Upton Sinclair, ed. (1878–1968).
The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest. 1915. | | | Concerning Women
(From “Aurora Leigh”) |
By Elizabeth Barrett Browning |
(English poetess, 1806–1861; wife of Robert Browning, and an ardent champion of the liberties of the Italian people) |
| | | I CALL you hard | |
| To general suffering. Here’s the world half blind | |
| With intellectual light, half brutalized | |
| With civilization, having caught the plague | |
| In silks from Tarsus, shrieking east and west | 5 |
| Along a thousand railroads, mad with pain | |
| And sin too!… does one woman of you all, | |
| (You who weep easily) grow pale to see | |
| This tiger shake his cage?—does one of you | |
| Stand still from dancing, stop from stringing pearls, | 10 |
| And pine and die because of the great sum | |
| Of universal anguish?—Show me a tear | |
| Wet as Cordelia’s, in eyes bright as yours, | |
| Because the world is mad. You cannot count, | |
| That you should weep for this account, not you! | 15 |
| You weep for what you know. A red-haired child | |
| Sick in a fever, if you touch him once, | |
| Though but so little as with a finger-tip, | |
| Will set you weeping; but a million sick— | |
| You could as soon weep for the rule of three | 20 |
| Or compound fractions. Therefore, this same world, | |
| Uncomprehended by you.—Women as you are, | |
| Mere women, personal and passionate, | |
| You give us doting mothers, and perfect wives, | |
| Sublime Madonnas, and enduring saints! | 25 |
| We get no Christ from you,—and verily | |
| We shall not get a poet, in my mind. | | | | |
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