A Commonplace Song

Ebbs and flows the restless river In the city street Where the great nerve centres quiver, Where the pulses beat. Where the human waves are driving Drifts a woman’s face, White and worn by ceaseless striving With the commonplace. Want has written strange inscriptions On the brow and cheek; Pain could weave some weird descriptions If the lips would speak; Toil has touched the lines of beauty And, the curves of grace. Comeliness is good, but duty Rules the commonplace. Thick-soled shoes and shabby bonnet, Dingy cotton gloves, Old turned dress with darns upon it (Not what woman loves), Gaunt umbrella, green with weather— One must self efface To keep home and bairns together In the commonplace. Late and early, never shirking Tub and scrub and broom, Late at night with needle working In the dwelling-room; Yet when week’s receipts are thinner Grocers’ bills to face— Tenpence means three children’s dinner In the commonplace! Poets sing their wild Iambics— Love and War and Gods— Let us sing of humble women Fighting fearful odds, Not where steel and bullets rattle And the squadrons race, But the grim unending battle With the commonplace. Now they shriek the creeds are dying! Faith is of the air! Wailfully their lyres are sighing Sonnets of despair! All the scheme of things evolving Somehow out of Space! Darken then, instead of solving, This grim commonplace! Rogues may win success and glory, Beauty pride of fame, Statesmen make a nation’s story, Poets deathless name. But the patient woman Toiler What is hers to win? On the one hand—Want, the Spoiler, On the other—Sin! Ye who swear and strut and bluster, So-called manly pride, When you answer at the muster On the other side, Will the courage you have vaunted Stand you in such grace As weak hands that fought undaunted With the commonplace? Noblest worth works ever humbly, Oftest is unseen, Half the world is toiling dumbly In the gray routine. Sing, O Poet of the Morrow! Cheer the weary face Where brave women moil and sorrow In the commonplace!