De Amerikaanse dichteres en schrijfster Margaret Widdemer werd geboren op 30 september 1884 in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, en groeide op in Asbury Park, New Jersey, waar haar vader, Howard T. Widdemer, predikant was van de First Congregational Church. Ze studeerde in 1909 af aan de Drexel Institute Library School. Ze kwam voor het eerst onder de publieke aandacht met haar gedicht “The Factories”, waarin het onderwerp kinderarbeid werd behandeld. In 1919 trouwde ze met Robert Haven Schauffler (1879-1964), een weduwnaar die vijf jaar ouder was dan zij. Schauffler was een auteur en cellist die veel publiceerde over poëzie, reizen, cultuur en muziek. In dat zelfde jaar won zij ook de de Pulitzer Prize (toen bekend als de Columbia University Prize) voor haar bundel “The Old Road to Paradise”, maar moest deze prijs delen met Carl Sandburg die hem ontving voor “Cornhuskers”. In Widdemers memoires “Golden Years I Had” vertelt zij over haar vriendschappen met vooraanstaande auteurs zoals Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, T.S. Eliot, Thornton Wilder en Edna St. Vincent Millay. De geleerde Joan Shelley Rubin opperde dat Widdemer de term “middlebrow” bedacht in haar essay “Message and Middlebrow”, gepubliceerd in 1933 in The Saturday Review of Literature. De term was echter eerder gebruikt door het Britse tijdschrift Punch in 1925. Widdemer stierf in 1978 in New York City.
The Factories
I have shut my little sister in from life and light
(For a rose, for a ribbon, for a wreath across my hair),
I have made her restless feet still until the night,
Locked from sweets of summer and from wild spring air;
I who ranged the meadow lands, free from sun to sun,
Free to sing and pull the buds and watch the far wings fly,
I have bound my sister till her playing-time is done –
Oh, my little sister, was it I? – was it I?
I have robbed my sister of her day of maidenhood
(For a robe, for a feather, for a trinket’s restless spark),
Shut from Love till dusk shall fall, how shall she know good,
How shall she pass scatheless through the sinlit dark?
I who could be innocent, I who could be gay,
I who could have love and mirth before the light went by,
I have put my sister in her mating-time away –
Sister, my young sister, – was it I? – was it I?
I have robbed my sister of the lips against her breast
(For a coin, for the weaving of my children’s lace and lawn),
Feet that pace beside the loom, hands that cannot rest,
How can she know motherhood, whose strength is gone?
I who took no heed of her, starved and labor-worn,
I against whose placid heart my sleepy gold heads lie,
Round my path they cry to me, little souls unborn,
God of Life – Creator! It was I! It was I!
The Wakened God
The War-god wakened drowsily;
There were gold chains about his hands.
He said: ‘And who shall reap my lands
And bear the tithes to Death for me?
‘The nations stilled my thunderings;
They wearied of my steel despair,
The flames from out my burning hair:
Is there an ending of such things?’
Low laughed the Earth, and answered: ‘When
Was any changeless law I gave
Changed by my sons intent to save,
By puny pitying hands of men?
‘I feel no ruth for some I bear….
The swarming, hungering overflow
Of crowded millions, doomed to go,
They must destroy who chained you there.
‘For some bright stone or shining praise
They stint a million bodies’ breath,
And sell the women, shamed, to death,
And send the men brief length of days.
‘They kill the bodies swift for me,
And kill the souls you gave to peace….
You were more merciful than these,
Old master of my cruelty.
‘Lo, souls are scarred and virtues dim:
Take back thy scourge of ministry,
Rise from thy silence suddenly,
Lest these still take Death’s toll to him!’
The War-God snapped his golden chain:
His mercies thundered down the world,
And lashing battle-lines uncurled
And scourged the crouching lands again.
