[Editor: This poem by Agnes L. Storrie was published in Poems, 1909.]
Some and Some.
Some sit in the sun and spin
Threads very fine and thin,
And they are heavy-hearted,
If this strand should be parted,
Or that one run awry
By the flicker of an eye.
They weave their threads so frail
Into a flimsy veil
That hangs between their senses, and the real universe
And in the fingers of the spinner
The threads grow ever finer, thinner,
Too thin to bear the burden of a blessing or a curse.
And still they sit aloof,
And wrap them in the woof
Of the fabric they have spun.
Ay, some sit in the sun
And spin. Oh! God, am I one?
And some sit in the shade
That want and sin have made,
And fight for very breath
With forces worse than death.
Real, ah! very real
Are the horrors that they feel,
Doomed to toil’s consuming altars,
Strangled by prenatal halters.
Fed for death by tainted blood
Jetsam of the human flood!
Perishing like summer flies
Amid their own unheeded cries.
Ay! some sit in the shade
That want and sin hath made.
And some sit in the sun and spin
Threads very fine and thin.
Source:
Agnes L. Storrie. Poems, J. W. Kettlewell, Sydney, 1909, pages 185-186
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