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Black clouds, lion-shaped,
White clouds, elephant-like, yonder. 
Crash! Crash! Thundering as if breaking the sky into two pieces. 
Slash! Slash! Lightening to cut the mountain top off. 
The Storm extends from sky to earth,
Youth’s vigour, love’s passion, beauty’s rapture.
Then Pearl-drops of hail – hundreds of jade-pieces,
Tok-tok-tok-tok-tok, monastery jingling bell.
Again soft slender rain.
Sh! Sh! Sh! Sh! Sh! whispering to the lover’s ear alone: 
“I love you, I love you, ever, ever, ever, ever.”

In scornful upright loneliness they stand,
     Counting themselves no kin of anything
     Whether of earth or sky. Their gnarled roots cling
Like wasted fingers of a clutching hand
In the grim rock. A silent spectral band
     They watch the old sky, but hold no communing
     With aught. Only, when some lone eagle's wing
Flaps past above their grey and desolate land,
Or when the wind pants up a rough-hewn glen, 
     Bending them down as with an age of thought,
     Or when, 'mid flying clouds that can not dull
Her constant light, the moon shines silver, then
     They find a soul, and their dim moan is wrought
     Into a singing sad and beautiful.

Well, son, I’ll tell you: 
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare;
But all the time
I’se been a’climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners, 
And sometimes goin’ in the dark, 
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back;
Don’t you sit down on the steps, 
’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard;
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

I shall not lie to you any more,

    Flatter or fawn to attain my end—

I am what never has been before,

    Woman—and Friend.

I shall be strong as a man is strong,

    I shall be fair as a man is fair,

Hand in locked hand we shall pass along

    To a purer air:

I shall not drag at your bridle-rein,

    Knee pressed to knee shall we ride the hill;

I shall not lie to you ever again—

    Will you love me still?

Through wild and tangled forests
  The broad, unhasting river flows--
  Spotted with rain-drops, gray with night;
    Upon its curving breast there goes
A lonely steamboat's larboard light,
    A blood-red star against the shadowy oaks;
Noiseless as a ghost, through greenish gleam
Of fire-flies, before the boat's wild scream--
      A heron flaps away
      Like silence taking flight.

Because my mouth 

Is wide with laughter

And my throat

Is deep with song,

You do not think 

I suffer after 

I have held my pain 

So long. 

 

Because my mouth 

Is wide with laughter, 

You do not hear

My inner cry, 

Because my feet 

Are gay with dancing, 

You do not know 

I die. 

You who pass coldly by when the police rush upon us,

When they wrench away our banners,

(Beautiful banners whose colors cry a demand for liberty)

You who criticize or condemn

(Declaring you “believe in suffrage,

Worked for it in your state, and your mother

knew Susan B. Anthony”)

Can you think in terms of a nation?

Could you die, (or face ridicule) for your belief?

For the freedom of women, for your freedom,

we are fighting; 

For your safety we face danger, bear torture;

For your honor endure untellable insult.

To win democracy for you we defend the banners of democracy

Till our banners and our bodies

Are flung together on the pavement,

Waiting at the gates of government,

We have made of our weariness a symbol

Of women’s long wait for justice.

We have borne the hunger and hardship of prison,

To open people’s eyes

To men’s determination to imprison the power of women.

You women who pass coldly by,

Do you imagine your freedom is coming

As a summer wind blows over fields?

Slowly it has advanced by a sixty-years’ war,

(Those who have fought in it have not forgotten)

And that war is not won.

Strongly entrenched, the foe sits plotting.

Close to his lines our banners fly,

Signalling where to direct the fire,

Greater forces are needed, reserves and recruits.

Are you for winning or for waiting,

Women who watch the banners go down?

Women who say, “Suffrage is coming,”

While suffrage goes by you into Prussia?

Cease to be content with applauding speeches, and praising politicians.

Patience is shameful.

Awake, rise, and act. 

Under General Greene, in South Carolina, who fell in the action of September 8, 1781

At Eutaw Springs the valiant died;

   Their limbs with dust are covered o’er—

Weep on, ye springs, your tearful tide;

   How many heroes are no more!

If in this wreck of ruin, they

   Can yet be thought to claim a tear,

O smite your gentle breast, and say

   The friends of freedom slumber here!

Thou, who shalt trace this bloody plain,

   If goodness rules thy generous breast,

Sigh for the wasted rural reign;

   Sigh for the shepherds, sunk to rest!

Stranger, their humble graves adorn;

   You too may fall, and ask a tear;

‘Tis not the beauty of the morn

   That proves the evening shall be clear.—

They saw their injured country’s woe;

   The flaming town, the wasted field;

Then rushed to meet the insulting foe;

   They took the spear—but left the shield.

Led by thy conquering genius, Greene,

   The Britons they compelled to fly;

None distant viewed the fatal plain,

   None grieved, in such a cause to die—

But, like the Parthian, famed of old.

   Who, flying, still their arrows threw,

These routed Britons, full as bold,

   Retreated, and retreating slew.

Now rest in peace, our patriot band;

   Though far from nature’s limits thrown,

We trust they find a happier land,

   A brighter sunshine of their own.

(It is a little-known fact that 200,000 Negroes fought
for freedom in the Union Army during the Civil War.)

In this green month when resurrected flowers,
Like laughing children ignorant of death,
Brighten the couch of those who wake no more,
Love and remembrance blossom in our hearts
For you who bore the extreme sharp pang for us,
And bought our freedom with your lives.

                                                           And now,
Honoring your memory, with love we bring
These fiery roses, white-hot cotton flowers
And violets bluer than cool northern skies
You dreamed of stooped in burning prison fields
When liberty was only a faint north star,
Not a bright flower planted by your hands
Reaching up hardy nourished with your blood.

Fit gravefellows you are for Douglass, Brown,
Turner and Truth and Tubman . . . whose rapt eyes
Fashioned a new world in this wilderness.

American earth is richer for your bones:
Our hearts beat prouder for the blood we inherit.

Go;—for ’tis Memorial morning—
     Go with hearts of peace and love;
Deck the graves of fallen soldiers;
     Go, your gratitude to prove.

Gather flow’rs and take them thither,
     Emblem of a nation’s tears;
Grateful hearts cannot forget them,
     In the rush of passing years.

Strew the flow’rs above their couches;
     Let thy heart’s affection blend,
With the dewy buds and blossoms,
     That in fragrant showers descend.

Strew the flow’rs above the heroes,
     Slain for loving friends and thee;
Canst thou find a better off’ring,
     For those sons of liberty?

While the buds and blooms are falling,
     Earnest hearts are asking,—Why—
In a tone, though low and gentle,
     Yet, as ardent as a cry,—

‘Why must precious lives be given,
     That our country may be free?
Is there not a nobler pathway
     To the throne of liberty?

‘Can we choose no nobler watch-word,
     Than the ringing battle-cry,
Harbinger of strife and bloodshed,
     Must we sin, that sin may die?

‘Long ago, to far Judea,
     Came the blessed Prince of Peace:
Shall we ever heed His teaching,
     That these wars and feuds may cease?’