Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE PROCESSION, by RICHARD EUGENE BURTON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE PROCESSION, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Now let our womankind tend hearth and house
Last Line: Make deposition as to woman's worth.
Subject(s): Love; Marriage; Time; Women; Weddings; Husbands; Wives


"NOW let our womankind tend hearth and house,
Obey and love, receive, in turn, due love
Of husbands, brothers, sons who battle for
Their wants and welfare in the outer ways,
And so fulfil the Law. This sums the whole."

Thus spake Sir Oracle. Meanwhile, meseemed
Through mists of time I saw in rich array
Pass by a white procession, one by one:
The swart-browed queen whose Eastern Sovereignty
Was large, but larger yet her passionate sway
Over two men who made the Western World,
Caesar and Antony, both at her feet.
And then, bright Helen, Menelaus' wife,
And Paris' leman in a golden day;
So fair that poets e'er since have joyed to sing
Her loveliness, which claimed its hecatombs
Of victims, Greeks and Trojans battailous.
Next, Magdalen, whose penitence is famed
And precious, and the Mary men revere,
Walking in sisterwise, with equal mien,
Save that the Mother's brow was full-content,
The Maiden's wistful. Then proud Joan of Arc,
A peasant yet a princess with a light
Fanatic yet divine within her eyes;
A martyr's eyes that look through flames to God!
The while the lips say: "Patience, 'tis for France."
And Sappho, fillet-bound about the head,
Chanting swift lyric lays beside the sea
AEgean blue, -- lays soft yet strong withal,
Since still we hear, albeit brokenly.
Hypatia, too, whose spirit was not quenched
By mob-defiance nor untimely death,
Strode gravely sweet and calm; and Portia, she
That donned a mannish habit for the nonce
And plead with angel-tongue for Mercy's place
Along with formal justice. Shyly there
Came Sister Dorothea, half a Saint
Yet all a woman, binding wounds and sores;
Her passing was a breath from the Command:
"Unto the least of these my brethren." --
These, yea, and many more filed by, until
The mist grew mythic and they faded out
Into the common light of day: anon,
Again I heard the little, piping voice
Make deposition as to woman's worth.





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