Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.
Our Lady of IdlenessFlorence 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.
She is weary and has lain
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.