Explore "The Child Speaks" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Get back! Give me air! Give me freedom and room, / The warm earth and bright water, the crowding sweet bloom / Of the flowers, and the measureless, marvellous sky,- / All of these all the time, and a shelter close by / Where silence and beauty and peace are my own / In a chamber alone.
Then bring me the others! "A child" is a crime; / It is "children" who grow through the beautiful time / Of their childhood up into the age you are in. / "A child" must needs suffer and sicken and sin; / The life of a child needs the life of its kind, / O ye stupid and blind!