Page:The cry for justice - an anthology of the literature of social protest. - (IA cryforjusticea00sinc).pdf/764

 In my warm, fragrant home an hour ago I wrote a sonnet on the peace they win Who worship Beauty! Let me breathe it low. What would it mean if chanted in this din? What would it say to those out in the snow, Who hunger, and who may not enter in?

What Life Means to Me

(From "Revolution")

(See pages 62, 125, 139, 519, 609, 649)

I was born into the working class. I early discovered enthusiasm, ambition, and ideals; and to satisfy these became the problem of my childlife. My environment was crude and rough and raw. I had no outlook, but an uplook rather. My place in society was at the bottom. Here life offered nothing but sordidness and wretchedness, both of the flesh and the spirit; for here flesh and spirit were alike starved and tormented.

Above me towered the colossal edifice of society, and to my mind the only way out was up. Into this edifice I early resolved to climb. Up above, men wore black clothes and boiled shirts, and women dressed in beautiful gowns. Also, there were good things to eat, and there was plenty to eat. This much for the flesh. Then there were the things of the spirit. Up above me, I knew, were unselfishness of the spirit, clean and noble thinking, keen intellectual living. I knew all this because I read "Seaside Library" novels, in which, with the exception of the villains and adventuresses, all men and women thought