<h2><SPAN name="poem88"></SPAN>INSIGHT</h2>
<p class="poetry">Sirs, when you pity us, I say<br/>
You waste your pity. Let it stay,<br/>
Well corked and stored upon your shelves,<br/>
Until you need it for yourselves.</p>
<p class="poetry">We do appreciate God’s thought<br/>
In forming you, before He brought<br/>
Us into life. His art was crude,<br/>
But oh! so virile in its rude,</p>
<p class="poetry">Large, elemental strength; and then<br/>
He learned His trade in making men,<br/>
Learned how to mix and mould the clay<br/>
And fashion in a finer way.</p>
<p class="poetry">How fine that skilful way can be<br/>
You need but lift your eyes to see;<br/>
And we are glad God placed you there<br/>
To lift your eyes and find us fair.</p>
<p class="poetry">Apprentice labour though you were,<br/>
He made you great enough to stir<br/>
The best and deepest depths of us,<br/>
And we are glad He made you thus.</p>
<p class="poetry">Aye! we are glad of many things;<br/>
God strung our hearts with such fine strings<br/>
The least breath moves them, and we hear<br/>
Music where silence greets your ear.</p>
<p class="poetry">We suffer so? But women’s souls,<br/>
Like violet-powder dropped on coals,<br/>
Give forth their best in anguish. Oh<br/>
The subtle secrets that we know</p>
<p class="poetry">Of joy in sorrow, strange delights<br/>
Of ecstasy in pain-filled nights,<br/>
And mysteries of gain in loss<br/>
Known but to Christ upon the cross!</p>
<p class="poetry">Our tears are pitiful to you?<br/>
Look how the heaven-reflecting dew<br/>
Dissolves its life in tears. The sand<br/>
Meanwhile lies hard upon the strand.</p>
<p class="poetry">How could your pity find a place<br/>
For us, the mothers of the race?<br/>
Men may be fathers unaware,<br/>
So poor the title is you wear.</p>
<p class="poetry">But mothers—who that crown adorns<br/>
Knows all its mingled blooms and thorns,<br/>
And she whose feet that pain hath trod<br/>
Hath walked upon the heights with God.</p>
<p class="poetry">No, offer us not pity’s cup.<br/>
There is no looking down or up<br/>
Between us; eye looks straight in eye:<br/>
Born equals, so we live and die.</p>
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