Famous Women: Sacred and Profane (Part 6)

by Glen Levin Swiggett

The University Press of Sewanee, Tennessee

1960

(contents)

M. Carey Thomas, 1857-1935

Devoted dean and later president

Who lived to see come true her dream Bryn Mawr,

An institution where one would not bar

The higher studies in development

Of women, and by such encouragement

Prepare them for careers particular,

And with such courses as were similar

To those for men at that time prevalent.

No institution of these latter days

Has in its founding had a faith so great,

Nor knowledge of the problems to be met;

And for this faith and understanding, praise

The highest must be given to the late

Miss Thomas whom Bryn Mawr will ne'er forget.

Selma Lagerlöf, 1858-1940

Outstanding woman of her native land,

Oft honored for her stories' purity

And charm, and pastoral simplicity--

All virtues of this Swedish wonderland!

First woman member of that favored band

To win the Nobel Prize, she fittingly

Was likewise first in its Academy,

Whence women members formerly were banned.

She travelled far that she might supplement

Her gentle heritage and discipline

With atmosphere demanded by such tales

As Miracles of Antichrist; content

Far more, how'er, with those whose origin

Lay in her love for Sweden's hills and vales.

Eleanor Duse, 1859-1924

The greatest actress of the Italian stage,

She did not need her poet-lover's Flame

of Life to give to her a deathless fame,

For like Bernhardt she had the patronage,

Despite great hardships, that from early age

Led them by common paths to take the same

Hard road to favors, whereby each became

For all who love the theatre, the rage.

The critics praised her great simplicity

And power to show emotion in the face;

And to interpret only with a look

Those characters of great diversity

By famous playwrights of the world, whose place

Had lain for many hidden in some book.

Carrie Chapman Catt, 1859-1947

Out of the woman suffrage movement came

The League which Mrs. Catt had long foreseen

Must be, if women would their harvest glean

From years of sowing, now within the frame-

Work of the Constitution, and their claim

Defend to right of ballot that had been

Denied. The League of Women Voters, keen,

Alert, remains as fair part of her fame.

In this great movement, as in others, she

Was ably helped by such as Maud Wood Park,

Selected as the League's first president,

A lovely lady serving loyally

The suffrage cause which bears, howe'er the mark

Of Mrs. Catt as sign of victory.

Marie Bashkirtsev, 1860-1884

To die so young! and yet to write as one

Who had lived richly with abundant years,

And knew life's happiness as well as tears.

Before its course had even well begun,

Rare talent she displayed for art, that won

High praise, yet one beneath that promise fears

Could see of early death which oft appears

In genius, dead before its work is done.

Than fiction stranger is the diary

Naïve, and yet profound, of one who knew,

As if innately and subconsciously,

Life's goal and meaning as, perhaps, but few

Have done so young, a greater tragedy,

Since fame so wistfully she, too, would woo.

Jane Addams, 1860-1935

To a great woman, highly prized, I write

These lines; to one who our first settlement

Established and became first president

Of a society that would unite,

Through peace and freedom, nations torn by might.

Hull House, however, is the monument

Of this wise woman, kind, intelligent,

Who sought to brighten sorry lives with light.

Not as director but as missioner

She should be known, who really met the need

Of social effort to deliver one

From momentary want, whose character

Was weakened by untoward fears that lead

To charges criminal that one should shun.

Edith Wharton, 1862-1937

The heart of fools is in the House of Mirth,

Ecclesiastes said, who gave to her the name

Not only of this book but, doubtless, fame,

For in her novels of surpassing worth,

Despite the social level and the birth

Of characters, she strangely showed the same

Frustration and unhappy end that claim

High praise in Ethan Frome, son of the earth.

A high example of what letters might

Have been with us, had Henry James not fled

To England early but remained to found

A school whose followers, with her insight

In human motives, but not limited

To class, would now with praise be better crowned.

Ricarda Huch, 1864-1947

Though born patrician, she had sympathy

For things unpleasant, even ugly, who

Successfully the veil of beauty drew

In tale and novel o'er reality.

