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\title{Bastard Born}
\date{1891}
\author{Voltairine de Cleyre}
\subtitle{}




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\begin{document}






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  {\usekomafont{author}{Voltairine de Cleyre\par}}%
  
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\begin{quote}


Why do you clothe me with scarlet of shame?\forcelinebreak  Why do you point with your finger of scorn?\forcelinebreak  What is the crime that you hissingly name\forcelinebreak  When you sneer in my ears, “Thou bastard born?”



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


Am I not as the rest of you,\forcelinebreak  With a hope to reach, and a dream to live?\forcelinebreak  With a soul to suffer, a heart to know\forcelinebreak  The pangs that the thrusts of the heartless give?”



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


I am no monster! Look at me —\forcelinebreak  Straight in my eyes, that they do not shrink!\forcelinebreak  Is there aught in them you can see\forcelinebreak  To merit this hemlock you make me drink?



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


This poison that scorches my soul like fire,\forcelinebreak  That burns and burns until love is dry,\forcelinebreak  And I shrivel with hate, as hot as a pyre,\forcelinebreak  A corpse, while its smoke curls up to the sky?



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


Will you touch my hand? It is flesh like yours;\forcelinebreak  Perhaps a little more brown and grimed,\forcelinebreak  For it could not be white while the drawers’ and hewers’,\forcelinebreak  My brothers, were calloused and darkened and slimed.



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


Yet touch it! It is no criminal’s hand!\forcelinebreak  No children are toiling to keep it fair!\forcelinebreak  It is free from the curse of the stolen land,\forcelinebreak  It is clean of the theft of the sea and air!



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


It has set no seals to a murderous law,\forcelinebreak  To sign a bitter, black league with death!\forcelinebreak  No covenants false do these fingers draw\forcelinebreak  In the name of “The State” to barter Faith!



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


It bears no stain of the yellow gold\forcelinebreak  That Earth’s wrethches give as the cost of heaven!\forcelinebreak  No priestly garment of silken fold\forcelinebreak  I wear as the price of their “sins forgiven!”



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


Still do you shrink! Still I hear the hiss\forcelinebreak  Between your teeth, and I feel the scorn\forcelinebreak  That flames in your gaze! Well, what is this,\forcelinebreak  This crime I commit, being “bastard born?”



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


What! You whisper my “eyes are gray,”\forcelinebreak  The “color of hers,” up there on the hill,\forcelinebreak  Where the white stone gleams, and the willow spray\forcelinebreak  Falls over her grave in the starlight still!



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


My “hands are shaped like” those quiet hands,\forcelinebreak  Folded away from their life, their care;\forcelinebreak  And the sheen that lies on my short, fair strands\forcelinebreak  Gleams darkly down on her buried hair!



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


My voice is toned like that silent tone\forcelinebreak  That might, if it could, break up through the sod\forcelinebreak  With such rebuke as would shame your stone,\forcelinebreak  Stirring the grass-roots in their clod!



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


And my heart-beats thrill to the same strong chords;\forcelinebreak  And the blood that was hers is mine to-day;\forcelinebreak  And the thoughts she loved, I love; and the words\forcelinebreak  That meant most to her, to me most say!



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


\emph{She was my mother — I her child!}\forcelinebreak  Could ten thousand priests have made us more?\forcelinebreak  Do you curse the bloom of the heather wild?\forcelinebreak  Do you trample the flowers and cry “impure?”



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


Do you shun the bird-songs’ silver shower?\forcelinebreak  Does their music arouse your curling scorn\forcelinebreak  That none but God blessed them? The whitest flower,\forcelinebreak  The purest song, were but “bastard born!”



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


\emph{This is my sin, — I} was born of her!\forcelinebreak  \emph{This is my crime}, — that I reverence deep!\forcelinebreak  God, that her pale corpse may not stir,\forcelinebreak  Press closer down on her lids — the sleep!



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


Would you have me hate her? Me, who knew\forcelinebreak  That the gentlest soul in the world looked there,\forcelinebreak  Out of the gray eyes that pitied you\forcelinebreak  E’en while you cursed her? The long brown hair



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


That waived from her forehead, has brushed my cheek,\forcelinebreak  When her soft lips have drunk up my salt of grief;\forcelinebreak  And the voice, whose echo you hate, would speak\forcelinebreak  The hush of pity and love’s relief!



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


And those still hands that are folded now\forcelinebreak  Have touched my sorrows for years away!\forcelinebreak  Would you have me question her whence and how\forcelinebreak  The love-light streamed from her heart’s deep ray?



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


Do you question the sun that it gives its gold?\forcelinebreak  Do you scowl at the cloud when it pours its rain\forcelinebreak  Till the fields that were withered and burnt and old\forcelinebreak  Are fresh and tender and young again?



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


Do you search the source of the breeze that sweeps\forcelinebreak  The rush of the fever from the tortured brain?\forcelinebreak  Do you ask whence the perfume that round you creeps\forcelinebreak  When your soul is wrought to the quick with pain?



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


She was my Sun, my Dew, my Air,\forcelinebreak  The highest, the purest, the holiest;\forcelinebreak  Peace — was the shade of her beautiful hair,\forcelinebreak  Love — was all that I knew on her breast!



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


Would You have me forget? Or remembering\forcelinebreak  Say that her love had bloomed from Hell?\forcelinebreak  Then BLESSED BE HELL! And let Heaven sing\forcelinebreak  \emph{“Te Deum laudamus,”} until it swell



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


And ring and roll to the utterest earth,\forcelinebreak  That the damned are free, — since out of sin\forcelinebreak  Came the whiteness that shamed all ransomed worth\forcelinebreak  Till God opened the gates, saying “Enter in!”



