A New England Girlhood [55]
That lofty thing, The palace and the throne Where Reason sits, a sceptred king, And breathes his judgment-tone!"
"The human soul! That startling thing, Mysterious and sublime; An angel sleeping on the wing, Worn by the scoffs of time. >From heaven in tears to earth it stole- That startling thing, the human soul."
I was just beginning, in my questionings as to the meaning of life, to get glimpses of its true definition from the poets,-- that it is love, service, the sacrifice of self for others' good. The lesson was slowly learned, but every hint of it went to my heart, and I kept in silent upon my window wall reminders like that of holy George Herbert:"
"Be useful where thou livest, that they may Both want and wish thy pleasing presence still. -Find out men' s wants and will, And meet them there. All worldly joys go less To the one joy of doing kindnesses;"
and that well-known passage from Talfourd,--
"The blessings which the weak and poor can scatter, Have their own season. It is a little thing to speak a phase Of common comfort, which, by daily use, Has almost lost its sense; yet on the ear Of him who thought to die unmourned 't will fall Like choicest music."
A very familiar extract from Carlos Wilcox, almost the only quotation made nowadays from his poems, was often on my sister Emilie's lips, whose heart seemed always to be saying to itself:- -
"Pour blessings round thee like a shower of gold!"
I had that beside me, too, and I copy part of it here, for her sake, and because it will be good for my girl readers to keep in mind one of the noblest utterances of an almost forgotten American poet:--
"Rouse to some work of high and holy love, And thou an angel's happiness shalt know; Shalt bless the earth while in the world above. The good begun by thee shall onward flow. The pure, sweet stream shall deeper, wider grow. The seed that in these few and fleeting hours Thy hands, unsparing and unwearied sow, Shall deck thy grave with amaranthine flowers, And yield thee fruits divine in heaven's immortal bowers."
One great advantage which came to these many stranger girls through being brought together, away from their own homes, was that it taught them to go out of themselves, and enter into the lives of others. Home-life, when one always stays at home, is necessarily narrowing. That is one reason why so many women are petty and unthoughtful of any except their own family's interests. We have hardly begun to live until we can take in the idea of the whole human family as the one to which we truly belong. To me, it was an incalculable help to find myself among so many working-girls, all of us thrown upon our own resources, but thrown much more upon each others' sympathies.
And the stream beside which we toiled added to its own inspirations human suggestions drawn from our acquaintance with each other. It blended itself with the flow of our lives. Almost the first of my poemlets in the "Lowell Offering" was entitled "The River." These are some lines of it:--
"Gently flowed a river bright On its path of liquid light, Gleaming now soft banks between, Winding now through valleys green, Cheering with its presence mild Cultured fields and woodlands wild.
"Is not such a pure one's life? Ever shunning pride and strife, Noiselessly along she goes, Known by gentle deeds she does; Often wandering far, to bless, And do others kindnesses.
"Thus, by her own virtues shaded, While pure thoughts, like starbeams, lie Mirrored in her heart and eye, She, content to be unknown, All serenely moveth on, Till, released from Time's commotion, Self is lost in Love's wide ocean."
There was many a young girl near me whose life was like the beautiful course of the river in my ideal of her. The Merrimack has blent its music with the onward song of many a lovely soul that, clad in plain working-clothes, moved heavenward beside its waters.
One of the loveliest persons I ever knew was a young girl who worked opposite to me in the spinning-room. Our eyes made us friends long before we spoke to each other. She was
"The human soul! That startling thing, Mysterious and sublime; An angel sleeping on the wing, Worn by the scoffs of time. >From heaven in tears to earth it stole- That startling thing, the human soul."
I was just beginning, in my questionings as to the meaning of life, to get glimpses of its true definition from the poets,-- that it is love, service, the sacrifice of self for others' good. The lesson was slowly learned, but every hint of it went to my heart, and I kept in silent upon my window wall reminders like that of holy George Herbert:"
"Be useful where thou livest, that they may Both want and wish thy pleasing presence still. -Find out men' s wants and will, And meet them there. All worldly joys go less To the one joy of doing kindnesses;"
and that well-known passage from Talfourd,--
"The blessings which the weak and poor can scatter, Have their own season. It is a little thing to speak a phase Of common comfort, which, by daily use, Has almost lost its sense; yet on the ear Of him who thought to die unmourned 't will fall Like choicest music."
A very familiar extract from Carlos Wilcox, almost the only quotation made nowadays from his poems, was often on my sister Emilie's lips, whose heart seemed always to be saying to itself:- -
"Pour blessings round thee like a shower of gold!"
I had that beside me, too, and I copy part of it here, for her sake, and because it will be good for my girl readers to keep in mind one of the noblest utterances of an almost forgotten American poet:--
"Rouse to some work of high and holy love, And thou an angel's happiness shalt know; Shalt bless the earth while in the world above. The good begun by thee shall onward flow. The pure, sweet stream shall deeper, wider grow. The seed that in these few and fleeting hours Thy hands, unsparing and unwearied sow, Shall deck thy grave with amaranthine flowers, And yield thee fruits divine in heaven's immortal bowers."
One great advantage which came to these many stranger girls through being brought together, away from their own homes, was that it taught them to go out of themselves, and enter into the lives of others. Home-life, when one always stays at home, is necessarily narrowing. That is one reason why so many women are petty and unthoughtful of any except their own family's interests. We have hardly begun to live until we can take in the idea of the whole human family as the one to which we truly belong. To me, it was an incalculable help to find myself among so many working-girls, all of us thrown upon our own resources, but thrown much more upon each others' sympathies.
And the stream beside which we toiled added to its own inspirations human suggestions drawn from our acquaintance with each other. It blended itself with the flow of our lives. Almost the first of my poemlets in the "Lowell Offering" was entitled "The River." These are some lines of it:--
"Gently flowed a river bright On its path of liquid light, Gleaming now soft banks between, Winding now through valleys green, Cheering with its presence mild Cultured fields and woodlands wild.
"Is not such a pure one's life? Ever shunning pride and strife, Noiselessly along she goes, Known by gentle deeds she does; Often wandering far, to bless, And do others kindnesses.
"Thus, by her own virtues shaded, While pure thoughts, like starbeams, lie Mirrored in her heart and eye, She, content to be unknown, All serenely moveth on, Till, released from Time's commotion, Self is lost in Love's wide ocean."
There was many a young girl near me whose life was like the beautiful course of the river in my ideal of her. The Merrimack has blent its music with the onward song of many a lovely soul that, clad in plain working-clothes, moved heavenward beside its waters.
One of the loveliest persons I ever knew was a young girl who worked opposite to me in the spinning-room. Our eyes made us friends long before we spoke to each other. She was