Poetry Friday--New Year's Resolutions

I for one, don't make resolutions. The simple change of the calendar isn't enough to motivate me. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, though, wrote a poem that is just chocky-block full of resolutions! And most, except for "to keep my health," are fully achievable.

RESOLVE

To keep my health!
To do my work!
To live!
To see to it I grow and gain and give!
Never to look behind me for an hour!
To wait in weakness, and to walk in power;
But always fronting onward to the light,
Always and always facing towards the right.
Robbed, starved, defeated, fallen, wide astray--
On, with what strength I have!
Back to the way!

Gilman is best known for her story, "The Yellow Wallpaper" (found in The Charlotte Perkins Gilman Reader [F GIL]). "The Yellow Wallpaper" is studied widely in colleges as an example of feminist literature. Gilman, though, in her time, was widely known as a lecturer and social reformer. She wrote profusely, and yet, aside from "The Yellow Wallpaper," is virtually unknown today.