Of women one of first in Germany

To win the doctorate, she wrote as few

Have of her time in history and, too,

In letters, all expressed with artistry.

A German-trained historian, she wrote

Of war her country waged for thirty years,

A book that is a classic in its field;

And in it and in one of greater note

Upon Romanticism such skill appears

As has her well-earned fame for all time sealed.

Marie Curie, 1867-1934

Devoted to her husband and career,

One vainly seeks in science for a pair

As great: a teacher-pupil who did share

Desire increasingly becoming dear

To physicists in research nuclear.

The world thought then a woman would not care

To enter on career where one would dare

To make the hidden things of Nature, clear.

Career and life were to her like romance,

And therein, doubtless, lay her great success,

Which in her own right won the Nobel Prize;

For at the threshold of the great advance

In physics, on her own inventiveness

Our late discoveries did capitalize.

Gertrude Stein, 1874-1946

To found a school, or rather place in debt

Some who have later won distinction in

Such art and letters as have doubtless been

Outstanding in their time, will never let

Them nor the critics of their age forget

The strangest endless flow of words to win

Applause, whose hidden meanings sibylline,

If such there be, bewilderment beget.

Mere words, howe'er, if swiftly read aloud,

Have sometimes tonal beauty which the sound

Repeated oft produces without thought;

And this she must have had for that keen crowd

That gathered round in Paris this profound,

Gay lady and her friendly counsel sought!*

*Revised from America: In Balance.

Amy Lowell, 1874-1925

Ancestral traits of this great family

Lived on in her, although she would have seemed

Most strange, indeed, too those who ever deemed

Accord, convention and conformity

Essential to the best society;

And this she, too, believed until she teamed

Up with those London Imagists who dreamed

A new philosophy of poetry.

Of many movements that have come and gone

With late World Wars, some traces still persist

Of one she led; and lives with some of those

That have their origin in verse of Donne.

And yet despite influence Imagist,

Keats is the best example of her prose.

Mary McCleod Bethune, 1875-[1955]

Her efforts have not had success that they

Deserve, although great progress has been made.

The type of education and the aid

She offered at Daytona Beach display

Rare understanding of the kind and way

Of training that for industry and trade

Can best prepare her people to evade

Misfortunes and mistakes of yesterday.

And through her Council by example she

Has shown how one can, too, advance her race;

How one by training only can prepare

Himself to play his part in the economy,

And find in the community his place

And in the common life his rightful share.

Willa Cather, 1876-1947

Of novelists the greatest in the sense

That much of what so swiftly disappears

In settling of the West, O Pioneers,

With other tales lives on as evidence

Of fortitude and loneliness intense

Which foreign immigrants on our frontiers,

With overtones of tragedy, in fears

Endured within their lonely land immense.

She wrote of women and the sacrifice

They had to make in building their own nest;

Of charm of character that hidden lay

Beneath their rugged strength; and of the price

A great priest paid for living loneliest

Of men midst those for whom he came to pray.

Helen Keller, 1880-[1968]

No man possessed of his five senses can

Begin to understand what she has done;

How with her rare companion she has won

Her way out of the soundless dark that ran,

A lifeless void, as when the world began.

How patiently, through touch alone, the sun

Of knowledge shone for her, inspiring, one

By one, her deeds humanitarian.

Achievement such as hers, accomplishment

Transcending mortal man's experience,

Makes one believe a miracle can be

Performed today, if man will but consent,

Believing in God's grace and providence,

And for relief pray understandingly.

Pavlova, 1882-1931

What is it that we seeking never find

As great in others as Pavlova had?

'Tis not technique, nor like Bacchantes mad

With joy she danced, for others of her kind

Are likewise trained and moved; but more refined,

A greater artist, elflike, rhythm-clad,

To whom was sadness, sad, and gladness, glad,

More subtly she her subject did unwind.

We see her now in the immortal role

Which Fokine once composed for her alone,

And which once seen lives on in memory,

Where we but see the beauty of the soul

Embodied, from some sylphine region flown,

Forever struggling in captivity.

