The Forerunner (1:1): "Thanksong" (Poem, Charlotte Perkins Gilman)

The Forerunner: 1:1 (November 1909): Table of Contents

Thankful are we for life
--And the joy of living.
Baby-pleasure of taking;
--Mother-glory of giving.

Thankful are we for light
--And the joy of seeing.
Stir of emotion strong,
--And the peace of being.

Thankful are we for power,
--And the pride ensuing;
Baby-pleasure of having,
--Father-glory of doing.
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Originally published in Forerunner: 1:1 (November 1909).

Etext from Project Gutenberg.

This public domain text has been presented as found (with some minor format changes); this website and its owners are not responsible for errors, substantive and/or minor.

The Forerunner: 1:1 (November 1909): Table of Contents

The Forerunner (1:1): "Thanksgiving" (Poem, Charlotte Perkins Gilman)

The Forerunner: 1:1 (November 1909): Table of Contents

I never thought much of the folks who pray
--The Lord to make them thankful for a meal
Expecting Him to furnish all the food
And then provide them with the gratitude
--They haven't grace to feel.

I never thought much of this yearly thanks,
--Either for what once happened long ago,
Or for "our constant mercies." To my mind
If we're to thank a Power that's daily kind,
--Our annual's too slow.

Suppose we spread Thanksgiving--hand it round--
--Give God an honest heartful every day;
And, while we're being thankful, why not give
Some gratitude to those by whom we live--
--As well as stingy pay?

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Originally published in Forerunner: 1:1 (November 1909).

Etext from Project Gutenberg.

This public domain text has been presented as found (with some minor format changes); this website and its owners are not responsible for errors, substantive and/or minor.

The Forerunner: 1:1 (November 1909): Table of Contents

The Forerunner (1:1): "How Doth The Hat" (Poem, Charlotte Perkins Gilman)

The Forerunner: 1:1 (November 1909): Table of Contents

How doth the hat loom large upon her head!
Furred like a busby; plumed as hearses are;
Armed with eye-spearing quills; bewebbed and hung
With lacy, silky, downy draperies;
With spread, wide-waggling feathers fronded high
In bosky thickets of Cimmerian gloom.

How doth the hat with colors dare the eye!
Arrest--attract--allure--affront--appall!
Vivid and varied as are paroquets;
Dove-dull; one mass of white; all solid red;
Black with the blackness of a mourning world--
Compounded type of "Chaos and Old Night"!

How doth the hat expand: wax wide, and swell!
Such is its size that none can predicate
Or hair, or head, or shoulders of the frame
Below thIs bulk, this beauty-burying bulk;
Trespassing rude on all who walk beside,
Brutally blinding all who sit behind.

How doth the hat's mere mass more monstrous grow
Into a riot of repugnant shapes!
Shapes ignominious, extreme, bizarre,
Bulbous, distorted, unsymmetrical--
Of no relation to the human head--
To beauty, comfort, dignity or grace.

Shape of a dishpan! Of a pail! A tub!
Of an inverted wastebasket wherein
The head finds lodgment most appropriate!
Shape of a wide-spread wilted griddlecake!
Shape of the body of an octopus
Set sideways on a fireman's misplaced brim!

How doth the hat show callous cruelty
In decoration costing countless deaths;
Carrying corpses for its ornaments;
Wreath of dead humming-birds, dismembered gulls,
The mother heron's breastknot, stiffened wings;
Torn fragments of a world of wasted life.

How doth the hat effect the minds of men?
Patient bill-payers, chivalrously dumb!
What does it indicate of woman's growth;
Her sense of beauty, her intelligence,
Her thought for others measured with herself,
Her place and grade in human life to-day?

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Originally published in Forerunner: 1:1 (November 1909).

Etext from Project Gutenberg.

This public domain text has been presented as found (with some minor format changes); this website and its owners are not responsible for errors, substantive and/or minor.

The Forerunner: 1:1 (November 1909): Table of Contents

The Forerunner (1:1): "Arrears" (Poem, Charlotte Perkins Gilman)

The Forerunner: 1:1 (November 1909): Table of Contents

Our gratitude goes up in smoke,
--In incense smoke of prayer;
We thank the Underlying Love,
--The Overarching Care--
We do not thank the living men
--Who make our lives so fair.

For long insolvent centuries
--We have been clothed and fed,
By the spared captive, spared for once,
--By inches slain instead;
He gave his service and is gone;
--Unthanked, unpaid, and dead.

His labor built the world we love;
--Our highest flights to-day
Rest on the service of the past,
--Which we can never pay;
A long repudiated debt
--Blackens our upward way.

Our fingers owed his fathers dead--
--Disgrace beyond repair!
No late remorse, no new-found shame
--Can save our honor there:
But we can now begin to pay
--The starved and stunted heir!

We thank the Power above for all--
--Gladly we do, and should.
But might we not save out a part
--Of our large gratitude,
And give it to the power on earth--
--Where it will do some good?
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Originally published in Forerunner: 1:1 (November 1909).

Etext from Project Gutenberg.

This public domain text has been presented as found (with some minor format changes); this website and its owners are not responsible for errors, substantive and/or minor.

The Forerunner: 1:1 (November 1909): Table of Contents

The Forerunner (1:1): "Then This" (Poem, Charlotte Perkins Gilman)

The Forerunner: 1:1 (November 1909): Table of Contents

The news-stands bloom with magazines,
--They flame, they blaze indeed;
So bright the cover-colors glow,
So clear the startling stories show,
So vivid their pictorial scenes,
--That he who runs may read.

Then This: It strives in prose and verse,
--Thought, fancy, fact and fun,
To tell the things we ought to know,
To point the way we ought to go,
So audibly to bless and curse,
--That he who reads may run.

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Originally published in Forerunner: 1:1 (November 1909).

Etext from Project Gutenberg.

This public domain text has been presented as found (with some minor format changes); this website and its owners are not responsible for errors, substantive and/or minor.

The Forerunner: 1:1 (November 1909): Table of Contents