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The Jester

By Margaret Widdemer 1884–1978 Margaret Widdemer

I have known great gold Sorrows:

Majestic Griefs shall serve me watchfully

Through the slow-pacing morrows:

I have knelt hopeless where sea-echoing

Dim endless voices cried of suffering

Vibrant and far in broken litany:

Where white magnolia and tuberose hauntingly

Pulsed their regretful sweets along the air-—

All things most tragical, most fair,

Have still encompassed me . . .

I dance where in the screaming market-place

The dusty world that watches buys and sells,

With painted merriment upon my face,

Whirling my bells,

Thrusting my sad soul to its mockery.

I have known great gold Sorrows . . .

Shall they not mock me, these pain-haunted ones,

If it shall make them merry, and forget

That grief shall rise and set

With the unchanging, unforgetting suns

Of their relentless morrows?

Source: Poetry (November 1912).

Biography

Poet and novelist Margaret Widdemer was born in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, in 1884 and grew up in Asbury Park, New Jersey. She was educated at the Drexel Institute Library School.

In her poems, Widdemer addresses the social problems of her day—such as child labor—and pays strict attention to traditional poetic forms. Her poetry collections include The Factories With Other Lyrics (1915); The Old Road to Paradise (1918), which . . .

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