Explore "The Spinster" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I. Here are the orchard trees all large with fruit; / And yonder fields are golden with young grain. / In little journeys, branchward from the nest, / A mother bird, with sweet insistent cries, / Urges her young to use their untried wings. / A purring Tabby, stretched upon the sward, / Shuts and expands her velvet paws in joy, / While sturdy kittens nuzzle at her breast.
O mighty Maker of the Universe, / Am I not part and parcel of Thy World, / And one with Nature? Wherefore, then, in me / Must this great reproductive impulse lie / Hidden, ashamed, unnourished, and denied, / Until it starves to slow and tortuous death? / I knew the hope of spring-time; like the tree / Now ripe with fruit, I budded, and then bloomed; / We laughed together through the young May morns; / We dreamed together through the summer moons; / Till all Thy purposes within the tree / Were to fruition brought. Lord, Thou hast heard / The Woman in me crying for the Man; / The Mother in me crying for the Child; / And made no answer. Am I less to Thee / Than lover forms of Nature, or in truth / Dost Thou hold Somewhere in another Realm / Full compensation and large recompense / For lonely virtue forced by fate to live / A life unnatural, in a natural world?