Explore "The Keeper of the Light" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
A lighthouse keeper with a loving heart / Toiled at his service in the lonely tower, / Keeping his giant lenses clear and bright, / And feeding with pure oil the precious light / Whose power to save was as his own heart's power.
He loved his kind, and being set alone / To help them by the means of this great light, / He poured his whole heart's service into it, / And sent his love down the long beams that lit / The waste of broken water in the night.
He loved his kind, and joyed to see the ships / Come out of nowhere into his bright field, / And glide by safely with their living men, / Past him and out into the dark again, / To other hands their freight of joy to yield.
His work was noble and his work was done; / He kept the ships in safety and was glad; / And yet, late coming with the light's supplies, / They found the love no longer in his eyes- / The keeper of the light had fallen mad.