Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.
Our Lady of Idleness
By Florence Wilkinson
T
Her name, the mistress of their endless task.
Tinsel-makers in factory gloom,
Miners in ethylene pits,
Divers and druggists mixing poisonous bloom;
Half-naked creatures of the tropics,
Furred trappers stealing forth at Labrador dawn;
Pearl-fishers perched on Indian coasts,
Children in stifling towers pulling threads;
Myopic jewelers’ apprentices,
Arabs who chase the long-legged birds in sandy places:
The genii of her costly wishes,
Climbing, descending, running under waves.
They burn and drown and stifle
To build her inconceivable and fragile shell.
They have painted a miracle-shawl
Of cobwebs and whispering shadows,
And trellised leaves that ripple on a wall.
Spun foam of the sea
And lilied imagery of the vanishing frost.
Like iridescent marshes,
Or like the tossed hair of a stormy sun.
Blue as a mummy’s beads,
Green as the ice-glints of an Arctic zone.
At last her body down.
What, with her clothing’s beauty, they have slain!
Come, brothers, let us lift
Her pitiful body on high,
Her tight-shut hands that take to heaven no gift
We seven archangels will
Bear her in silence on our flame-tipped wings.
Lo, she is thinner than fire
On a burned mill-town’s edge,
And smaller than a young child’s dead desire.
Of a spent harlot crying for her beauty,
And grayer than the mumbling lips of age.
White as a drowned one’s feet
Twined with the wet sea-bracken,
And naked as a Sin driven from God’s littlest street.