< Return to Charlotte Perkins Gilman Poems
Waste
Doth any man consider what we waste
Here in God’s garden? While the sea is full,
The sunlight smiles, and all the blessed earth
Offers her wealth to our intelligence.
We waste our food, enough for half the world,
In helpless luxury among the rich,
In helpless ignorance among the poor,
In spilling what we stop to quarrel for.
We waste our wealth in failing to produce,
In robbing of each other every day
In place of making things,—our human crown.
We waste our strength, in endless effort poured
Like water on the sand, still toiling on
To make a million things we do not want.
We waste our lives, those which should still lead on
Each new one gaining on the age behind,
In doing what we all have done before.
We waste our love,—poured up into the sky,
Across the ocean, into desert lands,
Sunk in one narrow circle next ourselves,—
While these, our brothers, suffer—are alone.
Ye may not pass the near to love the far;
Ye may not love the near and stop at that.
Love spreads through man, not over or around!
Yea, grievously we waste; and all the time
Humanity is wanting,—wanting sore.
Waste not, my brothers, and ye shall not want!
< Return to Charlotte Perkins Gilman Poems
“How I wish this illustrated version was given to me back [when I first read this story]! The level of detail in the illustrations helped me ‘feel’ the story. They are beautiful, haunting, disturbing, and yet not over interpreting the work. Do a young (or old) English student a favor and get this illustrated version of Gilman’s classic early feminist story The Yellow Wallpaper.”
—Lynn Silvera, Amazon reviewer