mmm......literature!

I'm broke right now. Nothing new. Sometimes I find that good things come from being broke. I watch my money much better. I appreciate the small things.

I had intended on trying to sell a couple of old school books. Well, one wasn't a school book, because I never took a class for it, but I'm betting that it is a schoolbook for SOME class out there. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. I had bought it at Half Priced Books. It's not worth it to sell this book. It is a goldmine of great literature. I found this amazing poem within it today:

A Double Standard

DO you blame me that I loved him?

If when standing all alone

I cried for bread a careless world

Pressed to my lips a stone.

Do you blame me that I loved him,

That my heart beat glad and free,

When he told me in the sweetest tones

He loved but only me?

Can you blame me that I did not see

Beneath his burning kiss

The serpent's wiles, nor even hear

The deadly adder hiss?

Can you blame me that my heart grew cold

That the tempted, tempter turned;

When he was feted and caressed

And I was coldly spurned?

Would you blame him, when you draw from me

Your dainty robes aside,

If he with gilded baits should claim

Your fairest as his bride?

Would you blame the world if it should press

On him a civic crown;

And see me struggling in the depth

Then harshly press me down?

Crime has no sex and yet to-day

I wear the brand of shame;

Whilst he amid the gay and proud

Still bears an honored name.

Can you blame me if I've learned to think

Your hate of vice a sham,

When you so coldly crushed me down

And then excused the man?

Would you blame me if to-morrow

The coroner should say,

A wretched girl, outcast, forlorn

Has thrown her life away?

Yes, blame me for my downward course,

But oh! remember well,

Within your homes you press the hand

That led me down to hell.

I'm glad God's ways are not our ways,

He does not see as man;

Within His love I know there's room

For those whom others ban.

I think before His great white throne,

His throne of spotless light,

That whited sepulchres shall wear

The hue of endless night.

That I who fell, and he who sinned,

Shall reap as we have sown;

That each the burden of his loss

Must bear and bear alone.

No golden weights can turn the scale

Of justice in His sight;

And what is wrong in woman's life

In man's cannot be right.



Frances E. W. Harper