score of friends 
who, grieved their friend`s not out, come rustling in 
by ones and twos to say the weather`s fine; 
or paid away, poor soul, on pilgrimage 
reciprocally due to tell them so: 
each woman owing tax of half her life 
as plaything for the others` careless hours, 
each woman setting down her foot to hold 
her sister tightly to the tethered round, 
will she or nill she: all with rights on each 
greater than hers… and I might say than God`s, 
since He made work the natural food of minds, 
cheated of which they dwindle and go dead 
like palsied limbs, and gives to each that sense 
of beasts, who know their food, to know its work, 
choosing the great or little. 

                    But myself, 
have I befooled the instinct by warped use? 
for is not the fruit rotten I have found 
by all my labours; nothing to the world 
and to me bitterness? And I forget 
the strong joy of endeavour, and the fire 
of hope is burned out in me; all grows dull, 
rest is not rest and I am sick of toil: 
I count the cost, and— 

                    Ready, love, at last? 
Why, what a rosy June! A flush of bloom 
sparkling with crystal dews—Ah silly one, 
you love these muslin roses better far 
than those that wear the natural dew of heaven. 
I thought you prettier when, the other day, 
the children crowned you with the meadow-sweets: 
I like to hear you teach them wild flowers` names 
and make them love them; but yourself— 

                    What`s that? 
"The wild flowers in a room`s hot stifling glare 
would die in half a minute." True enough: 
your muslin roses are the wiser wear. 
Well, I must see you start. Draw your hood close: 
and are you shawled against this east wind`s chills?
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