Eleanor Roosevelt, 1884-[1962]

Some men and women of great heritage,

Wealth and position gladly dedicate

Themselves with zeal to those less fortunate,

Devoting themselves daily without wage

To solving problems that their times engage.

To fail to recognize and praise her great

Accomplishments one would be an ingrate,

For none have tried to help more in this age.

Yet, though a great humanitarian,

Her party loyalty undoubtedly

Makes her an over-zealous partisan.

In controversy, therefore, frequently

She is the target of attacks more than

Seems fair for one of such warm sympathy.

*Revised from America: In Balance.

Gabriela Mistral, 1889-1957

The second of the name to win the prize

So highly coveted in letters, she bacame

Of Western women first to have this fame:

A teacher-poet to idealize

The things of spirit even more, and rise

Sometimes to heights whereto the Saints aflame

With ideal love aspire--her greatest claim,

Perhaps, to fame most critics recognize.

And as with Vasconcelos, Mexico's

Great teacher of this present century,

However practical or realist

Her aim may seem to be, there clearly flows

Through her philosophy and poetry

The traits of mystic and idealist.

Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, 1890-[1900-1990]

A brave, great soul inspired and paved the way

For Indian independence which Nehru

And, too, his sister, followers, best knew

How to promote and profit by dismay

Of people whom the British did affray

At Amritsar. Of Indians these two

Have best known how to follow and pursue

The course where their land's independence lay.

They have served country and their Congress well;

And Madame Pandit in diplomacy

First woman of all India became:

As diplomat, except in Israel,

No parallel can be found currently

Where women have achieved so quickly fame.

Pearl Buck, 1892-[1973]

Deservedly she won the Nobel Prize

For good work and not for Good Earth alone

That would for East and West, out of her own

Experience in China, mobilize

Public opinion that might otherwise

Ignore conditions there which she had known

First-hand and to such level now had grown,

That she could only tell them fiction-wise.

But her good novel has in vain been told,

It seems. The East and West cannot agree.

Ancestral China is today so far

Away from former customs, that the old

Things China loved so well seem hopelessly

Replaced by acts of violence and of war.

Dorothy Sayers, 1893-1957

A lettered English woman truly great,

Who turned away, of her own will, for pay

A gracious mind and spirit to essay,

With Peter Wimsey, thrillers that create

Delight, 'tis true, yet made, perhaps, too late

Translating Dante at this latter day,

Where undue haste and prejudice betray

Ripe scholarship and knowledge intimate.

Her Dante should have followed Catholic Tales,

Not rapidly, but with the ripening

Of spirit which this scholar has possessed.

One would be less aware of bothersome details,

And better know of Dante's visioning

And thoughts sublime on sinners and the blest.

Marian Anderson, 1907-[1897-1993]

(on seeing her televised Asian tour)

It did not seem that such rich melody

Could possibly come from a human throat,

Such tonal range and beauty as did float

Upon the air in unheard harmony;

And yet by their enraptured faces we

Knew that this woman's voice, God-given, smote

The lowly Asian folk and those of note

As well, and with us won them instantly.

How wisely she was chosen for this tour!

Her sympathies would in advance be known;

And she would, therefore, welcome be to all

The peoples visited. May then endure

The friendly ties her lovely voice alone

Created with those whom it did enthrall!*

*Revised from America: The Gate to Freedom.

Clare Boothe Luce, 1903-[1987]

The daughter of her time as well as child

Of destiny, a patroness of art,

Fame came to her when she became a part

Of that strong stream which like some current wild

Flows through our body politic. Unreconciled,

Howe'er, to such debate as has a dart

Concealed beneath the honied hand and heart,

Foe upon foe in public life she piled.

With her, to think leads quickly to swift deed;

And yet in her behavior one can see

Those gifts that but in quiet can create.

Endowed with wit and beauty, she, indeed,

Well represents our country currently,

Whose public acts should even foes placate.