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


What! In the face of the witness I bear\forcelinebreak  To her measureless love and her purity,\forcelinebreak  Still of your hate would you make me to share,\forcelinebreak  Despising that she gave life to me?



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


You would have me stand at her helpless grave,\forcelinebreak  To dig through its earth with a venomed dart!\forcelinebreak  This is Honor! and Right! and Brave!\forcelinebreak  To fling a stone at her pulseless heart!



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


This is Virtue! To blast the lips\forcelinebreak  Speechless beneath the Silence dread!\forcelinebreak  To lash with Slander’s scorpion whips\forcelinebreak  The voiceless, defenseless, helpless dead!



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


God! I turn to an adder now!\forcelinebreak  Back upon you I hurl your scorn!\forcelinebreak  Bind the scarlet upon your brow!\forcelinebreak  \emph{Ye} it is, who are “bastard born”!



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


Touch me not! These hands of mine\forcelinebreak  Despise your fairness — the leper’s white!\forcelinebreak  Tanned and hardened and black with grime,\forcelinebreak  They are clean beside your souls to-night!



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


Basely born! ’Tis ye are base!\forcelinebreak  Ye who would guerdon holy trust\forcelinebreak  With slavish law to a tyrant race,\forcelinebreak  To sow the earth with the seed of lust.



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


Base! By Heaven! Prate of peace,\forcelinebreak  When your garments are red with the stain of wars.\forcelinebreak  Reeling with passion’s mad release\forcelinebreak  By your sickly gaslight damn the stars!



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


Blurred with wine ye behold the snow\forcelinebreak  Smirched with the foulness that blots within!\forcelinebreak  What of purity can ye know,\forcelinebreak  Ye ten-fold children of Hell and Sin?



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


Ye to judge her! Ye to cast\forcelinebreak  The stone of wrath from your house of glass!\forcelinebreak  Know ye the Law, that ye dare to blast\forcelinebreak  The bell of gold with your clanging brass?



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


Know ye the harvest the reapers reap\forcelinebreak  Who drop in the furrow the seed of scorn?\forcelinebreak  Out of this anguish ye harrow deep,\forcelinebreak  Ripens the sentence: “\emph{Ye,} bastard born!”



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


Ay, sin-begotten, hear the curse;\forcelinebreak  Not mine — not hers — but the fatal Law!\forcelinebreak  “Who bids one suffer, shall suffer worse;\forcelinebreak  Who scourges, himself shall be scourged raw!



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


“For the thoughts ye think, and the deeds ye do,\forcelinebreak  Move on, and on, till the flood is high,\forcelinebreak  And the dread dam bursts, and the waves roar through\forcelinebreak  Hurling a cataract dirge to the sky!”



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


“To-night ye are deaf to the beggar’s prayer;\forcelinebreak  To-morrow the thieves shall batter your wall!\forcelinebreak  Ye shall feel the weight of a starved child’s care\forcelinebreak  When your warders under the mob’s feet fall!



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


“’Tis the roar of the whirlwind ye invoke\forcelinebreak  When ye scatter the wind of your brother’s moans;\forcelinebreak  ’Tis the red of your hate on your own head broke,\forcelinebreak  When the blood of the murdered spatters the stones!



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


“Hark ye! Out of the reeking slums,\forcelinebreak  Thick with the fetid stench of crime,\forcelinebreak  Boiling up through their sickening scums,\forcelinebreak  Bubbles that burst through the crimson wine,



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


“Voices burst — with terrible sound,\forcelinebreak  Crying the truth your dull souls ne’er saw!\forcelinebreak  We are \emph{your} sentence! The wheel turns round!\forcelinebreak  The bastard spawn of your bastard law!”



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


This is bastard: That Man should say\forcelinebreak  How Love shall love, and how Life shall live!\forcelinebreak  Setting a tablet to groove God’s way,\forcelinebreak  Measuring how the divine shall give!



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


O, Evil Hearts! Ye have maddened me,\forcelinebreak  That I should interpret the voice of God!\forcelinebreak  Quiet! Quiet! O angered Sea!\forcelinebreak  Quiet! I go to her blessed sod!



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


Mother, Mother, I come to you!\forcelinebreak  Down in your grasses I press my face!\forcelinebreak  Under the kiss of their cold, pure dew,\forcelinebreak  I may dream that I lie in the dear old place!



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


Mother, sweet Mother, take me back,\forcelinebreak  Into the bosom from whence I came!\forcelinebreak  Take me away from the cruel rack,\forcelinebreak  Take me out of the parching flame!



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


Fold me again with your beautiful hair,\forcelinebreak  Speak to this terrible heaving Sea!\forcelinebreak  Over me pour the soothing of prayer,\forcelinebreak  The words of the Love-child of Galilee:



\end{quote}



\begin{quote}


“PEACE — BE STILL!” Still, — could I but hear!\forcelinebreak  Softly, — I listen. — O fierce heart, cease!\forcelinebreak  Softly, — I breathe not, — low, — in my ear,\forcelinebreak  — Mother, Mother — I heard you! — PEACE!



\end{quote}


Enterprise, Kansas


January, 1891




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The Anarchist Library



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Anti-Copyright



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Voltairine de Cleyre

Bastard Born



1891


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Retrieved on March 24\textsuperscript{th}, 2009 from \href{http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist\_Archives/bright/cleyre/bastardborn.html}{dwardmac.pitzer.edu}
   

   



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